The Newsletter Leaf Journal LXXVI 〜 The newsletter blossoms always

Welcome to the 76th 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 Administrator and Editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. You will find the usual assortment of article recaps, links from around the web, and other news and notes that feature in all of our newsletters.

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 articles since the 75th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. Links and summaries below.

The Plum Tree Blossoms Always in the Springtime

Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 20, 2022.

Content.

Spring sprung on May 20, 2022. I searched for a good topic to welcome the new season. I decided to focus on a passage in a 1911 book about Japanese art about depicting the plum tree - the first tree to blossom in the spring. The book quoted a 9th century poem by one of classical Japan’s foremost scholars, Sugawara no Michizane, about his favorite plum tree.

Do thou, dear plum tree, send out thy perfume when the east wind blows;
And, though thy master be no longer here,
Forget not to blossom always when the springtime comes.

The article includes one painting and several additional translations of Sugawara no Michizane’s poem, along with some of the story behind it.

On Nintendo’s Pro-User Cartridge-First Strategy

Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 21, 2022.

Content.

In a new video game essay, I make the case that Nintendo’s focus on selling physical game media works in favor of users.

On Maury Povich’s Retirement

Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 22, 2022.

Content.

I read in the news that Mr. Maury Povich, a distinguished talk show host known for diligently trying to identify the fathers of various children, is retiring. To be sure, I never watched Mr. Povich’s show - I only learned of it through the grapevine. His retirement reminded me of a joke that one of my friends told in high school. This post includes the joke with a helpful chart explaining how Mr. Povich’s search for the father generally transpired.

A Tanka on Ants in the Springtide

Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 23, 2022.

Content.

I saw a single ant walk across my computer monitor. There is no surer sign that spring is upon us. Inspired, I wrote a tanka.

The NIXON Medical Truck on Court

Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 25, 2022.

Content.

Whenever my distinguished New Leaf Journal colleague, Victor V. Gurbo is called upon to name a video game character, he always goes with “RICHARD NIXON” or “NIXON” if only one name is available. When I saw a truck last July with “NIXON” written across its side, I knew that I had to take a photo and memorialize it with an article in The New Leaf Journal.

2. Leaves From Around The Web

Let’s check in on the world wide web…

Rohan Deshmukh: “Why You Should Start Self Hosting”

Rohan Deshmukh. March 23, 2022.

Content.

Mr. Dekmush makes a compelling case for self-hosting. As of late, I have become more interested (for my own use, at least) in local sync solutions - but all of Mr. Dekmush’s points apply well to those too.

Casey Baseel: “New Zero-Second Chicken Ramen leaves us zero reasons not to be eating ramen right now”

Casey Baseel. March 24, 2022.

Content.

I genuinely do not know what to make of this Japanese food story.

(car nil): “Leaving Goodreads”

Abhinav Tushar. June 29, 2017.

Content.

I have spent part of March deciding on a good solution for tracking my read books locally as an alternative to Goodreads. I have a plan that I will cover soon. Mr. Tushar decided to solve the issue with Emacs Org Mode. Now I cannot use Emacs and I do not care to learn, but I was looking for something that would work similarly to his solution.

Markdown Land: “Markdown table: How to Create a Great Looking Table”

November 2, 2021.

Content.

I made use of this helpful guide for creating tables in markdown in my Maury Povich article - and I am using it in my Goodreads replacement. What is markdown? What can you use to make your own fancy markdown tables? I covered these questions last October.

Gadgets, Google, and SEO: “Daffodil Hill weekend”

Matt Cutts. March 24, 2008.

Content.

Despite the name of the blog, this post has nothing to do with gadgets, Google, or search engine optimization. The poster, Mr. Cutts, visited Daffodil Hill in Eastern California with his wife in March 2008. Enjoy the aesthetic photos.

Portable thoughts: “Pocket web books”

January 2, 2021.

Content.

Portable thoughts is a creative website that consists entirely of a single HTML file. The creator of the site made two web book versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and In Praise of Idleness that can be read very comfortably in a web browser. Even if you are not inclined to read the books, they are formatted well and present good ideas for computer-reading.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

Nixon and the Illness of Apple in Animal Crossing

Nicholas A. Ferrell. May 12, 2020.

Content.

In Animal Crossing, the player has a number of animal neighbors. These animals can become sick. On April 2, 2020, a certain NIXON (Victor V. Gurbo) from Watergate Town visited my town and talked to the locals. When he talked to Apple on the evening of April 2, 2020, she was a happy healthy squirrel. When I talked to Apple on April 3, 2020, she was deathly ill. I had questions.

A Tanka on Ant Home Invasions in the Spring

Nicholas A. Ferrell. March 27, 2021.

Content.

Very voracious New Leaf Journal readers may have had a strange feeling that the ant tanka I published this week sounded familiar. There would be a reason for that feeling. Last year, I wrote a different tanka upon seeing the first ant of the spring to make it into my abode.

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 on site.

The week of March 19 to 25 was the twelfth “Newsletter Week” of 2022. Below, you will find our most-visited articles of the week.

Analysis

For the first time, I present our most-read articles in table form.

My tsuki ga kirei article posted its best-ever week, easily taking the top spot for the 10th time in 2022 and 35th overall. It, along with my F-Droid and Ubuntu Touch install articles, continue their streaks of ranking in the top five for every week of 2022. The top five was rounded out by the return of my Constantine XI and DuckDuckGo search articles for their fourth and second appearances respectively. While there were no major surprises, I will note notable 7th and 8th place finishes for my review of the Teracube 2e smart phone and my piece on installing LineageOS on a Nexus 7, neither of which have yet featured in a weekly top five.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

Today I recommend TinyGem, a free online bookmarking service. With a free account, you can bookmark links into TinyGem and make them public or private. I will note some interesting features below:

• Users have public and private lists of links
• Users can tag links for easy sorting and reference
• TinyGem discovers Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News discussions about links - where applicable
• TinyGem automatically saves your links to the Internet Archive in case they go offline
• TinyGem recommends articles from its pool of saved articles based on your preferences
• Discover links by viewing the public lists of other users
• Save links from your browser by adding a bookmarklet to your favorites bar
• View where your bookmarks come from in a pie chart (did someone say “pie chart”?)
• Public links help inform the Teclis search engine

I will cover TinyGem in more detail on The New Leaf Journal in the near future. Consider this a preview. Do note that the recommendations will generally tilt toward the kinds of articles that are popular on Hacker News - at least with the current user-base. Thus, mileage for that feature may vary depending on your interests.

I am using TinyGem for two purposes. Firstly, I can link to my public link list from The New Leaf Journal for those who are interested in reading what I am reading. Second, it serves as a sort of backup bookmarks store. My primary means of storing bookmarks for my own use are Buku and SingleFile.

6. News Leaf Journal

I made a few changes to the back-end of the site to reduce the number of plugins that run where they are unneeded, but this is unlikely to make much difference from the perspective of readers. In a small but substantive change, I added a link to my TinyGem profile to my list of places to follow me around the web.

I will publish our customary month-in-review post on Thursday, March 31. I also plan to debut our “web ring” section which will list interesting sites and feeds from around the web. Both of these will already be live if you are reading this newsletter after March 31, 2022.

7. Taking Leaf

Thank you as always for reading The Newsletter Leaf Joiurnal. If you enjoyed the content and have not done so already, please consider signing up via email or RSS feed. You can find past issues in our newsletter archive.

I look forward to sending our first newsletter of April 2022 next Saturday. Until then,

Cura ut valeas.