Its nearly time for the Eusprig conference on spreadsheet risk etc. (Thursday 5th July, glad you asked)
Here is the link, if you can make it and are involved in spreadsheet development, modelling or management its well worth a few hours of your time. Its at Imperial this year.
I’m a bit out of that world these days, I am waiting for the Excel extensibility conf in October.
But I would recommend Eusprig to anyone, lots of valuable info and contacts.
cheers
simon
In an alarming and uncharacteristic case of actually doing what I said I would I just pulled the trigger on a new(ish) lapper.
I went for a Dell xps, I got a windas one rather than linux cos I can just partition it anyway. That way if I need to work slooowly or pick up viruses I can use windas.
Theoretically it should be smaller lighter and faster than this cackbook, we’ll see… It would be nice also if it didn’t run so hot, and maybe if the battery lasted more than 20 mins – one can but hope…
I was mainly persuaded to update my Microsoft world as I am back doing a decent amount of ExcelDNA development. And I am currently working on a big 2010-2016 migration and my spidey senses tell me that might not be a bad career move for the next 12m or so.
Don’t take it as a vote of approval for the latest Microsoft creations. I think Windows 10 and Office 2016 are utterly shit. But they are still popular. Whenever I am working in this new stuff I just feel like I am using something a 13 year old ‘designed’. All valueless whistles and bells no core features or performance. I am astounded every day by just how slow and unresponsive it is, for simple stuff like opening a file. Often I have forgotten what I was doing by the time the dialog has deigned to appear. (I am knocking on though I guess..)
One (begrudging ;-) ) positive for MS though is the quality and amount of stuff they are finally giving away these days. A usable Visual studio – free, SQL server Express – a proper database – free, SQL Server Management Studio – free. Just need to put me hand in me pocket for Office, not bad at all. If Visual studio was as good as intelliJ I could almost convert. not. (Well maybe if they brought back the MSDN roadshows with those lovely little danish pastries)
Still chipping away at the Android too, I wasted a whole day not being able to find a completely stupid mistake I made the other day. It would be funny if I didn’t have so many better things to do with that wasted time. And I know I’ll do the same again (soon), perhaps with a different tech though.
cheers
simon
I’m working on Win10/Office 2016 these days, well I spend most of my time waiting for it. And shaking my head…
I was on the beta programs for Office 2007 and 2010 and those early betas were more reliable and performant than this ‘production’ 2016.
I have a feeling its a lot to do with Windows rather than Office, but my god its slow.
Alt tf to get options – 3 second wait before the dialog come up. Alt f11 for VBA, 5 seconds before the editor lethargically appears.
I know I am not on a super computer, but its not a total lemon either, a perfectly serviceable corporate machine. Or it would be without this combo.
10 seconds to open Excel, but its all forgiven because they have animated the activecell movement when you change selections.
10 seconds to open Word but its all ok, they animate the carriage return…
for real…
In ye olden days I had a dumb terminal onto a mainframe across a phone line that was more responsive.
All the animations made me sick, and not just because of the wasted cycles, so I turned it off in Windoze settings. Does some Microsoft UX expertidiot really fucking think people want to watch the computer slooowly respond to basic commands, slooowly???
Its like back in the day when we didn’t turn screenupdating off so it looked like we were doing the work manually instead of tossing it off in a little netscape window to geocities and alta vista.
Today alone I had five 10 minute plus application freezes, Excel, SQL Server Management studio, notepad++, and some other stuff. And Windoze Explorer crashed. This is what makes me think its at least as much a Windows problem as Office.
I was thinking I might consider a wondows lapper next now macbooks are shit, but it looks like it would be unusably slow or uncarriably heavy and bulky (and probably too powerful for a battery so coming with a 50m power cable on a reel). Never mind their ridiculous intrusive prove you’re not a pirate, frequently, features.
So maybe it will be a linux Dell finally, as system 76 only offer US keyboards (and sticker sets for johnny foreigners (like me)).
Unless you have a better suggestion for a (non wonkdoze) laptop?
How is your win10 Office 2016 experience?
cheers
simon
is real
well I bet that’s what those lawyers hope anyway.
I bet you thought it was just me being a grumpy bad loser, but no, its true, no one wants to employ unmanageable grumpy old farts who won’t do what they are told by inexperienced buzzword bingoistas. Or maybe that’s just me??
Talking of which is anyone having issues with pivot table refreshes being slooooow in Excel 2016?
Excel 2016 is breathtakingly slow, I keep having to remind myself it is actually meant to be production code, not alpha. Or maybe my new lapper is not up to the job.
I heard Cray were the only ones certified ‘Ready for Office 2016’, and maybe Big Blue?(The IBM tompooter not the epic Blackpool big dipper ride). Its a big investment just to manage shopping lists…
btw – today I have mainly been doing doing XLM in Excel 2016. Get in!
(Thank you Excel team for your consistently epic backwards compatibility story)
You know you are on the long tail when Google insists on ‘correcting’ your technology.
XML my arse
Cheers
simon
Smurf on Spreadsheets 