Lets talk about 2025, seeing as it’s the 1st January!

Below you’ll find an outline of what I hope to achieve next year and also my top three technical and political predictions. Hopefully we’ll all still be here next year to find out just how wrong I was!

Personal

From a personal stand point, 2024 has been about solidifying what I have. I’ve climbed further out of the “burn out” hole, my little house feels lived in and cosy, and I even got back into writing little side projects like thoughtstream.me (plug plug nudge nudge go check it out!). I even attended a meet up for the first time in roughly 5 years.

So I’d like 2025 to be about moving forward. Using the amazing foundation I have with my partner, my home, and my friends, I want 2025 to be about taking “The next step”.

Goals and resolutions

Yes yes I know folks don’t tend to keep resolutions, but I always set them every year. Some stick, some fall by the wayside very quickly. These two I feel are pretty achievable:

1. Write a blog post once a week
2. Learn one new song on guitar a month

I’ve really enjoyed bringing harrywinser.com back to life, and would love to flesh it out with more technical musings, silly little project ideas, and maybe sharing my photography and music. Hugo is an excellent static site generator, and I look forward to exploring more about it as I post.

As for learning more music; in 2023 I got very into playing in local bars in and around Plymouth. However 2024 has been a bit of a hiatus for me and I’d love to get back into it. So I want to use this as a way to push myself into practising and getting back out there to perform. The itch is certainly there and I know my mental health will appreciate getting back into music.

2025 predictions

Lets break this down into two; technical and political.

Technical

2024 was a bit of a weird year. A.I. became all the rage, crypto might be leaving it’s “winter”, Google might have to sell Chrome, a toaster is probably now an Xbox, and the Games Industry layoffs seem to be continuing.

With that in mind, here are my three tech predictions:

1. A.I. will fizzle out - A.I is everywhere, but it’s not proven actually useful. They lie hallucinate making trust a real issue. The text prediction/writing is proving useful, but I think we’re in for a major rebalancing of expectations this year as to what users expected, and what A.I can actually do.
2. There will be a Trump crypto bounce - pretty obvious one, and I’m not the only one making this prediction, but I expect to see an all time high for Bitcoin by the end of January, as Trump is sworn in. Post that, I think it’ll be rocky, depending on what Trump actually does. (Please do not mistake this prediction as an endorsement of Crypto).
3. Apple won’t release anything exciting - 2024 had the Apple Vision Pro, Mac Mini, and a bunch of other releases. I don’t think we’ll be seeing anything like a foldable. I reckon incremental upgrades, and potentially Apple Intelligence will be downplayed (as per prediction 1.)

Political

2024 was a big year for politics watchers. Obviously Trump being elected was a biggie, but closer to home here in the U.K. we finally threw off the 14 years of bad Tory management. And replaced it with, arguably, Tory Light ™️ (there’s certainly more to say on this topic, so look for a blog post on this soon).

With those in mind, lets do my three political predictions:

1. Starmer will still be in number 10 - the UK has had a lot of Prime Minsters in the last 14 years. Bar any major disaster, I think Starmer will still be in charge by 2026.
2. Reform will consume the Conservatives (whatever that means) - when Kemi Badenoch became the head of the Conservative party, there was a sense of “Oh no, what have they done?” and since then, she’s done nothing to dissuade those feelings. Reform has moved the Right much more Right, while Labour has pulled the Left to the Centre. This leaves the Conservatives as not being Right leaning enough for the fanatics, and not Centre enough for those looking for traditional conservative values. The question being; what do they bring to the table?
3. Trump and Musk will fall out - we can already see this happening. But two people with massive egos don’t work well together. It’ll be interesting (in a painful way) to see what will win out. Infinite wealth, or the most powerful seat. Either way, I don’t think they’ll be best friends by the start of 2026.

I wish you luck and fair weather for 2025

And with that I shall leave you to ponder what 2025 might bring your way. Whatever it does bring, I wish you health, wealth, and happiness.