Wise Owl's monthly (ish) news tweet | Issue 88 - June 2025

The items included in this newsletter are listed below. Our newsletter go out about once a month - if you'd like to subscribe, just let us know!

Claude's system prompt, an updated comparison of AI tools ... and creating your own AI starter pack

Did you know Anthropic publish the system prompt for their excellent Claude AI tool? It makes fascinating reading.

While on the subject of AI tools, we've updated our comparison of 4 leading AI tools, although the results are surprisingly similar to what they were last year.

And finally on AI, how to create your own starter pack:

All you need is a source photograph and the willingness to jump on an Internet bandwagon which has long since left the station!

You can now see value tokens for Excel data types, and also (using Copilot) clean tables of data.

You can now show value tokens in cells containing currency, geography, stock or any other data types to show that they are special:

In other update news, Excel also now lets you clean tables of data (providing you have Copilot within Excel).

We've incorporated matplotlib into our Python course - and written a deep dive blog about it too

Matplotlib is a vast tool, allowing you to create any chart type you want and to format it within inches of its life:

We've now included matplotlib in our 3-day fast-track Python course, and also written a deep-dive blog showing you how you can get started with creating matplotlib charts using Python.

Changes included in the May 2025 Power BI Desktop update

The main change in last month's update was improvements to editing the text-based TMDL model view in Power BI Desktop, but there are also minor improvements to line chart segment formatting and to Azure base map display. Microsoft's main focus remains (sadly, in Wise Owl's opinion) on extending the use of Copilot within Power BI Desktop - here are the 3 reasons why we're not covering these changes (at least yet).

Our own Rick Gould explains the attraction of body-building and of attending fitness exhibitions

Rick (one of the 7 Wise Owl trainers) has been attending fitness and body-building exhibitions for many years, at which he gets to meet people like this:

This photo shows Rick with Wesley Vissers (2024's double Arnold Classic Physique winner - he's the one on the left). In this blog Rick explains the attraction of attending body-buiilding exhibitions, and shares the app and also the fitness regime that he uses.

This month's competition (with a chance to win £50), plus the results and winner from last month

Congratulations to Ian Nolan for winning last month's codeword competition: you can see the answer here.

This month we're asking you to work out what's on our plate - we have 8 starters, 8 main courses and 8 desserts to choose from. To give you an idea, this would be a Chicken Caesar Salad (that's Mo Salah, the Liverpool striker, on the right):

The more correct answers you get, the greater will be your chances of winning our randomly chosen £50 prize at the end of June, but it's worth entering the competition even if you have gaps on your meal table!

Note that to keep our website content up-to-date we only publish newsletters from the last 3 calendar years.

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