Re-printing Lizzie Deas' short story, "The Christmas Rose."
https://thenewleafjournal.com/lizzie-deas-the-christmas-rose/
My PDF version:
https://thenewleafjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lizzie-deas-the-christmas-rose-nlj.pdf
“Nor myrrh, nor frankincense, nor gold,” said the angel, “is offering more meet for the Christ Child than these pure Christmas Roses.”
Four years to the day, I reviewed a very short (about 10 minute) visual novel titled From the Bottom of the Heart. It is the 2008 localization of a freeware Japanese visual novel titled Negaeba. It's a nice little piece with an unusual visual presentation for an NScripter novel of the era. It remains free to download and play and comes with my recommendation. I also wrote a long "analysis" which is linked from the review.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/from-the-bottom-of-the-heart-vn-review/
WordPress' default search is lacking. I had "improved" our search with a simple plugin called Relevanssi Light. However, it was still not to my liking. I noticed that Relevanssi Light has a boolean search mode (enabled through code snippet). I enabled it. Now our on-site search is "decent" with good queries. (Links to information about the plugin/code snippet in my post if you want to try it on your WordPress site).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/implementing-boolean-search-on-nlj/
Three years to the day, I ended up stuck at the airport in Atlanta for a few hours due to a passing storm. I spent those hours walking laps around the airport (I did many laps). I could have simply recounted the story from my perspective, but I instead used it as a prompt for a fictional dialoguein my long-running series.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/laps-around-the-atlanta-airport/
Well before I launched The Emu Café Social as my second website project, I named a section of The New Leaf Journal The Emu Café. Having done that, I could hardly resist publishing an article about a lost emu news story five years to the day on August 16, 2020. You may be thinking this story must be from "down under," but you will find that it is a New Jersey emu story.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/a-wayward-emu-loses-its-way-to-the-emu-cafe/
Back in 2021, I offered a contrarian take that summer is the best time to walk with hot coffee. Is the take specious? Yes. But I like to think the underlying reasoning is somewhat soumd.
I flew to Texas for vacation on August 10, 2022. Before I left, I had scheduled a few articles for publication on The New Leaf Journal over the next few days. One was about how Google was mysteriously not indexing my review of /e/ OS on my Murena Teracube 2e.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/google-not-indexing-murena-phone-review/
On August 10, while I was flying, someone shared my review article to Hacker News and it ended up making it as high as the top three on page one. It soon appeared in Google search.
One year to the day, I published an article on the biggest age gaps in U.S. presidential election tickets (with some rules for what constitutes a qualifying ticket).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/biggest-age-gaps-in-u-s-presidential-election-tickets/
One year to the day, I wrote about trying OatMilk Lindt chocolate after seeing it for sale at Lot Less (I had previously seen it at CVS, but would describe it as "cost-prohibitive" in that case). While I will stick with regular milk and dark chocolate, it was decent chocolate.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/trying-lindt-oatmilk-chocolate/
Four years to the day, I published what went on to be one of my more-visited articles, a brief look at installing LineageOS on a Google Nexus 7 (2013 Wi-Fi) tablet. Alas, the LineageOS project no longer supports the Nexus 7 and after getting a good 20ish months of use from my LOS Nexus 7, it became unbearably slow and lost its usefulness in any event.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/installing-lineageos-on-a-2013-nexus-7-wi-fi/
The Persona 4 Visual Data is largely, but not entirely, coextensive with the digital artbook available as an add-on for Persona 4 Golden on Steam. The only differences (besides one being "physical" and the other being "digital") are that the Steam artbook includes some Golden-exclusive characters and the original Persona 4 Visual Data book includes some concept art missing from the digital one (minor advantage to the original).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/persona-4-golden-digital-artbook-review-steam/
I completed my first maddening difficulty run in Fire Emblem Three Houses back in 2020. On one late stage, I made an unfortunate mistake in moving one of my units within range of "Death Knight" (not great, not the best). That inspired me to write an article about my a idea for a new strategy for video game strategy guides.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/teaching-the-art-of-the-video-game-snafu/
Three years ago, I wrote a brief review of Frogfind, a DuckDuckGo front-end designed to work well on very vintage hardware. Lacking any suitably vintage hardware, I decided to see how it worked on my PocketBook Color web browser.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/frogfind-vintage-computer-search-review/
I was using Manjaro four years ago. After a fresh install of the OS, I installed my favorite markdown editor, Ghostwriter. When I tried to launch Ghostwriter, I ran into a segmentation fault. I found a fix for the issue which involved, of all things, the Internet Archive.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/a-segmentation-fault-and-a-peculiar-ghostwriter-install-on-manjaro/
July 11, 2025 marked five years since I first installed the Koko Analytics WordPress plugin on The New Leaf Journal. Koko Analytics is an entirely local anlytics tool. The free version has a small number of configuration options. I set it to just number of page hits and referrers. In my post, I offer my updated positive opinion of Koko and a list of our 60 most-visited articles from 7/11/20 to 7/11/25.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/five-years-of-the-koko-analytics-wordpress-plugin/
I have played a few visual novels which require a Japanese-language environment to run (even though they are English localizations). I usually use Lutris to configure the environment and WINE/Proton. However, two years ago I looked into how to do the same thing on Steam.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/japanese-language-env-in-steam-linux/
I published an article two years ago about using MikroTik's RSS feed to stay on top of RouterOS updates for my hAP ac3 router. While this method was sound, I'll note that I subsequently figured out how to enable automatic updates for the router, so I no longer *need* to stay on top of the updates feed.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/rss-for-keeping-with-mikrotik-updates/
Four years to the day, I collected poems by Charlotte Becker, an early 20th century poet from Buffalo, NY, from various contemporary sources into a single article.
Three years ago to the day, back when X was Twitter, I wrote an essay making the case against using former Twitter as a *content curator*, arguing for RSS/ATOM/JSON feed collections as an alternative. This was the follow-up to a similar post I wrote about Facebook in 2021. Unlike the Facebook post, it did not hit page 1 of Hacker News, but for whatever it's worth I think my 2022 post was stronger.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/against-twitter-as-a-content-curator/
I am slowly catching up with the new anime season. But instead of looking forward, I look back to my 2023 article on the interesting animation of the first episode of The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses. (Find the operative word.)
https://thenewleafjournal.com/the-girl-i-like-forgot-her-glasses-ep1-animation/
Most of the discussion going into the NBA Playoffs (or any other postseason tournament) focuses on the best teams. I took a different approach in examining the worst NBA Playoff teams of the 16 bit era, covering 1984-2024. Instead of using win-loss record, I examined the teams which made the playoffs with a negative SRS score, which takes into account scoring margin and strength of schedule.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/worst-nba-playoff-teams-by-srs-1984-2024/
After the 2025 Playoff field was finalized, I wrote a follow-up post highlighting how SRS can differ from win-loss record. The 37-45 Miami Heat made the 2025 Playoffs (and were unsurprisingly sent home quickly). One would think a 37-45 team would have qualified for my worst playoff team survey... but the Heat actually had a positive SRS and Net Rating. Go figure. I examined whether they had the worst record of a positive SRS/Net playoff team (spoiler: they did).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/best-nba-playoff-teams-with-losing-records/
Most of the discussion going into the NBA Playoffs (or any other postseason tournament) focuses on the best teams. I took a different approach in examining the worst NBA Playoff teams of the 16 bit era, covering 1984-2024. Instead of using win-loss record, I examined the teams which made the playoffs with a negative SRS score, which takes into account scoring margin and strength of schedule.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/worst-nba-playoff-teams-by-srs-1984-2024/
I had never heard of Temu before January 2024, when I read an article about its advertising marketing blitz. I had two take-aways. First, I had not missed out on anything. Second, my late discovery was an excellent demonstration of the benefits of using a feed reader with a well-curated feed collection and uBlock Origin.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/missing-temu-ads-through-good-internet-usage/
Regular readers may know that I am one of the internet's leading anime hair color scholars (or so I tell myself). In early 2024, I learned about an upcoming Honey Lemon Soda anime (note I was/am not familiar with the manga) and singled it out as a hair color article prospect. Did the show which just finished airing live up to expectations? Indeed it did... for hair color, at least.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/honey-lemon-soda-anime-hair-color-analysis/