I arrived in Munich on this day, two years ago. A new mindset unfolded in front me as I left behind academia and moved to a way of thinking that allowed for a bit more of time for truly personal projects. My list of ideas grew in the blink of an eye. One of them captivated my mind in particular. The inkFrame. A picture frame that would show a different, new and unknown picture each time you look at it. It would not just be a boring frame showing a pre-selection of my holiday pictures, but it would show images that I had not chosen and thus never seen before. And it would use electronic ink, such that it could be on but off at the same time, all the time.

For the first version of the inkFrame, I made a custom wooden laser-cut frame (detail)

It took a while. But two years later, the second prototype stands on a small table in my apartment. It can show anything. Pictures. Text. Time. Weather. And in this time of lockdown, I have chosen to show motivational quotes on it. The frame gets them from a few Twitter accounts, and updates the image every five minutes. Each time I look at it, I get a new short wisdom to think about. But unlike Twitter, there is no scrolling. There is no dumb time wasting as you cannot ask for a new message. You are left there, on your own, thinking about it. It often lights up my day in this indefinite quarantine that nobody would have foreseen two years ago.

The second version of the inkFrame fits into a standard IKEA RIBBA frame

We are all very similar, yet so different. We all have a similar human shape, we all have similar feelings, we all have similar needs. And still, every single person lives in a universe of its own. Not better, not worse, but a different universe. We all have our own perspective on things that reveals dimensions that are invisible to others. As part of a small project that I have been working on for ages, I wrote a simple script that generates images with random lines. They all look very similar but, just like us, no two of them are identical. Sometimes the lines are grouped, sometimes they are sparse, sometimes they are parallel, sometimes they converge. They are similar, yet so different.

This image changes every five minutes. Reload the page with Ctrl+F5 to update the image.

Think different. Not more, not less, not better, not worse. Just different. Every day. Routine is comfortable and easy, but also boring and limited. It is not a matter of making today top yesterday. Yesterday was nice. And today is nice as well. But different. A different type of nice. And it is that difference which opens new dimensions. There are an infinite number of dimensions. Visit a new place. Make a new friend. Learn a new word. Eat a new dish. Create a new artwork. In other words, explore. The good news is that there is plenty to discover. The bad news is that a lifetime is not enough to discover it all. Better get started right here and right now. Happy 2020 :)

The valleys in the Alps are immersed in clouds as the sun sets on January 1, 2020

A lot of stuff. Tons of it. Everywhere. Overflowing shelves. Jam-packed drawers. A cram-full wardrobe. Boxes stacked on top of each other on the floor. Countless old CDs towering up next to where my computer used to be. My old bedroom at my parents is a mess. A myriad of memories overwhelmed me as I entered the room. At the end of a truly joyful year, it felt like an enormous setback. Back to square one. For decades I have hoarded every single memento believing that it would somehow help me in the future. It took me years to realize that it is much better to travel light. That I need to get rid of all that stuff. All we need is inside ourselves.

Need a cable for a technology that died ten years ago?

Curious about the newest games 20 years ago?

Ready to study for that lecture that does not even exist anymore?

Slim and portable: the revolutionary 1.6 Mb floppy disk!

A beautiful sunset on a warm evening with clear skies. For me, that somehow only happens when I am on holidays. And I feel like I should really enjoy it, because the holidays will be over at some point and then that beautiful view will be gone. However, the sunset is there every evening. And any time of the year there is a place on earth where it is warm. Also, the skies are always clear above the clouds. Rather than a shortage of holidays, maybe the problem is that we almost never pause our daily routine to admire the beauty and richness that surrounds us every single day. We just need to stop and look at it. It could not be simpler.

Sunset seen from Kritinia Castle on Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece

I still have to fully realize it. This morning I returned my laptop, my docking station, the chargers, everything. At reception, I handed over my badge. It felt strange as I walked across the Campeon Campus one last time towards the train stop. It has been an adventure, a great one. I have learned a lot in this one and a half years. The next adventure is just a few train stops down the line, again in industry. Apart from the beautiful campus, what I already miss are the people that have defined my time at Campeon. In the train every morning, at lunch every noon, in the office every day. More than the job itself, I guess what matters are the people one shares it with.

The stairs at the train stop leading to Campeon Campus on a gloomy autumn morning

I wear glasses all the time, morning to evening. Without them, I would be lost. I almost forgot how it is not to see sharp. Not to see all the small little details. But the more one perceives, the more one has to worry about. One of the few places I have to take the glasses off is when swimming at the beach. Waiting for the bright sun to dry me, the other day the bay at San Sebastian looked like a blurry impressionist painting to my glassless eyes. I could not do much but admire the indistinct shapes and appreciate the sound of the waves, wandering along the beach. All the details were gone, and along with them, all the worries.

Perfectly arranged beach on a windy day in San Sebastian

I still do not know what has changed. But something has changed. I did not find the love of my life. I did not become rich in terms of money. I did not become a boss at work. I did not buy a house. I did not buy a car. I did not buy an expensive phone. I did not go to luxory hotels and restaurants. I did not buy expensive equipment. And still, I am orders of magnitude happier than I ever was before. Not everything is perfect, of course, but it does not annoy me that much anymore. Most likely, it was a beneficial combination of factors. I moved to a nice city. I am surrounded by nice people. And I started to appreciate how beautiful everything around us is.

Lake Seeben near Ehrwald in Austria on an amazing summer day

Call it whatever you want. Some people call it minimalism. Other people talk about cognitive psychology. Yet another group says that they pray to a god. Others become buddhists. But it is all just flavors of the very same thing. Different ways that all lead to the same sort of liberation based on focusing on what really matters.

The hotel was in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by fields and forests, at the entrance to a small polish village in the outskirts of Katowice. I had nothing to do until dinner and it all looked like I was going to spend the time staring at my phone in my room. That did not sound very appealing. Suddenly, I recalled geocaching, a world-wide game about finding hidden secrets at specific locations. And to my surprise, quite a number of such secrets where hidden near that lonely hotel. I found one of them and got amazed at the thought that such "treasures" are hidden everywhere around us by other players of a silent game that spans the whole world.

In this case, the cache was just a small container with the list of names of the finders

Fields and forests on a warm summer evening in Poland

I use a lot of soap. And by a lot, I mean really a lot. Earlier this year, I was consuming 750 ml of liquid soap every week just for washing my hands. Regardless of how harmful that is for my skin, it also translated into a terrible amount of plastic waste since liquid soap typically comes in plastic containers. Looking for a new soap dispenser, I found a wonderful solution: a foam dispenser, which is filled with 60% water, only 20% soap, and 20% air. Now a 750 ml soap refill lasts for more than a month, which not only cuts massively on plastic waste but is also much cheaper. Now I can wash my hands for only 0.79 €/month, or even less ;-)

Best plastic and money saver ever

Along the same lines, I substituted shower gel with bar soap, which again cuts on both plastic and money. This was a bit more tricky because I really hate when soap bars get soggy after some time on a typical soap bar holder. However, I found out that humanity has a solution to that problem. At my local zero waste shop I found a soap holder made out of some sort of hardened threads that prevent water from accumulating below the soap. My life has a new meaning since then xD I can finally use all of that Aleppo Soap that I had hoarded at home, knowing that I am not only doing something good for the environment but also for my pocket. Double win :D

Yes, I had to cut that soap into smaller pieces before being able to use it