I’ve been having a blast on my 3+ month vacation now but I logged on to YouTube to catch up on AI news and I feel like I’m falling behind. First, META released MUSE which is an app that allows you to do similar things to Hermes or Open Claw but with some differences. Second, Hermes Agent released updates that look pretty cool and would make my life easier. Third, I’m on the other side of the world and don’t want to upgrade anything because if it breaks, I will be screwed. It would be extremely difficult for me to fix software on a computer from thousands of miles away.
Here are a couple of YouTube videos worth watching on AI.
And here’s a video about Hermes Agent updates:
I am eager to get back to working with these tools and I actually got a few calls for job solicitations as well but I’m not sure I want to go back to the corporate grind, even on a part-time contract basis.
I know for certain that I’ll likely never use Muse. I don’t like being tethered to these big tech companies: Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta. I am actually getting highly annoyed with my iPhone’s weak capabilities and I was greatly disappointed with Apples new $2000 folding crap phone. I really just want a linux phone where I can control everything on it and have AI agents. I have also been having some issues with Google Authentication tokens and my Hermes Agents so that’s another product (Google) that I desperately want to dump and replace with something open source. I may start having AI create my own simple spreadsheets, databases and cloud services so I can break 100% free from these tech firms. I like Obsidian and researching that more when I have time.
As for how I’m currently using my AI ecosystem. I talk to my Hermes Agent every single day. Whenever I spend money, I take a pic of the receipt with my iphone and send it to hermes to log an expense. If it’s a cash spend, I just tell it the amount of cash and on what I spend. For my travel, I keep a journal on my iPhone Notes app and then I send those notes to Hermes to log.
What kind of notes? Virtually everything I am doing. For example, I booked some activities on GetYourGuide, let’s say it’s a walking tour. I take notes of facts, figures, interesting observations, real estate in the area, restaurants in an area that I liked, entertainment venues, public transportation options (subway, bus, ferry, etc), grocery stores, and send it all to my hermes agent to sort out and keep.
I have real estate agents in local countries looking at properties for me based on my inputs. The outputs I get I upload to hermes agent to catalog and rationalize. My travel is part vacation but also part research into which country may be suitable for my wife and I to retire to for a while. The intent is to lower our operational cost and let our portfolios grow faster and higher by lowering out spend. We both like to travel and we also need a base of operations closer to Europe and Asia so that we don’t have to fly 12+ hours each time from the U.S.
With the new hermes agent updates, I think I could do thing a lot more efficiently using built in bots and I’m eager to give it a try but it will have to wait till I return home.
There are a ton of other things I’m doing with AI agents that I won’t get into here because they involve some possible business models and I don’t want people ripping off my ideas.
Finally, I am considering starting an AI blog since AI is now consuming so much of my free time. My personal finance stuff is essentially on autopilot now. My portfolio generates cash flow from rental properties, interest, dividends, options premiums, and capital appreciation. I still have to log on to manage my options positions every 30 to 60 days but that doesn’t take too much time.
I also have my Alpaca.markets AI bot trading paper money and I need to follow up on how it’s doing. Last time I checked it had made $2000 since I started it. It sounds impressive but I could have made way more money just trading a bond ETF like IEF or TLT and sell call options.
I wish I could write more but in a few days I’m heading back to the Schengen zone and will be hoping on/off planes, trains and ferries for the month of October. After than I should be heading west and can finally decide how I will upgrade all my hermes agents and maybe buy some new hardware.