The Newsletter Leaf Journal LXXXVIII 〜 Magnetic newsletter

Welcome to the 88th 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. Today was a slow week of content at The New Leaf Journal with just three new articles, but this newsletter will also come packed with the usual assortment of links from around the web and news and notes about our humble magazine. Without further ado…

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 just three full articles in the last week. Slacking, I know, but the content was varied as usual. I look forward to publishing more in the coming week.

• Roses at the Brooklyn Motor Inn | N.A. Ferrell | June 12, 2022 | Summary: A short piece on a photo of roses growing in an unexpected place in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
• The Sega Dreamcast Controller Joystick | N.A. Ferrell | June 14, 2022 | Summary: An interview with a Sega developer taught me some interesting facts about one of my favorite video game controllers.
• Japanese Environment in PoL, Lutris, and Bottles | N.A. Ferrell | June 16, 2022 | Summary: My experience configuring Japanese environments for running a small selection of Windows games on Linux.

In addition to these articles, I also published three Leaflet microposts over the last week. First, I covered my setting up Brave as a secondary web browser (and primary for editing The New Leaf Journal). Second, I covered a couple of peculiar dissenting opinions from the New York Court of Appeals in a case involving pachyderm personhood. Third and finally, I wrote about finishing a long-pending Fire Emblem: Three Houses run that I wrote about contemporaneously several months ago.

2. Leaves From Around The Web

It was a slow week at The New Leaf Journal, but there was no shortage of content from around the web. To make up for our slow week, I present eight articles from around the internet…

• Trial ends for Shizuoka man who stole school equipment to recreate Love Live! classroom at home | Master Blaster for SoraNews24 | June 17, 2022 | Quote: “Last February a trial began in which a 28-year old man was charged with stealing a large amount of school property because he was infatuated with the anime Love Live! Sunshine!!” (Sure, why not?)
• End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it | Liam Proven for The Register | June 15, 2022 | Thoughts: PostmarketOS is a Linux distribution designed primarily for old phones and mobile devices. But I am personally most intrigued by the PostmarketOS build for the Kobo Clara e-reader.
• Travel off the beaten path in Japan, to the point where three prefectures meet | Oona McGee for SoraNews24 | June 15, 2022 | Summary: A walking trip and story from Japan.
• This is War | Jonathan Pelson for The American Mind | June 16, 2022 | Summary: An interesting opinion piece examining the question of how and whether to impose tariffs on Huawei and other telecommunication companies with close links to the Chinese Communist Party.
• “Its” A Problem | Josh Blackman for the Volokh Conspiracy | June 15, 2022 | Rule of thumb: “[N]ever use the word ‘its’ in sentences with multiple subjects.”
• Multiplayer Battles Were Included [in] Pokémon Red & Blue At The Last Minute | Alana Hagues for Nintendo Life | June 13, 2022 | Summary: Who knew that video game history was so close to being very different?
• Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites | Todd Feathers, Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Surya Mattu for The Markup | June 16, 2022 | Thoughts: Something less than optimal.
• Sparks fly after Itochu publishes birthrate of its employees | Takehiro Tomoda for The Asahi Shimbun | May 27, 2022 | Thoughts: New company recruiting metric.

3. The Old Leaf Journal

Let’s dig into our archive…

• My Glass Cannon is Tankier than Expected 〜 Lysithea-Fire Emblem Story | N.A. Ferrell | November 10, 2021 | Thoughts: In this article, I told the story of one battle in a previous run of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This battle went more smoothly on my current run due to the fact that I attempted it at a higher level.
• Some Technical Difficulties | N.A. Ferrell | June 18, 2020 | Thoughts: Things are going better at The New Leaf Journal today than they were exactly two years ago.
• Defining What The New Leaf Journal Is | Victor V. Gurbo | May 28, 2020 | Thoughts: Victor V. Gurbo undertook the task of explaining what The New Leaf Journal is in late May, 2020.
• A Fogy’s Take on New Video Game Accessories | N.A. Ferrell | June 29, 2020 | Thoughts: In honor of my new controller content, my 2020 fogy’s take on a peculiar Nintendo Switch controller accessory.

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 June 11-17 was the twenty-fourth newsletter week of 2022.

New Leaf Journal traffic was on the lighter side this week as our Google visit counts remain a bit erratic since late May. However, my November 2021 review of the Teracube 2e smartphone posted its strongest week yet, giving it a third appearance in our newsletter week ranking and its highest one-week position. I will note that the Teracube article likely leads in near-misses, it just missed out on a top-five spot in the previous week and has about three or four close calls over the year. The tech-heavy top-five was rounded out by my 2022 article on an AmigaOS-inspired theme for the XFWM4 window manager, which also made its third top-five appearance of the year.

5. Notable Leaf Journal

Despite being a writer, I do not have a great knack for crossword puzzles. However, I can only imagine that we have some crossword puzzle fans among The Newsletter Leaf Journal readership. If you happen to be one of those crossword fans - I have just the thing for you. While searching for something on Project Gutenberg, I came across a 1924 title called The Cross Word Puzzle Book. As one may suspect, it is a book full of crossword puzzles. You can enjoy these puzzles from 98 years ago 100% free to enjoy in your web browser, as a standard EPUB book, or on your Kindle. Should I create a crossword puzzle section at The New Leaf Journal featuring old puzzles? Maybe I ought to put WordPress’s custom post type functionality to good use…

6. News Leaf Journal

There were no changes of consequence to The New Leaf Journal in the last week. However, I do have some interesting content planned for the next week - including a couple of visual novel reviews for my ongoing project. I am also starting a couple of longer projects that you should expect to see in late June and early July.

7. Taking Leaf

Thank you for joining us for yet another edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. If you enjoy the content and have not done so already, you can sign up for our newsletter via email or RSS. I also syndicate our newsletter to Bearblog. I look forward to having some more New Leaf Journal content as we welcome summer with the 25th Newsletter Leaf Journal of 2022 next Saturday.

Until then,

Cura ut valeas.