September 2, 2023

Newsletter Leaf Journal CLI 〜 Midsummer newsletter 〜

The 151st Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to our nine newest posts, including two midsummer visual novels, nine links from around the web, six links from our archive, and stats, news, and notes from the week that was. In especially notable news, we received official confirmation of our return to the Bing search engine and changed the appearance of The New Leaf Journal with new system font stack choices.

Welcome to the 151st 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. August is in the books, but I stepped up our publishing pace after a few slow weeks to bring the month to a proper conclusion. Below, I share our week's worth of posts, links from around the web, our new most-visited statistics, and other news and notes.

Leaves from the week that was

I published six new articles since mailing Newsletter 150. I suppose that is a decent enough rebound from a one article week (even conceding the month-in-review post only barely counts).

• Pumpkin Spice Makeup Removal Wipes: I am not an expert on makeup or makeup removal, but I could not resist the opportunity to opine on an interesting product seen at Marshalls.
• Midsummer Haze - Visual Novel Review: If you think I am exaggerating when I say that I had to re-do the same scene 43 times to advance in this visual novel so I could complete my review, you will find in my review that this is no exaggeration.
• Finding Manatsu no Kagerou: This is a companion article to my arduous Midsummer Haze review. Here, you will learn why actually being able to run Midsummer Haze involved a story in and of itself.
• The New Leaf Journal Twtxt Feed: Learn how we made The New Leaf Journal more friendly to a small number of niche hackers.
• August 2023 at The New Leaf Journal: Maybe I should defy expectations with one of these month-in-reviews.
• A Midsummer Day's Resonance - VN Review: My proverbial feature article of the week, notwithstanding that my misadventures in Midsummer Haze may be more entertaining for those who did not endure them.

I also published four short Leaflets:

• Brooklyn Public Library Priorities: Somewhat disordered.
• I carrot about good content: Almost as much as I carrot about bad puns.
• Our Official Return to Bing: Our newsletters will feel less subversive now that Bing is no longer banning us.
• Changing NLJ System Font Stack: If you wondered why The New Leaf Journal looks different...

Leaves from around the web

I think I cleared 10,000 words this week. Combine that with catching up on our August posts via the month-in-review entry and I am not sure how you are going to find time to read the links from around the web. But far be it from me to hog all of your attention this week... Here are nine links from my link-sharing backlog for your holiday weekend reading:

• A Great Wave of Hokusai
  Roger Catlin for Smithsonian Magazine. December 9, 2019.

  Katsushika Hokusai is known for his iconic painting, The Great Waveoff Kanagawa. We learn here, "it was one of an estimated 30,000 images from Hokusai" (mildly productive).

• Why Does a Plastic-Wrapped Turkey Sandwich Cost $15 at the Airport?
  Christopher Robbins for Hell Gate NYC. April 13, 2023.

  Must be some very fancy plastic.

• Pokemon Fans Recover Script For Two Lost Anime Episodes
  Joshua Robertson for The Gamer. May 1, 2023.

  These aren't the lost Pokémon episodes from back in my day (those gave kids seizures).

• Coney Island Beach closed to swimmers due to sewage, storm runoff
  Giluia Heyward for Gothamist. August 23, 2023.

  It checks out considering how many of the sidewalks in residential neighborhoods smell. For example...

• Unending Raw Sewage Leak Plagues Williamsburg’s Public Housing Development
  Gwynne Hogan for The City. May 4, 2023.

  New York City is not a good landlord.

• But Can Your Typewriter Do This?
  Analog Office. May 16, 2023.

  Question assumes facts not in evidence. But jokes aside -- watch the video. It is very fun.

• Japanese city allows residents to cut mayor’s salary based on public opinion survey
  Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. July 15, 2023.

  Are recounts allowed?

• Porky Pig Memorial in Portis, Kansas
  Atlas Obscura. August 17, 2023.

  This taps into some Looney Toons history (and a location to visit if you happen to find yourself in Portis, Kansas).

• Bing Asks Users How They Protect Themselves On The Pirate Bay
  Ernesto Van der Sar for Torrent Freak. June 10, 2023.

  The jokes write themselves.

The Old Leaf Journal

Let's dig into our own archives...

• “Casey’s Revenge” – Grantland Rice’s 1896 Reply Poem to “Casey at Bat”
  N.A. Ferrell. August 26, 2021.

  This article had a big week or two around the start of school last September. Will it repeat the feat?

• Excerpts From “A Weaver’s Reverie”
  N.A. Ferrell. May 16, 2022.

  A pretty piece by a nineteenth century factory girl.

• Bed in Summer, Bed in Winter
  N.A. Ferrell. September 5, 2020.

  My evergreen piece on the days growing shorter.

• Reflections on Digital Music Shows
  Victor V. Gurbo. September 20, 2020.

  Not everything works better via video conferencing.

• Version history of Aru Fuyu no Monogatari
  N.A. Ferrell. February 16, 2023.

  Elements of this research piece informed my work on the visual novel articles from last week.

• The End of the Western Roman Empire
  N.A. Ferrell. September 4, 2020.

  Approaching the anniversary.

Most-turned leaves of the newsletter week

I list our most-read articles from the previous newsletter week (Friday to Saturday) in each edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. These statistics come courtesy of Koko Analytics, our local, privacy friendly page-counting solution (see my review). Below, I present the 5 most-visited articles for 2023 newsletter week 35. (Note: All stats are for 2023 only.)

1. The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF; 3.14.21)
   34 appearances. 12 top placements.
2. Height differences in anime romances (NAF; 3.22.23)
   10 appearances. 4 top placements.
3. The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis (NAF; 1.18.22)
   26 appearances. 1 top placement.
4. Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021) (NAF; 11.28.21)
   2 appearances.
5. Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF; 2.26.22)
   20 appearances. 3 top placements.

We had a relatively middling week in terms of page views, with Bing and DuckDuckGo (really just DuckDuckGo) having a modest impact thus far since our re-indexing. For much of the week, it looked like my post on height in anime would return to the top spot for the first time since July, but my tsuki ga kirei post took over both the weekly and overall August rankings on Thursday and held on to both. This week saw the return of two relatively out-dated articles. My 2021 F-Droid review made only its second top-five appearance of 2023 after notching 42 in 2022, but it has been quietly solid in 2023, sitting at ninth in our yearly ranking. Last week also saw the return of my review of a now-dead search engine, Peekier, for the first time since newsletter week 26. Despite the long absence from the weekly ranking, Peekier continues to hold the third spot in our overall 2023 ranking, but it is slowly losing ground to this week's third place finisher, my study of Pokémon stats in the first two generations.

News leaf journal

The big news of the week is our official return to Bing. However, as I noted, it will likely take some time before our status in Bing and Bing-adjacent search tools is comparable to what it was in late 2022., although DuckDuckGo immediately returned to our status as our second biggest referrer (our Bing numbers are fairly close to Brave and Yandex at the moment).

I changed our system font stack (our articles will use a serif font for the time being, with the particular font depending on the fonts you have installed on your operating system).

Notable leaf journal

I purchased an old Kobo Touch on Ebay for the purpose of installing the InkBox operating system on it. I took advantage of a timely visit by my New Leaf Journal colleague, Victor V. Gurbo to have him open the back of the Kobo and remove the pre-installed SD card while I flashed InkBox on a new, much bigger SD card. Victor then inserted the fresh SD card and the Kobo booted into InkBox without any problem. Let us add another article to a long list of pending hardware/operating system reviews...

Taking leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our Saturday newsletter with your email or add its RSS feed to your favorite feed reader (no sign-up required). I also syndicate the newsletter to The New Leaf Journal a few days after it goes out. See our options for following the newsletter here and for following The New Leaf Journal via feed here.

I was glad to pick up the publishing pace to bring August to a close, and I have more than enough pending content to keep that going throughout September, circumstances permitting. I hope everyone looks forward to what (I hope) promises to be a good month of varied content (as always, I aim for something for almost everyone). I hope all of our American readers have a restful Labor Day weekend.

Until September 9,
Cura ut valeas.