Notes on the sixth birthday

It has been a busy and interesting year. Quite a bit of travel, great readings and discoveries.

The unfortunate news is that my job has changed, and I am no longer traveling around the world, so I will be writing less about museum visits, though I am still hoping to do a few trips.

However, in the second half of the last year I still managed to visit a few places. We traveled to Iceland with the family, I had some numismatic adventures in Brazil, Mexico and India.

Technically a museum visit took place before the sixth birthday in Hungary, but I didn’t have time to write it up.

Last year I mentioned a book I am writing, it will be more research than I ever thought it would be, and it is coming along nicely.

The big area I ventured into is the accessibility of currency, that is, making money available for people with disabilities. Just to start from the beginning, I wrote a piece on how blind people recognize paper money which also contains a video my daughter helped me with. Though I started a YouTube channel, I have to admit, it is really not my thing. So far I have three videos, maybe I’ll add some more.

There was a lot to discuss about accessible currency. For example, I decided to start a new collection, all kinds of tools, software and devices blind people use to identify currency.

I am not turning into a banknote collector though. I did acquire a good number of tactile currencies, but it only helped me to establish that I am not, and will not be a currency collector. I am planning to discuss this in a post soon.

I wrote about the new accessible coins of India and Kenya.

Also, I had two interesting interviews, one with the Australian Mint regarding their first braille coin, and an interview with Rajeev Prasad, a numismatist and blogger from India. As I am building the blog, I find out what are the things I love doing, and interviews are my favorites. I got to meet many interesting people through these interviews, and it is amazing how much one can uncover just by listening. But these are the most time consuming posts to write, as sometimes it takes a while just to get to a particular person.

I did have a few more pieces on the blog, but I won’t list them all here. I was trying to write more than in the previous years, but sometimes life got in the way.

It was a particularly good year. I learned a lot, and managed to refine my interests. Last year I said that I wanted to contribute to numismatics, but I wasn’t sure how. I think now I have a clearer idea.

In the following year, I would like to publish more about accessible currency, while keeping the blog mostly centered around coins. I am constantly running a list of ideas to write about, my goal is to clear the list by the end of the year. However, it appears that the more I write, the more ideas come to mind based on the interaction with people who read the blog. I definitely need a good list of ideas, as I mostly wrote about travel in the last three years and that topic looks to dry out, though I never know what the future brings. Since I was a little kid, travel opportunities found me, or maybe I got in their way.

So, thanks for reading, and let me know if there is anything you would like to read about.