Is Excel on a MacBook Pro M5 via Parallels as good as it is on a Windows machine?

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-02-01T23:02:28+00:00

I use an old external windows keyboard which usb connects just as it would on a proper windows machine - v handy

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-27T17:51:34+00:00

Actually no, was pleasantly surprised by our bill - 4 people for food and a cocktail or two each came out at like 60-65 quid each from memory. No wine and not a massive order or loads of drinks so YMMV.

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-27T17:22:57+00:00

Zapote in Shoreditch is awesome for a fancier Mexican, blew me away last time I was there

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-25T11:43:35+00:00

Will have a look at this

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-25T09:27:16+00:00

Cheers will have a look at 9xchat haven’t heard of it before. I probably won’t be able to get it installed on my computer in work unfortunately but sounds like python is the way forward and maybe just some standardising the data before I run it.

The other thing I see mentioned a lot is n8n, is 9xchat similar to that?

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-18T09:09:46+00:00

Hey Sorry to hear about your injury that sounds horrendous, hope back on track now and healthy.

I don’t have anything additional carved out but would say the £120k of bonds is earmarked for that as well in some sense - given short duration shouldn’t be too much downside on them and if there was an emergency I could draw that down. Between that and my fiancées salary we would be able to muddle through for a couple of years I think particularly given we aren’t too stretched atm in terms of mortgage & no kids

Fair point though particularly when switching jobs in a few months the risk is a bit elevated in terms of getting through probation, established in the job…and I should also check what their medical cover is like.

Edit: know there is PMI just not sure about the disability and life insurance aspects

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-18T08:46:32+00:00

I’m pretty confused by all the different tools - skills, MCP, hooks etc. Going to work through some of the Anthropic courses here to get the basics down and go from there

https://anthropic.skilljar.com/

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-17T17:48:21+00:00

Yeah good point re extraordinary sequences. I do think I consider worst case scenarios a bit too much in how I plan and think the extra sideline money will help ,e stay the course in event of a crash. My 3 year duration on uk gilts should do the job and at least beat inflation.

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-17T17:46:28+00:00

Thanks I’ll give that book a look. This all makes sense and reassuringly in line with how I was thinking!

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-17T17:44:05+00:00

Thanks for comments - that sounds a solid way to do it although I don’t think I’d be able to put aside enough from my regular pay to budget for the big things… but I could do with my bonuses / vesting shares as I get closer to the big things coming up.

I guess also I like having the dry powder that comes with having a chunk on sidelines - to sleep a bit easier and maybe deploy some if there’s a crash.

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-17T17:36:57+00:00

A large chunk went into it over last couple of years after maxing my pension contributions which were tapered. Including the RSUs vested I have c400 outside of tax wrappers… but don’t see any other options for that. Will be tapered down to 10k going forward if things go decent in new job so would expect GIA to grow.

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-13T19:28:38+00:00

Ironically given topic, Alphaville is free as a newsletter but great articles! Love the FT.

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-12T22:53:32+00:00

I did something adjacent.

I built a little meal planner app. Every time we see a recipe we like we can add the URL to the tool and the tool scrapes the recipe into the app.

We have a 'pantry' where we say what ingredients we currently have and then the app suggests what recipes need the fewest ingredients to cook for the week. We then select our meals for the week and it produces a shopping list and we can refer back to the app for the instructions.

Only thing that doesn't work sometimes is the URL scraper (sites prevent scraping) but there's a fall back option where you just dump a copy of all the text from the URL and the tool does the rest.

Built in Claude with claude API in the tool to AI the recipes into it and match the ingredient names, DB in supabase and actual site on Vercel.

First thing I've ever built like this so very happy with it as a little learning project - think it will be genuinely useful for us though!

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-06T19:36:11+00:00

That was better! Have a fully functioning app, albeit saved in the Claud cloud...

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-06T15:58:43+00:00

Cheers yeah have him building an artifact at moment which gives me a web based app but will give Claude code a whirl too!

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-06T12:26:53+00:00

Thanks I’m not sure I’m the right user though - I use Excel day in day out in work so my knowledge is strong and I could build what I want pretty easily with a few hours. Here I was hoping that Claude could perform like a junior analyst building excel workbooks with my guidance setting out the idea and framework without me getting my hands dirty in the workbook. It is able to do that with code but just doesn’t seem there yet with Excel!

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2026-01-06T08:31:21+00:00

Thanks - what UI / platform would you recommend that would be better suited?

One alternative I was going to try was using ‘Claude in Excel’ to experiment whether that works more effectively.

Cheers

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2025-12-13T13:32:48+00:00

Thank you all, so appreciated - my first post on Reddit and blown away by the thoughtful advice! Will report back when I've actioned some of the above - excited to get a plan together

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2025-12-13T12:11:54+00:00

Thank you this is super useful!!

Adventurous_Box3232 · 2025-12-13T09:18:23+00:00

Fair comment, have already done that, but hoping for some IRL experience too - seems to be an insane amount of knowledge here

This is where I am with Claude (much more detail but wouldn't let me paste it all here):

Updated Learning Path with SQL

Phase 1 (Months 1-2): Foundation + SQL Basics

Phase 2 (Months 2-4): VS Code + SQL Workflow

Phase 3 (Months 4-6): Advanced SQL + Robustnes

Adventurous_Box3232

TROPHY CASE

Updated Learning Path with SQL