Howdy %Name%,
When I was working on my Undergraduate degree in Marketing I ran my own company painting homes.
The name of my company was “Meticulous Painting” and I kept plenty busy making decent money.
One thing I really loved about the work was, after I’d finish a job, I could stand back and look at the home and clearly see and appreciate the results.
And, more importantly, the home owner could also look at the work and easily tell that I’d done a really good job.
Fast forward to when I earned my Master’s in Market Research and worked as a “Data Scientist“…before that term even existed)
One part of my job would be to meet with “C-level” executives and explain to them the Advanced statistical work I’d done and what it meant for the company.
I learned very quickly that, sadly, the vast majority of people had no clue what a “Regression Tree” was or what CHAID analysis was.
And those were the “simple” things I did❗
Nor did they understand, or appreciate, the complexities of working with multicollinearity (variables that are highly-correlated to each other).
Even worse was that even my boss had no clue what I was doing and had no realistic way to evaluate how good of a job I had done.
It reminds me of programming with AutoHotkey.
We often tackle very complicated automations and come up with very “cool” solutions.
They can see that our solutions are robust, however most our clients have to just “take it on faith” that the issue was “difficult” to solve because, anything beyond the basics looks like “Greek” to them.
To our clients that hire us to do work for them, we demonstrate how the tool works.
During our AHK Hero calls, we show Hero members the “magic behind the curtain”.
Now on with the show…
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Most Exciting thing I’ve seen with AutoHotkey in Years!
Isaias was working for a client on a project and revisited working with the Windows Runtime model (WindowsRT).
In this video Isaias showed me how he was using AutoHotkey to Record audio without using other tools (Like ffmpeg or BASS.dll). But we dive deeper into what his work implies for us using AutoHotkey.
Think of it like another “COM Object” approach for automating Windows Methods / Functionality.
This is going to be an ENORMOUS game changer! Expect more videos & scripts to follow!
Revisiting Windows Runtime – 20th way to Automate Windows with AutoHotkey
Speaking of New: This Functionality is available in AHK v2.1
Isaias wrote a cool “simple“ script for me the other day.
I went to run it and it “complained” that it required AHK v2.1. I didn’t want to bug him so I tried just changing it to requiring v2.0+ but quickly realized that, in that “simple script” he’d leveraged something that actually did require v2.1.
So I asked him to fix it but decided to “hit record” so we could all learn.
You can check out the cool new thing available in v2.1 in this video.
One New Functionality in AutoHotkey v2.1
Using AI to SuperCharge the AHK Newsletter
When I was working on the newsletter last week I realized AI could help me on this newsletter. In particular, not only could it verify all the URLs (ensuring I linked to the correct topic) and that the links were valid but also checking if I should have included more links to the AutoHotkey documentation, our YouTube Videos, or our AHK scripts.
This was easier than anticipated because of our the-Automator Resource Finder has all those links!
Check it out in this video
Using AI to to help with the AutoHotkey Newsletter
️♀️Improving People’s Lives: Story #56
Years ago we had a client reach out to us to help him with his “golf game” (both literally and figuratively).
You see, he had a very advanced golf game that he used to improve his golf swing and wanted to use a remote control to “reset” the game after his swing.
We made it super-easy for him to use and it allowed him to stay focused on what mattered (perfecting his swing).
He was gushing with praise by the end of the call❗
What we’re reading
- Microsoft is fixing Biggest Problem With Excel PivotTables
- Sick of being tracked? These Browsers put your privacy first
- Home Assistant is getting Better on Android
- Windows 11 is rolling out 14 New Features
- AutoHotkey in the spotlight / news
AI / Chat GPT-3 News / Usage
- Some great AI tools for Creativity and Productivity
- Use one API for many models for Text or Images
- Convert URLs to any format at URLtoAny.com
- The A-Z AI literacy Guide (I learned a lot from this video)
- AI Jargon, Demystified: Understanding Key Concepts for Effective AI Use
⚡️Productivity tips: F12 in VS code
In VS Code you can jump to the definition by selecting your item and hitting F12
A spot of Humor: Best Tech Support
The IT Crowd 4×05 the best scene ever
What we utomated this week with AutoHotkey #95
In this week’s episode of what we automated with AutoHotkey was interesting. We worked on 118 AutoHotkey files and I walk through some of the cooler ones I’ve been doing using AI.
What we Automated with AutoHotkey #95
I show how we updated a couple of our tools so they accept Command Line Parameters.
Client’s 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 442 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
- Demonstrating 20th way to Automate Windows with AHK: Windows RT
- Update to Clipster– wait for clipboard format
- Need to fix the file copy and RTF
- New Functionality in AHK 1 – Taking Fat Arrows a step further❗
- Use one class but many models for Text or images
- Waiting for user to select Menu / if click off menu
- AI Instructions – Use File Object not file append (but leave ini read/write alone)
- Passing Parameters to your Tools
- Transcribe & Summarize
- Applying at scale
- Named verse Un-named parameters
- Capturing Syntax Errors
- Breaking Logs into Incremental Files
- Debug configuration – Switching between scripts in VS Code
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 best way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing — Walt Disney
- What gets measured gets improved
- Learn how to calculate the future cost of your bad decisions — Joe Glines
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Joe, Isaias, Irfan and staff
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P.S. A lot of people hear about AutoHotkey, give it a try and think it is “rubbish” because they only tried the simplest ways to automate (usually sending keystrokes & mouse clicks).
It’s a bummer because we know 20 ways to automate programs with AutoHotkey.
The vast majority of which are far more reliable than sending keystrokes / mouse clicks.
