A collection of 207 posts
I was getting the feeling lately that I’ve been writing a lot here lately, and I already had an export of all of my blog posts, so I decided to check my word count each year over the last 8 years. As of yesterday, I’d written 167,824
Not going to make a big deal of it, but today I decided to officially close my Twitter (sorry, X) account. I know, I know, someone could take my username if they want and yes I know this means I’ll have to start a new account if somehow I
I promise I won't do this for every episode, but how can I not post when it's the debut episode?! It would be irresponsible, right? In the first episode, I talk about why I've been using the Quest 3 more than the Vision Pro
Once a year or so I seem to write something that gets a good chunk of pushback. In 2023 that article was my immediate reaction to the Vision Pro’s announcement at WWDC, which wasn’t as over-the-moon excited as many other people were. My favorite reaction was from Horace
Back in 2016 I was working in a support role at a payments company and found myself regularly using a BIN lookup tool to get basic information about card issuers. Basic stuff like what country the issuing bank was from or if the card was credit or debit…nothing crazy,
Here’s an uncomfortable question: when do I stop blogging? I’ve been doing this site since October 2010, which is over 1/3 of my life, and I don’t foresee anything that would make me stop anytime soon, but like…I have to stop one day, right? I
One month ago, I tossed out nearly $1,000/year in subscriptions so that I could see what apps and services I missed the most. I told myself I wouldn’t bring anything back for one month so that I could really get used to the alternative apps, and not
I’ve watched well over 100 movies this year, and I’ve posted a review of every one to a thread on Mastodon, as well as my Letterboxd profile. But since I know not everyone follows me there and others would prefer a blog post, here’s my reviews of
CSS { In Real Life } | Stop Using AI-Generated Images By choosing AI-generated images over those made by a human, editors are taking away one of the only sources of income available to those entering the field. I recently stopped using Midjourney and DALL-E generated images for header images on this site.
I strongly believe in paying for good software, and that having better software can go a long way to making your computing life better. And in an increasingly online world, making your computing life better can mean genuine improvements to your actual life. Of course Maslow's hierarchy of
Things are dire at Birchtree. Or are they?
One year ago to day I made the best $3,500 purchase of my life. No, it wasn’t a super early pre-order of the Apple Vision Pro, it was LASIK eye surgery, and it genuinely changed my life. I got glasses when I was in grade school, and I
I started my YouTube channel, A Better Computer in the summer of 2020 and I've recorded 334 videos since then, so it might be a bit strange to say season 2 is just beginning. Still, I do feel like I'm making a turn when it comes
Over the years I've accumulated a bunch of digital assets, and while most of those are things that I can keep using (effectively) forever, some of them keep costing me money whether I'm using them or not. A big category for me (and maybe you if
At the start of 2023 I made some predictions about what Apple would do with basically every product in their lineup, so halfway through the year seemed like a good time to check in on things. iPhone 15 A relatively minor upgrade once again, but USB-C will make it'