Howdy %Name%,
A new client scheduled a call with me a couple weeks ago.
I’ll have to admit I was a bit skeptical when I saw his name: Ron Swanson
If you were a fan of Parks and Recreation, then you understand why I thought it might be a fake name.
If you’re not familiar with Ron Swanson, here’s one of my favorite Swanson clips.
I’ll admit: part of me hoped it was Nick Offerman in character. A friend who worked on the Parks and Rec set told me Nick is nothing like his famous character politically.
My call with Ron went great! He started working with code in 1965 doing data processing.
That’s right; he’s been coding for 60+ years!
It was great having a client that we could very quickly work through the various approaches and settle on one that was far better than he’d anticipated.
I also convinced him to join the AHK Hero club both for the discount but also because I knew he’d enjoy getting to know the other Hero members that have equally long technology careers.
Now on with the show…
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Customizing VS Code
During a Hero call Ray asked about configuring VS Code.
Isaias took 30 minutes to help him adjust his extensions, change some color preferences in his theme, etc. You can check it out in this video.
Keep in mind we sell Isaias’ personal VS code settings here.
Customizing your VSCode settings
And don’t forget we have a full Intro to VS Code course (which has a double your money back guarantee!)
Comparing Edit Fields to DropDown
During an AHK hero call we talked about the pros and cons of Edit fields versus a Dropdown. You can see the conversation here and see how easy it is to switch between them. Or, get the best of both worlds and use a ComboBox.
Pros Cons of an edit field verse dropdown
Creating Scripts for other People / Computers
We’ve all been there! We create a script, get it working “perfectly” and then share it with a friend / colleague and it crashes faster than a free trial runs out!
We put our collective brains together and fed AI what the most important things to look for when sharing scripts and created this video. We also made this checklist
⚙️ How to Make Rock-Solid AutoHotkey Scripts Work on other Computers
Improving People’s Lives: Story #68
I was helping a friend learn what is possible with AI.
I created this page to help show the AI tools that we use regularly.
After which I created this video to help explain which AI to use and when to use them.
AI Superpower Guide: Know which to use depending on your task
What we’re reading
- How your smartphone Tracks Your Every Move
- 9 Google Maps Gestures every driver should know
- MIT upgrades its Concrete Battery
- Remove the Annoying Search Icons from Windows 11 Taskbar
AI News that you Need to Know
- Codex is more than a coder!
- Claude Skills will rock your world!
- How Joe uses NotebookLM for Learning
⚡️Productivity tips: the big F11
Most browsers, and many programs use F11 as a toggle for Full Screen mode
A spot of Humor: Another favorite Ron Swanson video
Ron’s burgers vs Chris’ burgers | Parks and Recreation
What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #108
This week I showed editor improvements, built out a mono-to-stereo audio conversion tool that doesn’t require re-rendering your video (huge time saver), and figured out how to switch between Windows 11’s classic and modern context menus.
In this video I walk you through all the tools we’ve been working on, why some of them are going to be paid products, and what’s next for the Ahk Script Maker.
What we automated with AutoHotkey # 108
Clients say…
“My mind is blown” — Kelly Coughlin
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 481 hours of recordings teaching AutoHotkey that is exclusive to AHK Hero members❗
During this Friday’s call we’re planning to discuss:
- Help AHK Hero Members with their Questions & Code
- Regular Expressions: Differences between AHK and RegEx101
- Using Edit field to Filter a list
- API call to Google Sheets
- Script highlight: Windows 11 Context Menu Switcher
- Object Oriented Programming- getting a reference to an element & reusing it
- Using SendTo for passing multiple files to a script
- Classes
- Why Group Code Together?
- Comparing a Function to a simple Class
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
- Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive; We can create it for you! — Joe Glines
- Never give up, never surrender, and always go for the win. — Charlie Kirk
- Your time is finite but you can get more done in your time❗— Joe Glines
- Success is a lagging indicator of previous hard work — Jimmy Carr
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Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff
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P.S. At the start of my meeting with Ron he mentioned that he’s programmed in a lot of languages and was fully capable of learning AutoHotkey but decided it made more sense to pay us to do the work for him.
It was very smart choice because we started off trying to automate the Browser but realized we could take a far more advanced, and reliable, approach by performing the API calls directly.
If you have an idea for an automation and have more money than time, then consider scheduling a call with me to see what I can do for you!
