I delete many spam comments left in our Guestbook. Most are not worth sharing, but every now and then I see one that catches my attention. One example is a spam comment that has now been left for moderation for posting in our Guestbook twice. The comment is posted by user killer for hire and it advertises a service which “lets you find experts for occasionally dangerous tasks.” It states that “contractors are qualified in managing complex jobs” before a URL, which includes the words hitman, assassin, and killer. “This service ensures safe interactions between requestors and specialists.” What in the world? I would have posted the screenshot but I would rather not indirectly advertise the actual URL. I did not click the URL, but there is a non-zero chance it leads to a casino or marijuana site. Weird stuff.
Category: Uncategorized
Waiting For a G3 Macintosh in 1998
I was looking for a good small web source to link to April showers bring May flowers for yesterday’s New Leaf Journal article on a brave tulip in Red Hook. I turned to Marginalia Search and Mojeek for the task. On Marginalia, I found a link to a link to a May 10, 1998 blog post by Michael Rawdon titled May Flowers. It did include the adage. I did not ultimately use it in my article. However, a passage unrelated to spring and flowers caught my attention:
Oh, and I ordered my new G3 Macintosh from The Apple Store. They say it could be up to 3 weeks before it arrives due to “time for assembly”, but seeing as it’s a standard model minus the internal modem, I’m betting it will arrive sooner.
Michael Rawdon (May 10, 1998)
While I never had a Mac of any kind (lest we count my temporary custody of Victor V. Gurbo’s 2007 MacBook), the passage caught my attention because I wrote about one Macintosh G3 just over a year ago. In Power Macintosh G3 in Nana Anime, I used a reverse image search to identify a desktop computer in a 2006 anime I was watching at the time. Of course, the G3 I wrote about was first released on January 5, 1999, so Mr. Rawdon must have ordered the model before the one I covered.
Woodpecker in Brooklyn
I was walking through the Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill in the late afternoon on April 21, 2025. I heard a tap-tap-tap in a tree. I looked up and saw a woodpecker with a red crown and white breast with spots pecking away. This was notable because it is only the second time I recall having seen a woodpecker in Brooklyn, with the first being in Park Slope/Gowanus one or two years ago. I pulled out my camera to take a photograph of the woodpecker. Unfortunately, it flew away and across the street before I could even open my camera app, much less take a picture. Thus, the woodpecker joins the blue jay and black squirrel, albino sparrow, and squirrel with a French fry on my tell, don’t show list of New York City wildlife stories.
Long Delays Between Anime Seasons
Coop and Chris try to answer the eternal question: does it matter if the sequel is as good if it takes too long to show up?
I came across an interesting Anime News Network discussion prompt asking whether it “matter[s] if the sequel [to an anime] is as good [as the first season] if it takes too long to show up?” The two participants in the discussion cite examples where it does seem to matter in a commercial sense. From my perspective, a long delay between seasons can be irritating in that I need to go back and refresh myself on the prior season(s). I distinctly recall having that issue with the second season of Re:Zero back in 2021 (the first season aired in 2016). But as long as the new season is good and worthwhile, I am not worried from a viewer perspective. The third and final season of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (aka Oregairu) was the easy choice for my TV anime of the year nod in 2020, notwithstanding the five-year gap between the second and third seasons. I still insist on a third season of the best series of the previous decade, March Comes in like a Lion, despite the fact that the second season finished airing seven years ago. (Aside: While I have yet to watch the third season of Kimi ni Todoke, which aired 12 years after the second, I appreciate that it helped bring attention to my Kimi ni Todoke hair color study.)
Fred Couples Shoots 71 in First Round of Masters
I noted in an article on the oldest golfers to contend for major championships that Fred Couples has always been a favorite of mine (thanks in no small part to Fred Couples Golf for Sega Game Gear). Mr. Couples is 65 years old, having reached the milestone on October 3, 2024. While he competes almost exclusively on golf’s 50-and-over Champions Tour these days, he is competing in his 40th Masters this week with his lifetime exemption from his 1992 victory. Mr. Couples shot an impressive (in general, but especially for a 65-year old) one-under 71 in the first round, thanks in large part to a chip-in birdie on the first hole and holing out from 191 yards for eagle on the par-four 14th. While I would be surprised to see Mr. Couples close enough to the lead on Sunday to qualify as a new addition to my oldest golfers to contend for major championships list, he is in good position to break the record for the oldest golfer to make the cut at the Masters. The record holder is Fred Couples, who set the existing mark in 2023. But Mr. Couples may not control his own record destiny. The 67-year old Bernhard Langer (1985 and 1993 Masters Champion), who is competing in his final Masters, shot a two-over 74, which gives him a chance to make the weekend in his farewell Masters if he posts a solid second round tomorrow.
Installing Tinker WriterDeck OS On Old ASUS Netbook
I read an article on Liliputing about Tinker WriterDeck OS earlier today (Liliputing. April 7, 2025). What is Tinker WriterDeck OS? I turn to Liliputing:
But if you’ve already got an old laptop lying around, maybe there’s no need to build or purchase anything new. You could just use distraction-free software. And that’s exactly where Tinker WriterDeck OS comes in: it’s a free and open source operating system that can be installed on just about any old laptop that you may have lying around to turn it into a distraction-free tool for writing… and not much else.
I happened to have a very old ASUS netbook (2 GB RAM, spinning HDD) laying around. Moreover, I had nothing much to do with it given that I have two more capable laptops. There was only one thing to do…
This is admittedly not the best picture, but rest assured that this is Tinker WriterDeck OS freshly installed on my netbook. I was impressed with how quick and easy the installation was, thanks in no small part to very concise docs. I confirmed everything works. Look forward to an exciting article about Tinker WriterDeck OS drafted on my newly configured netbook.
Trillion Game Two-Part Season Finale
I have been watching an anime called Trillion Game since it began in the fall 2024 season. It continued into the winter season. According to Anime News Network, we have a two-part season (I hope season and not series) finale on March 27. While I an loath to offer to many spoilers for my eventual year-end anime ranking (see my 2024 list), Trillion Game is a decent finale away from (likely) being the first-quarter front-runner in 2025 (granting its another fun show also wraps up tomorrow). Of course, you never want to count your chickens before they hatch. At least one of the better shows of the season did not stick the landing.
My Haqqani Bounty Payment Hangs By a Thread
Using open source intelligence tools (basic web search), I reported that I had information regarding the whereabouts of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was wanted by the FBI.
Back in 2021, I briefly moonlit as an OSNIT analyst and used The New Leaf Journal to inform the United States Government that I had information regarding the whereabouts of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who had a bounty of up to $10 million on his head. By “OSNIT,” I mean I shared a news report about Mr. Haqqani being appointed as the new Interior Minister of Afghanistan. Several years have passed. Mr. Haqqani continues to be the Interior Minister of Afghanistan. I have yet to receive an award. Thus, I read with some concern this morning that Mr. Haqqani is no longer subject to a bounty by the U.S. government. What is my concern? I still haven’t received by award! No take-backs!
SBInstitutionsBot Visits Picked Up as Visitors
My Set-Up I run the non-pro version of Koko Analytics on my WordPress site. I disable cookies and exclude visits from all logged-in users. What Happened? On two separate days, Koko Analytics was sh...
On March `12 and 19, I received a highly unusual number of visitors and page views on The New Leaf Journal according to Koko Analytics. By “unusual,” I mean about 10X as many visitors as expected. No individual article had an unusual number of views and my Koko Analytics stats showed the usual list of referrers (mostly search engines) at usual referral numbers. I checked by server logs on the 19th and determined that the likely culprit was SBInstitutionsBot/0.1 (it appears to be a Japanese web crawler for AI), which was hammering my site with requests as I was seeing unusually high visitor numbers. I used Jeff Starr’s BBQ Pro firewall plugin to block the bot. My Koko Analytics stats quickly returned to normal. I reported the issue to Koko Analytics on GitHub, so I hope the relevant IP addresses are added to the do not count list if it turns out that my diagnosis was correct. (In any event, one of my former visitors, PoorlyConfiguredWebCrawler, was much better behaved than SBInstitutionsBot.)
TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus Announced
The TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus is a tablet with an 11.5 inch display featuring a 120 Hz refresh rate and up to 550 nits brightness. It’s also the first tablet to feature TCL’s NXTPAPER 4.0 display technology, which the company says offers a more paper-like viewing experience than ever thanks to hardware and software improvements. NXTPAPER […]
The screen on the TCL NXTPAPER tablets is intriguing to me. [See Liliputing report] Intriguing enough for me to spend $200 on an Android tablet by a Chinese TV manufacturer that “is also baking … AI features into the tablet”? No. I do not even let my 2019 TCL TV talk to the internet, much less a tablet which would depend on updates. (This more or less also summarizes my thoughts on the BOOX line of e-ink devices.) But it would be neat to have this sort of screen on a Linux-friendly device (or even LineageOS-friendly if the project ever adds some of the NXTPAPER tablets to its list of supported devices). I suppose I would consider a cheap one if I could get some of the Google/AI cruft off the homescreen and use it as an e-reader without turning on wi-fi. For now, I will stick with my Pocketbooks for my e-reader needs (my Kindle Paperwhite does make a few rare appearances.)
Things I Learned: TP-Link Security Issues
On December 18, 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. authorities are investigating whether a Chinese company whose popular home-internet routers have been linked to cyberattacks poses a national-security risk and are considering banning the devices.” I learned a few interesting facts beyond the top-line story:
- “The router-manufacturer TP-Link, established in China, has roughly 65% of the U.S. market for routers for homes and small businesses.” TP-Link’s home and small business marketshare for routers was only 20% in 2019. The Wall Street Journal attributes the jump to an increase in working from home beginning in 2020 and TP-Link’s low prices.
- “The Justice Department is investigating whether the price discrepancies violate a federal law that prohibits attempts at monopolies by selling products for less than they cost to make…” (Note: For whatever it is worth, I do not think TP-Link is strikingly cheap compared to other “popular” consumer routers and access points, but I could be off.)
- TP-Link devices are used by the Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Agency, NASA, and other agencies.
- “An analysis from Microsoft published in October found that a Chinese hacking entity maintains a large network of compromised network devices mostly comprising thousands of TP-Link routers.”
- According to the Journal, people familiar with the TP-Link investigation have stated that the company does not engage with security researches complainted about security flaws in TP-Link products.
- “TP-Link routers don’t appear to be related to China’s alleged breaches of at least eight U.S. telecom firms by a group dubbed Salt Typhoon…” Chinese hackers instead targeted out-of-date routers built by Cisco and Netgear.
- Taiwan has banned government and educational facilities from using TP-Link routers. India issued a warning in 2024 that TP-Link routers present a security risk.
[Source: U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese-Made Router in Millions of American Homes (Wall Street Journal). Original Link. Archived Link.]
I used a TP-Link router for several years before upgrading to a MikroTik hAP ac3 router. As of the writing of the instant post, I still use a TP-Link wireless access point (it is a pure AP, no router capabilities), but I am in the process of swapping it out for a Netgear router with OpenWrt, which I will use as an Access Point instead of a router.
Angel Next Door Surging Views Explanation
Back in November 2023, I wrote a joke article about having the good foresight to review the first season of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, which had aired in the winter 2023 season, before a second season was announced that fall. While my actual review of the show did surge in views with the announcement, it was eventually overtaken by the joke article (that was not by design) so much so that by the end of 2024, the joke article was my 3rd most-visited article of the year while my serious review was 16th. The joke article just completed its best-ever week in terms of page views (albeit not good enough to overcome my review of Kaori After Story for the number-one spot this past week), and it is showing no signs of slowing down. I wondered what gives. Perhaps it was the release of a teaser image pertaining for the upcoming second season (note: no release date yet).
WordPress ATOM Feeds and GitHub blog-post-workflow
I came across Gautam krishna R’s blog-post-workflow repository on GitHub last night (being January 2, 2025). In short, it is a GitHub workflow for fetching RSS feeds and adding them to a GitHub profile README.md file. I created a profile repository (I had been meaning to for a while) and added three feeds: My ATOM feeds for this site and The New Leaf Journal and my Buttondown newsletter feed. Everything worked, but symbols in headlines for this feed and New Leaf Journal were being rendered oddly. I tried switching both WordPress feeds from ATOM to RSS. Now everything works perfectly. It is possible that I could have fixed the formatting using the available configuration options, but for this purpose (for mosy purposes, really), there is no difference between the WordPress RSS and ATOM feeds. You can see my GitHub profile with the feeds here.
Transcribing Podcasts
I present the following quote from Josh Blackman on taking podcasts out of context:
And this is yet another reason why I severely dislike podcasts. This was a 90 minute long discussion where Vance hit on lots of points. If you pluck out a few words here and there, and ignore the broader context, a lot will be missed. I transcribe podcasts, for good reason.
Josh Blackman
I am not a podcast-person, but I agree with the broad point in Mr. Blackman’s opinion. It is easier to take one line or another from a long podcast out of context than it is in a written piece. Transcribing podcasts sounds like a good approach. [Link: Josh Blackman]
Spam Email “Unsubscribe”
I regularly receive unsolicited “cooperation” and “collaboration” offers at my New Leaf Journal email. I receive these despite explicitly stating on our contact page that I am not interested in these offers. Something struck me as odd about how these unsolicited emails are worded. Today, I received a follow-up email from someone claining to be an SEO Outreach Specialist seeking to cooperate with a company he represents “in the SportsBook and Casino industry.” I ignored the original email. The follow-up email, which I will also ignore, asks whether I “got” the previous email. What strikes me as odd is how both emails conclude:
Reply with ‘Unsubscribe’ so you don’t hear from us again.
For one, why would a casino “cooperation” offer be sent pursuant to a subscription. For two, why would I unsubscribe from something I never subscribed to? I wish the spammers made more of an effort to make sense.