Newsletter Leaf Journal CLXXXVII 〜 Putting in the miles
Newsletter Leaf Journal 187 comes with links to the four newest New Leaf Journal articles, three of which owe their existence to a combined 40 miles of walking on two separate days. We also have 21 article links from around the web and exciting news about rebuilding The New Leaf Journal's "related posts" functionality from the ground up.
Welcome to the 187th 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 washable keyboard of the editor and administrator of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. This newsletter stands out among recent additions for being normal. I returned from a two week newsletter hiatus two weeks ago. Last week's newsletter followed some site downtime. But nothing unusual or unfortunate happened last week. Below, you will find our regularly scheduled newsletter content.
Leaves from the week that was
I published four new articles since mailing newsletter 186.
- Additional Thoughts on A Sign of Affection (The recently completed A Sign of Affection anime has inspired many popular -- by our modest standards -- articles at The New Leaf Journal. An interesting external article on the series' production inspired me to write what will most likely be my final article on the anime until our year-end anime review).
- The McLaughlin Park World War I Memorial (A look at a New York City World War I Memorial that sits just off the trafficked path).
- NEW BLOB DYLAN in Bushwick (If I have to walk more than 22 miles to deliver new BLOB DYLAN content, that is what I will do).
- Dove on Sculpture at Noguchi Museum (Some things come exactly as advertised).
Long-time readers and newsletter subscribers may note that my BLOB DYLAN article from this week was a bit of a throwback. I published three articles on BLOB DYLAN graffiti in 2021 and one of the three became something of a regular in our newsletter week article rankings. The new BLOB DYLAN story prompted me to create a new collection post for the BLOB DYLAN topic. A link to the collection is now included in all of the mainline BLOB DYLAN posts.
Leaves from around the web
While four articles is solid output, only one of my four new articles -- the piece on A Sign of Affection -- was long. I concede you may find yourself in need of some extra reading to fill your weekend. Below, I present 21 links from around the web with my commentary.
Memorial Day
Soldiers honor fallen heroes at Arlington's Memorial Day 'Flags In' tradition: 'It's overwhelming'
Mike Glenn for The Washington Times. May 27, 2024.
"'These are my brothers and sisters, whether I know them or not, or whether I served with them or not,' Sgt. Junga said. 'If we have to be here at 3 a.m. and do it with only three hours of sleep, we’re going to do this. It means that much to us.'"
A Day of Remembrance and Celebration: The History of Memorial Day in Brooklyn
Suzanne Spellen for Brownstoner. May 27, 2024.
Fitting based on the week that was inside and outside The New Leaf Journal.
Ask not why
Noodles Time Themselves While Cooking
Bryan Cockfield for Hackaday. May 30, 2024.
It's about time the instant noodles started throwing their weight around.
Etch-A-Sketch Camera is Open Source
Lewin Day for Hackaday. May 20, 2024.
But is it a free and open source Android app?
$80 Pironman 5 case makes a Raspberry Pi 5 look like a tiny gaming PC (with RGB lighting, NVMe SSD support, and enhanced cooling)
Brad Linder for Liliputing. May 25, 2024.
It's just ridiculous enough that I have to respect it.
Future New Leaf Journal article topics
The Western Conference Was Stacked. Dallas Won Anyway.
Neil Paine. May 31, 2024.
One of the NBA Finals briefly noted in this article will make an important appearance in an article I will have ready for you on June 11, 2024. What's more is that the main point of that article is not basketball. Intriguing? Mark it on your calendars.
This six-year-old Japanese girl is school’s one and only first-grader as lack-of-kids shutdown ends
Casey Baseel for SoraNews24.
This is almost exactly the plot of the #4 anime on my 2021 ranking.
Interview: How the personality test game Refind Self sold over 200K copies through collaboration between the developer and publisher
Aki Nogishi for Automation West. April 26, 2024.
An interesting game development interview.
Old tech
87% Missing: the Disappearance of Classic Video Games
Kelsey Lewin for Video Game History Foundation. July 10, 2023.
I am sure the proliferation of digital DLCs will improve the situation going forward.
A Floppy Disk MIDI Boombox: The Yamaha MDP-10
Nicole Brantigan at Nicole Express. May 19, 2024.
As long as I don't have to make it work for an old visual novel on Linux.
New tech
Building a Town that Doesn't Exist
Dan Sinker. May 10, 2024.
Very neat concept save for the generative AI part.
Bigme HiBreak smartphones coming soon with E Ink color and grayscale display options
Brad Linder at Liliputing. May 24, 2024.
Right direction but not quite there.
Left to your interpretation
Russia is Waging Spiritual War in Africa
Elisabeth Braw for Foreign Policy. March 12, 2024.
"You’ve heard plenty about Russia’s territorial expansion. But the Russians aren’t stopping there. In Africa, the Russian Orthodox Church is pioneering ecclesiastical expansionism. By offering gifts—not theological persuasion—it’s winning over priests and parishes from the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which covers all of Africa. The Moscow Patriarchate poaching African Orthodox Christians from its very own brethren is less odd than it might seem, because it’s a geopolitical move—and part of an ongoing battle within the Orthodox Church over Ukraine."
Exclusive NJ beach to open to public on Sunday morning for the first time in 155 years
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon for the New York Post. May 22, 2024.
Imagine getting up early on Sunday morning for no reason other than to go to a private beach to stick it to the local Methodists. Actually don't -- that time could be spent doing anything else. We can't all be heroes I guess.
Finding a way to make it about me
The Methodical Production Of Kusuriya No Hitorigoto: How To Create A System Of Holistic Excellence In Anime
kViN for Sakuga Blog. May 10, 2024.
I covered hair color in The Apothecary Diaries back in November 2023. I ultimately found the series, which finished its first season in March, somewhat disappointing -- but it does have strong production values as this linked article highlights in great detail.
Western products some Japanese people love: Diet Dr. Pepper, the rare unicorn of drinks in Japan
Scott Wilson for SoraNews24. July 9, 2024.
I had one on my 22.6 mile walk to and from Queens last Sunday. Picked up a bottle for $2 at a convenience store in Ridgewood. I would recommend the convenience store but I did not take down the location.
When crime goes wrong
Rachael Rollins Disbarred After Justice Refuses to Prosecute One of its Own
Jonathan Turley. March 15, 2024.
Don't try lying under oath to the Federal government at home. Leave it to the professionals.
Hundreds paid to be 'robbed' by phony holdup crews to gain favorable immigration status, feds say. (The 'robbers' accidentally shot someone during one caper)
Tim Heckle for CWB Chicago. May 19, 2024.
It's all fun and fake armed robbery games until you accidentally shoot someone while executing your fake armed robbery.
Good stories with no strange commentary
Israeli high school basketball team ripped apart by Hamas’ terror attack reunite for nail-biting game in NYC
Steven Vago and Priscilla DeGregory for New York Post. May 27, 2024.
Your nice story of the week.
An Interview with Judge Matthew Solomson About the Columbia Boycott
Josh Blackman at Volokh Conspiracy. May 20, 2024.
An insightful interview with Judge Matthew Solomson of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on his reasons for not hiring law clerks from certain high profile schools.
The Old Leaf Journal
Let's dig into our article archives...
Keep the Pet Millipede From Drowning
N.A. Ferrell. June 1, 2020.
I published a very important article four years to the day I am mailing this newsletter.
The Falcon of the Queensboro Bridge
N.A. Ferrell. January 22, 2021.
I had not published many Queens photos before the last few weeks. That may be changing.
The world to reverse – Visual Novel Review
N.A. Ferrell. June 21, 2023.
It made the top 10 of my al|together visual novel ranking, so it suffices to say this bleak pair of visual novels (two for the free price of one) comes with my recommendation.
Recollections of the Rise, Decline, and Fall of AIM
N.A. Ferrell. September 27, 2021.
We need to bring the AIM sound effects back.
Nikon’s Long-Term Support for the D7100
N.A. Ferrell. July 31, 2022.
While I never had a Nikon D7100, I praised the camera's manufacturer for supporting its products for the long haul.
Reviewing Three Boutique Guitar Strings
Victor V. Gurbo. June 25, 2020.
Victor V. Gurbo's review of three boutique guitar strings.
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-hit counting solution (see my review). Below, you will find the most-visited articles of Newsletter Week 22 (May 25-31) along with stats for 2024 and going back to the first week of 2021.
- #1. Installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 (2013) (N.A.F. July 5, 2021)
2024: 8 appearances and 2 top placements.
History: 85 appearances and 4 top placements
- #2. Installing LineageOS on a 2013 Nexus 7 (Wi-Fi) (N.A.F. July 28, 2021)
2024: 6 appearances.
History: 7 appearances.
- #3. An In-Depth Look at Norton Safe Search (N.A.F. October 18, 2022)
2024: 12 appearances and 2 top placements.
History: 24 appearances and 7 top placements.
- #4. Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 (N.A.F. November 5, 2023)
2024 & History: 4 appearances.
- #5. Reviewing "Rashomon and Other Stories" (N.A.F. March 6, 2021)
2024 & History: NEW
Analysis
We have a full week of ranking data after missing a day and a half last week. This week's ranking had a few interesting notes. It was led by two July 2021 articles that I published as something of a mini series about installing ROMs on 2013 Google Nexus 7 tablets. The more successful of the two has always been the first article focusing on Ubuntu Touch -- and it took its fourth overall ranking win this week. It was followed by my article on installing LineageOS, which now has six of its seven all-time ranking appearances in 2024. Alas, neither Ubuntu Touch nor LineageOS officially supports the 2013 Nexus 7 anymore -- so consider these posts historical curiosities. However, if you happen to still have a Nexus 7 in your drawer, there are worse ideas than installing the outdated LineageOS on it.
Spots three and four were taken by the top two articles of May 2024 (to be revealed in a monthly recap post later in the week). Planning and Angel Next Door Season 2 continues to be a surprise. The article is a bit specious -- noting that I contemplated the possibility that The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, a winter 2023 anime, may receive a second season when I decided to review the first. Now my post about one small motivation for writing the Angel Next Door review is doing better than the actual review. Go figure.
Our ranking concluded with a pleasant surprise. Back in March 2021, eight days before I published our all-time weekly ranking king and five days before I published another one of our more successful articles, I reviewed an English language translation of several short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. While it has never been a star performer, it has had its moments -- including quietly finishing as our 43rd most-visited article of 2023, but until now -- it had never cracked a weekly top five. We will see if it keeps the momentum going into June.
News leaf journal
Regular New Leaf Journal readers have likely noticed, if not availed themselves to, the "related posts" section beneath all of our articles. Prior this past week, I had been using a WordPress plugin called Contextual Related Posts. Contextual Related Posts works by using its own formulas -- guided by the user -- to select "related" posts to the post in question from a full-text index of all site posts (note this works locally -- it is not a service). While the plugin was convenient, the quality of its related post selections varied. It was solid with some articles and terrible with others -- no matter how I tweaked how it should weigh different factors. It was always good enough but not great.
Last week, I decided to scrap Contextual Related Posts in favor of a plugin called Manual Related Posts. As the name suggests, Manual Related Posts displays related posts that I tell it to display. If I do not affirmatively set related posts for a given article, there will be no related posts. I have full control over which and how many posts are related and their order.
You are unlikely to notice an aesthetic difference now that I switched plugins. However, what you will notice is a quality difference. Every related post on The New Leaf Journal is now curated and ordered by yours truly -- meaning you can click on related posts knowing that I put them there for a reason.
Of course, there is one downside to the switch beyond the fact that it requires more work on my end. At the moment, many articles, leaflets, and leaf buds do not have any related posts. I am working on eventually covering the entire site with my own selections -- but that will take time. I am ensuring that all new articles have related posts and I have already covered all of the most popular articles of the current year. You will find that every article linked in this newsletter, as of the date of mailing, has related posts.
Notable leaf journal
I have been on a few long walks of late. Starting in Brooklyn, I walked more than 14 miles to and from Greenpoint (still in Brooklyn) on March 3, 18 miles to and from Long Island City, Queens on March 16, and 22.6 miles to and from Forest Hills, Queens, on May 26. These walks have led to four articles thus far, and I have more photos waiting to be turned into articles. To those we can add photos from my May trip to San Antonio, Texas (two articles thus far with more to come) and at least one photo article coming this next week from an 11+ mile round trip walk to midtown Manhattan on May 30. I will stop at nothing -- certainly not a Subway station -- to deliver the photo journalism that our readers demand.
Taking leaf
Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the newsletter and are not already a regular reader, you can sign up for our weekly email or, if you do not like email, add the newsletter's RSS feed to your favorite feed reader or simply check in on our newsletter archive page once per week. See your options here.
We had a good week of new articles for the second week in a row and I have more interesting ideas in the pipeline (some are already in my drafts folder). While we continue to have a down stretch in terms of search engine traffic, I expect to see that recover in the future and I think a few recent changes I have made to the site -- most notably our improved related posts -- will make for a better experience in the long run.
Regarding this next week -- I have a few work assignments occupying me through June 6, so I expect that the upcoming selection of articles will be shorter fare save for the possibility that I finalize a draft. I do have one anime hair color report that is becoming time sensitive (if any of you happen to be following some of the current anime simulcasts on HiDive, you may be able to guess the series), so that will be my major project priority this week (granted -- I have been telling myself that for at least three weeks).
Happy June, Newsletter Readers,
Cura ut valeas -- Nicholas A. Ferrell.