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Birchtree
Developer and creator.
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Birchtree

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Stay Curious

Every Friday morning I open up Apple Music on my iPad and I scroll through the new music that came out overnight to see what’s new. Hardly a week goes by where I don’t add something to my library. Sometimes it’s something new from an artist I know, but just as frequently
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My Current Keyboard (Vortex Race 3)

My Current Keyboard (Vortex Race 3)
I wouldn’t say I’m a mechanical keyboard fanatic, but I do like to have a keyboard that looks
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How Long it Takes Me to Make a YouTube Video

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been putting a lot of time into YouTube lately. How much, you may ask? Well, I had the same question, so I did what any good nerd does and installed Toggl to track my work. What I Tracked I didn’t want to drive myself crazy with the
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How Much Money I Made Selling Wallpapers Online

How Much Money I Made Selling Wallpapers Online
A few weeks ago I started selling a collection of wallpapers, and today I've made a video showing
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It’s Hard to Write Nice Things

I think many people would use the word “nice” to describe me. I’m not controversial, I’m not actively out to get anyone, and for better or worse, I generally want everyone to like me. That said, I often find it hard to think of something to write about that isn’t “this thing
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My Custom Theme for Drafts

My Custom Theme for Drafts
I was inspired by the latest update to Drafts that added some pretty powerful theming options, so I made a
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My "Here Comes the Sun" Wallpaper Pack

My "Here Comes the Sun" Wallpaper Pack
If you like what you see, you can buy the whole package for $5. So I'm trying something
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I Still Love Blogging on Ghost (or why one man’s BS is another man’s essential functionality)

In December 2019 I moved BirchTree over to Ghost (and away from WordPress), and a big part of my reasoning was: While there was nothing really killer, [WordPress] was simply starting to feel like a giant train I was barely holding on the tracks. I don’t want this site to be very complicated, and
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Matt Goes Back to the Mac? Sorta.

Matt Goes Back to the Mac? Sorta.
Last month I made this video in which I showed how I make my YouTube videos, and sheepishly showed off
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Give People a Reason to Stick Around

If I had one recommendation to people launching new web projects, it would be that you need to present value right up front. Often I see new projects launch with a message of “subscribe and find out what I’m going to be doing”, which may work for some people who are hugely popular already,
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My Side Hustle Plans for 2021 (The State of BirchTree)

We’re almost to the new year, and I wanted to do a quick overview of how my numerous side projects are going, and what I plan to do in the new year. Think of it as a state of the union for BirchTree and all its related things. BirchTree This site hit it’s
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Birch Bark has Moved to Substack

Check out the first issue over there (#46 total) and you can subscribe there if you have not already. As a refresher for those who don't follow along, Birch Bark is a weekly newsletter (delivered every Friday morning), aimed at giving you my favorite things I found on the web that past week.
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My Quantified Life: 2020

Every other year I set up a quike survey for myself to take every night to track a few things in my life. These are things I'm either interested in improving, while others are just general curiosities. I'm publishing this on Christmas Eve, so I'm missing the last week
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And the Award goes To…

When I worked at Target, there was a list of 16 or so “personal leadership qualities” we worked from whenever we did reviews. You would have three that you were good at and three others that you needed to work on. They were all a bunch of generic things, and I honestly don't
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Inadvertently Load-Testing This Site

Yesterday I wrote an article that attempted to capture the feelings I've seen from a lot of people about the mixed messages related to the environment with the new iPhone 12 line and accessories. I wrote it in like 5 minutes, thought it was pretty good, and posted it without a second thought.
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I’m Out of the Photo Comparison Game

I’m Out of the Photo Comparison Game
One of my trademark pieces of content on this site over the past few years have been photo comparisons, usually
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🎂 BirchTree Turns 10 (so let’s look at my embarrassing old designs)

🎂 BirchTree Turns 10 (so let’s look at my embarrassing old designs)
It’s been a hell of a 10 years, and I am looking forward to the next 10. But while we’re here, let’s look back on some of the old designs of this site and cringe together.
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Why Newsletters?

There is a definite trend of email newsletters becoming the primary medium for writers who “go indie” recently. In years past, these folks would be starting blogs, but you don’t see nearly as many new blogs these days, and things like Substack and Mailchimp have made it so that anyone can get up and