Howdy,
I truly have a moving story for you today!
Around 12 years ago my son was 4 and had made a great friend, Alex, at his daycare. We’d met his parents (Jennifer and Cody) several times and, even though they are ~10 years younger, we realized we have similar attitudes and beliefs. Plus they lived in the same city as we did!
It was great because, if you’re not aware of it, when you have kids you spend more time with your kid’s friend’s parents than your own friends!
After a couple of years Jennifer was excited because they were buying a house. Unfortunately it was in a neighboring town but it would still be close enough where we’d see them regularly.
At this point I was working for TI full time and, even though I hadn’t started “the-Automator” yet, I did side projects to make sure we stayed debt free.
Given the fact that I:
- was out of shape
- super busy
- had more money than time
I told them:
“If you’d like us to watch Alex during the move, he’s more than welcome to stay with us for a few days.”
They said that would be great and we waited for the purchase of their home to go through.
Once they got all of that scheduled we were hanging out and Cody said: “We’re moving next weekend and would like to take you up on your offer”
”So please be at our place at 8:00 am Saturday, we’ll have a 🚚truck and be mostly boxed up”.😳
That’s when I realized they didn’t really hear my offer… They heard what they wanted to hear. This is a common thing that happens to all of us in everyday life!
Being a good listener and always paying close attention to what someone actually says is one of the things we do very well at the-Automator. We also push-back at what we here the client say they want because, more often than not, they’re not aware of all the possibilities. Sometimes it is more important to hear what isn’t being said so you can ask the right questions.
In fact, it’s of my firm belief that most disagreements happen because of miscommunications/misunderstandings. Once people really understand each perspective they resolve themselves.
It’s one reason why I ask people not to use pronouns when communicating with me. Its very easy for our brains to swap out who/what is being referred to when we say “It”, “he/she”, “they”, etc. Do yourself a favor and use the actual names and you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to communicate clearly!
Now on with the show…
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Computer Vision and AutoHotkey
A couple of weeks ago I had a vision (excuse the pun) of how, at some point, our usage of AutoHotkey will change because AI will be “doing” the image search which means it will be more robust and reliable. I was thinking this was a year or two away however, after watching several videos on creating GPTs, I see the future is much closer than I was anticipating!😀
Future of AutoHotkey with AI Computer Vision
OpenAI Playground Assistant is POWERFUL! Here’s how to BUILD one…
How to use AI to understand your pictures
Since we’re on the subject of AI and Computer vision, you might check out this video where I show a free way to submit pictures to an AI and have it tell you what it sees!
🆓 How to use AI to examine pictures for FREE❗
Celebrating AHK’s 20th Birthday!🎂
Don’t’ forget AutoHotkey turned 20 last week! To celebrate we’re having a huge sale (40% off)on our AHK courses that will be ending soon! You can learn more about AHK’s birthday, and how well AI is writing v2 code in this video.
AutoHotkey hit’s a milestone! Celebrate with us!🎂
What we Automated this week with AutoHotkey
As you might know I spent ~20 years as a Data Scientist and have a masters in Market Research. While I’ve mainly hung up my Data science “hat”, I do help a friend out when he needs it. A good friend of mine, Mike Courtney, runs Aperio Insights and is one of the few people I’ll still do work for as they’re honest, professional and do amazing work. We regularly use Alchemer (formerly SurveyGizmo) for fielding studies. So this week Isaias and I spent a ton of time connecting to their API and simplifying building a “clean” data file. In this week’s video I discuss some of that process and cover a bunch of other cool things we did!
What we automated with AutoHotkey this week #22
📚 What we’re reading
- How Browser Extensions Turn Into Malware
- How to Avoid Spam Robocalls on Android
- How to Take Photos of Space with your phone
- Windows 11 Nearby Sharing just got better
- How to Make Google Chrome Fast Again
🤖 AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage
- ChatGPT Will Let You Make (And Publish) Your Own Chatbots
- Announcing Grok
- The AI-Powered Executive Assistant
- How Set Up Your OpenAI Store
⚡️Productivity tips: Windows key + Shift + S
Did you know you can launch the Windows snipping tool by hitting Win+Shift+S❓ Or you can use our amazing Snipping tool and define your own!
🤣 A spot of Humor:
This is Fascinating, not funny, but just try and take your eyes off of this video! The vast majority of them are breathtaking!
1 in a Billion Moments
AHK Hero 🦸
Consider joining the 🦸AHK Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.
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
- Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first 4 sharpening the axe — Abraham Lincoln
- Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt — Mark Twain
- What I lack in Skills & Abilities I make up for with Optimism & Determination
- Knowledge is power; Automation knowledge is a “super-power”💪 — Joe Glines
⏩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!
Joe, Isaias, Irfan, and staff
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P.S. If you’re wondering what happened on the day of my friend’s move I’m proud to say I did show up and help them. You see, even though I was at a point I’d never move myself, I’m a firm believer in doing what I say (even when people innocently misconstrue what I said)
If you’re looking for people that do what they say you might consider joining our AHK Hero group. We have a lot of like-minded people there getting things done faster, smarter, better❗
BTW- I did insist they have a dolly because, like AutoHotkey, a dolly is an enormous productivity booster
