Posted by
Andy Brown
on 05 September 2024
Most of the changes in the July and August updates to Power BI are either too insignificant to merit a write-up here or else are for features in preview. For most report-writers the ability to document DAX measures is the only change which will make much difference in these two updates.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 04 September 2024
Learning to use AI tools has been a journey for us, although not one which we thought would take in broccoli cats and Neanderthal film reviews. In this blog we look at the 3 best and 3 worst things we've found when using AI tools like ChatGPT.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 18 September 2024
We have always provided the best courseware, exercises and standard of training in the industry, but now we have the CPD certification to prove it!
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 01 August 2024
In creating our two-day course on using AI tools we found a few sources of help particularly useful, and thought we'd take this opportunity to acknowlege them.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 22 July 2024
Having recently compared the 4 main AI tools for text prompts, I thought I'd do the same for image generation tools. In this blog series we compare Dall-E (via ChatGPT and separately via Copilot), Firefly, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for 3 pre-defined tests to see which ones score most highly for cost, ease-of-use, speed, editing ability and above all for quality of image.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 16 July 2024
I'm sick of reading blogs pretending to explain how Large Language Models work, when the truth is that few people on earth can ever hope to understand how they are constructed. This blog is my attempt to explain as much as 99.99% of us can ever hope to understand about how AI works, and why the other bits will always remain opaque to most people.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 15 July 2024
In this blog we'll compare OpenAI's Chat GPT 4, Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 and Microsoft's Copilot to see which AI tool gives the best results for different types of queries.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 04 July 2024
We've created clues to help you identify 16 different books (they're all well-known). The more you can guess, the greater will be your chances of winning our £50 voucher!
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 03 July 2024
"Is the periodic table yummy? Well, it depends on the element." Any website containing this text bears further investigation. Watch the epic spaceman shrink down by a factor of 10 every 20 seconds until he's the size of an atom, find out how to repair Oreo biscuits using the Japanese art of Kinstugi and learn which elements of the periodic table you should and shouldn't eat: all (and much more) at the Kottke archives.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 03 July 2024
Microsoft are introducing two new functions to Excel: TRANSLATE (to translate passages of text into another language) and DETECTLANGUAGE (to determine the language in which a particular passage of text is written).
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 03 July 2024
You can now add a checkbox to a cell with a single mouse-click. They look good, although it's hard to ensure that only one checkbox in a range is selected.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 20 June 2024
In computing it's enough to solve a problem, but as a bonus it's nice to do so in the most elegant way (although elegance is a subjective quality). This blog gives my 3 favourite ways to solve last month's Excel desert island competition.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 20 June 2024
This month's update to Power BI Desktop adds some seriously arcane functions to DAX, but it's the roll-out of the Power BI Home feature which most people will notice.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 06 June 2024
This month we ask you to travel to the terrifying Skull Island and find the hidden treasure buried there, armed only with some - unlikely - Excel clues
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 05 June 2024
Apologies for making this word search slightly harder than usual - you can see the answer in this blog, as well as discover who was the lucky win of the month's prize
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 05 June 2024
StackOverflow and OpenAI have announced a partnership, but I think it's fair to say that not every StackOverflow user is sold on the idea ... !
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 05 June 2024
If you love Excel and are also a fan of regular expressions, your Christmas has come early! And if like me you don't know how to create regular expressions, you can just get an AI tool to build them for you ...
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 05 June 2024
The Northwest Computer Museum not only has a vast array of old hardware, software, documentation and games on displays, but allows you to interact with much of this. Time to brush up your BBC Basic programming skills?
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 04 June 2024
The PQ How site contains both a reference guide to the M language and lots of links and resources for articles which will help you to learn it.
Posted by
Andy Brown
on 04 June 2024
We thought it might be useful to share the theme that we use for some of our reports, with some annoations, to give you an idea of what's possible when setting default Power BI formatting
