I had been planning to use the Gwolle Guestbook plugin here (I cannot use it on The New Leaf Journal because it relies on JQuery, which I disable over there). However, I decided that it was too heavy for what will probably be a light use-case. Over on The New Leaf Journal, I had briefly tried a comments-based Guestbook with an open source spam blocklist. However, we did not get any legitimate entries in that Guestbook before I shuttered it on account of the fact that a small number of spam comments were somehow showing up as published despite my requiring moderation in the WordPress settings. Wanting a Guestbook, I decided to give it a try on both sides while adding Antispam Bee, an entirely local anti-spam plugin, to my set-up. I also added a Block List Updater from the same developer to keep the open source-sourced blocklist up to date without my manual intervention. Finally, I use a plugin called Plugin Load Filter with allows me to explicitly limit Antispam Bee to specific pages. For example, this means that Antispam Bee only functions on the Guestbook page of The New Leaf Journal at the moment. We will see how it goes. But the way, while this site’s Guestbook looks solid (if I do so humbly submit myself), take a look at what I did on The New Leaf Journal side of things.
My 1,000 Articles at The New Leaf Journal
I published The New Leaf Journal’s 999th and 1,000th articles back in May. However, not all of those articles were mine. I published a few articles under the New Leaf Journal Editors byline and my friend and colleague Victor V. Gurbo has a good selection of posts on a number of mostly (but not entirely) music subjects. Today, I finally hit publish on my own 1,000th article: A stream of consciousness from someone who played EA Sports games back in the 90s about EA pontificating about shoving ads into its upcoming AAA offerings. I take readers from my memories of NBA Live 98 for Sega Genesis to a story from visiting my high school classmate’s man cave (it was a legit man cave, big TV, leather sofa, sports memorabilia, et cetera) where I witnessed the birth of a new phrase inspired by a game of Madden.
RSS Feeds in the Wayback Machine
I read an interesting post that appeared on Hacker News page 1 about creating full text and full archive RSS feeds. One method in its toolbox is constructing feeds from Wayback Machine captures of the RSS feed. That idea never occurred to me. Out of curiosity, I looked at Wayback Archive captures of The New Leaf Journal’s main RSS feed. Our feed was captured for the first time on August 15, 2020 (notre I published our first article on April 27 of that year). Between then and now, it was captured 41 additional times, seemingly most consistently in 2022.
Blogs Should Have About Pages
The site stats tell me that my about page at /about is consistently one of the most visited pages on this website. That confirms what everyone already knows: people are very curious, sometimes even nosy.
Wouter Groenveld opined on his personal blog (I recommend adding it to your feed collection) that blogs should have About pages. I submit for the record that I wholeheartedly agree (albeit my About pages have a different emphasis).
Non-Typo Typos
Have you ever made a typo that wasn’t a typo (unlike a typo-typo)? I was tying “teamviewer” into my terminal (it’s for work, for the record). I attempted to hit “e” after “w” and nothing else. However, my finger slid off “e” and hit “r.” This worked out fine since I needed an “r” after the “e.” But it was a typo. I really meant to first it “e” and then “r.”
Probably Ineligible for Google Incognito Mode Payout
I saw on Hacker News that a law firm leading a lawsuit against Google for purportedly misleading claims about Chrome’s “incognito mode” is looking for plaintiffs who, among other things, used Chrome’s incognito mode at any time between June 1, 2016, and December 1, 2023. While $5,000 would be nice (note I’m not following the suit so I do not know any of the particulars and am not interested in them), it couldn’t give me more satisfaction than noting that I am pretty sure I have not used Chrome on one of my computers in the June 2016-December 2023 time-frame. That’s right: I figured out Chrome was bad well before I switched to Linux in August 2020.
Diceware Inspiration: Lukewarm Phoenix
I have a diceware program for the CLI. I usually use it to generate passwords. I sometimes use it to generate usernames. On this occasion, I asked it to come up with a two-word username and kept going until I found one I liked. It gave me “LukewarmPhoenix.” Now that one I like. But it’s too good for a username. Saving it for future reference. Who knew that diceware is actually an idea generator?
Local Contact “Sync”
I have gone through three systems for contact syncing since transitioning to an open source tech lifestyle with my switch to Linux in August 2020. I tried EteSync, Radicale-DecSync, and most recently, using Posteo for server-side address syncing. Today I changed approach, borrowing from the Radicale-DecSync idea, which involved Radicale running locally on my computers, the DecSync app, and Syncthing. I first removed Posteo Sync on my GrapheneOS-powered Google Pixel 6a and then exported the .vcf file to a folder in my “Sync” directory that I Sync to my devices with Syncthing. I deleted my contacts from Thunderbird and imported the .vcf. After some testing, I opted to use Fossify Contacts instead of GrapheneOS’s default AOSP-derived contacts manager because the import and export was more to my liking. I then made some changes on Thunderbird, exported the .vcf, and imported them into Fossify Contacts. It worked as expected. I will keep playing with this system and see how sustainable it is.
Linux Desktop Market Share Hits 4.45% in July 2024
According to StatCounter (via OS Technix), Linux’s desktop marketshare reached a record high of 4.45% in July 2024. I enjoy following these trends as someone who has exclusively run Linux since August 2020 and has offered some thoughts on encouraging Windows and MacOS users to switch to Linux. Let us see the full StatCounter statistics:
- Windows (72.8%)
- OS X (14.92%)
- Unknown (7.14%)
- Linux (4.45%)
- Chrome OS (1.41%)
- FreeBSD (0.01%)
On one hand, it us neat to see Linux staying within three percentage points of the popular Unknown OS. But there is a downside; I will have to switch to FreeBSD if Linux surpasses Unknown OS because Linux will then not be cool anymore.
(Note: My jokes aside, the OS Technix article reasonably speculates that many of the “Unknown” users may be running Linux.)
Finding My Ubuntu Touch Google Nexus 7 Tablet
I wrote a New Leaf Journal article about installing Ubuntu Touch on a Google Nexus 7 tablet back in July 2021. That turned out to be one of our all-time most-read articles, and it has been one of our most-read articles of 2023 despite the fact that the Ubuntu Touch project discontinued support for it in April 2023. It may seem odd that I never wrote a follow-up, but there were two reasons. Firstly, while installing it was fun, I never found a specific use for the Ubuntu Touch Nexus 7 (I did end up using a second Nexus 7 that I installed LineageOS on and I have a new project in the works about that one). Secondly, I did not know where my Ubuntu Touch Nexus 7 was for a while. I just found it and am installing the last updates for it. Better late than never?
Thoughts on the Most Popular WordPress Plugins
This is a little negative-nancy-ish, so if you aren’t feeling that right now — just close this tab 😜. It struck me recently how this list of plugins I saw in the 2023 Annual WordPress Survey wasn’t full of fun and interesting plugins that do interesting and unique things, they mostly just fix boring problems […]
In November 2023, Chris Coyier published his thoughts on the 20 most popular WordPress plugins as of July 2023. I run two WordPress sites: this one and The New Leaf Journal. Between the two, I use a good number of plugins. Surely I must have thoughts on the list! Well first, let’s see the plugins:
- Yoast SEO
- Monsterinsights Google Analytics
- WordPress Importer
- All-in-One-WP-Migration
- Wordfence
- Contact Form by WPForums
- Elementor Website Builder
- Duplicate Page
- Akismet Spam Protection
- Contact Form 7
- WooCommerce
- Classic Editor
- Google Site Kit
- Yoast Duplicate Post
- Really Simple SSL
- WP Mail SMTP
- All-in-One SEO
- UpdraftPlus
- Jetpack
- LiteSpeed Cache
I only use two of these plugins. I use UpdraftPlus on both this site and NLJ (see my post on using it for migrating to a new host). I use the Classic Editor plugin on this site but not on The New Leaf Journal.
There are a few that I used a long time ago. I used Yoast SEO from summer 2020 through the end of 2021 before switching to the lighter, more performant, and less annoying The SEO Framework in 2022 (see my post on its humane site maps). I shamefully used Monsterinsights Google Analytics four about two months in 2020 (before I knew better) before switching to the local and privacy-friendly Koko Analytics in 2020. I discuss my Koko Analytics stats in every edition of our weekly newsletter and in The New Leaf Journal’s year-end article rankings (see 2023). I accept an invitation from another post to give it my high recommendation. I briefly used Wordfence in 2020 before quickly moving away from all-in-one security suites. I will note separately that neither Monsterinsights nor Wordfence cleaned up after themselves well, leaving a ton of options behind. I believe I also used Realy Simple SSL for a time early on before figuring out how to set the requisite headers in my site’s .htaccess file (hat tip to Jeff Starr and his myriad free resources at Perishable Press). I never tried the other plugins. I will note with regard to caching that I have used WP Super Cache since late June 2020 and have been consistently impressed by it.
Does Persona 4 Need (Another) Remake?
After the success of Persona 3 Reload, fans are starting to wonder which of the other Persona games would deserve a remake. One popular debate that is going on right now is whether a Persona 4 remake done similarly to Persona 3 Reload would be viable at all.
A new article in Automation West described an online debate over whether Persona 4 needs (another) remake. I have documented in the pages of The New Leaf Journal that I am a fan of Persona 4 and of the modern Persona series as a whole. However, count me as being on the side of “some [who] would like Atlus to focus on new projects, such as the hotly anticipated Persona 6.” Persona 4 received an excellent and much needed deluxe (so to speak) version in Persona 4 Golden and that game is readily accessible thanks to its availability on Steam and other platforms. I do not think that modern visuals or game play tweaks (which may only make Persona 4’s unfortunate declining difficulty curve worse) are worth the effort. Persona 3’s reboot (which I have yet to play) is justified in large part thanks to the game’s best version, Persona 3 FES, not being so easily available (especially with the upcoming Answer DLC). Instead of re-making Persona 4, Atlus can apply some lessons from Persona 4, namely its best-in-series social links and character writing, to a whole new game. (I suppose it can learn from the proper difficulty curve in Persona 3 FES).
A Linux Handheld Gaming Thought
I read on the AlternativeTo blog that Steam is planning to extend SteamOS support to the Asus ROG Ally and other Windows-based handheld gaming devices. I am not too on top of the market for current modern computer game handhelds because I do not personally have a use-case for one, although I am always happy to see how much Valve’s efforts to develop its own gaming ecosystem have benefitted Linux as a whole. Thus, I am not up to date on what Linux support is (if there is any real Linux support at all, that is) for the non-Steam Deck devices. The news update made me wonder whether Steam Deck support for these devices means that more general Linux options may soon follow.
Overheard on the Street ECS Edition 2
I recently published a short post on overhearing a woman abusing the word like in an atrocious sentence. On the same day I published that post, I overheard something more articulate, but nevertheless unusual. This was a gentleman in Brooklyn Heights: “They’re not kidding when they say you shouldn’t put pressure on the artery where they went in.” Duly noted. According to my doctor friend, they went with radial access on the man. At least he is on top of things!
Google Nexus 7 Tablet Gets New OS
I sometimes use the search box on The New Leaf Journal (despite its limitations) to find one of my old articles. I tried to run a search for teracube, which refers to my old phone (I reviewed it back in 2021). However, the search failed. Why did it fail? Because I typed teracute. Search results page...
Yesterday I posted about making a typo when I used The New Leaf Journal’s on-site search to look for something I wrote about my now-old Teracube 2e phone. Once I corrected my typo, I found what I was looking for: A short leaflet about upgrading my phone via ADB. I wanted to find it not because I was trying to upgrade my Murena Teracube 2e (it upgrades normally these days), but instead because I was trying to update another device that I once dicussed in The New Leaf Journal, my LineageOS-powered Google Nexus 7 Wi-Fi (2013) tablet. The tablet is no longer officially supported by LineageOS, but I found a build from a developer who decided to keep maintaining his own version. While I did figure out how to upgrade, the new ROM did not fit my use-case. One thing led to another, and my Nexus 7 tablet has seen an unexpected revival.
Out: LineageOS. In: DivestOS. That is all I will say here, but you can expect a new article about an old tablet in The New Leaf Journal in the not-too-distant future.