N.A. Ferrell

Editor and administrator of an online writing magazine called The New Leaf Journal. I am a legal research specialist by day.

Public Key

npub1w9jsh54fmjjl8879rwtz8smawdvsp38ml60ceduz2mv2n86c2gkqasemhr

NIP-05 Address

naferrell@thenewleafjournal.com

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8zegt625aef0nnlz3h93rcd7hxkgqcnala8uvk7p9dk9fnav9ytqk0wsux

Author Public Key

npub1w9jsh54fmjjl8879rwtz8smawdvsp38ml60ceduz2mv2n86c2gkqasemhr

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Last Notes

2025-04-05 16:12:03

One year to the day, I published a full review of the second season of the Bottom-tier Character Tomozaki anime. Overall impression: It has its moments, especially in an excellent episode 8, but I came away somewhat disappointed that the second season represented a step back from the first (my review of the first season is linked from the S2 review).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/bottom-tier-character-tomozaki-s2-review/

2024-08-14 16:07:21

Introducing my longes-used oldest computer-related device: A Newpoint Switcher 2000 Plus from 1996-97.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/b/6cr
#PowerSwitch #SurgeProtector #Newpoint #Windows95

2024-08-13 19:13:48

Revisiting our all-time most-read article, my 2021 review of /e/ OS as used on a Murena Teracube 2e phone. While I no longer use that phone as a "phone," it is still alive and well and I use it for two things. First, it is a Syncthing node. Second, I have the MikroTik app installed on it for quick access to my router. My daily driver phone these days is a Google Pixel 6a with LineageOS.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/b/2EY
#Murena #eos #OpenSource

2024-08-11 23:16:02

A brief look at a useful resource: The Simplicable color guide. While the site itself is written with a distinct whiff of being more for SEO bots than humans, its list of colors with hex codes makes for a good resource.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/b/3HY

2024-08-10 22:27:24

I followed the instructions on new modem's quick start card to log into its admin panel. Or so I would have if the instructions were correct. Now I did find a solution, but call me controversial for saying that the quick start guide instructions should be... accurate.
thenewleafjournal.com/b/6bT
#Arris #Modem

2024-07-04 16:24:46

On July 4, 1888, Benjamin Harrison informally accepted the Republican nomination for President while receiving the Republican National Convention's committee on notification at his home. On the same day, he also received a group of veterans who had served under his grandfather (the 9th President, William Henry Harrison) and were working on his behalf. Harrison of course would go on to win the 1888 Presidential election in November over the incumbent, Grover Cleveland.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/benjamin-harrisons-memorable-july-4-1888/
#July4 #IndependenceDay #BenjaminHarrison #USHistory #History

2024-05-24 16:42:21

A special dialogue to celebrate 999 full articles at The New Leaf Journal.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/999-the-dialogue/
#999 #HermanCain #Dialogue #Blog #TheNewLeafJournal

2024-04-30 15:17:38

I wrote several articles on the detailed portrayal of hair color in the recently concluded A Sign of Affection anime adaptation. So many articles, in fact, that I have one covering the evolving hair color of one of the show's secondary characters, Shin Iryū.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/shin-iryus-hair-color-in-a-sign-of-affection/
#Anime #ASignOfAfeection #YubisakiToRenen

2024-04-29 15:33:15

Photos of the the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse as seen in the New York City neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/the-eclipse-seen-from-brooklyn-heights/
#Eclipse #Photography #Brooklyn #NYC #BrooklynHeights

2024-04-03 16:53:09

My 2020 essay on the subject of reforming the ever-growing fact-checking industry.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/proposals-for-fact-checking-reform/
#Media #Journalism #FactChecking

2024-04-03 16:51:31

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Thanks for the kind words. I was very briefly excited when I read it back in 2002 but I had enough experience with game magazine April Fools jokes by then to quickly see that it was a joke. However, while I remembered the original magazine, I only learned while working on the article that there were actually discussions about Sonic and Tails in SSM. Perhaps if Dreamcast had fizzled out a year earlier.

2024-04-01 15:08:00

I revisit a 2002 April Fools joke from Electronic Gaming Monthly. Coming off the heels of Sega's becoming a third party publisher, EGM falsely told readers that there was a way to unlock Sonic and Tails in Super Smash Brothers Melee. I remembered having read the joke in the original magazine back in 2002. I did a bit of research and was surprised to learn that there may have actually been talks about Sonic in SSBM, albeit Sonic's debut would have to wait another six years.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/april-fools-sonic-and-tails-in-ssb-melee/
#AprilFools #SuperSmashBrothersMelee #Sonic #Sega #VideoGameMagazines

2024-03-14 16:54:00

There is some fun public domain art on Openclipart. Few pieces are more fun than "Turnip Head"
https://thenewleafjournal.com/turnip-head-a-work-of-open-clip-art/
#OpenClipArt #Turnip #Clipart

2024-01-19 17:34:38

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I (very) briefly used a BlackBerry Storm back in 2012 before switching to used Bold, which was my phone until it stopped working in 2016 or so. I then used a refurbished BlackBerry Classic until spring 2021. I would have kept using it until the end of BB10 but it developed battery issues (especially in the cold) that made it too impractical. I run a Pixel with LineageOS these days, but I do have a USB-C BlackBerry keyboard as a fun novelty item (https://www.tindie.com/products/zitaotech/blackberry-bbq20-usb-keyboard-with-trackpad/) (clear case, however).

2023-12-22 17:24:23

Unpacking a bonsai tree mailed from Mississippi involved copious amounts of Styrofoam...
https://thenewleafjournal.com/unpacking-a-mississippi-bonsai-tree/
#BonsaiTree #Unpacking #Styrofoam #HousePlant #Packaging

2023-12-12 17:45:59

Sometimes I write long essays. Other times I post a photo of a Dead End sign in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and write ahsort post about the location. This photo is back from when I was using my BlackBerry Classic as my phone camera.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/the-dead-end-sign-in-red-hook-brooklyn/
#StreetSign #NYC #Brooklyn #RedHook #BlackBerry #Photography

2023-08-13 18:16:37

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Thanks for reading and for the kind words. I will note that there are more convenient solutions than my Handy Reading set-up for people who like third-party providers and services, but Handy Reading is my personal recommendation (provided one uses Android or a derivative thereof) since it is local and keeps everything neatly in one place.

2023-07-14 15:18:18

I use a MikroTik Hap ac3 as my router (with a separate AP) and run Winbox on top of WINE on Linux to manage it. The router's operating system, RouterOS, is regularly updated by MikroTik. In this article, I describe how I use MikroTik's RSS feed for RouterOS updates to keep my Hap ac3 up to date (along with a cautionary story from 2018 about why it is important).
https://thenewleafjournal.com/rss-for-keeping-with-mikrotik-updates/
#MikroTik #router #RouterOS #linux #Winbox #WINE #RSS #rssfeeds

2023-07-03 19:08:50

The New Leaf Journal hasn't made a big Hacker News splash since last August. But I occasionally share an article to page one. See the news about there now being a Delta Chat app for Ubuntu Touch with some comments (most of the comments are about Doom though, so only a few relevant ones).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36574128
#deltachat #UbuntuTouch #email #HackerNews

2023-06-08 16:38:31

I enjoy my coffee while looking out my window at the hazy sky in Brooklyn, NY. The scene makes me sentimental (or sedimental?) for a scene from one of my favorite games, Persona 4. Persona 4 not only featured a foreboding fog, but also a heartwarming family scene which may have involved a father giving his 6-year old daughter coffee on a school night. I of course covered that scene in a 2020 article.
https://thenewleafjournal.com/persona-4-coffee-and-children/
#persona4 #videogames #coffee #fog #nyc #brooklyn

2023-06-08 15:48:25

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I'll add that on the Nostr end, it sometimes shows that I am following my Nostr from Mastodon and sometimes not - not sure why that is. But thus far all of my posts have shown up on both sides in the end.

2023-06-08 15:42:37

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I just figured out how it works yesterday. Alex Gleason (developer of Soapbox) runs a Activity Pub-Nostr bridge. Look for Mostr in the list of relays (I found it on Coracle) and add it. After I added it to my relay list, I was able to find my Nostr profile on Mastodon and my Mastodon profile on Nostr within about 15-30 minutes. See link below.
https://soapbox.pub/blog/mostr-fediverse-nostr-bridge/
#mostr #activitypub #nostr #mastodon

2023-06-08 01:29:03

I learned about highlighter.com shortly after making my Nostr account today. I had written recently about how I like hypothes.is, but am wary of its centralization. I decided to test highlighter on my most recent article, seems to work very well.
https://highlighter.com/e/note1784chcepysgl25v7r38sa0de0f6utm04n6kksvh52nxr0yaxlp3s3y2and
#nostr #highlighter #annotation

2023-06-08 01:26:17

#note1784…2and
(Test note) I think that a well-curated feed collection is a good alternative to social media for reading on the web. In touting feeds as an alternative, it is important to make a positive case for feeds (a good feed reader + read-it-later solution) instead of simply making the negative case against social media.

2023-06-08 00:08:13

I used the Nostr Directory to sign my Mastodon and Twitter accounts after setting up my WordPress site as the NIP-05 identifier. Pretty cool and easy to use. Only issue I had was initially using the npub key instead of the hex version for Mastodon. I'll add GitHub soon and call it a day.
https://nostr.directory/p/newleafjournal
#nostr #mastodon #twitter #wordpress

2023-06-07 23:56:31

@npub1teawtzxh6y02cnp9jphxm2q8u6xxfx85nguwg6ftuksgjctvavvqnsgq5u Verifying My Public Key for mastodon: "https://linuxrocks.online/@nafnlj"

2023-06-07 17:00:39

I had been interested in giving Nostr a go for a few weeks. I finally took the plunge when I saw that there is now a WordPress plugin (maintained by an Automattic employee) which makes it easy to use a WordPress profile to verify a Nostr account using NIP-05. As you can see on my profile, the plugin worked exactly as expected. If you have a self-hosted WordPress-powered site, you can try Nostr verification for yourself. I look forward to posting more from nafnlj@thenewleafjournal.com.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/nostr-verify/