I tend to read a lot of posts online to keep up with developments in the data industry. This usually consists of keeping an eye on the data engineering subreddit, people I follow on Twitter (no, I’m not calling it “X”, that’s stupid), my LinkedIn network and data topics on Medium. I find this gives me a good blend of opinions and content to keep up to date with things (even if my reading list on Medium is getting wildly out of hand). One thing I find interesting is there seems to be a sense of elitism from some in the community who are quite vocal about what they perceive a Data Engineer to be (or not to be).

The gaming Internet lost its shit yet again earlier this month. This time it was the turn of Xbox fans after information was leaked that Xbox were going to be making some of their exclusive titles available on Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Known for their rational and level-headed approach to speculation, Xbox Twitter quickly descended into claims that Halo, Gears, Forza, Starfield, Indiana Jones and other titles would launch on PS5 and that Xbox would completely stop making hardware and die as a brand. Phew. Xbox boss Phil Spencer added fuel to the fire by not denying the rumours and only stating Xbox would release a business update the following week. So what’s going on?

Somehow we’re here yet again. This little rock of ours has orbited our local fusion reactor again and Christmas is a distant memory. I’ve had a pretty varied year in gaming terms, picking up a load of older games to finally finish them, as well as a couple of new releases. It’s been a lot of fun dipping back into some games that I’d kinda forgotten about. So come with me now on a journey through time and space…

With the impending shutdown of Google Analytics legacy Universal Analytics product in favour of GA4, vendors have been rolling out updated connectors to support native integration between their tools and GA4. One notable absence from these updates was Microsoft’s Power BI, despite numerous requests from users over the past couple of years to provide native GA4 support. Fortunately, it seems with the June release of Power BI Desktop (version 2.118.828.0), Microsoft have released an updated Google Analytics connector in Power Query (a component of Power BI) which provides beta support for GA4 connectivity. I haven’t been able to find any announcement of this update, rather it appeared on some technical documentation for the Google Analytics Power Query connector on Microsoft’s Learn site.

I need your clothes, your boots and your employee ID. OpenAI’s Large Language Model (LLM) chatbot exploded onto the scene last November. In less than a week ChatGPT had over 4 million users and the Internet was awash with examples of prompts used and output from the chatbot. Some of the responses were so good that it didn’t take long for a wave of people claiming ChatGPT would make programmers, writers, support, and a whole host of other roles obsolete. A few months in and the doomsayers are still predicting widespread replacement of humans.

So how accurate are these claims of this particular AI offering taking our jobs?

2022, the year we had more Prime Ministers than hot dinners, energy firms continued to make record profits as people struggled to afford their heating, and Messi finally got his World Cup. It’s maybe just my imagination but it seemes like a rather weak year in terms of new games, at least on Xbox. In saying that however, Xbox Game Pass continued to be a great investment for an eclectic mix of indie games and all the best Microsoft and EA releases (and the £1 renewal trick still works, so I’m locked in for another 3 years). So what’s been on my Xbox for the past year?

“Dead game”. Thus goes the response (usually in more colourful language) on almost every social media post by the official account of Destiny 2. However, Destiny 2 regularly appears in the gameplay charts on Xbox, Playstation, and Steam, proving it has healthy engagement from fans, even four and a half years on from release.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The earth has travelled another 584 million miles or so, people are making all kinds of resolutions about how they’ll be different now that a number has changed, and we’re all looking back at the year just ended. Somehow COVID is still kicking around, although at least here in the UK things are a bit more open than they were, people still can’t get hold of the Playstation 5 or high-end graphics cards, and it seems like the world has gone daft for NFTs (including some game developers looking to get in on the action - please don’t).

Here’s my annual rundown of the games I’ve enjoyed playing in 2021 and the ones I’m looking forward to trying soon.