David M Hood

AutoHotKey (AHK) is a god-send for anyone looking to make their computing faster and easier.  Downloading AutoHotKey and learning the basics, and eventually, more advanced features has opened up an amazing world of computer expediency.

What originally drew me into AutoHotKey’s seductive web was how amazingly easy it was to speed up basic computer tasks.  I have programmed in more languages than I care to count, so you may be skeptical aof my use of the phrase “amazingly easy.”  However, I believe someone with no programming experience could easily do some basic AHK tasks to speed up their interactions with their computer.

Simple AHK Use:

For example, there is a set of websites that I go to frequently and I don’t want to have to open up a new browser window or tab, click the address box, and then type the a website address in to get to my desired website – thats just too slow!  Instead, I can press a 2 or 3 key combination and all of the above is done for me.  The following line opens a new browser tab and goes to ESPN’s main NBA page when I press Control + Alt + B: “^!b::Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index“  To someone new that might look confusing and fancy, but really there are 3 simple parts to it:

“^!b” – The keys to press.   “^” represents the Control key.  “!” represents the Alt key.  “#” and “+” can be used for the Win and Shift key respectively.   “b” represents the B key.  “::” separates the the keys from the command(s).  “Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index” is the command that opens up a new web browser or tab and takes me to ESPN’s NBA page.

If you’ve downloaded AutoHotKey and AutoHotKey.ahk is running (a little green and white H in the bottom right tray bar), you can right click on the green and white H, select “edit,” and add the line I quoted above.  Then save the file and right click on the H again and select “reload.”  Now when you press Control + Alt + B ESPN’s NBA website will open up.  You can easily chang ethe “b” to a different key and the website to any website, folder, file, or program path.

With each Hot Key combination, it may only save you 5-10 seconds each time you use it, but over time that really adds up – especially when you combine it with multiple time-saving scripting actions.

Simple+ Use:

You can do a lot more with AHK than just quickly running or opening something by just adding a few more tools to your arsenal.  You can have more than one command attached to a quick key set simply by going to the next line after the “::” and then ending the command set with “return” on the line after the last line of commands.   There are some sets of files/folders/programs/etc that I want to open all at once.  I can set that up to happen by just pressing a few keys.  For example:

^!b::

Run www.nba.com

Run http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/index

Run C:\somedoc.doc

Run C:\somexls.xls

Run C:\somefolder

return

The previous code will open both the websites, the folder and both files when Control + Alt + B are pressed.

There are other useful commands that you can likely understand and use easily.  For example, “Send blahblah” sends “blahblah” as if you typed it on a keyboard.  This is useful for sending long usernames or passwords (I recommend against really important passwords).

You can also use MouseMove X, Y and Click which are relatively self-explanatory.

Another easy tool is Auto-Replace:  “::btw::by the way” will automatically replace “btw” with “by the way” (you need to type space, comma, or other ending characters after btw to activate).

If you still want to learn more, I’ll post about some useful easy tools later.  Also, I recommend the AHK Forums and the help file that comes with AHK is really useful.

Cable TV is expensive and with many people trying to cut back expenses (like me), many are choosing between no cable TV and paying quite a bit of money per month.  The cheapest I could find that fills my TV requirements (HD and DVR) is DishHD for $40/month.  The hardware and channel selection isn’t as good as if I got cable, but cable costs $50+/month for HD + DVR.  I’ve had no cable for a while before because there are few shows that I actually want to watch on a regular basis.  However, there are a few shows that Jacqueline and I are hooked on and we have a newborn at home that limits our ability to do things together outside the home (not for much longer I hope).  Therefore, it will make entertaining while holding/feeding/taking care of our baby difficult without cable, so we would heavily prefer some form of TV entertainment.  But I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for 3-5 shows + sports.  Luckily there’s a 3rd solution that I’m seriously considering doing – setting up a home media center that plays media from the internet or another computer on my home network.

What has stopped me from setting up a home media center instead of having cable TV was the lack of TV shows that I could legally acquire and the serious lack of live sports available.  Nowadays, almost all my shows are obtainable free and legally with Hulu and its like.  Everyday more shows are going online.  The only hit is live sports – which hurts because I really enjoy watching basketball (there is NBA League Pass online, but a large portion of them are blocked out and the quality is inconsistent).  There are also additional bonuses with using a media center that somewhat offset lack of watching live sports like easily watching shows from current media collection, utilizing netflix online (we have a small subscription), and more.

I’m already paying for internet, so setting up a home media center is really just about up-front hardware costs and maybe some time spent every once in a while updating software or playing with settings (some of which I will enjoy).  After searching around eBay and other sources for “XBMC”, “Boxee”, “Media Center”, and others it looks like this can be done with little to no work for as low as $150 (about 3.75 months of paying $40/month for cable.  I don’t want to spend more than $300 (7.5 months @ $40/month) unless its really awesome.  If I want to put more work in it, I may be able to take an extra desktop computer I have thats barely being used and make it workable for very little to no money.  The only problem with the extra computer is that it may be too big to fit in an aesthetically appealing way in our living room.

[A few days later...]After working on my extra computer, I’ve got it working with a wireless keyboard and wireless network card that we already had.  The wireless network card was necessary because the media center will be all the way across the house from the office where our router is.  After installing XBMC (the extra computer doesn’t have a Media Center version of Windows on it) and setting it up for the local network, I was able to play videos directly off my main computer flawlessly through XBMC.  Total cost $0!  However, even with a wireless keyboard that works just fine from where I sit to watch TV, we still want a remote.  I bought a new one off eBay for $13 (free shipping).  An added unexpected bonus to the remote is that its supposed to be able to control the mouse cursor.  Total real cost to replace cable: $13!  Awesome.

You, dear reader, may not have already had the hardware that I had to make this possible.  If you don’t have a router (I think most people do.  If you have two or more computers hooked up to the internet, then you do.), thats an additional cost of about $50.  I also already had an extra decent computer (it came with a mouse and keyboard) that I was able to get off craigslist for $100 in about September of 2008.  A good search tool for Craigslist is CraigsPal.  I also already had a wireless network card (Linksys wireless-g pci adapter) which can be had for around $20 on eBay.  The XBMC software is free.  That would bring the total to $183 for a whole media center system.  Thats about 4.5 months @ $40/month cable or 3.66 months @ $50/month cable bill.  Most people probably have a router already, so I would expect it to cost to be $133 (3.8 or 2.66 months of cable).

You can also just get a Linksys Wireless Media Center Extender for $80 off of eBay if you have a router and Windows Media Center on one of your home computers.  However, this solution has its own limitations (read the reviews here).  Many of the solutions that are one big package will have similar issues – not being able to play some file formats and not being able to stream off of hulu, youtube, netflix, etc.  Which is why I like that I’ve done it with a computer.  Perhaps someone could design or already has designed a product that is a slimmed down operating system (either a minimal Windows install or some version of Linux) that has a small (in size) hard drive + wireless/wired network connections + appropriate media outputs for $100-$150…

Once the media center is setup and payed for itself, I expect to save $420/year if I cancel my TV completely.  I’m also considering just slimming down to local plus sports channels – which costs ~$11 with DishNetwork – and saving about $350/year.  If you’re paying $50/month for cable, thats $600 or $530 per year.  Putting the costs aside, there are some positives and negatives to having a media center instead of cable.  For example, with a media center I get no live sports, but I can easily display pictures and play music and I have access to a larger selection and wider variety of video.  On top of that, the amount of video available online is growing significantly every year.  Plus, I find it fun to mess around with =)

I’ve just been informed by DishNetwork that I’ve signed a 2 year contract where I have to have at least the minimum package ($20).  Oh well.  At least I can get a little savings with more features.