Fermenting Solutions 2024.11: Just What the Doctorow Ordered

Published: Wed, 11/27/24

Updated: Wed, 11/27/24

I've been asked recently "What's with the lack of homebrewing content?". In the early days of this newsletter, homebrewing content became as hated as blockchain content is now, so I guess I started to avoid it. The truth is that I haven't really been doing anything that I consider all that 'interesting' in the homebrewing space. It's much easier (and cheaper) to buy great beer locally now. I spend more time drinking said beer and judging to get to that coveted Master Beer Judge title, than I do 'innovating' in the homebrew space. This is about to change though as I've been working on two different homebrewing related projects that might yield some interesting content. Homebrewers, stay tuned!

I finally picked up the latest generation of the Pixel Watch. It's a nice piece of hardware and a noticeable upgrade to the FitBit I've been using for the last few years. The small crown version even feels better on my wrist. I couldn't help but be disappointed though in how little the Android Wear OS has progressed since the early days of using it. Sure the battery life of this device is noticeably better, but there's no longer support for certain things that were extremely useful and innovative on the devices from years ago.

Sadly, this isn't something that's confined to wearables. Home automation products have also experienced this issue. Google is notorious for this degrading of features over time even as 'new' product replacements are released. I just went through this big time with the rollout of Gemini to replace the Google Assistant. Tons of features that I relied on are no longer present and the ones that are don't work as reliably as they did before. This isn't even the first time this has happened with Google's Voice Assistant... the launcher version that predated Google Assistant was far better until Google Assistant finally caught up years later. Gemini will likely eventually achieve feature parity with Google Assistant, but by then, they'll probably be ready to roll out an inferior 'replacement'. If I sat here long enough I could come up with a hundred other cases of this.

This is all front of mind for me because I've been painfully dealing with it, but I also just listened to a talk that Cory Doctorow gave at Burning Man. He discusses this problem and coined the term "Enshittification" to describe it. I agree with him in every way about what needs to be done in order to combat it. I couldn't find a link to the Burning Man presentation, but he has a piece here that is pretty similar. Have you been battling 'Enshittification'? Have other ideas about how to combat it? Drop me a line and let me know about it.

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Breathe

Last month, my favorite relevant purchase was the O2Trainer. I've written a more extensive review of the device and how I've been using it. If you're interested, check out:

Training the Inspiratory Muscles: A Review of the O2Trainer - Transmutable Explorations

My review of the O2Trainer. Why is training the inspiratory muscles is important? How can you use the…

Favorite Relevant Purchase

The Pixel Watch that I discussed above was purchased through a deal offered by Google Fi. Fi is a mobile call and data plan offered by Google. I got a Pixel Watch for every interested member of my family and only had to pay sales tax. Google Fi also covers the data needs for the LTE version of the watch at no extra charge. I've been using Google Fi since it was an incubator project at Google (Project Fi) and I've added lines for each member of my family as soon as they supported it. It's really a fantastic service, especially if you regularly travel outside the US and want seamless call/data service just about everywhere.

J checked in on Untappd!

Definite departure from normal in my Top Styles this month 😁 This month was skewed by an event that I went to where we did a vertical of almost every Civil Disobedience ever released by Hill Farmstead. At this event, I also drank what was my favorite beer of the month. That beer was Harris Farm Maple Syrup Bourbon Barrel-Aged Dark Matter W/ Pecans by Barreled Souls Brewing Company out of Saco, ME. Pretty much everything you need to know about this beer is in the name. I'm fairly sure it's a blend of stout(s) and barleywine(s), although that's not explicitly specified. This vintage was bottled in 2018. It was absolutely fantastic!

Many of the beers I've had over the last month are available via Tavour. You can get $10 off your first order by using my link.

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Fermented Solutions

My radon mitigation is complete! I mentioned before how the layout of my house posed some peculiar challenges in making this successful. I went from being consistently above 5 pCi/L (often times much higher) to 0.8 pCi/L. All with minimal invasiveness throughout the different levels of my home. This is completely thanks to what ultimately became a fairly innovative solution from Airotox. I was lucky in that even though crushed stone under the foundation was not mandated at the time my home was built, all areas of my home just happened to be built in this fashion. This allowed us to minimize the number of 'holes' that had to be put in the existing structure. After dealing with other radon mitigation companies, I can't recommend Airotox enough if you live in Southeastern PA and have a radon problem.

Dealing with this radon issue has put some of my other indoor air quality experiments on hold. That's something I'm going to get back to now that the most urgent problem has been addressed.

Happy Fermenting!

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