It is now January 2026. That means it is time for our review of the months that were in The New Leaf Journal in September and October 2025.
Wait what?
I put off my September and October reviews for two reasons. Firstly, I have been busy. Secondly, I like to list our most-visited articles of the month and the most recent three-month period. Due to my abruptly changing our local page counting solution (see discussion in my August review, albeit note that I switched back to Koko Analytics in December), putting together the three-month rankings would be a pain. I finally decided to forego the three-month rankings for the rest of 2025. While it could be done, I figure that my finite time is better spent elsewhere (they will return at some point in 2026).
New New Leaf Journal Articles From September and October
Without further ado, let us review my “new” New Leaf Journal articles from September and October. Per my recent custom, I will explain my thought process behind each of the new articles.
New Leaf Journal Leaves From September
September is an easy month to recap because I only published six new New Leaf Journal articles, one of which was my August 2025 review (see September Archive).
Bird Crossing Sign By Swan Club on the Harbor (September 5). I was a groomsman at a wedding which was held at Swan Club on the Harbor in Roslyn, New York. I saw a bird crossing sign just outside the venue. Having published many articles about signs and birds, I knew I had to cover the bird sign. This is also my first article focusing on Long Island.
Aegis Authenticator and Linux Authenticator (September 8). I have been using Aegis Authenticator for Android as my main TOTP app since late 2020. But I usually access my tokens on my computer using the Authenticator app for Linux. In this article, I described my Android-Linux 2FA workflow. I was inspired to write it after reading a blog post by Imran Nazar titled Degoogling TOTP Authenticator Codes.
Jim Walden’s Connecticut Plates (September 12). I published a photo report post about Jim Walden’s New York City mayoral campaign car in Brooklyn Heights on July 29. In that original article, which I published in August, I noted that Mr. Walden’s campaign car had a Connecticut license plate. The plate turned out to be tangentially relevant to Mr. Walden’s unsuccessful attempt to have his name removed from the New York City mayoral ballot after he suspended his campaign, so I revisited my original reporting. I also wrote about the story in Jim Walden Suspends Campaign For NYC Mayor on ECS (before the story about the relevance of his Connecticut residence developed).
Broken Wheel on Amazon eQuad Cargo Bike in Brooklyn Heights (September 23). One of my most successful articles of 2025 (and September) is my April 9 report on Amazon eQuad cargo bikes. On September 6, 2025, I came across an Amazon eQuad Cargo Bike with a busted wheel in the rain in Brooklyn Heights. Photo-journalism ensued.
Inflatable Back to School Gnome in Brooklyn (September 24). I have covered many inflatable decorations in front of a certain residence at the border of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. Next up: An inflatable gnome dressed as a pencil.
New Leaf Journal Leaves From October
I was 33% more productive in October than September, publishing 9 articles instead of 6 (see October Archive.
I had installed a mobile operating system called Droidian on my Google Pixel 3a XL in December 2024. I did so with the intent of reviewing Droidian. Unfortunately, I only used it sparingly (in part due to battery drain). In late September, a battery issue with my primary Google Pixel 6a prompted me to switch back to my 3a XL as my daily driver. Droidian’s battery drain made using it as my primary phone OS impractical, so I replaced Droidian with Ubuntu Touch (which had been my original reason for purchasing the 3a XL in November 2022 before changing plans). But I used the switch as an opportunity to share my impressions from Trying Droidian on a Google Pixel 3a XL (October 2).
Staying on the subject of phones, I wrote about Using a Small Paper Clip as SIM Tray Tool (October 5), which includes photos of my less makeshift SIM tray tool. This idea came from my having had to transfer my SIM card from the Pixel 6a to the Pixel 3a XL. Now running Ubuntu Touch on my Pixel 3a XL, I published Reviewing iMoon For Ubuntu Touch (October 8). The iMoon review idea was inspired in part by my having read about the first super Moon of 2025, which occurred in October.
Ubuntu Touch also featured in two photo posts I published on October 10: Inflatable Fall Crow in Cobble Hill and Early Rotting Carved Halloween Pumpkins in Brooklyn. The fall crow photo came from a home which has provided many holiday inflatable photos for my article-writing. I also used that post to introduce the concept of seasonal themes for The New Leaf Journal (I did not do much with our fall theme but our just-published Winter 2026 theme is more well-thought out). The rotting pumpkins post is the newest in a long line of posts on liquefying gourds going all the way back to 2020, but the “early” part of the title followed from my second post in October…
In Christmas Countdown Clock in September (October 3), I covered a Christmas countdown clock seen in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, 86 days before Christmas. It was in working order. While I did not need extra motivation to publish it, I tied into it a 1970s NBA article noting that Clifford Ray, the starting center on the 1974-75 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, kept a Christmas tree up all year around.
My longest article of the month was Interview With Victor V. Gurbo On Outrun the Invisible Man (October 14). As the title suggests, I had a discussion with my good friend and sometimes-New Leaf Journal author Victor V. Gurbo about his new album. We came up with the idea when Victor noted some challenges he has had promoting the album (which he suggested could be a future article topic).
One day after the Victor review, I published my Memories of Shiny Drowzee in Pokémon Gold (October 15). October 15, 2025, marked the 25th anniversary of the North American release of Pokémon Gold and Silver. I covered the 20th anniversary back in 2020, so I could hardly let the 25th go without mention. I had started working on this article sometime in 2024 before it found itself lost in the shuffle.
I never before reviewed anime teaser trailers prior to publishing Reviewing Teaser Trailers for Angel Next Door Season 2 (October 21). Why did I break the trend? I reviewed the first season of Angel Next Door back in 2023 and I wrote a humorous post about having had the foresight to predict a second season when I reviewed the first. Both articles did well by our standards, but the second article about the second season was our third-most-visited article of 2024. It was the success of that second article which inspired me to tackle the official trailers for the second season, which is slated to air in spring 2026.
Birds are Dinosaurs: NLJ Article Rewrite (October 28) is my most unique article of the month. I read a quote about how birds are carrying on the legacy of dinosaurs. The quote was dramatic. I had originally intended to make a quip about the article in the newsletter. But then it occurred to me that it would be funny to replace references to birds in some of my past articles with the dramatic quote.
My final article of the month was Building and Running PumpkinOS (October 31). PumpkinOS is an open source reimplementation of PalmOS. I read about it a while before tackling it for a review. It should go without saying that the “pumpkin” in the title inspired me to publish it on Halloween (I had intended to publish it before Halloween but ended up being distracted by another task). But I plan to do some additional things with PumpkinOS, so this first-look will serve as a good point of reference for those future projects.
Non-NLJ Articles
I was also publishing short posts on The Emu Café Social during the relevant period. You can see my September and October archives on our sister site. Below, I share a few of the ECS highlights:
- Following MangaGamer on Steam: MangaGamer has localized some classic Japanese visual novels. But it localizes many visual novels, including some that I would not read, much less cover in the pages of a family-friendly website.
- Things I Learned: Pages Does Not Open .odt Files: This post is related to my collaboration with Victor V. Gurbo, but it is also related to a future New Leaf Journal article idea.
- NLJ Backlink Watch: Norwegian Publisher Press Releases: I was excited to discover that an old NLJ short post was cited as an authority by a Norwegian publisher in a book press release.
- Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE: Prologue Impressions: I have been publishing my contemporaneous impressions of Tokyo Mirage Sessions: FE for Nintendo Switch as I play through the game for the first time (this was the only one I published in October).
There are many more posts where these came from, so I encourage you to peruse the ECS archive and follow The Emu Café Social if you enjoy what you find (I will note that November was much busier at ECS).
I also mailed eight editions of The Newsletter Leaf Journal, which can also be viewed online and followed via RSS. While each edition of the newsletter recaps my new posts, it also includes 21 (sometimes more) links from around the web and other writing you will only find there, so I recommend going through old issues for interesting links even if you are up to date on my writing.
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CXLIV 〜 54-hole week Newsletter Leaf Journal CXLIV 〜 54-hole week September 6, 2025 (see also my ECS quip about the title)
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXLV 〜 Address authenticator September 13, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXLVI 〜 Summer’s End September 20, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXLVII 〜 Four becomes three September 27, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXLVIII 〜 Countdown reaches 0 October 4, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCXLIX 〜 Touching the Moon October 11, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCL 〜 Outrun the Shiny Drowzee October 18, 2025
- Newsletter Leaf Journal CCLI 〜 Mahiru, Allen, and George October 25, 2025
Most-visited articles in September and October 2025
I used a free and open source WordPress plugin called Statify, which works entirely on site and counts page visits, beginning on September 5, 2025, and continuing through October. Before that I had been using Koko Analytics from July 11, 2020 through July 29, 2025 (I have since switched back to Koko on December 2). Thus, my most-visited article stats for September-October come courtesy of Statify, but I extrapolated from my Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster data (note these only count clicks on search results in Google and Bing and do not run on NLJ) to estimate stats for September 1-5. Due to the multitude of sources of data, I did not compile three-month statistics for September and October, although I may do so retroactively in the future. Below, I present the 24 most-visited articles for both September and October.
September Analysis
September featured what may have been our most dramatic race for the top spot in the monthly ranking. Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search dominated for most of the month and posted one of the all-time best months for any article that did not benefit from an unusual event such as being shared by Hacker News (see August 2022 case) or Expecting Rain (see August 2021 case). But Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn, which was our second-best performing article for that same period, did benefit from an unexpected sharing event, gaining a surge of views from Reddi?? which allowed it to overtake Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search late in September. Given the significant number of views (by our standards) both articles accrued and some ambiguity with our numbers from September 1 and 5, the race for the top spot in September could be fairly classified as too close to call, but my counting methodology indicates that Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search was able to regain the lead in the final two days of September for its second consecutive top placement in the monthly ranking. In any event, they posted the first and second best months of 2025 to date (and the best since Cycling Doping Fallacies’ Hacker News-fueled January 2024) and did so by a good margin.
September was a good month for tech articles, with Enabling Charging Optimization on GrapheneOS notching its best-ever monthly finish in 3rd and a new September article in Aegis Authenticator and Linux Authenticator checking in at 6th. Also showing strength in the new article category was 18th place Thinkbot Visits The New Leaf Journal, which made the monthly ranking in what was effectively its first month online after having been published on August 28.
September featured a few 2025 debuts. My short leaflet post Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide made its first-ever (and now, not last) monthly top-24 after having been published in December 2022. Japanese Environment in PoL, Lutris, and Bottles made its first (and also, not last) ranking in 2025, checking in at 20th. Outline Guide to Persona 3 FES The Answer made its first 2025 placement at 22nd place after having posted some decent results in the fall of 2024.
October Analysis
While we had a dramatic race for the first-place ranking in September, there was no drama in October as Catching 151 Pokémon in Google Search posted another very strong performance (4th best of 2025 to date behind the top-two in September and Examining Whether Defense Wins NBA Championships in February), just more than doubling the numbers of Amazon “Cargo Bikes” in Brooklyn, which finished runner-up for the third consecutive month.
We had a “surprise” in third place with Christmas Countdown Clock in September, which went online with a big boost from the Newsbreak App and had enough views in the bank from the early days of October to hold on for the bronze medal in the ranking, just barely ahead of the Pokémon duo The Pokémon Special Split in Generation 2 – Statistics and Analysis and Dragonair Safari in Pokémon Yellow. The sixth position also went to a new October article in Trying Droidian on a Google Pixel 3a XL.
Two of our September surprises, Japanese Environment in PoL, Lutris, and Bottles and Umineko When They Cry Red Truth Guide made it two monthly rankings in a row in October. Related to the first of those two articles, my short 2023 post on Japanese Language Env in Steam (Linux) made what I believe is its first-ever monthly top-24 (perhaps the Steam Deck is inspiring interest in running games with Japanese language environment dependencies). Another unexpected article is my early 2021 anime review titled Usagi Drop: A Complicated Anime Pick, which made its first appearance in a couple of years (it was close in August and September).
I conclude with one notable debut, my August anime hair color study in Kazuya’s Hair Color in Rent-A-Girlfriend, which came on strong in late October and, as we will see, has remained a factor since gaining traction.
Conclusion
Since I am publishing my September-October 2025 review on New Years Day, there is little point in previewing November and December. I will note, however, that these late review posts come as part of my shoveling theme for winter 2026, which you can read about here. I look forward to also publishing a dual review of November-December before putting together my year-end review and most-visited article ranking for 2025.
