It's been two years since my wife Anna and I moved to Overland Park, Kansas and we've been enjoying life here. We've had one of the nicer (and more expensive) views from the balcony of our apartment that you could possibly get in this area and I thought I'd share some of these views with you before we move to a cheaper and far less scenic place. Enjoy.Taken March 28th 2009. We knew from the forecast that we were going to get snow, but waking up to it was still a shock this time of year. It all melted the next day. Typical Midwest weather! Funny thing is you can see the fountain running in the center of the pond.Taken April 4th 2009. We've seen some very amazing sunsets from this apartment. The view will be missed.More photos of the same sunset.

If you're like me, you like to use the "prop" snippet from Visual Studio 2005. If you don't know what I'm talking about, with a C# file open in Visual Studio 2005 (or 2008), type: prop then hit tab twice. In 2005, you are able to initialize the variable like so:

private string _name = "default"; public string Name { get { return _name; } set { _name = value; } }

However, in 2008, prop tab tab gives you the following..

public string Name { get; set; }

This is a problem because there's no simple quick way to initialize the variable.
You can initialize it in a constructor, but what if you're using a static class? You're only other option is to use a DefaultValue attribute like so:

[DefaultValue("default")] public string Name { get; set; }

The problem with using the DefaultValue attribute is that, as far as I know, it requires using Reflection. So not only is it a pain to type, you also take a performance hit.

The way that 2005 handled it still works in 2008, so the easiest solution is to use the snippet from 2005 in 2008. I have created a propx snippet to handle just that. Simply unzip and put the propx.snippet file into your My Code Snippets folder (in Windows 7 this is located at C:\Users\Gordon\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets\), restart visual studio then type propx tab tab to use it.

In my quest to find a great text/code editor for Mac OS-X, so far, I've chosen Smultron. It has a nice set of features for what I need: It supports Unicode, can display East Asian characters just fine (shame on you TextMate), has project support, syntax highlighting, auto-complete and more, and it's free. Most importantly, it also has support to configure and run shell commands, which means you can use other apps to modify the text. One thing I found missing right off the bat was the ability to format, tabify, and indent XML, so it's time to find a command to format XML and integrate it with Smultron.

Read more to find out how to format XML in Smultron

I needed to write a Windows Service using Visual Studio 2005 Standard at home, however when I went to New Project, I was missing the Windows Service project template. Ok, weird. So a quick web search and I found a post with similar instructions on how to restore the Windows Service project templates.

Basically what it says is, you need to download the Windows Service template zip files:
C# Windows Service Template
VB Windows Service Template
(Hosted at megaupload.com)

Hit the jump to see the remaining instructions on how to restore the Windows Service templates.

A few things have changed since my previous Desktop Feng Shui.

My older Viewsonic LCD no longer works, so I ended up getting an HP w2207h LCD. In fact, BOTH of my Viewsonic LCDs no longer work, so my wife had to revert back to using her smaller, older Samsung SyncMaster 730B LCD. (She didn't want to get a newer LCD.)

I really like the HP w2207h, esp because my wife was able to find it for about $160. It only comes with VGA and HDMI inputs (no DVI), so some people might think that's a big drawback, but it doesn't matter to me. My cousin is about to visit from Georgia, and we do a lot of video gaming, so I will use my LCD to hook the 360 up via HDMI, so we have the option of playing on two systems simultaneously (sometimes we will play our own games at the same time, other times we'll play multiplayer games together). Anyway, for $160, it's practically a steal. Furthermore the HP can rotate into portrait mode, which I like to use a lot.

Hit the jump to see the latest Desktop Feng Shui.

Being quite the Mac OS-X newb, I had a little trouble knowing how to share files from my PC to my Mac. Apparently there are still quite a lot of confused people out there in various threads and forums, so I thought I might help clear up with providing my experience on how I got it working. From what others have said, this used to be much easier in OS-X Tiger, and it was a change made in Leopard that is causing all the fuss. I used to have a Macbook Pro and I didn't seem to have this problem, even while using Leopard, but it is definitely an issue on the recently released new Mac Mini.

I will explain how to connect to a windows workgroup, because that's how my network is set up. For other network configurations, this obviously may not work. Furthermore, this only explains how to get your Mac to see Windows shares. My Windows PC can see my Mac Mini, but it cannot access any shares. I'm guessing I need to authenticate somehow, but I'm not sure yet. I'll update if I find out how to get it working the other direction (from Windows to Mac).

Hit the jump to see the instructions on how to enable Windows sharing in Mac OS-X Leopard

I started Illusive Studios just after college, with the intention of becoming a contender in the video game industry. Throughout the years however (even before Illusive was around), we worked on several game programming projects that never fully got off the ground. Our game ideas were usually too big in scope for the beginners that we were, and the result was usually us getting discouraged and going off to work on other things, leaving what we started behind and never coming back to finish it.

After taking a hiatus from game development, illusivestudios.com was neglected and was generally only used for the very occasional blog post. (Albeit, it wasn't called a "Blog" until that word caught on in the Internet world more recently.) You can view the previous versions of www.illusivestudios.com.

So it has been about four years since I've been "blogging" again, and that's where this brand new site redesign comes into the picture. I've learned several technologies at my current web development job; Most notably ASP.NET, C# and SQL Server. The site was originally coded in PHP with mySQL, which for me at least, I find very limiting in functionality. For example, it's far easier to set up URL Rewrites for SEO using ASP.NET than it is in PHP (you'd actually use an Apache Mod if you were using PHP). ASP.NET also has built in data caching, so with one line of code, you can cache the data from a SQL query for faster reads. There are other reasons as well, so that's why I decided to make the switch to ASP.NET.

Anyway, the site is back up now, and it will primarily be a blog for now. At some point, there may be some separate pages to house my projects, but there's nothing planned at this time. My wife and I will be moving to Korea for a few months starting in mid May, at which time I will mostly be using the blog to show you our experiences while living in Seoul. Other than that, the blog content is mostly going to coincide with my interests which are mostly coding, Windows 7, technology, gaming, anime, food, travel, and whatever else I feel like. Hopefully that's enough to keep you coming back. That said, I have an RSS feed that shows full blog posts, so feel free to subscribe.

Enjoy!
-Gordon (AKA Alphatrak)

I haven't had much time to play video games lately. Been too busy coding. But every once in a while there's a game that comes around that I know I HAVE to have. A game that you KNOW is going to give you that incredible and unforgetable experience. A game that, when you see the trailer, you nearly piss yourself with excitement as you take in the fantastic visuals and the pulse pounding soundtrack. That game is here, and it's Street Fighter 4. HADOUKEN!

Hit the jump to watch the English trailer.