Mokong

Yesterday I mived the goal posts of my lingest swim from 8km to 10km All the extra swimming I been doing this year been working towards this goal. Delighted to have done it. Been trying to do it the last 6 weeks but weather on weekends haven't been great. Yesterday I knew the forecast wasn't going to be 100% what I would want but I also knew it would be within my tolerance for choppy water. I had a kayaker on standby and he was cool with the conditions too. Though it did slow me down more than I thought it would. There was a section I'd say between 5 and 6km that was really tough. Both mentally and physically. I had to breaststroke more than I would like as I found it hard to keep rhythm for the front crawl. Then I came round a corner and saw a landmark (the pillars in the Twitter post) that I was worried might be further away, once I saw that my mental confidence picked back up as that landmark I knew exactly where I was and exactly how far I had left to go. Didn't start to feel cold till I was about 1km from the finish but at that point I just hand to get my head down and power through it to get to land 😎

I did a thing!

Bump Got offered and have accepted a new job today. WOHOOOOOOO

Finished a little personal project of my own that I am just super proud of myself for and needed to "talk" about it with peeps that would understand It's probably something those of ye who've been programming for years would throw together with ease, haha. Now I say "finished" above but I've already starting getting ideas for a few changes...but "finished" in the sense it now does all the things I wanted it to do. Made a GUI in Python that allows me sign onto my Oracle SQL Database on my laptop, set up a login function so that login details are not hardcoded and can sign in as different users. Started it off as a command line program that allowed user to insert new data to a table. The limitations of that was it required the user to type in the table name they wanted to work with and the column names that they wanted to insert data into. Started looking at how to make a GUI, settled on using PySimpleGUI for now as it seemed the most beginner friendly but down the line I'll hopefully redo it in TKinter or something else. Managed to first turn what I had into a login screen followed by a screen displaying a list of tables in the logged on users schema, can choose a table to then get a window with input boxes which dynamically creates the right number of input boxes for each column in the selected table. So regardless of which table is selected and how many or few columns in that table the same function works for all. From there added functions for handling updating of existing data and deleting data. Added functions to make popup windows for catching and displaying errors. Added a popup window for when you try to delete a row it gives a warning asking to confirm you intend to delete it. Added a function to display a full table in a table format GUI (used Pandas to help with this which helped me get to grips with some basic Pandas usage ). Was previously using an Outbox box element in the GUI to print the output of a select statement but I didn't think that looked good visually. I was also using the output element to print errors or other messages so made functions that created popup windows for those and removed the Output elements entirely I've also converted it to a .exe file so I can launch directly from my desktop. I think I've also accounted for any possible user errors, like if you try view a table without selecting a table, if you try to update a table that has no rows you get asked to insert data first and a few other things I discovered would break when I was messing with it. I actually enjoyed after I added something trying to see what would break it and then trying to figure out how to fix it. Or even trying to figure out how to make something work better. Like when I first made the update function it would update all parts of a row not just the changed part. So it would be redundantly updating data to the same data (eg: FirstName: Franklin changed to Franklin). So was real happy with myself when I figured a way to get to ignore data that was unchanged and only execute an update statement on the changed data.

I was thinking todays date seemed familiar, realised it when I went through todays FB Memories thing. A 1/4 of a century, damn, that's some achievement.

I'm hoping for a new (and better paying) job for 2023 On a hobby/health note, 2023 will involve more swimming and seeing how much I can push my limits in the water again. 2022 I broke every milestone I had. Longest single swim increased from 2.3km to a massive 7.9km, total distance swam in year 208.79km, total time swam 100 hours 11mins. https://twitter.com/MokongX3M/status/1609171036553056256?s=20&t=FWYn4XF3T9k56TKVTCkqlQ

Sunbreak Title Update 3 drops Nov 24th Risen Teostra Risen Kushala Daora And Chaotic Gore Magala A7 anomoly quests with Afflicted Flaming Espinas, Scorned Magnamalo, Gold Rath and Silver Los Anomoly Research max level increased to 200....and cleared quests you will get the option to lower level if you want. Followers can be used in ALL quests Master Rank and Anomoly (they didn't state it but I assume only if playing offline) New stat options for Qurios Weapon crafting and for Qurios Armour crafting you'll be able to choose if you want to roll for Defence stats or Skills!!!!!! Title Update 4 for "Winter 2023" will have an Elder Dragon and "powered-up Monster"....can only assume the Elder Dragon, to be something new not in the game yet. Hoping for Alatreon. And they announced a Title Update 5 for "Spring 2023" with "more monsters".

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is in the nominations list for The Game Awards Game of the Year, Best Music and Score and Best Role Playing Game. I gave it my vote for all 3 A little weird it didn't make the list for Best Narrative also though. And none of the voice actors got a nomination either. I was hoping actirs for Eunie or Noah were get a nod Still irks me Adam Howden never got an award for Shulk for first game. https://thegameawards.com/nominees/game-of-the-year

Finished the game. Loved it. Final boss was epic and loved the set pieces. That ending though... Edit: Oh just spoted Bayonetta 3 has a nomination for Best Action game at The Game Awards https://thegameawards.com/nominees/best-action

167 hours amd hit level 99 and beat all Super Bosses. I actually found my first one without looking was just exploring parts of map I hadn't been too and found the level 105. Beat him first time. Oddly the level 99 (or is it 95) the lowest level of them gave me the most trouble. Beat the 110 forst time and the 120 without breaking a sweat. Think this game has the easiest Superbosses, I didn't really worry too much about builds with accessories and gems and such. Just focused on which classes I used and equipened skills for combos. The Superbosses in Xenoblade 1, pretty sure I have still never beated the highest level of those. Not done all the challenge quests yet, but pretty sure I've done all side quests now (must check a list online and make sure). But I think I'm ok to leave the Challenge Quests till more drop with next DLC set. Loved this game so much, def my game of the year! Now I need to play Bayonetta 3 before Pokemon drops ina few weeks

name = "Mokong" score = 81.5 if score >= 70: print(f"{name} has passed his Python exam today") print(f"With a score of {score}%") print("And is certified an IT Specialist in Python by Certiport") else: print("Try again, no certification for you or your CV!") https://twitter.com/MokongX3M/status/1588180505219964928?s=20&t=Q5a513xEsJIrxEJT6Pp-jw Added a Python cert to my two SQL certs, all three done in a year! Now if I can just find a work place looking to hire someone who only has certs and 0 years previous working experience I'll be sorted.....

I switched to the base classes (and clothing) for the endgame fight just for story....probably an OCD thing, if I had a feeling a main story cutscene was coming I always tried to switch to the base classes Still not finished the post-game sides... thought it would only be the two new ones but as I was doing one, I found new Info circles and question marks!!!!!!! I'm never gonna get to Bayonetta 3 at this rate

Credits rolled for me on Sunday, I managed to get im a nice 4 hours session to finish the game Loved it, loved every minute of it. I needed a few days to process before I could give my thoughts...then I realised loading the post game save file has some extra side quests!!!! Hoping at least one will answer one question I still have after the game that didn't seem to be addressed so gonna polish off these quests first and the will give final thoughts

When I got the email that pre-orders were open I clicked the link straight away and had one in my basket but then realised I was on the UK storefront. When I went to change it to the Irish storefront that is when the whole site went down.... I checked randomly through that day and the next day and it was always down. Of course when I eventually got to checking again and the site was up again they were sold out I wonder at what time they got the site back up and how long the stock lasted. Given the delay it had you'd think they would have stocked up more, they better get more in. I need a full collection of Collector Editions for Xenoblade Switch games

That finale was amazing, executed to perfection.