I published our final October 2023 article on October 19. I spent most of the last two weeks of October feeling sub-par and working on assignments related to my day job. For that reason, October turned out to be a light month at The New Leaf Journal. Moreover, I was not able to publish our month-in-review on Halloween. However, the month-in-review tradition must carry on, so for the first time since October 2020, I present a late month-in-review post.
Articles Published in October 2023
I published nine new articles in October 2023. You will find links and summaries below.
- Hair Color in A Dream of Summer (NAF. 10/1.)
A detailed analysis of hair color in a freeware Japanese visual novel first published in 2005 (based on English version released in 2006). It is more interesting than it sounds! Really! - Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow (NAF. 10/5.)
The story of my long and somewhat pointless journey to catch a level 15 Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow. There are plenty of statistics for those of you who enjoy such things. - ActivityPub for WordPress and The NLJ (NAF. 10/6.)
On turning The New Leaf Journal into an ActivityPub server and how you can follow us from Mastodon or the like. - Productivity to Secure Downtime (NAF. 10/6.)
On securing leisure as a proper end for productivity. - Citizenship Rules for Running for President of Egypt (NAF. 10/8.)
Examining dual citizenship and nationality in the context of eligibility to run for the Egyptian presidency. - Christopher Columbidae in Brooklyn (NAF. 10/9.)
Celebrating Columbus Day with photos of a pigeon on a Downtown Brooklyn Columbus statue and the history of said statue. (Note: This is an all-time article title if I do say so myself.) - Against “Experts Say” Headlines (NAF. 10/10.)
An inane opinion piece on Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel prompted my essay against experts say headlines. - On Russia’s and China’s Self-Awareness (NAF. 10/14.)
Calls for peace, restraint, and self-determination come from the darndest places. - Analyzing BIA Decision in Matter of Salama (NAF. 10/19.)
It is fitting that the last article for October before my hiatus was a result of work I did for my day job.
The events that caused my publishing shortfall at The New Leaf Journal in October resulted in the same at our fledgling sister publication, The Emu Café Social. But I was able to publish several interesting short posts as I work out some final issues with the new site. First, I offered my thoughts on the announcement of a live action version of Teasing Master Takagi-san, which happens to be one of my favorite anime series (both the upcoming live action show and the anime are based on a manga series). Next, I used a post about potatoes and darkrooms to offer a joke. Third, in a relatively long short post, I highlighted the importance of offering sources for claims in the wild to avoid giving the impression of making a strawman argument. One day later, I wrote a short post on baseball stats which is tangentially related to my August essay on Barry Bonds’ intentional walks records from 2001-2007. Finally, I wrote a follow-up piece on Matter of Salama which serves as an addendum to my main article here at The New Leaf Journal..
We also published newsletters on October 7, October 14, and October 21. I skipped October 28, but returned to form on November 4.
Most-Visited Articles
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 October 2023 and also of the period from August 1 to October 31.
October was a soft month for The New Leaf Journal thanks to a decline in Google referrals (we saw an uptick in Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex, albeit not enough to make up for the Google drop). One effect of the decline in Google in conjunction with the return of DuckDuckGo is an increase in views for our tech articles relative to non-tech articles. Tech articles took five out of the top seven and nine out of the top fifteen spots in October, which was the best relative showing for the class in 2023.
The break-out star of October was my 2021 post The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis, which not only notched its first monthly first-place finish after narrowly missing the title in August, but also took the top spot in our three-month ranking. It was a strong month for outdated tech articles with my posts on a defunct search engine (second), installing Ubuntu Touch on a device that no longer supports it (fourth), and a 2021 review of open source Android apps (fifth) all making the top five. One fun surprise this month was one of my Halloween photo articles, this one featuring a 2022 12-foot flying witch in Carroll Gardens, coming in eighth and posting what was by far the best month for Halloween photo post. I missed out on the fun in 2022 since I published it in November 2022, so perhaps it will be a mainstay in October rankings to come.
Looking Ahead to November
It is hard to look ahead to November since it is already November, but I will give it our best shot. After posting some October leftovers (including two Halloween photo posts), I will prioritize finishing my al|together visual novel project which I am a bit behind on, but had already planned to finish in November. Beyond that, I look forward to returning to a normal publishing flow after our unplanned break in October.