24th of February AutoHotkey Newsletter

Howdy %Name%,

I’m one to do my best to “practice what I preach”. Many times, Jackie and I have talked about how important it is to write “pseudocode” before you actually program. Lately I’ve taken this to heart and make sure that, when I start a new script, I quickly write out several lines of text that describes my goals / what I want to achieve.

The more I do it, the more it’s been helping! 👍

First, in case you’re not aware of what it is: Pseudocode is a human readable description of the steps planned steps in your script. Pseudocode is intended for human reading (not your AHK programming code).

Now that I’m writing pseudocode more frequently my scripts are far better organized and much more likely to take into account things that I wouldn’t normally think of. Also, by doing it more often, I’ve gotten to a point where it takes almost no time to do!

Think of it more as writing a 1️ ^st draft. Don’t try and get anything “perfect”. Don’t worry about misspellings or grammatical errors. Just make short notes to yourself about what you’re going to do. Trust me, after doing this for a while you’ll be so glad you started!

Are you writing pseudocode before you program?

Now on with the show…

ActiveX vs. GDIp

Did you catch the great video last week with where Dimitri Geerts created some amazing GUIs with an ActiveX GUI in 🅰️🇺t🇴🇭🇴tk🇪🇾 🇻2️? At the end of the video we were wondering how GDI would stack-up in comparison. Well Dimitri decided to put it to the test and build the game of life in both ActiveX and GDI. This is a really fun video where we demo the comparisons and discuss what is actually being done with the code.

Arrays & Pseudo Arrays

Speaking of “pseudo” things, one thing that confuses people new to AutoHotkey are the usage of Arrays and Pseudo Arrays. In this video RaptorX walks us through using them in a command. BTW- I had a call with Isaias Baez / RaptorX last night and he’s ready to come back to work! 😁 Can’t wait to get back in our grove!

Are you cheating at work?

Continuing on with this concept of “is AutoHotkey cheating at work” I Ryan W. (Automation expert and marketing guru) his thoughts on the idea. It turned into a great chat (thankfully I’d recorded it). We continued on discussing how to evangelize AutoHotkey.

The book I mentioned is from John Carlton: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Getting Your Shit Together. Chapter 2 has a ton of amazing quotes to live by. I’m going to include some of them at the bottom of the newsletter but there are a lot more in the book. The book mentioned by Ryan is Darren Hardy: The compound effect. It’s an amazing book with great ideas and tips how to be more productive!

🔎Searching / Replacing text within files

Do you need to find some code but don’t know the file name / location? I’ve been using grepWin for a really long time. It’s an amazing free tool that allows you to, easily, find and replace text within files. It’s allows you to filter on many things to limit the search and allows you to see the content of the file w/o opening it. Here I walk through a few examples how to use GrepWin.

The-Automators’ Podcast

#133: Using a time study to quantify your efficiency
#132: Is AutoHotkey “cheating” at work?
#131: 19 Questions to consider when automating a process

What we’re reading 📚

Why Aren’t Digital Games Cheaper Than Physical Ones?
How to Prepare Your Android Phone to Be Stolen (noting your IMEI Number is a great tip!)
How to Search for Text Inside of Any File Using Windows Search (in case the above was too simple)

AutoHotkey GURU 👨‍🏫 Interview: Joe Winograd

For those of you on the AutoHotkey forum, you’ll be familiar with Joe Winograd. He runs/operates a business where he develops code for clients. In our AutoHotkey Guru interview I got to know him better and picked up some great AHK tips from one of the few people I know that works in AutoHotkey but IS A PROGRAMMER! He has some great content on working with PDFs and AutoHotkey.

Productivity tips ⚡️

Short and sweet: Kill your social pages (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) while you’re working!

A spot of Humor 🤣

Do you watch The IT Crowd? It’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen🤣. They really nail many aspects of corporate world and geeks🤓! Here’s a short excerpt from S1 Episode 2. Freaking genius! The main tagline in the show is “Have you tried turning it on and off again”? What a great burn 🔥 on Windows!

Beta testing Clipboard 📋 manipulation tool

Many of us have this need but don’t even realize it! Wouldn’t it be cool if you could write some rules that would monitor your clipboard and apply them w/o you having to think about it? That’s just one of the uses of Quick Access Clipboard; a new tool from Jean Lalonde (author of QAP). He’s currently looking for beta testers to QAC. To learn more take a look at this video if you’d like to learn more and you can go here.

Quotable quotes 🗣️ 💭

The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. — Mark Twain
You’ll never be criticized by someone who is doing more than you. You’ll always be criticized by someone doing less —Denzel Washington
Effective performance is preceded by painstaking preparation. — Brian Tracy

Live AutoHotkey Support Tomorrow

Don’t forget on Friday’s you can get free AutoHotkey support on my YouTube channel. Or you can sign up for reminders and join the zoom room.

The-Automator

Joe and staff

P.S. Special thanks to the following for purchasing multiple AutoHotkey Udemy courses this month!

6 Peter E.	2 Marc P.	2 Ewelina W.
3 Sam B.	2 Malgorzata M.	2 Ewa N.
3 Carlos M.	2 Magdalena O.	2 Emilie Viola H.
3 Łukasz G.	2 Magdalena F.	2 Doug B.
2 VCALD.	2 Maciej W.	2 Damian G.
2 Sylwia B.	2 Lidia D.	2 Claudia J.
2 Swen B.	2 Kosma W.	2 Charles Oduk II.
2 Sean M.	2 Kinga C.	2 Cezary K.
2 R.	2 Katarzyna U.	2 Cesar A.
2 Qun G.	2 Karolina S.	2 Bartosz B.
2 Przemysław M.	2 K.	2 B.
2 Piotr Pawel B.	2 Justyna K.	2 Annet S.
2 Paulina D.	2 Joanna R.	2 Anna C.
2 Natalia P.	2 J.	2 Anna B.
2 Monika B.	2 Izabela K.	2 Alicja C.
2 MateuszH.	2 Iwona S.	2 Aleksandra P.
2 Mateusz T.	2 Iwona Granacka-P.	2 Agnieszka W.
2 Mateusz J.	2 G.	2 Abdulmalik A.

Double P.S. Quotes from John Carlton: The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Getting Your Shit Together

It’s not how much you screw up that counts. Nope. It’s how you fix your messes that matters.
You must stop expecting perfection — either from yourself, or your employees, or your customers and clients. It will never happen.
Life isn’t a calm pond — it’s an unpredictable ocean… you gotta learn to enjoy the ride, no matter what.
Real tragedy is having a loved one pass away, or getting bad news from the doctor. Everything else is just a small bump on the road as you haul ass through life.
Live below your means. And avoid all debt — if you can’t pay cash-in-full, don’t buy it. Let your thrill be in your accomplishments, not the toys you can suddenly afford on credit.
Put aside a healthy pile of “Up Yours” money, so you can walk away from any situation you don’t like, and know you’ll survive.
Be a good animal. Sweat a little bit every day, sleep well, eat well, purge your system, live like a warrior-poet. You can monitor how healthy you are by walking up a hill.
Learn some basic self-defense, today. The first thing a mugger does to a mark is knock you down –most people can’t handle any jostling at all, and freeze. The simple confidence of knowing what your options are — and where the “soft targets” are on an attacker — can save your life.
Do the right thing every time, as a habit. If you’re not clear on what the right thing is, that means you’re facing another life lesson. Figure it out. The test begins now.
Say “sorry” and “I love you” often and without self-consciousness
Take responsibility for your actions. This simple habit has profound consequences you will learn to enjoy. Fix what you break, clean up your mess, watch your buddy’s back.
You want it, you take it, you pay the price. There really is no free lunch.
If what you’ve done over the past 5 years hasn’t worked for you, then change what you’re doing. Or the next 5 years will be one long boring re-run of the same bullshit.
Wake up. Challenge your belief systems. It’s better to realize you’ve been wrong for years, than to stubbornly hold onto a delusion that holds you back.
Stop doing things that don’t work. Too many people go through their entire lives marrying the same type of mate over and over again, making the same behavior mistakes, and making excuses for themselves.
Stop making excuses. I don’t care how badly your parents, or your teachers, or the system screwed up your head. You’re old enough to make the decision to start over and rewrite your script. Nothing will change for you until you do.
Keep a master list of long-range goals
Accept defeat with grace. Learn your lesson, adjust, and plan for victory next time out. Know how to cheat. Don’t do it, but understanding the game thoroughly requires knowing how others take advantage.
Work hard, play hard. Think harder.
Just do it. The meek may inherit the earth, but only after the bold are through with it
It it’s critical, do it yourself. If it’s not, delegate. Learn the difference
Don’t lie. If you’re in a position where you can’t tell the truth, learn how to weasel-word your way around trouble or hurting innocent bystanders. But don’t lie.
Some things are and always will be out of your control. Stop freaking out about it. If you gotta cry, cry. Don’t make a big deal of it. Life has tears built-in.
Don’t borrow. Pay as you go. You borrow, you’re a kept man.
Right now, you owe someone a phone call. If it’s not yet past 8 p.m., make the call, even if your hand shakes as you dial.
Spending time with someone is more important than spending money on them.
Don’t try to change anyone. Learn the difference between actual help and co-dependent enabling.
Allow people to blossom or fail on their own. This takes ungodly patience, but it’s the only way it works.
Stop arguing.
Lead by example, not big talk. In fact, shut up until you’ve earned the right to talk by honing your chops.
You’re going to be an idiot occasionally. Embrace this opportunity for a good story, learn from it, forgive yourself, and try not to make idiocy a common event in your day.
Your reputation is built one act at a time, and a lifetime of good work can be squandered the same way. Respect is earned by consistent behavior.
Be where you said you’d be, when you said you’d be there, ready to do what you said you’d do.
Struggle is not a bad word. Accomplishment is impossible without it.
Intellectually-sound people change their minds when the facts change. Ideology sucks as a lifestyle.
Turn off the TV and go read.
Listen more than you talk. And when you talk, observe the rules of conversation. If these rules are a mystery to you, go hunt them down.
Don’t interfere with people disciplining their kids. Do interfere when clear abuse is occurring next door.
Tip twenty percent. If you’ve never worked in a job where you had to be nice to rude people, tip even more. You won’t start a trend, but you will make someone’s day and generate good karma.
Learn empathy. Get a vivid picture of what it’s like to walk in the other guy’s shoes.
Go the extra mile. Even when no one does it for you.
Eleanor Roosevelt was right: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Sometimes you gotta take one for the team.
Learn to tell a joke. But don’t rely on them. True wit is intelligence and humor, not one-upmanship or memorization.
Not everyone likes you.
Right now is a good time to stop the bullshit. Get real. Take a painful review of yourself, and be honest. Face your faults, and begin the fix.
Love will always have baggage attached. Get over it. Love is essential to a full life. No matter what.
What people think of you is irrelevant. But how you leave this world matters. Even if it’s all futile in the end, play your part as well as you can. Real courage is fear, in action. Play your hand.

17th of February AutoHotkey Newsletter

Hi %Name%,

Let’s force ourselves to have an anxiety attack! Sounds crazy but anytime we step into unknown areas we ALL experience anxiety. It’s just human nature. It’s undoubtedly the #1 reason people stop trying to learn AutoHotkey!

AutoHotkey is an amazing language that allows people (like you and I) to “program” without really being programmers. However, the majority of people that start to use AutoHotkey stop right away (or never even try) because they see they have to “program” and believe they can’t do it.

Some will get started but then get very confused and even consider themselves “dumb” because they see others “getting it” in seconds. When I first started WebScraping I nearly gave up. I thought “I just don’t get it”. What I didn’t realize at the time is that WE ALL went through that learning (feeling stupid) process! Rarely are we all at the same “level” when learning something new.

But what gets some of us to keep plugging along into the dark abyss? Is it that some of us are just smarter?

Hogwash‼️

Those of us that continue to learn have “had a win”. We’ve automated something and then felt the joy of using that script, over and over, and avoid the mundane work. %name%, can you remember the script that saved you time? I used HotStrings and Hotkeys for the first 3 years of using AutoHotkey.

And they made me a Rockstar!

It’s a rough part of life but we need that carrot🥕! That reward for the work to continue on. If there’s no gain, then why submit to the pain?

This is one of the big reasons I created the AutoHotkey Udemy courses. Because AutoHotkey is so vast (with some many applications) having a clear path really helps! My courses aren’t “amazing” but they do provide a very clear path to start learning AutoHotkey.

Now on with the show…

Amazing ActiveX example with AutoHotkey V2

The other day I published a short video documenting how Maestrith had shown how to create an ActiveX GUI. Dimitri Geerts was inspired by it and did some amazing work! He then joined me in Zoom to demo some of it which was spectacular! The 2d work was amazing but the 3d version and “game of life” was really, really over-the-top! I should point out that it’s all done in V2 (mainly because GUIs are a bit simpler in V2 because they’re functions). Check out the video and let me know what you think! Click here if you’d like to learn more about AutoHotkey V2.

Awareness of Automation

It’s been a few years, perhaps Jackie and I need to go look at the current stats to see if the bar has moved at all? Are people more aware of ways to automate?

Parsing Text with AutoHotkey

In this video I show some tips & tricks how to parse text with AutoHotkey. The more programming you do, the more splitting text becomes “a thing”. RegEx is great but StrSplit() and InStr() are faster and simpler to get started with.