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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 20h

Missed the chance to vote, but this is amazing. Love it. By coincidence I'm going to the cinema to watch the Hitchcock film this evening! Hope you win.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 22h

A really good point made with a great mix of charts including some beautiful significant historical examples.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

#PowerAutomate #Copilot is the worst of all possible AIs. An awful, awful experience every time I use it. I think the success rate would be higher if I just let my cat walk all over my keyboard.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

In the latest instalment of "I've been using #Excel for 30 years, how am I still so dumb" I just learnt that "macro" is short for *macroinstruction*. Only been making #macros for 28½ years....

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

How have I been working with #Excel for 30 years, used MIN() and MAX() regularly, but never even heard of SMALL() and LARGE() which have the added advantage of being able to find the 2nd Smallest or 3rd Largest by adding a number as the 2nd argument? It spills too!

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

It's interesting that the badness of the design to some degree masks the actual factual error.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My mega-AI prompt has hit page 7. Hoping it can handle the task with the available bandwidth I have.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My thoughts on this have really been challenged recently working with a colleague who is better than me at #DAX (or at least converting C# code into DAX in #TabularEditor), but knows nothing about #PowerQuery. His DAX scenarios work quickly while I'm still watching the spinning wheel of death in PQ

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

:: Without AI. You are doing the Lord's work indeed.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ah right. I did not know that, but now that I do I can recall situations where an ALL() was not working and I felt it should have and had to resort to something else. Thanks

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I've been more intentionally learning SQL for a year now. This week I got to recursive CTEs and it has not gone well...

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Excellent, if terrifying article

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Pretty shocking that it turns out the cartoon was underselling it

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

How is the Sort By column impacting the CALCULATE()?

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I love these stories of errors by data analysts that have huge, far-reaching impact. Makes me feel a little less bad about my own occasional slip-up. Ordinarily I usually have some sympathy for the people making the error, but here it's exposure has been strangely muted.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thanks. By the way, that is the nicest 3D Area chart I have ever seen. Not exactly up against much competition, but still.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Do you think the coloured pie chart is deliberately eccentric (in the proper sense of the word) and if so, why?

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I don't get why this doesn't also bring the active tab onscreen (as in scroll it along so it's one of the tabs that is showing, rather than being off-screen)

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Lots of chat about using AI to create your documentation / comments on your data models etc., but (aside from basic manners) would it not be more effective to trust that your successor (if you even have one) can just plug you're code into AI for themselves?

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It's a great concept because I think most actors are far more conscious of this kind of thing than the viewers and it's a great way to talk about the art of the film rather than just reeling off well-worked anecdotes. The earliest-done colour ave. I've seen was in book for PRINCE OF EGYPT FROM 1998

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Reposted by GoatShipMate

Andy Kirk @visualisingdata.com · 01/10/2026

Just come across these interviews on Instagram with movie stars where they’re challenged to guess the films they’ve been in/directed based on the average colours on screen across the duration of the movie. Tom Cruise is very good at it www.instagram.com/reel/Dd848fK...

Tom cruise guessing Mission Impossible’s colours

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I seem to remember @wynhopkins.bsky.social suggested in the last but one episode of @unpivotshow.bsky.social that the Query Dependencies view was not going to change any time soon? Apologies if it was someone else, but at the time I certainly shared your pessimism.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

These little fellas are a real step forward though. The "Query" one lets you choose between viewing the whole query formula or just that step. The "Diagram view" lets you see a new interface of the relationships. It's messy but lots more functionality. #PowerQuery #PowerBI

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The query folding indicators are a good way to encourage good practice and overcome a perceived weakness of the system – its slowness.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Microsoft obligingly providing extra material for this thread by getting rid of the Quick access toolbar in #PowerQuery. Needless vandalism. I'm utterly reliant on using Alt+2 to open the editor window. A slap in the face for those of us trying to take the product seriously.

Screen grab of the – now empty – area where the quick access toolbar used to reside, and a higlight of where I have to click from here on in.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Ooh. The September update of #PowerBI now has icons for each step in #PowerQuery. Looks a bit busy with my use of a ♠ to highlight unstraightforward steps, but that's my issue! What do you think about this?

Screen grab of the "applied steps" window in Power Query with some example names and the new (and my old) icons showing. "Source" is preceded by a csv icon, Filtered Rows by a filter icon etc.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And now for today's issue: Adding in extra clicks to be able to see the most basic card visual. I just want a quick count people. Why have you got me clicking round to "Restore default visuals" just to reveal 3 more visuals. Sidebar: I'm also not sure you understand what "default" means. #PowerBI

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Meant to add to this one a while ago, the ability to have a Quick Access menu was there (only briefly in my 5½ years) and now isn't. Even just an Alt+F12 shortcut for "Transform data would be nice".

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I knocked up a little system to automatically track the files I've been working on. #AutoHotKey notes down any changes of the active window in a .csv, #PowerQuery tidies it up in #Excel. Not sure if the conditional formatting is a bit much: it's uncouth but useful, I guess.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Not a fan of Prue, and, while I carried on for a few seasons more, it was never the same without Mel and Sue.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It has no numbers, but it still has data. Text is data. Even non-aggregatable data is still data.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've spent the day doing things in Excel and thinking, "I could really use those "HAS" functions today..."

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Great. Thanks Wyn. Looking forward to it arriving. (Still waiting on naming tables)

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks for adding me to this. I have a lot of new follows as a result.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

...or was it the other way round? = Date.DayOfWeek(#date(2026,9,14)) [a Monday] is now giving 0. Anyway, the lesson I've learned is to specify which system I want to use rather than accepting the default. Makes it easier for anyone following what I've done as well.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Thank Wyn. I saw the "culture dependent" line. It seems strange that UK, AUS & US are not all the same. And it does seem like the UK's has changed from the default being 0 = Monday to 0 = Sunday, as it broke one of my reports and I fixed it by explicitly stating the day I wanted to be 0.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Thanks Jeff. Something in between! I'll DM you.

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Is anyone else, especially non-US folk, finding that #PowerQuery is not giving the right answers for Date.DayOfWeek()? The documentation seems to say that Sunday is 0. I'm realising it's worth making sure you are getting what you think you are by writing Date.DayOfWeek(CurrentDate, Day.Sunday)

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GoatShipMate @goatshipmate.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Here's a little #PowerBI dashboard I finished over the weekend showing all the incidents dealt with by Leicestershire Fire & Rescue Service (using the data they make publicly available on their website).

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