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Tree Style Tab Issue by Nicholas A. FerrellNicholas A. Ferrell
I had been using Tree Style Tab for side-tabs on Firefox along with a userChrome.css file to remove the top bar. I was surprised to find when I opened Firefox this morning that Tree Style Tabs was not working. Instead of checking its GitHub repository, where I would have found the issue, I tried to ...

I use side tabs with my Firefox set up. I briefly switched from Tree Style Tab to Sidebery when Tree Style Tab had an update issue. I was impressed with Sidebery and it comes with more power features than Tree Style Tab out of the box (It also does a better job of clearly showing nested links). However, I opted to switch back to TST when the developer expeditiously fixed the issue with a new update. Why? Firstly, while I was impressed with Sidebery, it does not do anything beyond TST that I need. Secondly, TST can take on my theme for its coloring and I like my theme.

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Minds to Mastodon by Nicholas A. FerrellNicholas A. Ferrell
I have a social media account on Minds. Minds added ActivityPub support not too long ago. I had been able to follow my Minds account from Mastodon and follow my Mastodon account from Minds. However, posts were not showing up in either case. Today, I was surprised to discover my most recent Minds pos...

I wrote a post a few days ago about how my Minds posts are now visible from my Mastodon instance. I noted one issue, however. Minds has a praiseworthy set up where users can add hashtags separate from the post. I noted that I liked the set up last year on The New Leaf Journal, and Minds subsequently improved it by making the hashtags visible while still separating from the post. However, Minds has always allowed people to put the hashtags in the body of the post similarly to other social media platforms and software. When using Minds’ method for separating hashtags from the post body, the hashtags are invisible on Mastodon (I have not tested on any other ActivityPub-based clients). I tried writing my hashtags into the body of a Minds post and they carried over to Mastodon as expected. Consider this something to keep in mind if you use Minds and have followers on Mastodon or similar Fediverse networks.

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Linking by Jeremy Keith (adactio.com)
A collection of hyperlinks to collections of hyperlinks.

I came across a good post with links to bloggers who share links on Jeremy Keith’s website, adactio.com. I added the adactio links feed along with a few of the link feeds noted in the post to the Links category of my personal feed collection. I may start sharing a few links each day here at The Emu Café Social, but note that I share 21 external links from around the web (with commentary) in each edition of my Saturday New Leaf Journal newsletter, The Newsletter Leaf Journal (note you can subscribe to the newsletter via RSS). In fact, I should organize the hundreds of links I share from my newsletter into a public Git repository before I start any new projects…

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I use Xfce as the desktop environment on my workstation. I have read some complaints that Xfce is dated compared to GNOME, KDE Plasma, and other newer and shinier desktop environments, but I disagree. Xfce looks slick with a good theme (the Linux distribution I use, EndeavourOS, comes with a nice Xfce spin out of the box). But even if you think Xfce old and best used with an AmigaOS or Windows 95 theme, there is something to be said for heritage. I learned recently that Xfce traces its origins to the Roman Empire from a report in Atlas Obscura titled For Sale: A Mouse-Infested Roman Helmet That’s Stumping Historians. The subject of the report is a decorative Roman helmet that has two mice on the back. Historians are stumped, but I immediately recognized that the mice look very much like the Xfce logo. Switch to Xfce and use the desktop environment endorsed by Emperor Antoninus Pius. While the helmet sold for $1.2 million, Xfce is 100% free as in free coffee and open source.

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I have a social media account on Minds. Minds added ActivityPub support not too long ago. I had been able to follow my Minds account from Mastodon and follow my Mastodon account from Minds. However, posts were not showing up in either case. Today, I was surprised to discover my most recent Minds post in my Mastodon timeline, which I promptly boosted.

Nicholas A. Ferrell's boosted post from minds.com in his Mastodon timeline on linuxrocks.online.
See it on Minds: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1599828018962894868

I have two outstanding issues. Firstly, my Mastodon posts are still not being picked on Minds. Secondly, Minds hashtags are not being picked up by Mastodon. However, I am using Minds’ nice method for adding hashtags instead of writing them directly into the post. I will write some hashtags into the post body to see if those carry over to Mastodon. While I would like to see Minds add support for RSS/ATOM feeds, its ActivityPub and separate NOSTR implementations show a good commitment to federation.

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Writing Prompt: What anime did you start the new year with? by Yomu (Umai Yomu Anime Blog)
Or if you haven’t watched any yet in 2024, I guess what anime will you start with? Surely anyone reading this has watched something though, right?

Yomu at the Umai Yomu Anime Blog asked readers to answer the following question:  What anime did you start the new year with? The first anime I watched in 2024 was actually a 2023 series: BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! Two factors came together to make that 2023 musical melodrama my first anime of the new year.

First, I had started working on my long 2023 anime year-in-review article for The New Leaf Journal in late December. My year-in-review features a list of my top-six series of the previous year. I had considered publishing it in late December, but I had multiple projects in the works so I delayed it until the first week of January. I then became sick in late December and my ill health trickled into the first few days of 2024. Being sick and not having work assignments, I had little to do. I had read some positive reviews of BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! and, after confirming that familiarity with the BanG Dream! franchise was not a prerequisite to entry (I had no prior familiarity), I decided to spend some of my sick hours watching the series to see what the fuss was about and make sure that I covered all the bases I wanted to cover for my 2023 anime review article. While it is far from perfect, it impressed me enough  to earn the fourth spot on my final anime of the year ranking, which made me delete a section that I had written for (former) sixth place The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten (that one still has its full-length review, however).

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tab bar not finishing loading with latest .21 update · Issue #3440 · piroor/treestyletab by piroor (GitHub)
tab bar not finishing loading with latest 3.9.21 update solution: reinstalling 3.9.20 everything is fine again Details many open tabs 500+ (but was never before a problem) latest firefox beta 123.04

I had been using Tree Style Tab for side-tabs on Firefox along with a userChrome.css file to remove the top bar. I was surprised to find when I opened Firefox this morning that Tree Style Tabs was not working. Instead of checking its GitHub repository, where I would have found the issue, I tried to fix it myself and in the process, inadvertently reset my Firefox display settings (separate from my user.js). I decided to switch to Sidebery while the issue with TST is being resolved. While I found TST to be a bit prettier, I like some features that Sidebery comes with such as multi-level nesting. I may stick with it for a bit and see how it goes.

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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.