Google Analytics 4 connector now available for Power BI
Google Analytics 4 connector now available for Power BI

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.

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Is AWS about to enable Redshift Spectrum with Enhanced VPC Routing?
Development Is AWS about to enable Redshift Spectrum with Enhanced VPC Routing?

AWS is knocking it out of the park at the moment with loads of new services and features coming out every week. Indeed, it can be hard to keep up with the degree of change. But, while working on one of our Redshift clusters today we spotted a potential scoop that would remove a key blocker for one extremely useful service, Redshift Spectrum.

Up until now it’s only been possible to use Spectrum if you don’t have Enhanced VPC Routing enabled on your Redshift cluster. There are so many benefits to using Enhanced VPC Routing (reduced data transfer cost, control, security) that it’s hard to see why anyone wouldn’t be using it, especially if you move data between Redshift and S3 a lot.

But we spotted a new parameter being applied to one of our clusters when we made some maintenance changes to a parameter group. There’s now a parameter named spectrum_enable_enhanced_vpc_routing showing, which hints that Amazon may be about to remove this crucial limitation.

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Three Guardians and a Baby – Destiny 2 and parenthood
Gaming Three Guardians and a Baby – Destiny 2 and parenthood

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.

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Redshift connectivity officially announced for Power BI Service
Data & analysis Redshift connectivity officially announced for Power BI Service

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.

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Reboots: heresy or homage?
Gaming Reboots: heresy or homage?

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.

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10 Years of Achievements
Gaming 10 Years of Achievements

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.

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Battlefield 1 Open Beta Review
Gaming Battlefield 1 Open Beta Review

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.

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picnicerror.net is a personal blog where I post various ideas, thoughts and discoveries through both my day to day work in marketing technology and general hobbies and interests.

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