Tag: Wrapped2022

December 26, 2022

2022 step by step

Earlier this year I decided that I’m not walking enough. It’s supposed to be healthy and my average daily step count for 2021 looked like this:

That’s obviously not good enough. An average of 4000 steps is not only embarrassing but also a far cry from the 10,000 steps you’re supposed to walk if you trust some company’s advertisements. Or science.

I tried walking 10,000 steps a day previously and found that it’s basically impossible to do if you don’t have a commute or two hours a day to walk through the city. Since I’ve been working from home for six years now and I didn’t plan on walking through Berlin Mitte two hours each day, I needed a better solution.

My friend Luise told me about her WalkingPad. A slow treadmill you can put under your standing desk to walk while working. A worthwhile investment, as you can see by my stats for 2022.

If you want to walk more in 2023, make sure to check out Stoins. It’s a step counter I designed and programmed that lets you repair your walking streak by collecting Stoins. It’s a whole thing.

December 3, 2022

My 2022 in music

Say what you want about Spotify but Spotify Wrapped is a fantastic invention and I thought it might be nice to highlight a couple of… highlights of my year in music. Sorry if you’re not using Spotify and these links are useless to you but you brought this problem onto yourself, to be honest.

  • First things first: Just like with every single previous installation of Spotify’s Wrapped playlist, New Slang from The Shins found its place on 2022’s playlist as well. Because of course.
  • A newcomer to my daily rotation and to releasing music in general is Arny Margret. Her music fits my taste so perfectly that she ended up being my most listened to artist this year. I discovered her music in August. That’s less than half a year ago. What a meteoric rise! Cold Aired Breeze, Akureyri and Intertwined are some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
  • Anna Ash, one of my all time favourite artists, released a new album this year. Only Seasonal made it onto my top list though.
Andrew Bird, Metropol Berlin, 2022
  • The list of artists for whom I would take on the awful experience of a concert is short. Andrew Bird is on that list though and not only did he release a new album this year, he also toured and played a concert in Berlin. The album is literal perfection. Seriously. Every single song is a masterpiece. Try Underlands, Fixed Positions or Make a Picture if you don’t trust me. Delete my number and never contact me again if you listened to them, but didn’t like what you heard.
  • Everything else was the expected medley of everything from previous years.
  • Here’s my Marcel’s Top Songs 2022 playlist if you want to listen to perfection. You’re welcome.
December 2, 2022

Five years of daily marcelfies

Today marks exactly five years of daily Close-Up pictures of my face. Close-Up is a little app without flashy features that allows you to simply snap a selfie each day and stitch them into movies highlighting your your physical deterioration.

One of the best aspects of an app like this: The selfies don’t have to be good pictures. A rare case of quantity above quality.

It might sound stupid but I’m a bit proud of this. Doing something daily for five years, even if it’s just taking 5 seconds to snap a quick selfie, is not as easy as it sounds. There’s a metaphor in here somewhere for how incremental work creates exponential results.