March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. It is now April, but I have not yet published my regularly scheduled month-in-review. Below, I link to our new articles from March along with our most-visited posts.
New Leaves From March 2024
I published 17 new articles on The New Leaf Journal in March 2024. The first of which was my February 2024 review. I present the other 16 articles below. Note: I (N.A. Ferrell)
- Shin Iryū’s Hair Color in A Sign of Affection (March 1)
Part four of five of my series on hair color in the A Sign of Affection anime. - Fallen One Way Sign in DUMBO (March 2)
More or less as advertised. - High School Newspaper Microsoft Publisher Memories (March 4)
News of the impending sunsetting of Microsoft Publisher inspired me to share my high school Publisher memories. - History of My Anime Hair Color Project (March 5)
The success of my first two articles on hair color in A Sign of Affection inspired me to recap the history of my anime hair color project. As we will see in my final March rankings, one could argue I should have waited four weeks to publish this restrospective. - Revisiting My Ideal E-Ink QWERTY Phone (March 6)
A new QWERTY e-ink phone inspired me to revisit and slightly modify my essay on the ideal phone from 2023. - Humane Content in World of Language Models (March 11)
I offer my thoughts on writing humane articles (by humans for other humans) in an internet full of language model and human-generated SEO spam. - Itsuomi Nagi’s Hair Color Experiments (March 12)
The final part of my five-part series on hair color in A Sign of Affection (but not my final article about the anime). - Donut Fender in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (March 13)
A photo post from one of my rare trips to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. - Boku no Shokora – Visual Novel Review (March 14)
I looked for a visual novel with a White Day theme to review on White Day. My search led me to Boku no Shokora. - On Twitter’s (Now X’s) Re-Branding (March 21)
I question whether X can shed its Twitter legacy to make its platform a place for publishing and reading full articles. - Bad New York City Branding on Social Media (March 21)
I question the political wisdom of the Mayor of New York City calling NYC “the Port-Au-Prince of America.” - Power Macintosh G3 in Nana Anime (March 22)
A vintage computer sighting in a vintage anime (is a 2006-07 anime vintage now?). - Evaluating Purpose in Organizing Feeds (March 27)
A reply to an external reply to my article on organizing feeds. - Against Buying Games From Smart TV Stores (March 28)
Don’t. - A Sign of Affection – Anime Review (March 28)
It would have been sad to not review the anime after I wrote five articles (with many screenshots) about hair color in its world. - Snack Recommendation: Carr’s Whole Wheat Crackers (March 29)
My first-ever dedicated food review. Only took a shade under four years.
Related Sites
I published several new articles on our sister short-form publishing site, The Emu Café Social. I will share a few highlights here. I discussed a case of narcissism wherein one disgrunted individual took credit for Nintendo, a famously litigious multi-national corporation, suing to shut down the Yuzu Switch emulator. I wrote an update on my Pokémon Red play-through novel project, which is still in progress. I responded to an interesting post on blogging under the threat of AI content scrapers. Finally, I talked about washing down the last episode of The Dangers in My Heart season two (I will review the season on NLJ in April) with a couple fo Initial D episodes.
I mailed five editions of our weekly newsletter in March. Each edition The Newsletter Leaf Journal includes original content such as 21 links from around the web, weekly article rankings, and other news and notes, so I recommend skimming the older issues even if you already read our March articles. See issues 176, 177, 178, 179, and 180.
Most-turned leaves of March 2023 and Jan-March 2023
I use an open source, privacy-friendly, and entirely local page counting solution called Koko Analytics to track page views and referrers here at The New Leaf Journal (see review). Each month, I list our 24 most-visited articles of the month and also of the three month period ending with the month in question. Below, you will find our most-visited articles of March 2024 and also of the first three months of 2024.
After my article on Itsuomi’s hair color in A Sign of Affection debuted at number one in February, my first article on hair color in the series covering Yuki Itose took the top spot in March. Itsuomi held on to the second spot to etch another milestone in the history of my anime hair color project with a 1-2 finish on the month. We also saw three other anime hair color articles make the top 24 for a record five in total (surpassing February’s mark of four). While it was a good month for anime articles on the whole with 8 in the top 24 and 4 in the top 10, what had been one of my strongest anime articles in recent months, my review of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, narrowly missed out on the monthly top 24 (although it still held a solid 12th in the 3-month ranking). The month saw no major surprises with the top 9 articles all sitting in the top 10 on the year (the year leader, my essay on cycling doping fallacies, is a Hacker News aberration). March was a solid month in the grand scheme of things albeit a drop from our very strong February, so I hope to see a little bit of a rebound as we move into the spring.