Howdy %Name%,

It seems hard to believe but Christmas is upon us!   I write this on Christmas morning and am looking forward to a (mostly) relaxing day.   We celebrated over the weekend because the kids have their families.

Are you having a wonderful Christmas /Hanukkah / Holiday?

Personally, I don’t care what religion you practice and view Christmas and New Years as a time to spend with family & friends remembering the reason we do what we do.

I miss the times when people would just say “Merry Christmas” and not be worried about offending anyone.

I remember when Darrius Rucker was criticized for singing “White Christmas” and/or when Dean Martin’s “Baby it’s Cold Outside” the world was changing (and not for the better).

So, if me telling you “Merry Christmas” causes you anxiety, I’m sorry for you.  I hope you learn that the world is not centered around you (nor is it around me).

And that 99% of the time when someone tells you “Merry Christmas” they’re really just saying they wish “you and yours well”.

Now on with the show…

Adding an Icon to a Listview

We were making a small update to our Fake drive tool and I realized the tool could also benefit by adding icons to the ListView to indicate if it was a Local or Fake drive.

So I asked Irfan to show us how he’d do this.

Thankfully he remembered in our Icon Resource Finder it provides syntax for doing just that!  You can watch the process in this video.

Adding an icon to a listview Updaing our Fake Drive creator

Improving People’s Lives: Story #31

A client called up mentioning they needed additional help as they were getting a lot of support calls.  Their tool requires users to do several things before running.

One of which is to set their DPI to 100

I mentioned our Active Monitor DPI adjuster could easily be tweaked to take care of this so we cranked out this simple tool to help with this.   You can check it out in this video.

Automatically setting the DPI on your primary monitor with AutoHotkey

What we’re reading

• My Incredibly Cheap Alternative to a Soundbar
• How to Check if a Screenshot Has Been Photoshopped
• How to Locate a Bluetooth device

AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage

• Google’s new “Deep Research” tool is great
• OpenAI’s o3 Sets New Record
• NotebookLM updates Business to Plus
• Skip reading and start learning with Lesson22

⚡️Productivity tips:  Cut to the Spike in Word

Ctrl + F3: Cut the to the Spike in Microsoft Word, allowing you to cut multiple selections and then use Control+Shift+F3 to paste them all at once

A spot of Humor

Here are some Christmas Fails

Christmas Fails of the Week | FailArmy

What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #69

In this video I walk through 97 AHK scripts we worked on during the past week.

What we automated with AutoHotkey #69

Client’s say…

With The-Automator, I learned to use AutoHotkey, in order to automate otherwise tedious and repetitive tasks. My favorite script extracts audio tracks from a video file for me, converts it into an MP3 file and saves it on my hard drive. What previously required dozens of mouse clicks and dozens of keyboard shortcuts in loops, now only requires the support of a simple key like < ALT+1>. With this script, all I have to do is specify the number of loops the script should perform depending on the number of files to convert, press < ALT+1> and fetch me a coffee. Thanks to Joe Glines and all his guests, I am now able to automate boring tasks, “if only my mower could respond to AutoHotkey”. — Claude Paga

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 357 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 Members with their code
• Adding an Icon to the “Open folder”
• Add timer to restart every X hours, minutes, etc.
• Putting “ads”in a program / AdPopupAds
• Run program; Add condition do something else ;If !folder; run folder
• Fix API call responses with Proper UTF-8 Encoding [lib] AHK V2
• Demonstrating resource drain during debug mode

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

• What gets measured gets improved — Joe Glines
• It’s easy to see stupid in other people — Dan Kennedy
• The thing most people like least is a mirror — Dan Kennedy

⏩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.  If my mention of Merry Christmas offended you.  I’m not sorry.

It was meant in good faith as a way to say “I wish you & your family well“.  If you celebrate a different holiday feel free to substitute it there (even if that holiday is Festivus!)

Have an amazing day and I’ll be talking to you “next year”