Brazilian Vacation

Well I haven't had the chance to update my blog lately...So I decided to take a moment to do so...The last 3 weeks I went on vacation with my wife to visit her family in Brazil.
Overall I had a great trip, I got to relax at the beaches in Natal, RN and eat some great food/fruits that can only be found in Brazil.
On other side notes, Diablo III beta started like a week ago...which I have yet to get invited to X(
Ill try to post more often...I've just been slacking too much :D

Fixing IPhone 3GS LCD Screen

* Update...So the new LCD came in the mail with all the tools needed to fix it. It was quite easy to change out the bad one. I thought about taking pictures but decided I should just link the youtube video that i used which explained out how to do it.

Heres the link, hope it helps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFtuew6a1_0

So, I have had my IPhone for 1 year and 8 months now...Overall I feel like I have taken good care of it, always using a cover to protect it form scratches and drops. Surprisingly it hasn't been enough though as after a 4 foot drop the LCD decided to split diagonally. which over time has caused dead pixels to form around the cracks...A repair specialist at the mall said it'd cost $65 for a new LCD. When I looked it up on amazon I found LCD Screen Replacement Kit for Apple iPhone 3GS for $17 + shipping. I purchased it and I plan to repair my LCD in the IPhone. Ill be sure to make a nice documented explanation of how I did the fixing to help anyone else who encounters this in their IPhone's life...Stay posted...

Dead Nation

So for Sony's free game giveaway after their PSN down-age I chose "Dead Nation" as one of my games. The game is developed by Sony Europe, by Finnish studio "Housemarque" which has done a really excellent job of bringing the zombie genre to life. In some ways it reminds me of "Super Smash TV" and one of the more recent games on Steam "Alien Swarm" since it is a top down shooter. You get to kill mass loads of zombies and buy bigger and more deadlier weapons as the game progresses. The story line doesn't tend to drag on and has little comic book cut scenes similar to Infamous between each level you pass that tell the story. I would give the game a 4.5/5 mainly cause it does an excellent job of keeping the gamer satisfied for the first 3/4's of the game, then it becomes a tad repetitive when you stop earning new guns to test on the zombie populations. Overall an excellent game and I am glad I chose it as one of my 2 free games from Sony.

E3 Game Expo

Currently the biggest game expo of the year is going on where they show off all the new games being released soon. I was looking at Blizzard and looks like they provided content for their new Starcraft 2 expansion "Heart of the Swarm" which looks to be really awesome. A ton of new games, E3 is always a fun time of the year...

Sony Welcome Back Program Begins

Hey guys my friend Cordoro linked me this
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/03/welcome-back/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=WelcomeBack_060311

Free Sony PS3 Games!

Sending Text Messages by Email

So I discovered a cool little trick for sending text messages. Apparently all it requires is to have the persons phone number and their cell phone provider then you just send it like a normal email. A good list of those can be found here http://www.emailtextmessages.com/
This is useful for my website project I am currently working on. I thought I'd share it with anyone who is not aware of this.
This does kind of makes you mad when you realize that to pay for cell phone texting you pay 20 dollars and then you pay for a internet plan for about 20-30 dollars as well...when really they are the same thing...data being sent from one place to the next.

Update

Today I had a chance to start designing the webpage for my current project...It takes a lot of time to come up with a good design for the website. So many good sites already have great designs and its hard not to copy the formats of those. Next step is to start working on the database design and setup.

Brazilian Stroganoff

I must say one of the best dishes I have eaten that is tasty and filling is my wife's Brazilian Stroganoff. The recipe she uses is like that which they use in Brazil...it includes. To start the recipe she first cooks
1. Start cooking steak chopped in cubes with onions in a pot.
2. mixes in water while its cooking the meat as to not burn it to the pot.
3. when meat is done cooking add corn, cilantro, and "creme de leite"(creamy milk they use to make whipped cream its found at most grocery stores)
4. Final ingredient to the sauce is spaghetti sauce...you have to mix the 2 to get a orangy sauce...thats when you know its good and yummy :)
5. Add salt to get final taste you want.
6. Make some rice or spaghetti noodles and enjoy a delicious dish :)

One of the best meals I have had. Hope others will enjoy it.

White Erase Board

I purchased a white erase board to help with the design/development process, since its easier to keep track of things on that instead of using a piece of scratch paper that can be lost. I really recommend it for any kind of home office. Amazon has a few for sale at close to what I paid for mine Dry-Erase Board, Melamine, 36 x 24, White, Satin-Finished Aluminum Frame
Sorry I haven't written much lately, I am working on a big project right now...Which ill probably share about soon.

New Logo...

My brother made me a nice logo for the site, hopefully everyone likes it.

IPhone App Development!

This week is gonna be crunch week for me at home...I gotta get this IPhone app out as quickly as possible. Once it goes live ill post a link to it here for people to test out. Should be really exciting once its done.

Terraria - Minecraft Clone (Sandbox Genre)

So my friend over at Cordoro Gaming introduced me to this new game that just came out called Terraria. I think it is a really good game, it has a lot of depth and fun factors to it that make it enjoyable. I think it is the first game released after the game idea of Minecraft which is of the genre "sandbox" where you build, destroy, dig, and harvest materials to create new things. I really suggest it to anyone that enjoys Minecraft.

Freelance Software Development - VWorker - RentACoder

So I registered with http://www.VWorker.com to make some cash on the side. It looks like there are a lot of opportunities available to make some extra money.
Before I chose to start an account on their site I researched a few of the sites available for freelance software development. The reason I chose VWorker is cause they currently have the most secure system for getting paid...it reminds me kind of how half.com works in that you get paid every month on a specific date for what you made...so basically getting paid is taken care of by VWorker. Other sites appear to have similar system but VWorker also does arbitration if companies refuse to pay you for your services.
Registration was also quick and easy and required little effort, just some identity information and I was set up to start bidding. I'll see how things work.

Free Sony PS3 Games Because of Network Outage

*Update* The games are now available for download, as Sony has finally started the welcome back program... Check it out http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/06/03/welcome-back/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=WelcomeBack_060311


So Sony is doing a free game giveaway to its customers because of the long network outage that occurred.
Games that are available are: Dead Nation, inFAMOUS, Stardust HD, Wipeout HD, and Little Big Planet...Personally if I didn't have any of these games I would take inFAMOUS and Little Big Planet since they are two of the better games to choose from...but since I have both already, I choose Dead Nation, and Stardust HD or Wipeout HD...still looking at them to decide which to choose. Stardust HD might have more multiplayer fun for my wife and I :)

Crunch week is over!

Well crunch week is finally over at work. Now comes deployment and fixing any major bugs that are found in the process of deployment/production.
I am going to be working this week on a few projects so maybe ill make a post about that...

Wow Blogger got all wacky....

Dang, looks like their system had quite the hiccup...posts are missing and the poll disappeared. I guess gotta do some damage control...

Also it looks like I will not be able to stream until I get a better computer. I was excited about it but it wont be happening till later.

Crunch Time Week...

Well never had to do one of these at work before...but surprisingly they have us doing more hours...probably not the worst crunch time schedule but still 8am-6pm is 10 hours a day.
I have been busy with house chores since the house is new...poisoned some dandelions in the backyard and planted some grass seed in the front yard for bare spots. Also I had to chop up the front tree so my wife was happier about the tree...
Development should speed up as soon as things are settled in.

Add printer. Connect to Printer. Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation failed with error 0x0000007e

So at work I was having trouble installing a printer on windows 7 64 bit OS...I decided to google it and found a solution.
A fairly simple 2 step process...

STEPS
1st install the printer locally, on lpt2
2nd at the dos prompt enter in this redirect command
net use LPT2 \\computername\sharedprintername /persistent:yes

A really easy fix, but got the printer installed and printing perfectly. Hopefully this will help anyone running into this issue as well.

All moved in...

     So I finished moving...and I must say I don't want to do that again. My right arm was so overworked that it go sore and swollen at the joint so it was painful to not even use it...it just hung there and felt like it was falling out of its socket.
     On more positive fronts I got my home office up and running now. I have two desktops set up in the home office at the moment, plus laptops can be used side by side if needed. Internet is a tad bit slower at the house(1.4Mbps) than it was at the apartment...but who knows if I will upgrade it to something faster.

Moving...

I am currently moving, so I haven't had a chance to post anything or work on anything. Once I am moved in I will post more...

Creating your own QR C# ASP.NET website generator...

Well there aren't a whole lot of examples of how to create your own...so I decided to post how to do it here.
For starters when I wanted to create my own QR Code generator in C# .NET I found sites like google that would do it all for you with the click of a link...but this didn't generate the image file. In some instances generating that image file is important since you may want to use it later on, for instance when customers are ordering business cards and they need to keep track of the QR Code image as well as what will be on the card.
So here is a nice library I found that is open source.
http://twit88.com/platform/projects/show/mt-qrcode
It is very simple to use and requires minor setting up. After creating an object of the QR Code library you just set a few values:

MessagingToolkit.QRCode.Codec.QRCodeEncoder QREncoder = new MessagingToolkit.QRCode.Codec.QRCodeEncoder();

QREncoder.QRCodeEncodeMode = MessagingToolkit.QRCode.Codec.QRCodeEncoder.ENCODE_MODE.BYTE;

QREncoder.QRCodeErrorCorrect = MessagingToolkit.QRCode.Codec.QRCodeEncoder.ERROR_CORRECTION.H;

QRCodeBitmap = QREncoder.Encode("http://xelot.blogspot.com");

QRCodeBitmap will now hold the bitmap you want to store to your HDD...with a simple saving...

System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream("/QRCode.bmp",System.IO.FileMode.Create);

QRCodeBitmap.Save(fs, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Bmp);

fs.Close();

I hope this can help anyone to create their own C# ASP.NET website QR Code Generator.

Coders at Work...first 60 pages...

         So I have been reading this book, and I have really been enjoying the interviews it contains with some of the pioneer programmers of our days. One which was quite interesting was one of the main programmers of Netscape...He basically started programming at about 15 years old, dropped out of college but was still a successful programmer.
        In chapter 2 the second interview is with an Google employee who began programming at about age 5 in BASIC. Throughout Middle School he was making graphical games for kids and selling them(talk about crazy)...In High School he was making about 10k-25k on his FreeVote engine programmed in CGI which would generate voting polls. He generated this revenue through ads on the FreeVote site...by college year he was contracting to do programming work as well as starting projects of his own. I cant remember the name and don't have the book on me to look it up, but it was called like LiveJournal. anyhow I was very impressed with the success stories this book contains this far, as it is very motivational to any programmer.

Coders at Work

I just picked up this book. It includes a bunch of interviews with programmers that did big things for the computer industry, which should be interesting to read about. Its more of a non technical book since I feel like I tend to read more technical books and not enough literature about coding that may include good insight about the field of computer programming.
For anyone interested in reading about it as well here is a link.
Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
Once I've started reading it ill be sure to write some reviews.

Great Games...

While I was busy working on my first iPhone game I was listening to techno and trance music while coding, testing, playing with, and understanding different pieces of the cocos2d lib...Ofcourse, my lil brother had to go and send me some of that great music from my childhood video game "Secret of Mana"...boy did that touch a spot of good memories, of thoughts of such a great game in its time...While soaking up the music I decided to give it a search on iTunes. Which yes it is available on iTunes and also the entire game for iPhone(wow)...Secret of Mana was one of those games that will never be forgotten, neither graphics nor gameplay will out rate it in my mind. It had a wonder selection of music and some really good gameplay.

Just hearing this song brought back good memories of the old SNES days and I felt i'd share it with everyone...

Three new iPhone game ideas!

I came up with three new iPhone ideas, that I am very eager to work on. First will be an all time favorite of mine that I created back in High School when I was taking my first computer science course. I call the game "Monster Rally" which was basically a very simple game programmed in C++ using the Direct X API. I want to make it more sophisticated in the iPhone version so players can upgrade their guns and have different monsters that attack.

Finding time for everything...

     I have been giving thought to how to find time for things I enjoy to do as well as things I'd like to do. Being an avid game player and enjoying games on a daily basis can be very unproductive in many ways. There must be a balance to how much time is spent playing games and how much time is allocated for coding. Being the sole programmer and owner of Xelot Code LLC makes it difficult at times to work full time, play games, and find time to work my side jobs/ideas I want to create. I've given it some thought and here is what I think may be the secret to this problem...first of all there needs to be time management...This is key to any successful start up business. Without time management as a human being its easy to get drawn into the fun things that can be done with our time(Games, Outdoor activities, shopping, movies, etc).
     For starters making a schedule is one way to accomplish things that need to be done and also things that you would like to do. For instance, playing games every other day or once a week would be one way to still enjoy playing games, but also have time to be productive. It is something I will start to do with my time and get some of the project ideas done that I have been considered doing with my time.

Tron: Legacy

Yesterday I finally got the chance to see Tron:Legacy. Overall I felt it was a decently good film. I liked the special effects, and how the movie ended. I did feel there was some inconsistency with the film and the timeline...since in the grid Kevin Flynn mentioned that days there were like minutes in real life...which then made me think about why Kevin Flynn is not dead since he got trapped in the grid when his son Sam Flynn was like 12 years old...And now Sam being 27 years old is meeting his Dad in the grid...so that is one main problem...second problem...if turning off the power to the arcade meant they didnt age i suppose that would take care of this problem...But...then if that were the case how did CLU send out a message to the pager? So there are some holes in the story, or maybe I am over analyzing it.

QR Codes

    I recently came across a few clients wanting to use QR Codes in their ideas. I decided to do a little bit of research to get an idea of what they were...To simplify they are basically a complex bar code which can store things such as URL, or messages...and with your very own cell phone and a QR Code decoder you can then use that to decrypt the message or have it automatically send you to the URL the code has encoded.
    When thinking about how I may be able to use this in a real life business opportunity...I came to the conclusion that they are mostly only good in a niche market...for marketing a particular product(since naturally someone is gonna want to scan your QR Code if they run into it when walking at the mall), and providing discounts to customers that have a QR Code decoder(this could be fun). In these two ideas, I believe lies the best interest of a QR Code enthusiast...but as you'll notice its a niche market since it has such a small use and the amount of people that will be scanning the codes will be few unless more and more people become involved with using them.

Text Message

Website URL

Xelot Code LLC

Xelot Code LLC is now an official company. We are registered in the state of Utah! Main reason behind finally doing this is cause we have been contracted to start to develop a new IPhone app/Website project.
Exciting times, hopefully there will be more on this later on to share about.