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This recent 99% podcast episode talked about a piece of history I can’t get out of my head: Bone Music. In short; during the 50’s Soviet era there were no ways to distribute (at the time illegal) western music. No cassettes, no records presses (vinyl very scarce). The inventive contraband industry came up with the idea to recycle discarded X-rays, hence the nickname Bone Music. A beautiful piece of creativity, and actually the best example I’ve come across of “Scarcity acts as a catalyst for creativity”, the motto of my graduation thesis (2010, long time ago).

In retrospect of the holidays (overload of stuff, food and people) I want to introduce you to the Story Hopper films of Dave Hakkens, a designer from Helmond that earlier impressed the tech industry with the modular smartphone concept Phonebloks. I was astonished by Dave’s energy and way of thinking. His latest project Story Hopper is a series of simple and fun movies on sustainability and better living. He talks about too much stuff, about healthy realistic lunch, honest made in labels and much more. Well done Dave!

Some guy made a script that disconnects WiFi camera’s from your current network. Okay, but why is that interesting you say? Recently AirBnb-users found out they were being spied on by their host, using these types of cameras. What I especially like about this story is the fact that technology is also able to act as a protector of your privacy. Fight fire with fire. That kind of thing.

NOS, the dutch broadcaster, surprised me and many others with this insightful interactive page on data-collection by governments and authorities. In Dutch only unfortunately.

This article made my day, week, whatever. George Hotz approach to create new technology has really inspired me. His hacker mentality of ‘just starting’, ‘build and discover’ and ‘DIY’ is fresh and motivating. Instead of creating mystery around your company and showing of with a futuristic concept, Hotz is humble and confident. Love it.

Last holidays I’ve been toying with the ESP8266 NodeMCU, a small and cheap WiFi Microcontroller. On my quest for inspiration I found this: Netflix Socks. Around christmas Netflix launched a series of DIY ‘make it’ tutorials for the home-tinkerer. Here’s a guide how to make (and knit) a pair of socks that detects if you have fallen asleep while watching TV.

Awesome how a company like Netflix is stimulating the maker movement!

It sometimes seems I tend to have a strange sources for new music to listen to, books to read and movies to watch. So I totally missed the existence of Inside Out, an animation film by Disney and Pixar, directed by Pete Docter. I was surprised to find this ‘kind of film’ mentioned in Peter Zantingh‘s Favorite things of 2015-list (in dutch).

The film depicts the emotions of protagonist Riley, a young girl moving with her parents to San Fransisco. Actually the film is about the emotions, as they are characterised by the funny quintet in the picture above, steering the little girls life from headquarters. I was overwhelmed by the great harmony of the emotion-team and how the makers of this film succeeded in visualising our inner-emotional-self. Conceptually stunning was Bing Bong’s shortcut, where I couldn’t but think of Alice in Wonderland-like mind tricks. Worth a watch!