The Newsletter Leaf Journal LXXXV 〜 The (Hacker) New(s) Leaf Journal

Welcome to the 85th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, the official newsletter of the perennially virid online writing magazine, The New Leaf Journal. As always, this newsletter comes to you from the waterproof keyboard of the editor of The New Leaf Journal, Nicholas A. Ferrell. This newsletter comes with tidings of eight new New Leaf Journal articles and several leaflets, recommendations from around the web, and other varied news, notes, and leaves.

Without further ado, let us turn to the table of contents.

Table Of Contents

1. Leaves & Leaflets 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 & Leaflets From The Week That Was

I published eight articles since I mailed the previous newsletter. Thursday (May 26) saw two articles to make up for a couple of very short posts throughout the week.

• The Unfortunate Car in Carroll Gardens | May 21, 2022 | Summary: I happened across a car in 2018 that was a bit worse for wear.
• Video Game Visuals That Age Well | May 22, 2022 | Summary: Examining what kinds of video game visuals stand the test of time as graphics technology progressively improves.
• An 1882 Poem on Apple Blossoms | May 23, 2022 | Summary: Apple blossoms get their day in The New Leaf Journal after cherry and plum blossoms.
• Grape Hyacinths at the Botanic Garden | May 24, 2022 | Summary: A 2019 photo of mine makes The New Leaf Journal.
• Memorial Day Flowers - 1880 Memorial Day Poem | May 25, 2022 | Summary: "We bring you the red and the white and the blue / To welcome Memorial-day"
• Fixing a WP Custom Post Type Permalink Error | May 26, 2022 | Summary: The story of how our Leaflet microposts sprung 404 errors for about 12 hours on May 25, 2022, and how I fixed it.
• Aliens vs Noncitizens - The Anatomy of a Debate | May 26, 2022 | Summary: Tackling a terminology question in the area of U.S. immigration and nationality law.
• Instant Death! Panda Samurai Review | May 27, 2022 | Summary: In the fifth review in my al|together visual novel review series, I tackle a strange (and very short) adventure from 2003 (translated into English in 2006).

In addition to eight new articles, I published several Leaflets. I will note a few of those Leaflets here.

• Reviewing an idea to use the Known CMS for social bookmarking
• The Mojeek search engine's calculator
• Thoughts on dogs and rats in New York City

2. Leaves From Around The Web

Let's see what is going on around the world wide web...

• Look at this awesome vision of how beautiful a modern Pokémon Red and Blue remake could be | Casey Baseel for SoraNews24 | May 22, 2022 | Thoughts: This is high on the list of things that should happen but will never happen. Alas, Nintendo already has a template in the form of one of its old strategy guides
• City removes last-standing public payphone from NYC street | Allie Griffin for the New York Post | May 23, 2022 | Thoughts: Nostalgic.
• DuckDuckGo browser allows Microsoft trackers due to search agreement | Lawrence Abrams for BleepingComputer | May 24, 2022 | Thoughts: I addressed this story in a Leaflet
• How to Create an NFT Using Windows Notepad (and make millions! | Shantnu Tiwari for Python for Engineers | January 24, 2022 | Thoughts: A thoughtful piece that treats bored monkey NFTs with the seriousness that they deserve.
• The Gentrification of Disability | Freddie deBoer on Substack | May 23, 2022 | Thoughts: A strong essay criticizing the focus of several disability "awareness" movements.
• Tree may be the world's oldest, dating to 3,400 years before the birth of Christ | Allison Finch for Yahoo! News | May 27, 2022 | Thoughts: Even if the estimate is a bit off, it is a very old tree.
• Proprietary Distro 'LinuxFX' Has User Database Compromised | Derek Taylor on YouTube | May 24, 2022 | Thoughts: LinuxFX is a proprietary "Linux" distribution that aims to copy Windows 11. I thought it was strange (and pointless) when I first read about it. Here, we learn it had other issues as well.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let's dig into our archives...

• Remembering Second Lieutenant Carleton Burr for Memorial Day | N.A. Ferrell | May 25, 2020 | Summary: A 2020 piece on Carleton Burr, a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps who gave his life for his country on the battlefields of France in the First World War.
• An 1895 Poem on Memorial Day and Piece by Theodore Roosevelt | N.A. Ferrell | May 29, 2021 | Summary: A short piece that combined an article by Theodore Roosevelt on Pickett's Charge and a poem on Memorial Day.
• The Last Stand of Constantine XI | N.A. Ferrell | May 30, 2020 | Summary: An article on the last stand of the last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, in Constantinople on May 29, 1453.
• Constantine and the Last Vespers at Hagia Sophia | N.A. Ferrell | July 14, 2020 | Summary: On the eve of the fall of Constantinople, Emperor Constantine XI participated in what would be the last vespers at the Hagia Sophia.

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 May 21-27 was the twenty-first newsletter week of 2022.

The unusual top of our ranking should betray that it was an unusual week. Two of my Leaflet microposts made the first page of Hacker News. Our top-ranking post of the week, my paragraph on a man who uploaded 2,000,000 videos to YouTube, had the most views of any New Leaf Journal article in a single day, surpassing the record set by my post on RSS as a Facebook Alternative in March 2021. The Hacker News duo had down-stream effects on our ranking. My post on the meaning of tsuki ga kirei finished outside the top two for the first time since August 2021, and my piece on installing on Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 7 lost its streak of 31 consecutive weeks in the top five (going back to 2021), which was the second longest streak behind my tsuki ga kirei post's ongoing streak of 57 consecutive top fives.

Finally, this week marked the first week wherein a majority of the top-five articles were published in 2022.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

While conducting some research related to my ongoing al|together visual novel review project, I stumbled upon a site for a different project called The July Society. I came across The July Society site while I was looking something up related to True Remembrance, the crown jewel of Insani's (the most prolific visual novel translator in the 2005, 2006, and 2008 al|together festivals) collection, and a story that I plan to review in late 2022. But in addition to extra True Remembrance content and an alternative version of the game, The July Society has produced several other translations of freeware Japanese visual novels. I will have to dig into the collection a bit to see what we may want to review at The New Leaf Journal.

6. News Leaf Journal

The previous week turned out to be the highest traffic week in New Leaf Journal history with two short posts unexpectedly appearing on page 1 of Hacker News.

• First appearance
• Second appearance

Interestingly, our Google hits went down a bit while we received a ton of visitors from Hacker News and Twitter. But I expect that we should see some downstream benefits from the Hacker News backlinks going forward.

I did have one unfortunate issue involving broken permalinks to our Leaflet posts - including the two that were receiving a large number of visits - on May 26. I explained the issue and my solution here. After figuring out why some of my custom post type links were failing on occasion, I resolved the issue and added a new "Resource" custom post type. I plan to convert some of our pre-existing resources from pages to new Resource posts, and I look forward to adding more Resources over time.

7. Taking Leaf

It certainly was an unexpectedly busy week at The New Leaf Journal. While we officially launched in April 2020, May 2020 was the first month in which we published meaningful content. I suppose it is fitting that we are ending May 2022 on a high note. I look forward to reporting to you with new news for the beginning of June next week.

If you enjoyed our newsletter content, feel free to subscribe via email or RSS. I am also syndicating our newsletters to my blog at Bearblog if you prefer to read it in that format.

Until next week,

Cura ut valeas.