Howdy,
This weekend I worked on replacing a ceiling fan in the master bedroom.
My son asked if we should throw the circuit at the main breaker. I told him we turned the switch off on the wall and, as long as nobody messed with it, we’d be fine.
Boy was I wrong !
While taking down the old fan, “spark’s flew” ⚡ which (thankfully) through the circuit breaker.
I was shocked! (no not literally)
After further inspection I realized some one had left a bare “always hot” wire exposed in the box with nothing covering it. It’s a miracle we never had an issue before!
Thankfully the circuit breaker helped prevent anything catastrophic from happening.
This reminds me of how some people are “afraid” of AutoHotkey / Automation.
Many of my managers used to think I might “break something”.
They didn’t understand 99% of the time, AutoHotkey operates at the “surface level”.
And, while it can give the impression it is, it’s not “magical”
Most of the time AutoHotkey can only do what a human can do. Granted, it can do it much, much faster without errors but usually you’re not going to “break something.”
If you’re not understanding how AutoHotkey “works” or want to learn more about the 19 ways we use AutoHotkey to automate programs, Reply to this email and we can plan a call.
We’re the world’s best AutoHotkey shop and I guarantee we can save you time and
Now on with the show…
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Major news: Claude announces Automating your Computer
I was amazed to hear that Claude just announced you can use their API to automate your PC.
While it is in beta, and relying on image search, it’s still a huge step forward. Apparently you send a screen-shot of your desktop and the API will return coordinates which you click. Not great, but I’ll take it! So far every example I’ve seen has been on a Mac however it will be easy to do this on a PC!
We haven’t created a video on it yet but Matt Wolfe documented using it on a Windows computer here.
How To Install and Use Claude’s New AI Agent
Fixing Badly Created Files
I used to download files from sources like LinkedIn, SurveyGizmo/Alchemer, Facebook etc. that would give me really “weird” issues with my data. The solution was technically simple however very complicated to explain. Basically some programs (like Excel, Word, etc.) look for the Byte Order Mark (BOM) and will not assign the correctly “guess” the encoding without it.
Our executable FileFixer adds the BOM to the file which then will correctly import by these tools. You can check out the issue in this video.
How to Remove those Weird characters in your file with File Fixer.exe
Standardizing File Paths across computers
When I worked in Corporate America I’d often have 2-3 work computers (and had 2-3 computers at home).
It was always annoying to have to account for various paths depending on what computer I was at so I found a robust way to create a “fake drive” in Windows.
This approach is especially helpful because it exists before windows finishes loading. So, if you’re calling programs to run at startup, this approach will not fail.
BTW- you might think you can just “map a drive” however, for reasons unknown to me, Microsoft’s tool only works on Network drives!
Now that we have a team of people working at the-Automator it is especially valuable to be able to copy a path to a file and share it with a colleague. You can check out the tool in this video.
It’s also super helpful for creating temporary drives for projects you’re working on. You can get the DriveMapper tool here.
Creating Fake Drives for easy access & Identical paths across computers
Easily revert to previous versions of your code in VS code
Ever try and add a new feature to your script only to get side-tracked and not be able to finish❓ Then you go to use your script and realize it’s no-longer working because you didn’t finish what you started?
Isaias walks us through how to avoid this exact situation using VS code & git integration in this video.
How to easily revert to earlier versions with VS Code and GIT
This is one of the reasons why we say you should switch to VS Code! It’s why we created an entire course walking you through how to get up and running in VS code.
Don’t forget, our courses come with a 30-day 200% money back guarantee!
Improving People’s Lives: Story #22
Michael, a Radiologist client, emailed me (somewhat panicked) saying that he changed his system and the script we wrote for him ~2 years ago had stopped working.
We squeezed in a call with him and not only fixed his tool but added some extra features so, if/when he upgrades his PC again, he can easily do the change himself❗
What we’re reading
- Control How Links Open Apps on Android
- Stop Delaying, It’s time to Switch to Google Messages
- 5 Handy Android Features
AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage
- Qwen2-VL To See the World More Clearly
- AI Mind Maps Spark your creativity
- Automate 95% of financial tasks
⚡️Productivity tips:
Thankfully Ctrl + K: will insert a hyperlink in many programs: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Chrome, Firefox, to name a few.
A spot of Humor Dilbert offers Tech Support
This is a bit much but probably would be fairly helpful! Thanks Russell!
What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #60
Another very busy client week! We had a record low number of scripts worked on (but really saved our clients a lot of time!).
You can see what we worked on last when in this video.
What we automated with AutoHotkey #60
Client’s say…
I love your scripts because I don’t have to focus on so many things. I just look at the image and rely on muscle-memory. — Michael N. (Radiologist)
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 327 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗
During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:
- Help AHK Members with their code
- Branching in VS code with git
- Using Download verse httpRequest (API call) on YouTube thumbnail
- Using HEAD request
- Preventing redirect of httprequest
- Create Payroll tool AHK V2 GUI
- The “rate” will be remembered for each employee. Each time the tool is launched, the rate will be there (but editable) and the hours are blank
- the total is the Rate * Hours and rounded up to the nearest dollar
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
- The thing most people like least is a mirror — Dan Kennedy
- The object of life is to make your vocation your vacation. — Mark Twain
- If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense — Grandma
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Joe, Isaias, Irfan, Rizwan and staff
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P.S. Yes, I did get the new ceiling fan in without burning down the house. Just in time for fall! LOL.
Just remember, we know of 19 ways to automate programs with AutoHotkey (17 of which do not involve sending keystrokes or mouse clicks so they are vastly more reliable.
Our approaches are much more robust & reliable! Drop me a line if you’d like to learn more!
Or check our calendar and schedule a meeting.
