October 29, 2022

Newsletter Leaf Journal CVII 〜 Mold-free newsletter

The 107th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal includes links to the newest New Leaf Journal articles, four Halloween-themed links from our archives, 10 links from around the web, and information about crossposting from Mastodon to Twitter.

Welcome to the 107th 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. The last week was a bit slow at The New Leaf Journal due to the fact that your favorite editor (I hope) has a day job, but the newsletter still comes packed with your usual assortment of news and notes from The New Leaf Journal and links from around the web. Without further ado, let’s get to the content.

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 week
5. Notable Leaf Journal
6. News Leaf Journal
7. Taking leaf

1. Leaves from the week that was

I published four regular articles subsequent to mailing Newsletter 106.

• The Worst Elfen Lied-Inuyasha Anime Take
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 24, 2022.

  The article was prompted by a quote: “[N]o one has ever been more wrong in the history of time.” In context, that quote was not hyperbole.

• IndieWeb Standards, RSS, and Atom
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 25, 2022.

  In my most substantive article of the week, I examined two accounts of disagreements within the IndieWeb community about the usefulness of RSS and Atom feeds for sites which utilize microformats (the terms are explained in my post). Unsurprisingly, the person who wrote an introduction to RSS and Atom feeds has an opinion.

• A Moldy Halloween Carved Pumpkin
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 27, 2022.

  I promise you that you will not see anything more horrifying this Halloween season (if you do, please do not tell me about it).

• Powder Blue Tugboat and Foggy Manhattan Skyline
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 28, 2022.

  More or less as advertised.

I also published five Leaflet posts in the last week. Three of them will feature in my “Around the Web” section below. I will profile the two that do not appear elsewhere here.

• Disable Google Analytics on Nintendo Switch
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 22, 2022.

  A short guide for changing a difficult-to-find toggle.

• Losing Track of Steam Library
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 27, 2022.

  It is always fun to find games that I never played and do not remember when I open Steam after a long time away.

2. Leaves from around the web

Let’s see what is happening around the world wide web…

• Chinese Dragon gang brawl breaks out at 100-person party inside Tokyo skyscraper
  Casey Baseel for SoraNews24. October 18, 2022.

  This article contains the backstory of the Chinese Dragon gang, which I discussed on October 22 in The Chinese Dragon Gang Origin Story.

• Some People Really Are Mosquito Magnets, and They’re Stuck That Way
  Daniel Leonard for Scientific American. October 18, 2022.

  The study is interesting, but I examined the story from a different perspective on October 24 in News I Knew About Being a Mosquito Magnet.

• Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo - 1996 Interview
  shumplations. October 26, 2022.

  This is a translation of a 1996 interview with the team behind Capcom’s Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, wherein it took its popular characters (namely from the Street Fighter) series and put them in a puzzle game. While I never played this game or Street Fighter (not my genre), I covered one aspect of the interview on October 26 in Chibi-fying Street Fighter Characters.

• 1980s Amiga has been running the AC and heat in 19 schools for 30 years
  Ryan Whitwam for Geek-Cetera. June 13, 2015.

  This neat story is from 2015, so the district may have updated its systems at some point in the interim.

• First-ever study shows bumble bees ‘play’
  Queen Mary, University of London on Science X. October 27, 2022.

  Pictures and descriptions included.

• Frozen Pizza History: Ready To Heat, Nearly Ready to Eat
  Ernie at Tedium. May 19, 2021.

  A long, entertaining, and sometimes technical history of frozen pizza.

• How the Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan Endure
  Evan Pheiffer for New Lines Magazine. October 25, 2022.

  A history, with contemporary accounts, of the Red Village Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan. There are a few points where the accounts do not align with the author’s analysis, but it is a good read nevertheless.

• YouTube shuts down EWTN’s Polish channel
  Zelda Caldwell for Catholic News Agency. October 25, 2022.

  For the second time in two years with no explanation.

• Ye olde screensavers
  Stephen Glasskeys for IT World. February 25, 2015.

  A guide to using old .src file Windows screensavers on Windows 10. My understanding is that this should also work on Windows 11, although I have not tried it myself - in no small part because I don’t have a Windows PC. This does give me a creative future article idea though…

• U.S. weighs crackdown on experiments thatcould make viruses more dangerous
  Jocelyn Kaiser for Science. October 19, 2022.

  What could go wrong? Comments aside, I credit the author, Ms. Jocelyn Kaiser, for writing an excellent and in-depth piece which gathers perspectives from all sides of the debate and cites to useful information.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archives…

• Visual Novel Review: Bad End
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 31, 2020.

  Bad End is a short Japanese “horror” visual novel. It has a number of flaws (not least among them its English translation), but people who enjoy Halloween movie tropes and have a couple of hours to kill can get something out of it. The most interesting part of my review is that I reviewed Bad End on my former Kindle Fire HDX – the Amazon Store version of it is no longer available. It is available on Steam, Google Play Store, and App Store, however, so I suppose that its distribution range has improved.

• Review of Night of the Forget-Me-Nots, a Freeware Horror Visual Novel
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 29, 2021.

  Last year, shortly before Halloween, I reviewed Night of the Forget-Me-Nots, a free Japanese horror visual novel which was released in 2003 and officially translated in 2006. It has its flaws, but it is definitely a better and more interesting project than Bad End. It is free for Windows, Linux, and MacOS – although you will need to be able to handle MIDI for sound.

• Halloween Quarantine Session: “Ghost Woman Blues #2”
  Victor V. Gurbo. October 31, 2021.

  Victor V. Gurbo shared his haunting original song, Ghost Woman Blues #2. Link to his recording of the song with fellow Brooklyn musician Mark Caserta included.

• Halloween Cooking and Decorating Tips From 1913
  Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 20, 2021.

  Do not forget your “wise owl.”

4. Most-turned leaves of the 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 on The New Leaf Journal. The week of October 22 to October 28 was the 43rd Newsletter Week of 2022.

#	Article	Author	Date	22Top5
1	The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei	NAF	3.14.21	43 (27)
2	Review of /e/ - An Android Alternative For Mobile Phones	NAF	11.21.21	12 (5)
3	Recommended F-Droid FOSS Apps For Android-Based Devices (2021)	NAF	11.27.21	41 (7)
4	Cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter	NAF	4.18.22	NEW
5	Ghostwriter Markdown Editor Review	NAF	10.8.21	5

We had an interesting week in our top five, with spots 2-7 in the rankings being fairly tightly packed together. However, the clear number one for the week was my tsuki ga kirei article, which notched its 27th top finish of the 2022 and 52nd overall.

The one surprise article in this week’s top five is my April Leaflet on cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter. It surged at the end of the week, most likely due to the change in Twitter ownership (see more below). It is the fourth Leaflet post to appear in a weekly top-five, but the first to do so without having been shared on Hacker News. This also marks the first appearance for an article published in 2022 since the week of September 3-9.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

As you saw in the most-turned leaves of the week section, my short post on the Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter had a good week, most likely thanks in part to the change of ownership at Twitter. I find it a bit annoying that my tiny Leaflet post on the Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter is preferred by Google to my full review of and guide to the Crossposter, but as long as people find one, I suppose.

I have been using the Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter since writing my review in April, and it works like a charm. All of my Mastodon posts are syndicated to Twitter properly, and on the few occasions I posted on Twitter, it was properly syndicated to Mastodon. Thus, if you want to go from Mastodon to Twitter or Twitter to Mastodon, I still recommend the Crossposter. Do note for technical users who run servers that it can be self-hosted.

I do find it mildly amusing that interest in my Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter review is most likely being driven by opposition to Mr. Elon Musk’s take over of Twitter since I personally think that this is a positive change for reasons which I explained in an April Leaflet. But with my positive take on Mr. Musk’s Twitter takeover granted, I have no plans to change my Mastodon-to-Twitter strategy, and my general qualms about Twitter as a content curator remain unchanged.

6. News Leaf Journal

In light of the fact that I struggled to post four relatively short articles and a few Leaflets due to work, it should be little surprise that I have no major news from the past week to report. I am pushing to post a few Halloween-themed articles in the last couple days of October (they may already be published depending on when you read this Newsletter). We are also, as of the mailing of the instant newsletter, three articles away from publishing our 700th New Leaf Journal article.

7. Taking leaf

Thank you as always for following and reading The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoy the content and have not already subscribed, you can sign up with your email or add our newsletter’s RSS feed to your favorite feed reader with no email necessary.

I look forward to sending our first November newsletter next week, and I hope to have more New Leaf Journal content to share than I did this past week.

Until Newsletter 108,

Cura ut valeas.