Amazing things I've discovered this week

It's been a week of getting excited about silly things.

 

Shoe heaven - First up, these shoes. Discovered whilst casually walked through my local town and spotted out of the corner of my eye. I did the double-take that everyone who has seen me wearing them since has done. For at first these look like patterned yellow and blue shoes. Get closer and you realise they are minion shoes.

Yes. As in Despicable me.

The designer, Kirsty Needham can customise in whatever style you like. Find her on Facebook at Crystal Jane Customisations.

 

Power your Pivots - I've also had the unusual experience of sitting in a work training session... Yawn... And learning something that will absolutely revolutionise how I work. Good grief that doesn't happen often, so buckle up and prepare yourself for something special. And If you don't use Excel, skip this section now. You either know Vlookups or you don't.

If you do; well I kid you not when I say that that this was the best training session I have ever attended. Ever. My work absolutely depends on my ability to analyse data. I am already a pivot table fan. What I didn't realise was that I've been working with pivot tables for years without fully understanding their ability to group. I know. Stupid.

And when I'd held my head in my hands on at least 10 other different occasions in this training session, having realised how inefficient I had been using Excel, I still didn't realise my mind was going to be blown away by the concept of PowerPivots.

PowerPivots will pivot more than one table together. More than one. Together.

No need to use Vlookups to add further data columns to your original table. Just link them together in a couple of clicks.

Not only that but it can handle 100million lines of data. Yes you read that right.

I'm blown away.

I immediately bought two books on the subject and the first, PowerPivot for the data analyst is a great relaxed, objective and informative read.

Scandal - Finally I found out that they've commissioned a third series of Scandal. A series that I originally discovered on BT Vision on demand on a particularly slow TV night. I was quickly hooked. It's a political thriller created by Greys Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes.

If you can find it on demand I highly recommend catching up and joining us gladiators. Season 3 is on ABC in the USA I believe. Can't wait to catch it here. White hats at the ready!

 

A week of grinning discoveries. What have you discovered this week? What floats your boat?