Advent of Code 2020 – And the Winner Is…

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Another year comes to a close and brings with it the end of another excellent Advent of Code. Here at Optima, the spirit of competition remained high throughout; Roy kept up a close tail, but nobody was able to catch Jonners on his way to victory. With that said, Jonners took the Optima trophy, along with the overall prize. In … Read More

Advent of Code 2020 Day 5 – Our Solutions

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Airports can be hectic, especially around Christmas. Nobody wants to get stuck and miss their flight, even if it is completely hypothetical. Advent of Code’s day 5 question deals with a chaotic situation of boarding passes and locating your seat on a plane; seems a distant memory now with all that’s going on in the world… Your given input is … Read More

Advent of Code 2020 Day 1 – Our Solutions

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The holiday season is among us, and that can only mean one thing…Advent of Code is here! Optima is hosting a little internal competition this year to see who can get the most stars. This has genius from all corners of the office, and I thought it would be nice to show off the different thought processes from some of … Read More

Would You Survive the Titanic? – Data Visualisation in Python

James HeslipComputer ScienceLeave a Comment

There are a lot of useful tools out there that can help you see trends and patterns in your data… but how valuable is that in the real world? Recently, I have been looking into Matplotlib and Seaborn – two of Python’s best data visualisation libraries. With the knowledge of these packages (and a few other data science dependencies), you … Read More

How Does a Computer Add Two Numbers Together?

James HeslipComputer ScienceLeave a Comment

Computers are fascinating when you really think about it- how is it that a piece of metal goes from a simple rock in the earth, to being able to do complex arithmetic? Or to be able to remember? In order to understand the more advanced topics, we need to start simple. How does a computer interpret a number? Again, you … Read More

Left and Right Tack in Dyalog APL

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Tack (⊣ ⊢) – What is it good for?! Dyalog APL offers two symbols which do, on the surface, a seemingly pointless task. I’m referring to left tack (⊣) and right tack (⊢). As with most APL functions, they have two uses depending on their number of arguments: monadic, if used only with a right argument; or dyadic if used … Read More

Rendering HTML in Dyalog APL

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I was inspired by the talks of Brian Becker and Josh David at the Dyalog’19 user meeting to try out some of Dyalog 17.1’s newer methods of GUI implementation. On the Sunday 8th of September – the unofficial first day of the conference- I attended their workshop on rendering HTML in Dyalog APL. Realising the potential for modernisation in our … Read More

Indexing arrays in APL: Squad indexing on multi-dimensional arrays

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I had a question for the team in our regular meeting on Wednesday, but it relied on an understanding on squad indexing, and nobody felt comfortable enough with ⌷ to answer my question. I’ve since reach a conclusion and thought I’d share.Squad indexing vs. Square bracket indexing ⎕←cube←?3 4 5⍴7 4 3 4 1 1 5 5 7 6 3 … Read More

DisplayPort No Signal – How to Fix This Issue

James HeslipTechnologyLeave a Comment

How to fix the displayport no signal issue in Windows 10 title image

DisplayPort no signal: The question “have you tried turning it off and on again?” gets joked about a lot in computing; when someone has a problem, it’s well known that a quick reboot often works a treat. I recently faced a hardware issue on my PC at home whereby one of my two monitors seemed to suddenly no longer connect … Read More

How Have Video Games Changed Our Lives?

James HeslipFunLeave a Comment

How have video games changed our lives?

I’m an avid gamer, and I feel lucky to have grown up witnessing this modern age of gaming. With graphics and hardware capabilities at an all time high, story tellers can create an immersive virtual reality and even begin to place the players directly into the game. If this isn’t suitable, they can bring the game into the real world. … Read More

Origins of the QWERTY Keyboard Layout

James HeslipFunLeave a Comment

I am only human, and with that, I tend to forget things. I find that if I don’t write an important task down, I won’t remember to do until it’s too late. Naturally as a programmer my instinct when it comes to making quick notes is my keyboard, not pen and paper. This all got me thinking, where did the … Read More

Bridging the Gap Between APL and Python

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Bridging the gap between APL and python - A blog.

One of the things I was most looking forward to at Dyalog ’17 was Marinus Oosters’ presentation of Py’n’APL. I caught a brief glimpse of his work on a webinar beforehand, and it was enough to inspire me to start learning Python in my spare time. Py’n’APL is a bridge between Python and APL; It allows you to execute Python … Read More

Dyalog ’17 Elsinore – Day 1

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Gitte Christensen at Dyalog '17 Day 1

Dyalog ’17 Day 1 – Monday September 11th 2017 Welcome to Dyalog ’17 – Gitte Christensen, Managing Director (CEO) The conference started with a warm welcome by the CEO of Dyalog, Gitte Christensen. She highlighted just how important these conferences are for the company by pointing out that there is only one member of staff left to man the office, … Read More

Using a gaming mouse at work

James HeslipTechnologyLeave a Comment

I recently purchased a new mouse for use in the office. It’s the same model I use at home (mainly for gaming) but it was so useful I thought I could increase my productivity in the office. The typical response when people see this mouse is shock, amazement and most people think it’s unnecessary. I’ve grown so accustomed to it, … Read More

Generating cell refs in Excel

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A problem generating cell refs in excel

In this post James asks for help from his colleagues and the greater APL community regarding problem he has generating cell refs in excel. I’ve been working on a project for our Finance Manager Jenny helping to generate the Networking Finance reports. In a nutshell this involves a query on the Coretime database to retrieve any relevant time entries- those … Read More