Welcome to the 173rd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof Logitech K310 keyboard of the editor and administrator of both The New Leaf Journal and its new sister site, The Emu Café Social, Nicholas A. Ferrell. I have plenty of news to share this week, but I am also off to a late start (it is 1:49 PM on Saturday, February 10, as I write this) and it is nice weather out -- so I am going to try to be efficient in putting this newsletter together. Let us jump into the content. Leaves from the week that was I published four new New Leaf Journal articles since mailing Newsletter 172. Comparing my al|together VN rank to VNDB (NAF, 2/3) Afte…  ( 10 min )

From Phoronix: “The Steam on Linux marketshare per Valve’s official survey put it at 1.97% for December after hitting 1.91% in November — continuing a slow upward trajectory seen in recent months thanks to the ongoing success of the Linux-powered SteamOS / Steam Deck … In turn the CPU results for AMD continue to climb […]

Puts on Apple Hat Turns on Apple Hat Opens article about Microsoft adding sudo to Windows “Looks like Microsoft is ripping off Apple again” Starts video of Steve Jobs introducing some Apple product in 2005 (For the record, I almost use Arch by the way.  Posted from my desktop PC running EndeavourOS.)

I had an old Yahoo email account (it was @ymail, I thought that was neat). I think I made the account in 2008 or 2009. Back when I did not know any better, I primarily used Gmail, MSN, and Yahoo Mail, but Yahoo was always third on the priority list. I do not think I […]

I have not followed the NBA closely since 2016. However, I am working on a few article projects for The New Leaf Journal focusing on interesting NBA points, primarily from when I followed the league closely (1997-2016). See, for example, my pair of articles from last year on the Detroit Pistons’ 2003 NBA Draft and […]

2022: I took a look at EnBizCard, a free and open source web app for creating a static digital business card page. The result can be hosted as a static site -- but I followed the instructions to incorporate my business card into my WordPress site. https://thenewleafjournal.com/enbizcard-review-foss-digital-business-cards/  ( 2 min )

Back in 2022, I wrote a guide to making a web browser search engine shortcut for DuckDuckGo and Brave timers (e.g., "5 minute timer) https://thenewleafjournal.com/brave-and-duckduckgo-timer-search-shortcuts/ #Timer #Firefox #Chromium #BraveSearch #DuckDuckGo

I share an old outline party composition guide that I wrote for Persona 3 FES's The Answer epilogue back in 2011 or 2012.

Update update-feed.yaml Force update  ( 1 min )

Update osmosfeed.yaml Switched from main NLJ feed to author NLJ feeds so that aggregator will show the author of each post.  ( 2 min )

Update update-feed.yaml Force update  ( 1 min )

Update osmosfeed.yaml Added /feed/atom to ECS feeds. You'll be surprised to learn that Osmosfeed needs a FEED URL.  ( 2 min )

You never know what you will find while walking around in Brooklyn, New York. For example, here is a discovery from an October 14, 2022 walk -- an unopened gallon of Poland Spring water. It came with the "Free H2O" label lest anyone would have mistaken it for being lost instead of free. https://thenewleafjournal.com/free-h2o-seen-in-brooklyn/ #NYC #Brooklyn #PolandSpring #Gallon #Water #Free #Anecdote #NewLeafJournal #TheNewLeafJournal #Teracube2e

You can find many free things left outside in Brooklyn, New York. This includes free furniture, free books, and, apparently, free gallons of Poland Spring water.

Yomu of the Umai Yomu Anime Blog posted a new writing prompt: “What’s an anime that you’ve fallen asleep to?” Let us see Yomu’s response: Strangely enough, I’ve never fallen asleep to an anime, even when including re-watching series where I’d already have an idea of what was going to happen and there was less […]

I wrote a short article on the ongoing renovations of the Carroll Gardens Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library with my photos of the now (temporarily) closed building. https://thenewleafjournal.com/carroll-gardens-library-renovations/  ( 2 min )

I use the term "survive and advance" to describe a specific type of visual novel choice structure. In a late January article, I explained what inspired my use of the term (March Madness) and how I define it in the visual novel context. https://thenewleafjournal.com/survive-and-advance-visual-novel-choices/ #VisualNovels #VideoGames #VisualNovelChoices #Sports #NCAABasketball

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time since New York City evicted all of the vendors and panhandlers a few weeks ago. I fully supported clearing the Bridge for pedestrians just like I previously supported removing the bike lane from the walkway. However, I was skeptical that New York City would follow […]

I decided to request an invite to Bluesky a couple of weeks ago when I saw that it allowed for using one’s own domain as a handle and had RSS support. I finally received my invite on February 4. I made my account, set it up with my domain, and added my Bluesky RSS feed […]

Photograph of Manhattan from close to the Manhattan pedestrian walkway entrance/exit of the Brooklyn Bridge. I wrote a short post praising NYC and the NYPD for actually following through on clearing vendors and other impediments from the walkway -- making for a pleasant walk despite there being a good number of people. https://social.emucafe.org/naferrell/clear-brooklyn-bridge #NYC #Manhattan #ManhattanSkyline #BrooklynBridge #FreedomTower #PaceUniversity #Pixel3aXL #EmuCafeSocial

From 2021: My DuckDuckGo query for "freedom tower birds" returned top results that were very much at odds with one another. Unfortunately, neither of the results was the specific new (at the time) article that I was trying to pull up. https://thenewleafjournal.com/duckduckgo-presents-both-sides-of-the-freedom-tower-songbird-debate/  ( 2 min )

I read an article that described NBA Hall of Famer Tim Duncan as having been born "overseas." While Duncan was not born in one of the 50 states, he was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands -- which is a U.S. territory. In my essay, I make the case that Duncan should not be described as having been born "overseas" in the sense the term is most commonly understood. https://thenewleafjournal.com/espn-states-tim-duncan-was-born-overseas/ #NBA #Sports #Citizenship #Nationality #Semantics

I use privacy.com to generate virtual credit cards (one of my few closed source “apps”). I usually pause cards that I am not using at the moment but will probably use again in the future. Fun fact: If you set up a card for a scheduled payment but forget to unpause the card, the payment […]

I maintain two emails over at The New Leaf Journal. My site administrator email is info [at] newleafjournal. It largely exists to receive spam emails. A certain gentleman purportedly from Qatar Energy sent me the following email: Dearest info, I am [REDACTED], Manager of Finance and Accounts, at Qatar Energy. I have $100m for Investment. […]

If you have a WordPress site, you can subscribe to yourself on Minds and Minds will recognize your WordPress account as a follower. In order to this, you need the ActivityPub and Friends plugins, both available in the regular WordPress plugin repos https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/friends/ After both are configured, go into your Friends admin menu and […]

I’m now friends with Nicholas A. Ferrell.

Before doing anything on Bluesky, I connected my account to one of my domains. Then I installed a WordPress plugin to one of my sites to connect for cross posting. It took me longer than I would like to admit to figure out that the instant domain was .social, not .app.  ( 2 min )

Update osmosfeed.yaml - Removed main Emu Cafe Social feed in favor of author feeds only - Removed Hypothes.is feed - Added NAF Bluesky feed - Reorganized feed order  ( 2 min )

Episode 5 of the A Sign of Affection anime adaptation provided definitive proof that one of the two main characters, Itsuomi Nagi, has been dying his hair. I examine the evidence.

I came across an interesting blog post by Evan Sheeran noting that it is easy for to become overwhelmed by new feed articles using an RSS/ATOM Feed Reader. He stated that “[t]he more feeds to which you subscribe, or the more prolific some of the authors are, the more of a commitment opening your feed […]

I use side tabs with my Firefox set up. I briefly switched from Tree Style Tab to Sidebery when Tree Style Tab had an update issue. I was impressed with Sidebery and it comes with more power features than Tree Style Tab out of the box (It also does a better job of clearly showing […]

I inadvertently discovered that WordPress interprets something immediately followed by a “#” in a post as a new tag. Who knew? I learned this when I was indicating numbered rankings in a new article. I decided to forego the “#”.

I wrote a post a few days ago about how my Minds posts are now visible from my Mastodon instance. I noted one issue, however. Minds has a praiseworthy set up where users can add hashtags separate from the post. I noted that I liked the set up last year on The New Leaf Journal, […]

Putting a # before a number (or probably anything) inside a post in WordPress creates a new tag. #WordPress

I compare my al|together visual novel rankings with the Visual Novel Database average user scores for all 31 pieces.

Welcome to the 172nd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof Logitech K310 keyboard of the administrator and editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. Last week saw the publication of several big ticket articles that have been in the works for a while, so let's get to our weekly review and other news and notes, including 21 links from around the web. Leaves from the week that was Let's review our new articles... al|together Visual Novel Ranking (20-11) Following up my (subjective) ranking of the bottom-11 al|together novels... Missing Temu Ads Through Good Internet Usage I decided that my ignorance of an internet advertising…  ( 9 min )

Managing GitHub Personal Access Tokens: #GitHub

I came across a good post with links to bloggers who share links on Jeremy Keith’s website, adactio.com. I added the adactio links feed along with a few of the link feeds noted in the post to the Links category of my personal feed collection. I may start sharing a few links each day here […]

I use Xfce as the desktop environment on my workstation. I have read some complaints that Xfce is dated compared to GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other newer and shinier desktop environments, but I disagree. Xfce looks slick with a good theme (the Linux distribution I use, EndeavourOS, comes with a nice Xfce spin out of […]

Examining overwhelming circumstantial evidence of Yuki Itose's use of hair dye in the first two episodes of the A Sign of Affection anime adaptation.

"Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki 2nd STAGE" NOTES (Ep 1-5) I will review Tomozaki S2 at the end of the season. These are a few notes on the first five episodes for future reference. Animation quality in episodes 1 and 5 was solid. Weaker in episodes 2-4 with some instances of off-model characters that we saw in the weaker points of S1. Episode 1 was much like the first season with Hinami giving Tomozaki a light-hearted social task to carry out. This opening arc did a good job of showing Tomozaki's growth with respect to Hinami (setting limits on how far he would go in accomplishing his task) and in having friends he could rely on to help him achieve his objectives. Opening arc segued into a "bullying arc" wherein Erika Konno, who came off as unpleasant in her small role in season 1 and he…

I have a social media account on Minds. Minds added ActivityPub support not too long ago. I had been able to follow my Minds account from Mastodon and follow my Mastodon account from Minds. However, posts were not showing up in either case. Today, I was surprised to discover my most recent Minds post in […]

I recently read that Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green turned 20. Sadly, I have no article to commemorate the occasion (although I should play them again), but I covered the 20th anniversary of Pokémon Gold and Sliver's (North American) release in 2020, including my memories of getting Pokémon Gold right when it came out. https://thenewleafjournal.com/winds-of-new-beginnings-pokemon-gold-silver/ #Pokémon #PokémonGold #GameBoy #GameBoyColor #VideoGames

I have been following myself on Minds from Mastodon and Mastodon from Minds for a while now, but posts were not federating. For that reason, I was surprised to see my new Minds post pop up in my timeline. Looks like everything is integrated now...

Sharing my system for organizing my personal RSS/ATOM feed collection and discussing other systems seen around the web.

January was highlighted by a surprise newsletter share and Hacker News page 1 appearance early in the month, but we also published 17 new articles on many interesting topics.

Yomu at the Umai Yomu Anime Blog asked readers to answer the following question:  What anime did you start the new year with? The first anime I watched in 2024 was actually a 2023 series: BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! Two factors came together to make that 2023 musical melodrama my first anime of the new […]

I never had a pet millipede and I do not plan to acquire one. But that did not stop me from writing an article about how to keep YOUR pet millipede from drowning in its own water dish. https://thenewleafjournal.com/keep-the-pet-millipede-from-drowning/ #Pets #Millipedes #Bugs #Dictionary

I had been using Tree Style Tab for side-tabs on Firefox along with a userChrome.css file to remove the top bar. I was surprised to find when I opened Firefox this morning that Tree Style Tabs was not working. Instead of checking its GitHub repository, where I would have found the issue, I tried to […]

I use YOGA Image Optimizer -- an open source GUI tool for optimizing images -- to handle the small images I use on my sites. I decided after using it for more than a year that a review was warranted. https://thenewleafjournal.com/reviewing-yoga-image-optimizer/ #OpenSource #YOGAImageOptimizer #Linux #ImageOptimizer #Flatpak

I rank the top 10 visual novel translations to emerge from the 31 pieces translated for the 2005, 2006, and 2008 al|together festivals.

I have been busy with New Leaf Journal and law work as of late, but I return to The Emu Café Social with a fun New Leaf Journal update. As of the afternoon of January 29, 2023, we have more Google referrals at The New Leaf Journal than Hacker News referrals despite our fairly high […]

I recently learned about some shopping app called Temu. I contemplated my obliviousness and determined that I owe my lack of knowledge to good internet usage.

Thoughts on how to make good use of WordPress's native category and tag taxonomies. https://thenewleafjournal.com/thoughts-on-wordpress-categories-and-tags/ #WordPress

The second part of my al|together visual novel ranking covers the ten translations I have ranked 20-11.

Welcome to the 171st edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. Speaking of my keyboard... Leaves from the week that was My Logitech Washable Wired Keyboard K310 After noting my waterproof keyboard in every newsletter for more than three years, it finally received a full New Leaf Journal article. "Survive and Advance" Visual Novel Choices I have used the term "survive and advance" to describe certain visual novel choice structures. In this article, I define my pet visual novel description. al|together Visual Novel Rank Intro Introducing my long-advertised final ranking…  ( 8 min )

A photograph of the Carroll Gardens branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The library was closed for improvements in July 21, 2023 and will remain closed for 18-24 months from that date. I took this photo on August 19, 2023. https://thenewleafjournal.com/carroll-gardens-library-renovations/ #NYC #Brooklyn #CarrollGardens #Library #Columns #ArchedWindow #Pixel3axl #NewLeafJournal #TheNewLeafJournal

I have been using a Logitech K310 keyboard since April 2013. The K310's standout feature is that it is washable. Sadly, Logitech discontinued it several years ago -- but mine lives on. https://thenewleafjournal.com/my-logitech-washable-wired-keyboard-k310/ #Keyboard #Logitech

I offer my opinion on whether Google's promoting new AI tools with Chrome for drafting forum posts and reviews will contribute to making the internet a better place.

The first of three legs of my al|together visual novel ranking covers novels 31-21 on my list.

Introduction a 3-part series wherein I will rank the 31 al|together visual novel translations from 31 to 1.

My Logitech K310 keyboard after a good washing and scrubbing in my kitchen sink. I have been using this as my main desktop keyboard since April 2013 and it is still going strong after countless keystrokes, many cleanings, and one coffee incident. Sadly, Logitech discontinued it several years ago. https://thenewleafjournal.com/my-logitech-washable-wired-keyboard-k310/ #Logitech #LogitechK310 #Keyboard #PhysicalKeyboards #WashableKeyboard #NewLeafJournal #TheNewLeafJournal #pixel3axl

Welcome to the 170th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal,Nicholas A. Ferrell. It is highly likely that there will be a live New Leaf Journal article about said keyboard when you read this newsletter, but that is technically an article for next newsletter week. Below, we cover the events of January 13-19 in our typical Newsletter Leaf Journal manner. Leaves from the week that was I published three new articles since mailing Newsletter 169. Shopping on AI (Sp)Amazon Justin and Justina discuss some interesting AI-generated product descriptions seen on Amazon (or Spamazon). Provocative O…  ( 8 min )

I published a new version of my New Leaf Journal feed directory. It includes links to our RSS/ATOM/JSON feeds with directions for subscribing to narrower subsets of articles and it also includes our less-used feeds (e.g., mf2, TWTXT), static feed aggregator site, and off-site newsletter RSS feed. For those who do not know much about feeds, I also linked to my introduction and several essays on the benefits of feeds. https://thenewleafjournal.com/new-leaf-journal-feeds/ #WordPress #RSS #ATOM #JSONFeed #TWTXT #Feeds

Over at The New Leaf Journal, my January 5, 2024 article, which was about drug-enhanced professional cycling results, became the sixth New Leaf Journal article (going back to February 2021) to appear on Hacker News page 1 (only after a stop in The Browser newsletter). It reached as high as 11th on HN and was […]

Pro-Hamas protesters spent January 15, 2024 loudly protesting outside of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, yelling that the cancer hospital is complicit in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza, or even “supporting” it. Far be it from me to offer any sort of advice to supporters of a foreign terrorist organization, but in light […]

I did not get around to publishing a review of episode 2 of season 2 of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun after publishing a brief review of the first episode. The second episode had a dramatic tonal shift — segueing from the social game shenanigans that began in the first episode to bullying. I had some issues […]

A 2022 post featuring my photographs of the Freedom Tower, shrouded in fog, from a morning walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. https://thenewleafjournal.com/freedom-tower-in-the-fog-from-the-brooklyn-bridge/ #NYC #Brooklyn #Manhattan #BrooklynBridge #FreedomTower #Fog #Photography

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Let's check in on how Amazon and brand FOPEAS are doing... Fictional dialogue inspired by the "product": https://thenewleafjournal.com/shopping-on-ai-spamazon/ Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240112170316/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Ffulfill-request-respectful-information-users-Brown%2Fdp%2FB0CM82FJL2 #Amazon #AI #Spam #newleafjournal #thenewleafjournal

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg published an interesting “birthday post” asking people to create blogs for his birthday. The idea is that […] Possibly related posts... Matt Damon's Brooklyn Heights Crane Game Around the Web 〜 Alternative Software and Services Resources The New Leaf Journal Celebrates Its First Birthday Justin and Justina review 2022 at the NLJ New Leaf Journal Year-In-Review: 2023 The al|together and Insani Visual Novel Translations Justin & Justina: The Most-Read New Leaf Journal… 100 Articles and Counting at The New Leaf Journal Searching for the "Libertarian Moment"

I came across a blog post titled Just Blog by Frank Meeuwsen. This post alerted me to an interesting “birthday” project by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. Mr. Mulenwig asked for people to blog for his birthday and link to his post. Ideally, the links should show up as pingbacks on his article. His post said […]

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Welcome to the 169th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. This newsletter comes to you as always from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. I am running a bit behind schedule today, so let us cut straight to your regularly scheduled newsletter content. Leaves from the week that was I published three new articles since mailing Newsletter 168. 2023 Anime Year in Review My third annual New Leaf Journal review of the year that was about anime, and it features my ranking of the top six series of 2024, notes on additional series, and category-specific awards. You can either use my article to find something to watch or as a prompt to become angry bec…  ( 7 min )