Howdy %Name%,

On Sunday I had another call with my AI / strategy buddy Ryan Wells.

He’s creating a very interesting tool that is watching his computer usage. 

This may sound a bit “big brother” to you (and it does to me) however I do know it is very hard to figure out the “performance” of something without tracking it.

For nearly 20 years I was a quantitative stats guy that used data to help businesses make better informed decisions.

Now I’m loving that we’re collecting metrics on ourselves to see how we can improve❗

How about you %Name%❓ 

What is your feedback loop that you use to ensure you’re improving❓

If you don’t have an easy way to track your time, you should check out our Time Tracking tool

Also, if you’re a Claude Code user, make sure you run /Insights.  It’s a game changer!

Do you have a time each week where you evaluate yourself to ensure you’re improving “you“❓

Now on with the show…

Easily Magnify your screen

A couple of weeks ago we came up with this really cool Magnifying Glass which let’s you very quickly zoom into a given area of your screen.  You can even adjust either the area being zoomed and the size of the magnification.

Crazy Z-Order issue with AHK GUI

A while back I found a “bug” which I’d never seen before. 

We had a child GUI that, on one computer, showed the child window behind the main GUI but, with the same executable, showed up in front of the main GUIs.

In this video, Irfan explains what we learned.

AutoHotkey GUI Z Order Fix AlwaysOnTop Preferences Window Bug | Hero Extract

Speaking of Z-order

If you’re new to working with GUIs with AutoHotkey, you might check out this video where I was showing a tool to help capture the Z-order of GUIs.

Developing Z order and Level of Windows

My Script isn’t broken, it just looks that way…

Often we might be doing some “work” with AutoHotkey but most people don’t let users know the script is continuing to plug along.  

That’s where our Progress Bar can help easily inform users that the script is actually hard at work!

Improving People’s Lives: Story #97

Monday morning I had an amazing call with Kenneth Aar (an AHK Hero member).

He has his own YouTube channel.  I showed him some of our tools (Like Transcriber and Media Segmenter) but we also had some very interesting discussions that will be a focus of upcoming newsletters.  🙂

BTW, you might enjoy his channel, here’s a brief description of it: 

“Discover the sweet spot where AutoHotkey meets psychology and GTD (Get Things Done) to engineer systems with less friction and more freedom.”

📚 What we’re reading

• Everyone thinks USB killed this 66-year-old port (but it secretly runs the modern world)
• A signal light is what my home Assistant smart home was missing
• This 11-year-old streaming device is still better than any Roku or Fire TV

🤖 AI News that you Need to Know

• GitHub Copilot AI Charges going up 10 to 100 times the current rate❗🤬
• Claude for Small Business
• How to enable Claude’s hidden project management mode
• 📺 I’m switching to Hermes (goodbye OpenClaw!!) (Thanks Kenneth)

⚡️Productivity tips:  

Less is more.  

Version One is infinitely better than version None❗

🤣 A spot of Humor:  Jimmy Carr is so funny!

You Dream of Someone This Dumb In The Front Row

Clients say…

THANK YOU, YOU SAVED MY LIFEEEEEEEEEEEEEE — @sillywilly-102

AHK Hero 🦸

Consider joining the 🦸Hero club! Members receive 25% off courses, consultations, tutoring, done for you project work, etc.    Currently we have over 566 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to Hero members❗

During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:

• Help Hero Members with their Questions & Code
• Converting the AutoHotkey MCP to CLI (and why)
• Buttons in Notifyv2 class 👀
• Our new DiffViewer for AHK Script Maker (It’s way cooler than I planned❗)
• Using Try/Catch in your code
• Live Creating Skills and Testing
• Continue to Automate creating Downloads on the-Automator

They also have access to exclusive & pre-released content and 3 hours a week where we help people with their automation issues (the Saturday calls are geared towards people new to Automation with AI)

🗣️ 💭 Quotable quotes

• When a man understands that the aim of life is not material profit, but life itself, ceases to fix his attention exclusively on the external world, — Alexis Carrel
• Fire fast; Hire slow — Dan Kennedy
• Do the hard jobs first. Easy jobs will take care of themselves — Dale Carnegie

⏩SHARE WITH A FRIEND⏩

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the-Automator  Dedicated to Multiplying your Income

Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff

P.S. We like to think we are “efficient” but the truth is, more often than not, we are incredibly inefficient.  And having “someone else” (whether it is AI or another human) is often the best way to spot places for us to improve. 

How about it %Name%❓  

Do you have the courage to join the hero club and share your workflow❓