Hello. I am Paul Kinlan.

I'm starting to port the Parallax Engine to XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 due to major changes from Beta 1, notably the removal of Game Designers. While I liked the rapid configuration they offered, their removal seems necessary for Xbox 360 support.

I'm incredibly frustrated with Technorati! It's not updating my blog's information despite numerous ping updates and support emails. This is really impacting my blog's visibility.

I had a problem getting TypeConverters to work with generic lists in XNA and WinForms. The designer wouldn't generate the code I wanted for properties. I needed a simple way to serialize objects, so I tried a minimalist approach. Overriding CanConvertTo and ConvertTo methods in my TypeConverter was enough for the designer to serialize the objects correctly, generating much cleaner and simpler code.

I bought iforgive.eu, but my initial ideas for the site (a forgiveness flower shop, a public confession/forgiveness platform, and an open email apology site) were flawed. I considered alternatives like a social charity platform ("If Or Give") or a Q&A site, but those didn't pan out either. Now, I'm selling the domain. Leave a comment if you have suggestions – funny or serious – for what someone could do with it. I might even implement your idea. Learn from my mistake: think before you buy a domain!

I came across ARogan's F14 XNA game which features 3 levels of parallax scrolling. I'm thinking it would be a great opportunity to demonstrate the capabilities of my XNA Parallax Engine. Ideally, someone ports the game to use my engine, but if not, I'll do it myself since the F14 game's source code is available. This will be a good test of my engine's flexibility and I'm eager to see how easy the porting process is and how well it performs. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

I read Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" and found it insightful, albeit a bit verbose. While many of the concepts about choice, aggregators, and filters felt obvious, the book effectively highlights their importance. I realized I'd already implemented a "long tail" approach on this blog by creating a tag directory (http//:www.kinlan.co.uk/tag/{anytag}) to link related posts and resources. This led to the development of Topicala (http://www.topicala.com/), a meta-search engine that aggregates results from multiple search engines based on tags.

I've started testing Windows Live OneCare Beta 1.5.1785.18, switching from Windows Defender. While the Protection Plus firewall alerts are helpful, the TuneUp feature feels lackluster. It doesn't provide enough detail about its actions (like during defragmentation) and lacks advanced tuning options I'd expect, especially given Microsoft's SysInternals acquisition. It's good for automating basic maintenance, but the performance hit and limited functionality don't justify a paid subscription yet.

In this post, I describe a solution to a problem I encountered while working with XNA Beta1 and Vector2 structs. Because Vector2 didn't have an associated TypeConverter, the designer lacked support. Applying a TypeConverter to the property worked in the designer, but Visual Studio 2005 ignored it during serialization, resorting to resource files, which was messy. My workaround involves dynamically adding a TypeConverter to the Vector2 type itself using TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes, which is invoked during the class's construction. By registering the Vector2Converter with the Vector2 type early on, both the designer and code serialization work harmoniously.

Check out my new video demo showcasing the simplicity of creating scrolling parallax layers in XNA. In under 3 minutes, I demonstrate how to build a parallax engine with layers, a camera, and scrollers, all without writing any code! The video covers basic scrolling and adding effects like oscillators. Watch it on YouTube, Google Video, or download the WMV. Feedback is welcome here or on the CodePlex forums.

I've just released the first alpha version of my XNA Parallax Engine! You can download it from CodePlex. It's still early stages and needs a lot of work, including examples, documentation, artwork, and more. If you're interested in contributing, please get in touch!