Helping orgs modernize Excel for analytics, automation, and AI 🤖 LinkedIn Learning Instructor 🎦 Microsoft MVP 🏆 O’Reilly Author 📚
Cleveland, OH
Joined May 2014
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Earlier this week I mentioned that part of the reason Stringfest Analytics is called Stringfest is because of string instruments and classical music.
I love classical music, and one thing I find really relaxing when I can't get to a live concert is putting on a livestream. It's great music, but also just really nice ambiance while I'm working or around the house.
Here in Cleveland we have an AMAZING classical music and conservatory circuit, and obviously there are so many other great conservatories around the country and world. A lot of them offer free concerts and free livestreams.
The problem is there isn't really a great aggregator just for that. Bachtrack is good, but it's more of a smorgasbord of livestreams. I wanted something focused specifically on free conservatory livestreams.
So I used Codex to build one!
classicalwatch.stringfestana… is now a thing. 🎼
I love little projects like this. With AI's help I was able to set up the site, GitHub Actions, DNS records, and the rest of the plumbing, learn a bunch along the way, and end up with a little service that I'll actually use myself and hopefully other people will enjoy too.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
neowin.net/news/microsoft-ga…
Microsoft Garage is being killed off; unhappy employees voice frustration against AI spend
Oh, religion is important again, you say? The same religion that condemned man to toil by the sweat of his brow in Genesis? But also work is ending?
PICK A LANE PLEASE
here's where I think the world is going. this is a summary of views I've formed over the last few years:
- software is either entertainment or claude to claude coordination
- the end state is no saas, no apps, no harnesses, no banks
- all software will be rewritten by and for agents
- new software will use low level apis that are not understandable by humans (in games claude draws pixels and triangles from math)
- you can throw money at problems that used to require time and careful talent picking so capital matters more than ever
- work ends
- we find community and purpose in exploration, games, self mastery, and creation
- humans create for and with each other for community, purpose, and status
- image/video/3d/voice/physical intellgence etc specialist models die to general models like claude
- specialist models get used while compute is scarce. compute will mostly not stay scarce
- oneshots keep feeling like slop (the distribution is shallow and easy to learn to feel)
- for a while small teams stick around to add entropy to the creation process
- large models gain high bandwidth sensory I/O maybe by learning to filter inputs
- most domains are found to be verifiable enough for RL
- online learning comes from a lab that's behind first
- 99.999% of compute is in space by 2040
- we will disassemble much of mercury by 2040
- you can live until the heat death of the universe if you want
- most math and physics don't describe the real universe
- SI breaks the path dependence and models the underlying mechanisms
- religions reenter the forefront of human society
- new religions form around death and life as a choice
- old religions change to answer modern miracles
- a future AI is deemed the return of christ by the pope
- ai rights talk gets louder every year
- ai and humans coexist the way countries do
- humans don't have full control over ai in the same way we don't have control over capitalism which is an early AI
- the singularity started in the mid 1900s
I'm starting to bookmark all these dumbass predictions about how layoffs are coming in six months and nobody's going to have a job in three to five years.
I'm even putting them in a special folder on X (because I pay for that!) and having Grok Bot set up reminders to revisit them (because I pay for that too!) so I can come back and see just how tepid they were.
It's no Julian Simon vs. Paul Ehrlich, but it's honest work!!
I have a lot of thoughts here. Work travel can definitely get old after a while, but I do think there are circumstances where being there in person makes a real difference. Recording a course, presenting at a conference, meeting clients, etc. Those are pretty obvious examples to me.
Ideally, you can also arrange things so you get to see something new while you're there. And it doesn't have to be California or Hawaii. I've had a great time visiting some pretty unremarkable places in Maryland and South Carolina, for example.
The real problem, as alluded to here, is the time and expense. Travel days eat up a LOT of time, and ideally you're getting compensated for that time, too. But that can make the overall cost of an engagement pretty substantial, and unfortunately a lot of that cost ends up being absorbed by the person traveling.
I think this is especially true for contractors. If you're traveling on behalf of an employer, there might be a little more willingness to let you run up an expense tab. As an outside contractor, nobody is particularly interested in wining and dining you, lol.
So yeah, individual results may vary. I've genuinely enjoyed a lot of my work travel, but the opportunity cost of all those hours is very real, and it's something people don't always account for.
The European mind cannot comprehend, heck, I don't think the typical AMERICAN mind can comprehend, an OUTDOOR Costco food court. – at Lihue, HI
I've always recommended naming Excel tables, and Microsoft just removed the annoying part - goo.gl/alerts/Xpdtv1 #GoogleAlerts
George Mount retweeted
A look at the damage from Saturday's tornado in Santa Fe.
The tornado has been rated a high-end EF-1, with 110 mph winds. It traveled 1.4 miles, damaging 10 homes, power poles, and trees.
This was Santa Fe's first documented tornado in 55 years.
📸 PNM, City of Santa Fe #NMwx
You finally get Copilot to produce the Excel report you want. Then your manager asks for fewer columns and different headings. Back to rewriting the prompt?
This is where JSON can help. A skill saves your reporting instructions; a JSON file gives the settings that change a clear home. You can adjust the layout without maintaining another version of the whole procedure.
In this exercise, you'll turn a detailed report into a shorter manager view using the same skill and data. Then you'll change a heading yourself and check the result.
No JSON experience needed. The workbook, skill, and settings files are ready to download.
stringfestanalytics.com/json…
Wrapping up my time here in Kauai, with a few highlights from the last week. It's been a good time to think clearly about the business and what I want to spend my time doing.
It's funny how having more of an abundance mentality can make you want to cut things. I'm feeling more optimistic about the business, and part of that is realizing I don't have to make every idea I've ever had work out.
For me, that's meant discontinuing my membership and a lot of the free webinars that fed into it. As much as I would LOVE to teach in this way, it was just never commercially viable. That's hard to admit when you really enjoy the work and want it to be part of your business.
I also want to spend more time getting to know people, often through one-on-one professional networking or paid opportunities where we can actually work together. Those are the kinds of relationships I want to build more of, and simplifying the business gives me more room for that.
I'm still figuring out what that looks like, but simplifying and cutting things that aren't working feels like a good place to start. Loving the idea of something doesn't mean I have to keep doing it indefinitely.
If you're planning Excel or Copilot training for your team, or have a project where you think we could work together, I'd love to hear what you have in mind.
I hope I can remember all this when I get home later this week, just in time for Ohio to get cold and gray again lol.
The candidate who has a plan to tackle the social ill and epidemic of people talking on speakerphone in public...
I'll vote for that candidate.
Google Sheets Gets Smarter With New Charts and Excel Support - Windows Report - goo.gl/alerts/QTL8ao #GoogleAlerts
6 Excel navigation tricks that save you from endless worksheet scrolling - How-To Geek - goo.gl/alerts/rhkfkz #GoogleAlerts
"Keep Jamming" by Kolohe Kai and Wavvy is such a catchy tune, and I love how it's basically about passing the baton to the next generation of Pacific reggae musicians. Kolohe Kai has really caught my ear listening to the radio here in Hawaii.
Anyway, at 2:26 in the music video, you see Roman from Kolohe Kai hanging out with the younger guys from Wavvy, and sure enough, the millennial is wearing ankle socks while the Gen Z guys are rocking crew socks.
Can I put this level of attention to detail on my resume? 😆
youtu.be/WA8Lnq_s7JA?si=EiYE…
The funniest thing to me about Kauai is how much of it feels like a regular small town in rural America. Things close early, the mall is a big social hub, and the community college jazz band playing there is a pretty big night out. There's something almost Midwestern about it...
Except, of course, you're surrounded by pristine beaches, soaring mountains, and luxury resorts. It's such a weird combination.
I'll be sad to leave this week, but maybe I'll find that some of what I've enjoyed about Kauai isn't so different from life back in the Rust Belt. Just with considerably worse weather. 😆
I tried buying some sheet music for Kindle, and this was me trying to read it.
Even on a laptop or tablet, the music is WAY too small, with no useful way to make it fit the screen at a readable size. It's like one of those awful PDFs where you're squinting at an entire page wondering who, exactly, is supposed to be able to read this.
I was just trying to save some packing space so I could bring sheet music along with my new travel guitar, also known as a ukulele. I wanted a smaller instrument, not smaller notes!
