I recently read Keza MacDonald’s article on Kotaku about struggling to get into Destiny 2 now that she has a nine month-old baby, and was able to sympathise somewhat. We’ve just had baby number two (now approaching 2 months old), and I caved and bought Destiny 2, which is (as expected) proving tricky to play while dealing with an infant.

But I was a little surprised to read some of the hatred directed at the article and author (okay, mostly on Twitter). Here’s someone writing an article about her experiences with a notoriously grindy game that she likes, but is coming to terms with the fact that she may not be able to explore all its content due to other commitments. It’s an opinion piece.

Last year, Microsoft added a preview connector enabling Power BI to query Amazon Redshift. This wasn’t publicised as an “official” data source, and took some steps in order to be able to even see the connector in Power BI Desktop. Crucially, you could only use this connector in Power BI Desktop, not when workbooks are deployed to the cloud. Yesterday, Microsoft announced the connector is now available within the Power BI Service, which means that workbooks containing Redshift data connections can now be deployed to the cloud. I’ve been working a lot with Redshift over the past year or so, and Power BI’s still my go-to data-viz solution, so I’m delighted to see the this announcement, as it means that Redshift-based workbooks can now be shared with others via powerbi.com.

Hollywood is obsessed with reboots. Total Recall, Star Trek, Big Trouble in Little China (I’m gutted about that last one)! It’s wide open for debate as to whether all these reboots are a good thing, or whether people should stick to creating original stories. This practice has bled over to the gaming industry as well in recent years.

We’ve hit that time of year where everybody’s doing a “top games of 2016” write up. I’m not going to differ.

12th December 2006. The day the world bid farewell to disk drive pioneer Alan Shugart, and grumpy grandad Frank Barone (Everybody Loves Raymond). A Tuesday. Also the day I unlocked my first achievement on my brand new Xbox 360.

A lot can happen in ten years. People can forge a career, a relationship, move house, raise children, or simply end up turning tricks under the bridge due to bad life choices.

In addition to some of the above (I’ll let you figure out which), I’ve somehow managed to rack up 100,000G on Xbox.

Late last night, Amazon announced that their proprietary AWS data visualisation tool, Quicksight was now generally available in the US and Ireland.

I cower in a crater, left in the middle of the Egyptian desert by some recent artillery barage, and drop a medkit by my feet. Heart pounding, I look left and right to make sure nobody is following me. My vision is blurred, breathing heavy as the medicine starts to take affect. Cautiously I peek my head over the lip of the crater, scanning the distance for some sign of the sniper. I work up just enough courage to sprint to the next crater when out of nowhere, a horse thunders past and it’s sword-wielding rider cuts me down, just as a biplane loops overhead. This is World War One. This, is Battlefield 1.

The biggest adjustment with having a kid is just the sheer amount of time they take up. And I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. Especially after they start walking and needing constant supervision. I regularly find myself recalling pre-child times and wondering just what the hell I did with all my time. The following tips are just a few things that I’ve learned throughout the last year and a bit, that are mostly common sense. I thought I’d share them anyway. Some of you may relate, some may find inspiration, some may be able to add more!