Very interesting programming project. I'll have to give that a try sometime.

For day-to-day automation of stuff, I like to use sikuli [1] which lets you automate pretty much anything in a gui using screenshots. (Their editor is pretty cool). It's a research project so a bit rough around the edges, but still worth your time to check it out if you're at all interested in automation (auto-configuring systems, driving applications, playing flash games, etc)

[1] http://sikuli.csail.mit.edu/