Howdy,
I spent most of my life working for Fortune 500 companies. Many small businesses think large companies have a huge technological advantage. They have departments of IT people and an enormous infrastructure.
It may surprise you however there is a strong negative correlation with the size of a company and the “newness” of technology used. The older / larger a company is the worse the software is that drives it. Most of the companies use older systems that don’t have APIs (a programmatic way to interact with them.)
This was always great news for me as connecting to older programs is super easy with AutoHotkey! I’d often identify painful interfaces and automate them.
So why did I quit❓
I had not one, but two bosses literally tell me not to automate processes❗
Both said what I was doing “wasn’t hard” and I should “just do it” however neither of them actually had to do what I did on a daily basis. I could have documented how much time is saved however I was tired of fighting the “old school” mentality. Of course I still automated my job, I just stopped telling my supervisors what I’d done.
Then, around 8 years ago, I was watching this video from Paul Joseph Watson where, around ¾ way through it, he stated
“…you can’t eliminate dissatisfaction with your life by taking pills.
The only cure is to change the way you live your life to make better decisions to create value excitement and authenticity in your life.
Work on projects. Start businesses. Read. Absorb worthwhile information. Create something.”
That video made me realize that, over the last year at Texas Instruments, I hadn’t created anything. I’d automated much of my job and then I kept my head down and stopped being creative. I then knew I had to quit my job.
Fast forward to today and not only am I lucky enough to be implementing new things everyday, I’m also able to solve our client’s problems. If you’re wanting help working with crappy old programs, check out our prices and let me know. We love helping people automate the mundane!
Now on with the show…
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Creating & Using Flags in AHK v2
Are you ready to level-up your AutoHotkey coding skills❓ Using Flags is a great way to advance your AHK Coding skills and Isaias walks us through how to create and use them in this video. If you’re wanting to become a programmer, this is a great video for you!
Creating and using Flags in AutoHotkey v2
Comparing Editors to an IDE: Extract from Intro to VS code
A few weeks back we released our Intro to VS code course. In this video Isaias and I discuss some of the main benefits of using and IDE over an editor (like SciTE4AutoHotkey or AHK Studio). Our course is over 4 hours long and comes with a double-your-money back guarantee. VS code is the “Ferrari” of IDEs and, currently, is the only real “stable” choice for AutoHotkey.
Editors vs IDE Extract from VS code
☠️Please Backup your AutoHotkey scripts
If you missed last week’s newsletter please check out this video where we explain how Windows Defender not only deleted AutoHotkey.exe but all of our 7,788 .ahk scripts❗
Don’t lose all your AutoHotkey scripts Antivirus is evil
Want to become a Freelancer / Entrepreneur❓
An AHK Hero member is considering quitting working for “the man” and working for himself. He asked us if we’d mind giving some advice around going out on your own. We decided to go ahead and record this video on the topic so we can help others as well.
Tips on Becoming a Freelancer
Improving People’s Lives: Story #3
We were on a consultation call earlier today with a Radiologist and were automating his work in Power Scribe. When we automated part of his routine his reaction was priceless❗ He said:
Holy shit❗ This is amazing – Dr. Kamran J.
What we’re reading
- What Is Copilot Pro and how do you use it?
- AI is creating a Rise in Scams on Social Media
- Direct Installer Downloads from Microsoft Store
AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage
- Ted Talk: What is an AI ?
- Google is testing an AI-powered feature to help English learners
- China’s Vidu Challenges Sora
- I used Blogfox.ai to “watch” this video of ours and generate this blog post
⚡️Productivity tips: Control+Alt+V
Use Ctrl + Alt + V to Open the Paste Special dialog box in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
A spot of Humor: Are you using AutoHotkey Wrong?
I was watching a Columbo episode and saw this gem. It reminded me how a lot of people come to AutoHotkey. Most people that start using AutoHotkey use it to imitate a human. We know of 19 ways to automate programs with AutoHotkey 17 of which are programmatic only 2 (mouse clicks and sending keystrokes) are imitating a human. Imitating a human is easy to understand however they are, by far , the least reliable, fast, and problematic.
Are you using AutoHotkey wrong?
What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #44
Our guys have been hard at work this week! In the below video I walk through 52 AutoHotkey scripts we worked on last week in this video.
What we automated with AutoHotkey #44
Testimonial
The Automator is an amazing resource I use it weekly. – David B.
AHK Hero
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 248 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗
During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:
- v1 to v2 quick converter tool
- Understanding Warnings verse Errors
- Discuss different buttons on error message in V2
- Amazing GUI TIP: Plus Minus (verse minus plus) to align GUIs
- Using a byRef in a function
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
- Time is linear; Success doesn’t have to be
- If you think education is expensive, try ignorance — Derek Bok
- New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do — James Cleary
⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩
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Sign up for this Newsletter here. We never share your email with anyone. EVER!
Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff
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P.S. As I mentioned in the introduction of this newsletter, working with AutoHotkey is an amazing way to help you spend more time being creative and less time doing mundane work. In short, AutoHotkey lets you work smarter, not harder.
Our AHK courses are a great path to learning AutoHotkey and come with a 200% money back guarantee .
If you don’t have the time or inclination to learn Ahk, we do “done for you” as well.
Either way, you’ll have a simple way to buy-back time in your day and focus
on what matters to YOU!
