October 8, 2022

Newsletter Leaf Journal CIV 〜 Newsletter streaming service

The 104th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal features links to 16 new NLJ posts, 10 links from around the web, and news and notes about custom Android ROMs.

Welcome to the 104th 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 editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. Today’s newsletter will feature our usual assortment of New Leaf Journal updates, links from around the web, and other news and notes.

Table of Contents

1. Leaves From The Week That Was
2. Leaves From Around The Web
3. The Old Leaf Journal
4. Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week
5. Notable Leaf Journal
6. News Leaf Journal
7. Taking Leaf

1. Leaves From The Week That Was

I published five new full-length articles since mailing our previous newsletter.

• Leaving the Phrase ‘Reach Out’ in the 90s
  N.A. Ferrell. October 1, 2022.

  Justin and Justina return after a break in September. Justin expresses his irritation at the phrase reach out, which receives a surprising, if ultimately unconvincing, defense from Justina.

• Freedom Tower in the Fog From the Brooklyn Bridge
  N.A. Ferrell. October 2, 2022.

  Four photos of the Manhattan Skyline from an early-morning walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The first and last photos were taken 14 minutes apart, but that was more than enough time for the fog to grow heavy. Make sure to see the links in the image captions to find higher-resolution versions of the photos.

• Help! I Think My TV Is Watching Me
  N.A. Ferrell. October 3, 2022.

  A humorous meditation on the perils of smart TVs (my TV is not actually watching me, however).

• Stadia and the Value of Owning Games
  N.A. Ferrell. October 4, 2022.

  Google’s shutdown of its short-lived game-streaming service gave me the opportunity to publish a new piece on the meaning of owning content in 2022. (I also got to show off my original copies of Kirby’s Dream Land and Kirby’s Dreamland 2).

• Wallabag Custom Search Engine Shortcuts
  N.A. Ferrell. October 6, 2022.

  Wallabag is a bookmarking/read-it-later tool. In this post, I demonstrated how to create custom search engine shortcuts for Wallabag in Firefox (and Chromium-based browsers through the same logic). The tips should be applicable to other similar software and services even if you do not use Wallabag.

I published 11 shorter Leaflet posts in the past week. I will feature a few of these Leaflets in the Around the Web section coming up next. Here, I will provide links to the Leaflets which do not appear elsewhere in the instant newsletter.

• Vankyo MatrixPad S7 and Google Play Protect
  N.A. Ferrell. October 1, 2022.

  My Vankyo MatrixPad S7 tablet makes its first New Leaf Journal appearance since 2020.

• Attracting Windows Users to Linux
  N.A. Ferrell. October 1, 2022.

  My brief thoughts on a good video by Mr. Derek Taylor (“DistroTube”) on arguments about how to best make Linux attractive to Windows users. I agree with him that neither deception nor turning Linux into Windows is the answer.

• nice.boats Domain Available For Sale
  N.A. Ferrell. October 2, 2022.

  The initial price was a bit steep for me, but the renewal prices are very appealing. I note that this is the opposite of how domains are ordinarily priced.

• A Blog-to-Twitter Service
  N.A. Ferrell. October 3, 2022.

  Making the case against using a blog to power traffic to Twitter.

• A Flaw in PayPal’s Email System
  N.A. Ferrell. October 3, 2022.

  When sending an email confirmation link in an email, please include the link in the email.

• Don’t Compare Stadia to the Dreamcast
  N.A. Ferrell. October 4, 2022.

  A second post referencing the article which inspired my latest piece on software ownership. This one is a bit more light-hearted.

• ‘Squeegee Men’ Become ‘Squeegee Workers’
  N.A. Ferrell. October 7, 2022.

  The AP is again shifting terms under our noses.

Leaves From Around The Web

Let’s check in on what is happening around the world wide web.

• Hyperlinks in Handwriting
  Daniel Janus at handwrititen.blog. October 1, 2022.

  handwritten.blog is an entirely handwritten blog. In this post, the author explains how he makes hyperlinks work in his handwritten blog. This is one of the neatest projects I have come across. I would follow Mr. Janus’s example and post handwritten content at The New Leaf Journal, but I fear that no one would be able to read my posts.

• The ‘Egg’ laptop
  Shun Ikejima on his blog. 2022.

  A very aesthetic 3D-printed laptop. I offered my commentary in a Leaflet.

• WordPress+IndieWeb as the OS of the Open Social Web
  Ton Zijlstra at Interdependent Thoughts.

  An interesting post about the social potential of WordPress (with help from IndieWeb protocols and standards). We are working on weaving some IndieWeb into The New Leaf Journal. If you scroll to the bottom of the comments on Mr. Zijlstra’s post, you may notice that my Leaflet shows up as a reply. I did not add it manually, it made it over to Interdependent Thoughts automatically because The New Leaf Journal implements WebMentions (albeit not as fully as I would like).

• Hummingbird Hawk Moth Photo
  Marco de Booij on Pixelfed Social. October 5, 2022.

  I found this amazing photo of a hummingbird hawk moth on Pixelfed. What is a hummingbird hawk moth? I investigated and posted my initial findings in a Leaflet. This may require fuller investigation.

• Vivaldi Web Browser Continues Adding Every Feature Ever
  Joey Sneddon at omg! ubuntu! October 5, 2022.

  Vivaldi is a very feature-rich fork of Chromium which I used for several years, including back when we first launched The New Leaf Journal in 2020 (see Old Leaf Journal for more). I enjoyed the humorous description of Vivaldi’s ongoing efforts to put every possible feature in its browser at the top of the post.

• Japanese game dev releases 5 free games to Steam developed by their new employees
  Koutaro Sato for Automation West. October 5, 2022.

  “Byking has released 5 free games to Steam from the company’s BykingRooKIES brand. Byking is a game developer in Japan known for their involvement with titles like My Hero One’s Justice. The 5 free games they recently released were developed by new employees at the company as a part of their introductory training.” (Very cool - I will have to check if any of these games are available in English (and, as an additional matter, if they run on Linux)).

• Outcry as British researcher is given ANOTHER US grant to investigate COVID - despite fears his initial work at Wuhan lab triggered pandemic
  Paul Farrell for the Daily Mail. October 3, 2022.

  The best part about including a Daily Mail article in our Around the Web section is that the headline does all the work for me. In any event, speaking for myself, I share the concerns described in the post for the same reasons I articulated back in May 2020.

• The end of history
  Hanno Sauer for An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. Septemeber 9, 2022.

  According to the abstract, this scholarly paper argues “that studying the history of philosophy is philosophically unhelpful.” I have not read the paper but will get around to it after checking what Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury, and Rene Descartes had to say about studying the history of philosophy.

• The Deception of ‘Buying’ Digital Movies
  Matthew Morgan at World of Matthew. October 4, 2022.

  This post makes some strong points about “buying” digital movies which tie in nicely to some of my recent work on indefinite rentals. Expect my thoughts on the issues raised in the next week.

• RSS Club: School vs Wikipedia
  Dave Gauer at Ratfactor. October 7, 2022.

  While I think that schools are correct to disfavor citations to Wikipedia, I agree with the author to the extent that random links that pop up in Google search are not trustworthy by virtue of not being Wikipedia. Moreover, the author is correct that even where citing directly to Wikipedia is not permitted, studying the sources upon which a Wikipedia article relies may be useful. Wikipedia became something of a thing toward the end of my tenure in high school. Direct cites to it (in our few typed assignments) were not allowed, but there was no prohibition against checking the sources in a Wikipedia article.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• The Wicked Car of the Gowanus - Car with Hat
  N.A. Ferrell. November 7, 2020.

  I meant to publish this article prior to Halloween in 2020. Unfortunately, I forgot, so I published it in early November. I noticed it recorded some views early in the week, so I made some small technical revisions and feature it now in October.

• TI-89 Haiku: Boerum Blue Jay and Black Squirrel
  N.A. Ferrell. May 13, 2020.

  This is another post which unexpectedly received some views early in the week. I added a link at the end to my 2022 article on a photo of a black squirrel.

• A Charming Hometown Tax System Story
  N.A. Ferrell. January 7, 2021.

  A short post on an interesting tax set-up in Japan. The title has an Easter Egg for people who are knowledgeable about semi-obscure slice-of-life games for the Nintendo 3DS.

• Justin & Justina 〜 A 5% Chance of Rain
  N.A. Ferrell. December 3, 2020.

  It rained quite a bit in Brooklyn early in the week. The rapidly shifting estimates of the chance of rain reminded me of my 2020 Justin and Justina dialogue on the subject.

4. Most-Turned Leaves Of The Newsletter Week

I list our most-visited articles of the previous week in each newsletter. In keeping with our newsletter schedule, these “Newsletter Weeks” begin with Saturday and end on Friday. The statistics come courtesy of our local and privacy-friendly analytics solution, Koko Analytics – which I reviewed. The week of October 1 to October 7 was the 40th Newsletter Week of 2022.

#	Article	By	Pub	22Top5
1	Review of /e/ - An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones	NAF	11.21.21	9 (5)
2	The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei	NAF	3.14.21	40 (24)
3	Installing Ubuntu Touch on an Asus Nexus 7 (2013)	NAF	7.5.21	32
4	Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)	NAF	11.27.21	39 (7)
5	Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review	NAF	10.8.21	2

While the calendar changed from September to October, our five most-visited articles remained the same with the only internal change being my Ubuntu Touch install review and my F-Droid app review switching places. My Ghostwriter review celebrated the one year anniversary of its publication with its second consecutive top five appearance after making its debut in the previous week.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

My 2021 article on installing Ubuntu Touch on a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet is currently our 15th most-read article of 2022 and our sixth most-read article of all time. I have intermittently planned to actually review Ubuntu Touch in use, but that plan has always been on the backburner for two reasons. Firstly, Ubuntu Touch is primarily designed for phones, and I have never pinned down a test use-case for the tablet. Secondly, while Ubuntu Touch runs well on the tablet, some of its more interesting features are limited to better supported devices with more powerful hardware.

Now our most-read article of 2022 is my review of /e/ OS, a fork of LineageOS (which in turn is a fork of Android), which I run on my phone. That review is about actually using /e/ rather than just installing it. I noticed the now outdated Google Pixel 3a XL phone is fully supported by Ubuntu Touch. I figured: Why not install Ubuntu Touch on that and actually try it as a daily driver phone?

I found an affordable Pixel 3a XL on Ebay in great condition and purchased it. I received it on Wednesday and undertook the process of installing Ubuntu Touch. There was but one issue.

I could not get beyond the recovery screen for Ubuntu Touch.

As I noted in my article on installing LineageOS on a Nexus 7 (which I have used heavily), my ability to install custom ROMs on Android devices does not go too far beyond reading instructions. I followed the instructions for the Ubuntu Touch install and used the official app, but I could not get past the recovery screen. My searches suggested it may have been a partitioning issue, but it was not an issue that I have the knowledge to fix.

Annoyed, and not wanting to brick my small investment, I backtracked and began the steps for installing LineageOS on my new Pixel 3a XL. I was almost surprised that this went rather smoothly, and within about 15-20 minutes of issuing adb and fastboot commands, I had a perfectly working LineageOS install on my Pixel 3a XL.

Now this is much less exciting than Ubuntu Touch. LineageOS, like /e/ OS, is a straight fork of the Android Open Source Project. I already use it on my tablet. But I may try using it on my phone along side my Teracube with /e/ OS and see if I can write something interesting about it. It could also function as a quasi-tablet. Unlike my Teracube 2e, I did root the Pixel 3a XL.

As for Ubuntu Touch, out of phone options, I may finally figure out an interesting way to review the very lightly-used tablet.

(PS: I am also studying how to install a custom rom on my old Kindle Fire HDX 7. That is a less simple process than what I just did with the phone, but it will make for some fine content if I can make it happen.)

6. News Leaf Journal

I set up a new special post type for bookmarks and tested it to make sure that it works. However, much like our unused resources custom post type, I have not done anything with it yet. I am thinking of some interesting ways to make interesting article bookmarks available, but I have not decided how yet. I should come up with something this month.

Finally, I am also looking at an interesting way to make The New Leaf Journal more accessible on the Fediverse (meaning easier to follow for people who use ActivityPub compliant social networks and software). I still need to research it a bit more, but it looks like it should be easy to set up.

7. Taking Leaf

Thank you as always for reading and following The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, you can sign up to follow the newsletter via email or RSS. I also syndicate the newsletter to Bearblog, although I have fallen behind on recent issues (I will catch up).

Until newsletter 105,

Cura ut valeas.