Newsletter Leaf Journal CLII 〜 Too many projects 〜
The 152nd edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to our newest articles and articles from around the web, notes on redesigning The New Leaf Journal, and news about our sister project, The Emu Cafe Social.
Welcome to Newsletter Leaf Journal 152. The Newsletter Leaf Journal is 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 had a busy week with site administration -- although not all of it had to do with The New Leaf Journal (I will explain in our Notable Leaf Journal) section. But despite the side projects, I published several new articles and made a few adjustments to what I hope is your favorite perennially virid online writing magazine.
Leaves from the week that was
I published three new full articles.
- Two Visual Novel Midsummer Kasumis (I did not realize before reading Midsummer Haze and A Midsummer Day's Resonance for reviews that the protagonists shared the save first name)
- Surviving Megidolaon Spam in Persona 3 (Revisiting past video game trauma and triumph)
- Local Avatars and Redirecting Gravatars (My adventures in starting a new WordPress site led me to discover a small way to reduce third-party requests)
I also published five short posts...
- Simplified New Leaf Journal Display (More to come in News Leaf Journal)
- Kimi ni Todoke season three coming in 2024 (Little did I know when I wrote an article about hair color in Kimi ni Todoke back in 2021, 10 years after the last episode aired, that I was actually forward-thinking)
- New Project: The Emu Café Social (More to come in Notable Leaf Journal)
- Pingback-to-Pages WP Plugin (The code for my very simple WordPress plugin)
- Appreciating BunnyPress (A short post on the WordPress theme The New Leaf Journal has used since June 2020)
Leaves from around the web
Let's see what's happening around the world wide web...
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Google Search, Whatsapp, and TikTok on list of 22 services targeted by EU’s tough new DMA
Joe Porter for The Verge. September 6, 2023.It seems like Microsoft Edge missed the list because it has generally been unsuccessful at trying to force Edge on Windows 11 users.
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noteworthy.mix 08-29-23
Joe Jenett at i.webthings hub. August 29, 2023.Five links to very fun tools. Give it a look and see if you find one that interests you.
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In 'Fancy Pigeons,' Brendan Burden Captures the Flair of Underappreciated Birds
Grace Ebert for Colossal. August 29, 2023.Our Victor V. Gurbo does not discriminate when it comes to pigeons.
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How New York's legal weed is turning workers into stoned zombies
Steve Cuozzo for the New York Post. April 16, 2023.I have personally witnessed the phenomenon of which Mr. Cuozzo speaks.
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The History of Jaleco – 2011 Developer Interview
Shumplations. January 15, 2023.Interesting interview (translation). I covered one humorous note in Leaf Bud form.
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TikTok spied on me. Why?
Cristina Criddle for the Financial Times (via Ars Technica). May 5, 2023.I can guess...
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The Shame Of Revisiting My Abandoned Pokémon Ranch
Ethan Zack for Nintendo Life. June 9, 2023."That’s all well and good — except for the fact that I abandoned my ranch around 2011 and didn’t come back for nearly an entire decade."
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Is College for Puppets?
Emma Pettit for The Chronicle of Higher Education. July 6, 2023.An interesting and in-depth look at the uncertain future of one of the two puppetry college major programs in the United States.
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The Small Website Discoverability Crisis
Viktor Lofgren at Marginalia. September 8, 2021.I know our readers are good at discovering small websites.
The Old Leaf Journal
Let's check in on our archives...
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The BunnyPress Chronicles: Story and Review
N.A. Ferrell. September 3, 2020.I do not have too much to add about our WordPress theme since publishing my review three years ago.
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The 9.9.99 Computer Bug That Wasn’t
N.A. Ferrell. September 9, 2022.Convenient when our newsletter falls on the same day as one of my this day in history pieces.
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Sega of Japan’s Yukawa Dreamcast Commercials
N.A. Ferrell. September 5, 2022.Also on this day in history... the Sega Dreamcast was launched in the United States 24 years to the day.
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Video Game Visuals That Age Well
N.A. Ferrell. May 22, 2022.The Dreamcast earned a mention here too.
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Most Important Dylan Songs By Half-Decade
Victor V. Gurbo. December 9, 2020.Our resident Bob Dylan historian gives his view of the most significant Dylan songs by era.
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I Have Information That Could Lead to the Arrest of Sirajuddin Haqqani
N.A. Ferrell. September 9, 2021.Still waiting for my reward.
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 36. (Note: All stats are for 2023 only.)
- Height differences in anime romances (NAF; 3.22.23)
11 appearances. 5 top placements. - The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 - Statistics and Analysis (NAF; 1.18.22)
27 appearances. 1 top placement. - The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei (NAF; 3.14.21)
35 appearances. 12 top placements. - Peekier Search Engine Review (NAF; 2.26.22)
21 appearances. 3 top placements. - An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search (NAF; 10.18.22)
2 appearances.
In what I count as a mild surprise, my essay on height differences in anime romances returned to the top of the ranking for the first time since Newsletter Week 30, and in so doing became the fifth article of the year to make 10 consecutive weekly ranking appearances. If only I had known when I wrote all of those articles about anime hair color that the public was really looking for anime heights.
The rest of the ranking featured no major surprises lest one considers the continued performance of my Peekier review to be surprising in light of the fact that the website has been gone for seven months. One to watch for next week is my article on two letters by Abraham Lincoln which finished the week strong (it was our top article for Thursday and Friday).
News leaf journal
Working on my new WordPress project (to be discussed in the next section) inspired me to make a few changes to The New Leaf Journal.
The obvious change is in site aesthetics. I tweaked the color of our header (now a sort of mahogany color) and the design of our quotation and table of contents boxes in posts. I also changed our system font stacks again, finding a combination that I liked. However, the serif font that appears on my system (your font will vary depending on what device you use) was not as readable as it should be, so I changed our font color (it is now a very deep brown) and slightly increased the font size.
On the back end, I changed our caching method. The New Leaf Journal is already performant, but my tweak may make a difference for some users who do not live close to our Virginia server. I am also adding categories to our custom post types so that they have breadcrumbs, which I think will help with site organization. Syndicated newsletters are done. I will work on Leaflets and Leaf Buds next. I am considering adding Leaflets and Leaf Buds to our main article archives, but I have not made a final decision as of September 9, 2023.
These changes, combined with last week's change to turn The New Leaf Journal into a single column site on Desktop and remove all of our widgets save for the search box, aim to make The New Leaf Journal more focused on reading. Desktop readers will find that there is now much less empty space and no sidebar distractions. My changes make less of a difference on mobile devices, but readers may appreciate less tacked on underneath articles. As for the aesthetics, I thought we were due for a tweak and I think the new design is quite cozy. I would like to tweak the background colors a bit, but at the moment I have not figured out how to do it.
Notable leaf journal
I launched The Emu Café Social last week. This is a new website built on WordPress. The concept behind it is social publishing. The site is designed for short posts and interactions between site users. It implements the ActivityPub plugin, so all accounts can be followed from Mastodon or other ActivityPub clients. The idea was inspired by some of my work at The New Leaf Journal, see my introduction.
The site is just about ready to go, but I am working on resolving one issue before I begin posting in earnest and bringing other people on board. As it stands however, the site works and you can see I have already made several posts.
I consider The Emu Café Social a sister project to The New Leaf Journal, but designed for a different posting format with a different focus. There will be many site-to-site interactions and links between the project, so I hope you follow The Emu Café Social along with The New Leaf Journal. I will have much more to say about it (and on it) in the coming weeks and months.
Taking leaf
Last week was busy, albeit much of my time was spent on The New Leaf Journal's new sister project. But with the work to start The Emu Café Social winding down, I will have more time to work on some long-form content for The New Leaf Journal and to continue my project to improve the site structure by better integrating our short post types into The New Leaf Journal proper.
Until September 16,
Cura ut valeas.