Why would a 66 year old retired Church of Ireland Rector want to spend his time studying Artificial Intelligence?

1. What I AM trying to achieve?

   1. When asked “What do you do?” I want to answer “I am a Blogger and Influencer.”

      1. Who wants to be that person who is known for who they used to be. I want to be known for who I am.

   2. I love computers and tech.

      1. I want to continue to be the person in the room who understands this stuff.

2. What I am NOT trying to achieve?

   1. I am not trying to get rich quick.

      1. I don’t expect my blog to make me rich or famous

   2. I don’t want a job in Tech.

      1. I am retired.

3. How am I going to achieve my Goals.

   1. Start with the tech I already have.

      1. Because I love gaming I bought a nice Gaming Laptop with my retirement gift. This laptop has an RTX 5050 graphics card, so is good for running local AI.

   2. Build on the knowledge I have built up over many years of messing around with computers.

      1. Run Linux, most of this AI stuff starts in a Terminal

         1. Windows is lacking in the Terminal department. PowerShell doesn’t cut it for me.

         2. MacOS is great for Terminal work but lacking in the GPU and affordability departments.

      2. Run Emacs.

         1. Emacs is a great text editor, good for working on all the files I will need to edit.

         2. Emacs is great for writing content for my blog posts. Org Mode can produce text which is easily exported in multiple formats.

4. Linux and Emacs are difficult. Why not choose something easier? Windows and VS-code provide a lot of help and hand holding, why not use them instead?

   1. Easy does not equal learning. If the system completes my code and corrects my mistakes I won’t learn.

   2. Difficult makes me think, figure out how to solve problems, and achieve a sense of satisfaction when I finally figure it out.

Over the next few months I plan to share my AI adventure. I am retired and old. I make no promises to post every week, or to be informative and entertaining. Follow if you are interested, I would be glad to have a few people to share this journey with me.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far.

Alan