Category: Uncategorized

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Google vs HN at the NLJ (1) by Nicholas A. FerrellNicholas A. Ferrell (The Emu Café Social)
As of the evening of January 18, 2024, we are on pace to have more Google referrals this month (according to Koko Analytics, which I also use here) than Hacker News referrals.

I have been busy with New Leaf Journal and law work as of late, but I return to The Emu Café Social with a fun New Leaf Journal update. As of the afternoon of January 29, 2023, we have more Google referrals at The New Leaf Journal than Hacker News referrals despite our fairly high Hacker News page 1 appearance earlier in the month. It took a record Google month to do it, but is another sign things are looking up in terms of New Leaf Journal notoriety after struggling for much of 2023 with our arbitrary Bing ban.

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Over at The New Leaf Journal, my January 5, 2024 article, which was about drug-enhanced professional cycling results, became the sixth New Leaf Journal article (going back to February 2021) to appear on Hacker News page 1 (only after a stop in The Browser newsletter). It reached as high as 11th on HN and was our fourth-strongest Hacker News article of the six that made page one. The page 1 run dissipated, but it left behind one encouraging point about NLJ’s notoriety. As of the evening of January 18, 2024, we are on pace to have more Google referrals this month (according to Koko Analytics, which I also use here) than Hacker News referrals. It will take a record Google month for us to do it, but we should make it by the 29th or 30th. While I am not a Google fan and only use Google Search via Startpage, I am a proponent on making it possible for people to find writing of interest with whatever search engine or front-end they prefer.

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Pro-Hamas protesters spent January 15, 2024 loudly protesting outside of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, yelling that the cancer hospital is complicit in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza, or even “supporting” it. Far be it from me to offer any sort of advice to supporters of a foreign terrorist organization, but in light of the fact that Hamas uses hospietals as command centers and many of the so-called or actual doctors are Hamas members or at least complicit in Hamas’s activities, you have to wonder whether choosing this line of argument is part of the kink for Team Hamas, much like their fellow travelers in Beijing and Moscow make similar claims about the war.

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I did not get around to publishing a review of episode 2 of season 2 of Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki-kun after publishing a brief review of the first episode. The second episode had a dramatic tonal shift — segueing from the social game shenanigans that began in the first episode to bullying. I had some issues with most of episode 2. It was oddly paced. I did not mind the fact that none of the main characters (save for Tama) acquitted themselves well, but the whole production felt rushed and a bit heavy-handed. My biggest concern was with the main character himself, Tomozaki, whose views on the episode’s bullying situations jumped around without the changes being fully developed. Bullying is a subject that requires good writing (see e.g., my anime series of the 2011-2020 decade, March Comes in like a Lion). Even the best anime in the broader high school drama/comedy genre that Tomozaki is in, Oregairu, struggled a bit in its one season one arc that focused primarily on bullying. However, while episode 2 was one of the weaker Tomozaki episodes overall, it ended on an intriguing note with Tomozaki and the second bullying subject, Tama. I complained about Tama being underdeveloped and used to highlight the annoying tendencies of a more important character in my season 1 review, but depending on the writing, it can use her well here. I will see what I think when I watch episode 3 this evening.

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Birthday Gift by Matt Mullenweg (Matt Mullenweg)
Publish a post. About anything! It can be long or short, a photo or a video, maybe a quote or a link to something you found interesting. Don’t sweat it. Just blog. Share something you created, or amplify something you enjoyed. It doesn’t take much. The act of publishing will be a gift for you and me.

I came across a blog post titled Just Blog by Frank Meeuwsen. This post alerted me to an interesting “birthday” project by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. Mr. Mulenwig asked for people to blog for his birthday and link to his post. Ideally, the links should show up as pingbacks on his article. His post said that pingbacks would be closed on January 11 (unfortunately I only read Mr. Meeuwsen’s post on the 13th), but I figured I would try sending one. I like what Mr. Mullenweg is doing and it is making me think of some interesting ideas in the blogroll/webring sphere. If this pingback happens to work — this site is for my short-form writing. My long-form writing is available at The New Leaf Journal. Both sites are powered by WordPress and hosted on a Hetzner VPS server.

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I published an article on The New Leaf Journal about doping in cycling during (and before) the Armstrong era. I noted in my Saturday newsletter that it unexpectedly blew up (by our standards) within hours of its publication. I was not immediately able to identify the source, but I figured out from our referrals that it had been shared by The Browser, a paid newsletter which sends readers five links per day. At the time, I could not confirm this directly because I am not a paid subscriber, but I noticed that The Browser shares several free links from past newsletters each day. Today, it shared our link, and I saved proof in the form of a Wayback Machine screenshot. Very neat.

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marcinzm (Hacker News)
The money from showing a pancake ad make them do that. It's not a search problem. They know it's not a good experience but they also know it makes them more money than not showing it. The goal is money. Your experience is merely a means to that end.

I starred this very insightful comment by Hacker News user marcinzm about search engines. The commenter noted the obvious, that big tech search shows ads because its purpose is to generate revenue through ads. But I appreciated the commenters putting it in terms of means and ends. Ideally, the user wants a search engine to be responsive to his or her query. That is, entering the query is the means for achieving the end of finding a useful result. However, commenter marcinzm noted that the end for the search provider is money and the search experience is a means toward creating more ad revenue. While this is not a novel point, it is phrased well here. One good anecdote is site-specific search, but this is an area that needs more work.

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The Demon Prince of Momochi House (Ep 1) from crunchyroll.com
Himari’s 16th birthday will be one she never forgets. Unexpectedly, she receives a will detailing her inheritance of a mysterious estate: the Momochi House. She arrives only to discover that the home was built on the cusp between the human world and the spiritual realm. There, she encounters Yukari, Ise, and a peculiar boy named Aoi, who seems to be concealing a shadowy secret.
⭐⭐⭐

This was the first completely new (as in not subsequent season) anime I am trying in the Winter 2024 season. These days, not involving “another world” or “reincarnation” is a good place to start. We have a girl, Himari Momochi, who is an orphan. When she turns 16, she learns her late parents left her an inheritance: The family house. However, the family house she finds is old, in the middle of nowhere, and occupied by three very pretty boys (le shock!). The studmuffins warn her that she should leave for her own safety, but everyone unsurprisingly works things out by the end of the episode after all the cards are laid on the table (you’ll be shocked to learn that the dreamboats may not be normal guys). It was equal parts inoffensive and unimpressive. I do not always (or often) agree with Anime News Network review takes, but I think their four first impression reviews were on point. I would have given it 2 stars out of 5 on my unofficial rating scale but for one thing…

A basket of sealed ayakishi, including several talking vegetables, from episode 1 of The Demon Prince of Momochi House.
Look at that turnip…

The talking turnip in the basket is too perfect for our imperfect world. I like animate turnips. 5 stars for the turnip, 2 stars for everything else. I will keep watching but I expect to see more of the turnip.

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Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki 2nd STAGE (Ep 1) by Project No.9 from Crunchyroll
As the second term begins, Tomozaki's first task (courtesy of Hinano) is getting popular girl Erika Konno motivated for the school sports tournament.
⭐⭐⭐⭐

I re-watched the first season of Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki (after having watched it as a simulcast in 2021) for two reasons. Firstly so I could write a review and secondly so that I could refresh my memory for the second season. I watched the first episode of season 2, titled The best games make reconnaissance fun, a few hours after it went live on Crunchyroll. Five quick thoughts below.

  • The overall aesthetic is the same but the production values were better than most of the first season. For example, I noted that the character models were very consistent. It did reuse a few cuts, however.
  • The episode did a good job of depicting Tomozaki’s new-found confidence in his coaching sessions with Hinami.
  • A good part of the episode was spent effectively re-introducing the characters. This is understandable since I assume many viewers did not re-watch the first season in the last week of December like I did.
  • It introduced one new character in Tomozaki’s lethargic co-worker (another girl, of course). She seems to be set up for a advice role but time will tell.
  • Speaking of advice, I complained that Tomozaki’s friend/pushed love interest, Kikuchi, was used too much as an oracle in season 1. In this episode she gives advice that reasonably followed from things she and the audience observed happening in Tomozaki’s class.
  • Speaking of advice, I do not find Tomozaki’s initial challenge, to get the unpleasant Erika Konno motivated for the sports festival, to be particularly interesting. However, his approach to completing the task, relying on others, does highlight his character growth (namely that he can rely on others) and give the first episode a way to help all the characters shine.
  • Speaking of shining, I like what this episode did with Yuzu Izumi. I mentioned in my review of the first season that I thought she was a good character but somewhat underused. Her late-episode resolution was well-done and I hope she continues to play a meaningful role in the second season.
  • In my review, I opined that the series would ultimately depend on its exploration of Hinami’s characters and motivations. Perhaps the most encouraging point of the episode was an early monologue wherein Tomozaki considers the difference between him (trying to enjoy each step of his self-improvement journey) and Hinami (looking beyond the moment at something distant). I will count it as a good early sign that this is something Tomozaki is thinking about.
  • Finally, in my season 1 review, I complained about the camera’s tendency to fixate on Hinami’s and Mimimi’s legs. Positive sign: Only one weird Hinami leg shot in episode 1. Progress!

I expect to see this first arc wrapped up in episode 2 next Wednesday. All in all, the first episode was a solid start to the second season and I am interested to see how it develops after we finish the first arc.

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I opened Steam because I am purchasing at least one visual novel while it is on sale. Steam prompted me to ask whether I wanted to participate in the Steam hardware survey. I said yes. I did my part to represent EndeavourOS. But what about my specs?

  • OS: EndeavourOS
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core processor (3.60 GH)
  • RAM: 32 GB
  • Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER
  • VRAM: 4 GB

I built my computer in 2020 and decided to go for a budget video card, but I have not had any issues since I have not done anything to tax it. My computer originally had 16 GB of RAM but I upgraded to 32 in 2021.

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I checked by 404 logs over at The New Leaf Journal. I found an interesting user agent among the myriad web crawlers:

PoorlyConfiguredWebCrawler

I appreciate that the crawler advertises that it is not well configured. You get the feeling that whoever released the poor thing on the internet is asking us to not be too hard on it. I did a bit of digging and learned it comes from a Swedish server, but information is otherwise scarce. According to my logs, it was only trying to crawl real articles (its only 404s were old links with no redirect) and did not seem to be misbehaving. Because it appears to be a well-behaved (albeit “poorly configured”) bot, I declined to stand athwart its crawling journey. I look forward to trying the Poorly Configured Search Engine it is clearly working toward.

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Santa Owl by Michal Rzeszutek (Openclipart - boican's album)
A cartoon owl in a Santa hat bearing two wrapped presents. The image is on Open Clip Art and in the public domain.

I enjoy some of the fun public domain images on Openclipart. For Christmas 2022, I shared a “cat Christmas tree” over at The New Leaf Journal. This year, I will use my new social posting site (it seems more conducive for the purpose) to share a fun Openclipart Christmas owl posted by Openclipart artist Michal Rzeszutek.

Public domain Openclipart image of a round cartoon owl in a Santa hat holding a blue and green wrapped present in each of its wings. The owl is looking straight at the reader as if it wants to share its presents. Image by Michal Rzeszutek.
Public domain image from Openclipart by Michal Rzeszutek.

Merry Christmas!

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Victor V. Gurbo's "Christmas & You" by Victor V. Gurbo (The New Leaf Journal)
I started writing Christmas & You in college when a friend of mine prompted me to write a Christmas song that would have no prospect of commercial success. His idea was not that the song should be anti-commercial, but instead that it should be hilariously off-brand next to upbeat popular Christmas songs such as Jingle Bell Rock and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer.

My good friend Victor V. Gurbo noted over on The New Leaf Journal that his college friend gave him the prompt for a melancholy Christmas song that would have no prospect of commercial success. I addend his post to note that the unnamed friend was a very versatile character. The person Victor refers to is the same person who I described as having changed my opinion for the better of one of the many twisted story lines in the infamous “nice boat” School Days anime (I did not, however, grant his positive opinion of the series as a whole). We can complete the circle by noting that my decision to subject myself to re-watching much of School Days for a review was prompted by Victor, who never watched the series.

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I send a weekly newsletter attached to The New Leaf Journal called The Newsletter Leaf Journal. Unsurprisingly, I focus on sharing links to my latest articles (including some from here) and news and notes about my projects. However, in the spirit of generosity and sharing external links, I pack each newsletter full of links from around the web (21 per issue, as of late). I had a markdown file with links and comments ready to use in future newsletters. This file was over 9,200 words. I managed to lose the file while reorganizing my documents, notwithstanding the fact that my preferred markdown editor, Ghostwriter, creates automatic backups (single-version automatic backups hit a snag when you accidentally write over markdown your file but keep the same name). Maybe I would have been safe the markdown document was not in one of the few working folders that I was not syncing with my favorite app, Syncthing). But the past is the past. I guess that we will be starting fresh as we prepare to turn the calendar to 2024. Fortunately, I have more than enough new links to keep things rolling (so do subscribe via email or RSS).