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I caught up on all the winter series I decided to follow as simulcasts. Below are my (mostly) one-sentence impressions thus far. I publish a year-end top six anime series list annually over at The New Leaf Journal, so I will note which series I view as potential candidates for 2024 based on how they compare to one another and also to series that have made my top-six in previous years.

  • 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy: It is much better than the ridiculous (somewhat misleading) title and it has had some good episodes, but cracks started to show in the writing and setting with the introduction of a certain sibling.
  • A Sign of Affection (thru 8): This is a solid effort all around and one of the better shoujo series I have seen in recent years — it should be a solid year-end top-six candidate with a good finish. (Note: I may be somewhat biased due to its exemplary attention to hair color detail.)
  • Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun: 2nd Stage (thru 8): This has erred on the disappointing side with its odd pacing and sometimes-shaky writing, but it has had its moments — episode 8 was its best episode of the first 8 and delivered what should stand as one of the better moments in 2024 anime.
  • BUCCHIGIRL?! (thru 6.5): A trashy delinquent comedy that feels like it is from a different era and stays watchable by not forgetting what it is.
  • Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (thru 24): It has had some genuinely excellent moments and seems like a near-lock for best aesthetics of 2024, but episodes 18-24 have been shaky (read: boring and very uncomfortable depicting action) to put it generously. It is still a likely top-six prospect but any chance it had to be in the series of the year mix have gone by the first class mage exam wayside.
  • Metallic Rouge (thru 7): It’s a convoluted mess but I’ll watch to the end for some unknown reason.
  • The Apothecary Diaries (thru 20): Its generally strong start has been underminded by its unsatisfying mysteries (a problem for a mystery show) and its passion for using Maomao’s (or Xiaomao’s) long, winding monologues to advance the plot.
  • The Dangers in My Heart (thru 7): The class of the season and the only anime of the year caliber show of the winter bunch.  I expected it to improve over last year’s season one, but not go go from borderline-top six candidate (it missed my 2023 top-six list but would have made 2022) to potential series of the year.
  • Sengoku Youko (thru 7): This is admittedly not my cup of tea but it built up to an excellent episode 7 and has done enough to keep me around so far.
  • Shangri-La Frontier (thru 20): I respect this series for turning the sort of dumb premise that usually makes me run for the hills into a genuinely fun, excellently-animated show that makes for a good watch on Sundays.
  • The Demon Prince of Momochi House (thru 8): I am in a strange place with Momochi where I find it slightly boring but also find myself looking forward to it. So long as the ambulatory daikon (I thought it was a turnip, but it is a raddish) keeps appearing every episode, we have an unexpected borderline top-six candidate with a solid finish.
  • Urusei Yatsura [S3] (thru 9): There’s an animation cut toward the end of the new OP that is about as pretty as anything you will see in anime (AS FOR THE ACTUAL SEASON THEY STILL YELL ALL THEIR LINES SO IT IS STILL VERY MUCH URUSEI YELLSURA).

All in all, winter 2024 has been solid and certainly better than winter 2023, which ultimately yielded no top-six entries in my final 2023 ranking. Dangers in My Heart is a genuine series of the year caliber production through 7 episodes and despite its dull mage exam arc, Frieren is still a strong more-likely-than-not year-end top six candidate. Sign of Affection and Momochi both have top-six ambitions.  I’m still not entirely persuaded by Sengoku Youko, but it is long enough that it may be a good prospect for 2024 if it keeps improving. Tomozaki, 7th Time Loop, and Apothecary Diaries are outside candidates for top-six contention but they would need much stronger finishes than what the episodes which have aired thus far suggest they are capable of.

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I built my current desktop computer back in August 2020. One of the benefits of building your own computer is that you can easily fix it when you have a hardware issue. For example, one of the top fans on my case is becoming a bit off-kilter. Once in a while (maybe once every 30-40 start-ups), it will make an unpleasant noise. When this happens, I bring all the knowledge I gained from building the computer together for a solution.

A fist overs over the top of a pink desktop computer behind a lucky cat.

Punch the top of the case once and the issue is resolved. This is what we call an expert solution.

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I read that Microsoft is discontinuing Microsoft Publisher in October 2026 (see report). This made me feel nostalgic in the same way that seeing a Ti-89 Titanium graphing calculator does. I worked on my high school newspaper for two years, one as an assistant to my friend and New Leaf Journal colleague Victor V. Gurbo, and second as the senior editor after he graduated. We used Publisher to make the paper and I created a new template for it when I was senior editor. In light of the fact that I had never done anything like that before (mind that I had only had a modern PC at home for about 1.5 years before becoming senior editor), Publisher was intuitive and easy to work with. I have not worked with Publisher since high school and have not used Microsoft Office at all since switching to Linux in 2020 (I do most of my writing in markdown and use LibreOffice when I need an MS Office equivalent), but it is still nostalgic.

I had a second non-nostalgia thought when I read that Publisher is being retired: “I thought Microsoft killed Publisher a long time ago.”

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This site and The New Leaf Journal are self-hosted WordPress sites. I have never really used WordPress.com. However, I made a WordPress.com account around the time I started The New Leaf Journal in 2020 for some reason I no longer remember (maybe it had to do with Gravatar, although that is moot now). I gave up on maintaing my now-former Osmosfeed aggregator on GitHub because figuring out why it was not building required too much time and effort for a project that I want to be low maintenance. Instead, I decided to finally take advantage of having the ability to make a free WordPress.com site. Behold, my free WordPress.com aggregator site that shows off my supreme full site editor skills: The Pressed Leaf Reader.

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Steam On Linux Falls Short Of 2% For January, AMD CPU Adoption On Linux Hits 70.5% by Michael Larabel (phoronix.com)
The Steam on Linux marketshare per Valve's official survey put it at 1.97% for December after hitting 1.91% in November -- continuing a slow upward trajectory seen in recent months thanks to the ongoing success of the Linux-powered SteamOS / Steam Deck ... In turn the CPU results for AMD continue to climb for Steam on Linux use in part due to the Steam Deck. AMD CPUs power 70.5% of Linux gaming systems on Steam.

From Phoronix:

“The Steam on Linux marketshare per Valve’s official survey put it at 1.97% for December after hitting 1.91% in November — continuing a slow upward trajectory seen in recent months thanks to the ongoing success of the Linux-powered SteamOS / Steam Deck … In turn the CPU results for AMD continue to climb for Steam on Linux use in part due to the Steam Deck. AMD CPUs power 70.5% of Linux gaming systems on Steam.”

I did my part to contribute to the positive Linux and Linux-AMD trends. My workstation has an AMD CPU. However, my mini TV-designated PC and laptop, both of which have Steam (although I never really run Steam on them), run Linux with Intel CPUs.

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Introducing Sudo for Windows! by Jordi Adoumie (devblogs.microsoft.com)

Introducing Sudo for Windows
We’re excited to announce the release of Sudo for Windows in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052! Sudo for Windows is a new way for users to run elevated commands directly from an unelevated console session. It is an ergonomic and familiar solution for users who want to elevate a command without having to first open a new elevated console.

  1. Puts on Apple Hat
  2. Turns on Apple Hat
  3. Opens article about Microsoft adding sudo to Windows
  4. “Looks like Microsoft is ripping off Apple again”
  5. Starts video of Steve Jobs introducing some Apple product in 2005

(For the record, I almost use Arch by the way.  Posted from my desktop PC running EndeavourOS.)

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I have not followed the NBA closely since 2016. However, I am working on a few article projects for The New Leaf Journal focusing on interesting NBA points, primarily from when I followed the league closely (1997-2016). See, for example, my pair of articles from last year on the Detroit Pistons’ 2003 NBA Draft and the 1997 trade which gave them the second pick in that Draft. I am in the midst of writing an article on the 2001-02 NBA MVP race, wherein Tim Duncan narrowly won the honor over Jason Kidd, but not without controversy (spoiler for my take: Mr. Duncan was the clear MVP). For that reason, I was happy to see that Basketball Reference, which I use for all of my NBA articles, just added awards voting information to its main player tables. While award voting sometimes goes sideways and specific awards do not age well (e.g., had Jason Kidd won the MVP over Tim Duncan…), I think it adds valuable context to how the media viewed specific players at the time they played.

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Writing Prompt: What’s an anime that you’ve fallen asleep to? by Yomu (Umai Yomu Anime Blog)
Let’s get another one of these prompts going, and this one will be quite short!

Yomu of the Umai Yomu Anime Blog posted a new writing prompt: “What’s an anime that you’ve fallen asleep to?” Let us see Yomu’s response:

Strangely enough, I’ve never fallen asleep to an anime, even when including re-watching series where I’d already have an idea of what was going to happen and there was less need to pay attention. For some reason, anime just doesn’t make me sleepy, or I don’t want to sleep while I watch it.

I tend to watch anime at night before bed. I recall having fallen asleep during an episode once. However, I do not remember exactly when this occurred or what I was watching (maybe it is harder to remember stuff when you are falling asleep). With that being said, I do distinctly remember falling asleep once during Earth science class and once during psychology class in 11th grade, but that is not the prompt. It would be dull to end my answer to the actual prompt with I fell asleep once while watching an anime episode but I forget the anime. I will thus modify the prompt. I will think of an anime that I have watched that has the natural tendency to drain my ability to stay awake. That I can answer easily: Space Brothers. I was watching it with a friend in college (in a study room in the college library) at the same time as we were watching Kids on the Slope (another sleepy candidate) and Puella Magi Madoka Magica (which gave rise to an anecdote I published in The New Leaf Journal). Space Brothers started promising enough, but it began to lose both of us during the box arc, which featured the characters being in a box. They finally got out of the box close to episode 40, but we checked out at episode 39 of what ended up being 99 episodes. I do not think I am going to catch up for the upcoming continuation.

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Alien Street Vendors and Unauthorized Employment by Nicholas A. FerrellNicholas A. Ferrell
The Gothamist published an article on the push to ban street vendors from the magisterial Brooklyn Bridge. I am 100% in support of banning street vendors from the Bridge. But vendors said there are not many legal spots where t...

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time since New York City evicted all of the vendors and panhandlers a few weeks ago. I fully supported clearing the Bridge for pedestrians just like I previously supported removing the bike lane from the walkway. However, I was skeptical that New York City would follow through. I can happily report that I saw no vendors or stands on my two walks across the Brooklyn Bridge on the afternoon of February 6, 2024. Despite having a decent number of pedestrians, both walks were easy and painless (save for the one guy twirling around with his “selfie stick”). Moreover, I only saw one illegal bike on the Bridge. There were a few cops (first time I have seen cops on the Bridge since early 2020), so that may also be helping.

Photograph of the Manhattan skyline and Freedom Tower from the Manhattan pedestrian exit/entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge -- taken on February 6, 2024.

While I did not take pictures of the walkway, you can see the Manhattan skyline and Freedom Tower from what is close to the Manhattan off-ramp at about 1:40 PM.

 

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I decided to request an invite to Bluesky a couple of weeks ago when I saw that it allowed for using one’s own domain as a handle and had RSS support. I finally received my invite on February 4. I made my account, set it up with my domain, and added my Bluesky RSS feed to my feed aggregator site. Two days after I received my invite and made my account, Bluesky announced invite-free sign-ups.

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I maintain two emails over at The New Leaf Journal. My site administrator email is info [at] newleafjournal. It largely exists to receive spam emails. A certain gentleman purportedly from Qatar Energy sent me the following email:

Dearest  info,

I am [REDACTED], Manager of Finance and Accounts, at Qatar Energy. I have 
$100m for Investment.

Contact me if you are interested, I have all it will take to move the fund to 
you as a contract fund to avoid every query.

I will give you more details upon receipt of your response.

Regards,
[REDACTED].
Finance and Account,
Qatar Energy.

This email bothers me. Why did he not capitalize “Info”?  If my name is Info now, he ought to capitalize it. The spammer also spammed my naferrell at newleafjournal email. That one led with Dearest naferrell.  I respect creative spam. This is just trash.

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If you have a WordPress site, you can subscribe to yourself on Minds and Minds will recognize your WordPress account as a follower. In order to this, you need the ActivityPub and Friends plugins, both available in the regular WordPress plugin repos

After both are configured, go into your Friends admin menu and add a new friend. Add your Minds account in the following format:

@[username]@minds.com

From the WordPress side, you can “subscribe” to your Minds account. I checked from the Minds side and it recognized my WordPress site as a new subscriber/follower.

Caveat: There is a quirk with multi-user WordPress sites. I set my default user on my site to my administrator account (not hidden in this case so not a big deal) and subscribed with my user account. From the Minds side, it recognizes admin account as subscriber even though from the WordPress side I subscribed as user.