Howdy,

Happy New Year to you!  Did 2024 treat you well❓

Are you setting goals for 2025❓   How about any specific things you’re wanting to learn with AutoHotkey❓ 

I’ve found that setting clear and actionable goals significantly increases the likelihood of achieving them.   Another way to increase the odds of success is by telling people your goals.   You do have to be careful though and don’t tell the “negative-ninnys” your goals.  

Negative people kill more dreams than fortune cookies written exclusively by divorced DMV employees❗

If you like you can tell me what you’re wanting to learn.  Simply reply to this email and tell me specifically what it is you’re planning to learn.  Here are a few ideas to get you started

I’m going to…

• Create highly organized multi-line HotStrings
• Become a computer power user
• Make the switch to AHK v2
• Become a wizard with VS Code
• Create and use Functions
• Understand how to work with Win32 Controls
• Connect to AI tools via API Calls
• Use Classes & Objects
• Improve my knowledge about Regular Expressions
• Fill in the blank__________________

So if you want to increase the likelihood of achieving your goals, Reply to this email and tell me what it is you’re going to achieve!  If you’re considering purchasing a course from us, hold off for a couple of days as, January 3^rd , we’re having a big sale!

Now on with the show…

Step-by-Step ways to learn Regulare Expressions / RegEx

Do you want to learn how to manipulate text?   We created this email drip campaign which, currently has 10 emails that will get delivered every three days.   

There are lots of great reasources and lessons here.  You can sign up for the email drip campaign here.  Or learn more about it in the below video

Alternatively you can just grab our Intro to Regular Expressions course here

Knowing when a User Stops Typing

While not the most glamorous topic, it can be very beneficial to know when a user stops typing.

One of the most common benefits is to take the content of the edit field and use it in a query.

In this video Isaias shows us how to achieve this.  He came up with the solution during one of our Hero calls “last year”.

How to detect when a User stops Typing

Controlling the order of files in the Open/Save Dialog window

It is super annoying that, when I’m in the Open / Save dialog window, I always have to click the “sort by date modified” option.

We created this script to do this (but demo three different ways in this video)

Open and Save Dialog Sorter

Improving People’s Lives: Story #32

One of our clients is selling his scripts to non-technical people around the world.  Of course their clients have all-types of computers.  Customers are contacting tech support but then cannot recreate the issue.  

We’d helped create a log function which saved screen shots however the .bmp files were quite large (often over 4 megs).

Isaias created a cool function that saves them as .png instead which are around 1/30^th the size of the bmp file.  

Now, when users send in their auto-generated error logs, it’s often under a meg instead of being 10’s of megs.

What we’re reading

• Do not Disturb is My Secret to Sanity
• 3 Productivity Hacks I Love Using on My Android Phone
• 5 Microsoft Word Hacks you probably don’t know

AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage

• GenCast predicts weather & the risks of extreme conditions
• Microsoft just made Github Copilot free
• Riffusion lets you Transform lyrics into complete songs

⚡️Productivity tips: Review your week

At the end of each week take a look at what you accomplished.  Ask yourself:

1. Did I achieve what I wanted to achieve?
2. Did I personally need to be there for everything I attended?
3. Could I have achieved the same in a shorter timeframe?

A spot of Humor Best TikToks of summer 2024

Best TikToks of Summer 2024

What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #70

This week I review 99 AHK scripts that we worked on over the past week.

What we Automated with AutoHotkey #70

Client’s say…

How can I pay more for this? — Kelly Coughlin

AHK Hero

Consider joining the AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 360 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗

You can watch 1 hour a day for a year and not repeat content! That’s a lot of AHK Learning!

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

• Help AHK Hero Members with their code & questions
• Fix API call responses with Proper UTF-8 Encoding 
• Easily Saving a screenshot as a PNG
• Demonstrating resource drain during debug mode
• Create Random Groups from a file
• AHK Built-in-Variables Viewer
• Trigger Context Menus

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and a 3 hours a week where we help people with their AHK issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to AutoHotkey.)

️ Quotable quotes

• Decisions without actions are worthless — Dan Kennedy
• Work harder on yourself than you do on your job — Jim Rohn
• Excuses are simple lies we first tell ourselves then others — Joe Glines
• Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me — Carol Burnett
• The amateur does not know what to do. The master knows what not to do — James Cleary

⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

Do you know someone that would benefit from learning useful automation tips like the gems in today’s issue?  Take a second and forward this newsletter and bask in the glow of their undying gratitude.  Was this email forwarded to you?

Sign up for this Newsletter here.  We never share your email with anyone.  Ever!

The-Automator

Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff

P.S. Will 2025 be the year you prioritize your growth ?  Set those goals to Level-up your AHK Skills! 

On January 3^rd we’ll be having a sale on our v2 courses.  Be ready for it and make 2025 an amazing year!