2024... what a year! Looking back,
Fermenting Solutions has definitely evolved, while still hanging on to some of the things from the earliest days. I feel that it still holds true to its original purpose of touching on the main things that preoccupy my mind each month... especially while enjoying a cold one with friends.
There are clear topics that continue to resonate with readers... The most popular (based on clicks and in person/digital engagement)
continue to be craft beer and any "mechanical projects" that I discuss. I guess I need to prioritize documenting more of the great hands on projects that I've been pursuing. This year saw a noticeable uptick in readers who wanted to discuss backpacking and my related adventures. The core gardening group has kept general interest in those topics flat.
At the same time, this year has had more than its fair share of polarizing themes. I've been asked to never write about blockchain again 😁It could be my gentile bashing of mobile, or maybe it's all blockchain related, but
most things software related that I discussed didn't really 'hit' either. I've apparently become "too obsessed with fringe health topics" as well. This is all to say that I appreciate and welcome your feedback and really do take it to heart when deciding what I'm going to write about.
If I had to summarize the year in one word, I'd definitely say it was the year of 'Enshittification'. Even though I didn't call it by that term until the year was almost over, many things that I wrote about definitely fall into this category. I just don't have patience for this continuing trend at this point in my life and find that every case of it that I encounter drives me crazy.
I'd say that the most well received health topics of the year were related to hot and cold therapy. Although there were a smaller group of people interested in some of the previously mentioned "fringe" themes that spawned some great offline conversations. As much as
I try to do so already, I need to reiterate that I'm really just documenting things that I'm experimenting with and not advocating them as a universal panacea. The reality is that I wouldn't really even encourage anyone to follow this lead unless they've already gone through the path that I have to get there first. I'll try to do better at documenting this in the future.
Most of the interesting (to me) software that I wrote
this year was in the decentralized social/AI space. This falls in the area that just about no one wants to hear about. Even if I don't write about it next year, I guarantee you'll be hearing more about it from other sources, even if it's not obvious that that's what it is. I don't make
predictions often, but I feel that just about everyone will be using AI agents in some way, shape or form before 2025 is out. I didn't hear much about the 'integration' software projects that I spoke about, so if you found that interesting, let me know and I'll continue to include those.
