Cookies · fewer than a tourist kiosk

What gets stored in your browser, and what I actually need

A cookie is a small note a site leaves with your browser. Some notes are how a page remembers a choice. Some notes are how an advertising network knows an ad did its job. I use as few as I can, and I will tell you which pile each one sits in. This page is the cookie story in my own words. The privacy page is the PIPEDA story. They overlap because Canadian law cares about both.

This logbook does not require an account. I do not set a “logged-in” cookie because there is nothing to log into. If your browser shows a session cookie from this domain, it is likely the web server or a security token keeping a single visit consistent. It is not a profile of your ceiling readings. You can delete it when you close the tab and the pages will still load the next time.

Search advertising cookies

I run a modest search campaign so visitors checking harbour weather and queue times find these notes. The search network may set advertising cookies when you see or click those ads, and sometimes when you land here afterward. Those cookies measure whether the signpost worked. They can also be used by the network to limit how often you see the same ad, or to avoid showing it to someone who already came through.

They are optional in the only sense that matters: you can read every field note on this site with those cookies blocked. A blocker, a browser’s tracking-prevention setting, or the ad network’s own opt-out will cut them down. I will not put a fake paywall in front of the terrace notes because a cookie failed to fire. If the campaign becomes less efficient because people block ads, that is my problem, not a reason to hide the strobe rule.

I do not use advertising cookies to change the text you see. There is no version of this site that becomes more breathless because a campaign tag is present. The voice stays mine. The advice stays: look at the pod, then decide.

How to refuse, without a 40-page banner

Use your browser settings to block third-party cookies or to clear this site’s cookies. Use a tracker-blocking extension if that is how you move through the rest of the web. I am not going to guilt you with a dark pattern. I would rather you arrived with a clean browser and a clear view of the shaft than with a perfect conversion path.

If you write to me about cookies, I can tell you what I control (this domain, my campaign account) and what I do not (the internals of a global ad network). I will not claim a one-click miracle that deletes data I cannot see. I will delete correspondence you ask me to delete, which is the part that actually has your name on it.

For the legal frame, read the privacy page. For the harbour, ignore all of this and look out a west-facing window at Union. The strobe does not set a cookie.