http://www.brains-N-brawn.com/tskTSK 1/13/2003
This is not a dev article ... just silliness
The Today Screen on a Pocket PC is its background image, also called a Theme. Its file extension is *.tsk. There are many Themes available from sites like pocketthemes.com, pocketpcthemes.com, etc... That's great unless you want more risque images ... i did (that is how Tsk Tsk is worked in ... as a disapproving sound). The themes they have were created by individuals using such tools as ThemeMaker and MS Theme Generator. So for more 'ndecent' themes, you can create your own with these tools. That's great unless you want to waste alot of time creating themes ... i didnt. So I wasted alot of time (2 days) creating my own theme generator. This is a web based version of that WinForms app, which lets me create themes like mad. The WinForms version can crank out approximately 1 a second. 86,400 seconds in a day ...
It takes a single image as input. From that image it finds out its base grey-scale, its predominant color hue, and the inverse of that color. Then it sizes the image accordingly for the main background. Depending on the image it does a 50/50 padding and crop resizing algorithm (works best for most images as opposed to full crop or full padding). Next, it creates the Start menu image by cropping the other, lightens it a little for the black text, and adds a 'brains-N-brawn' branding mark at the very bottom. NOTE it uses jpg images instead of bmp, so the files are 20 to 30k as opposed to 100k on the other theme sites. Then, it sets the colors of the TitleBar, Messages, etc ... using the primary color and its inverse found above ... The text is set to black or white based on the grey-scale. If the grey-scale is closer to white then the text goes to black and vice-versa for readability. Finally, it generates the TSK file
click here to preview and download themes that others have created (WARNING no telling what images will be displayed END WARNING)
Got a full theme setup now. A leecher to grab themes from other sites, a theme previewer to extract the TSK files and display rapidly (making sure they are not corrupt), and my own CF .NET Pocket PC app (1 day) to rotate themes on the device. It rotates themes from a menu command, on reset, and whenever synched; randomly choosing from available themes. I like it better than ThemeDream and ThemeMaster. Theirs offer more features, such as previewing, which I dont use because a theme doesnt go on my device if I dont want it to be displayed. The MS Generator had the real nice feature of one-click to change themes, while mine currently requires 2 ... albeit the MS one would freeze often requiring a power cycle
These were some of the Themes created with this page. The 1st is Lisa from DallasDancers.com (NOT at work). I met her, and believe it or not, she is really smart. Not that she has to be. NOTE how the menu image is a little brighter than the main image. The 2nd is Linda O'Neil. One of my friends favorite. I think she's ... err, umm ... more than OK; and the costume she is in rocks. NOTE how the text is black in that one and white in the others. The pic is form FobPro.com (depends on where you work). That guy has one of the best jobs in the world. The 3rd is Sakura, she kills me. Pic is from Sakura-Sena.com (also NOT at work). NOTE the branding image at the bottom that is hidden until the menu is opened, also the menu has to be full of items. Since I am not working right now, I can view all of these sites (and more ... dont forget I have a password spider so I could easily grab more than 86,400 images a day)
No source code or file format info for this one. Came to the realization that I share code unless I can use it to advance pr0n. This will definitely be used in my adult pocket pc site (ndecent.com) once I get it back online, so no code for you. You do remember I was the creator of SkinCycle.com for adult winamp skins ...
if you have a pocket pc, brains-N-brawn.com mobile (http://www.brains-N-brawn.com/mDefault.aspx) has ppc themes and ebooks online. the themes include the ones that you have created here and many others. you can browse them on your pocket pc, select them and they automatically become your background. the ebooks are converted text files from the gutenberg project (no longer copyrighted texts, including many classics). the ebook files are optimized for MS reader and have small file sizes. finally, the articles listed to the right are also available for you to read. casey 2/4/2003
1/17/2004 this now converts the image into SmartPhone themes as well. the preview page will show the SmartPhone home screen side by side with the PocketPC today screen. this is a result of the /spHme article
END /tskTSK. Now I feel like ranting because I am pissed. Too much testosterone (see above). Went independent at the true millennium. Got sick of letting others choose my technological career path. Decided to teach myself the technologies that I wanted to work on professionally. Threw down J2EE and busted my 4ss learning .NET. I'm talking chronic eye strain from coding and reading, coding and reading, ad infitium. Also made myself mobile so that location would not limit me. Once I was ready started talking to recruiters and they all turned me down because I had no experience. Forget that nobody had .NET experience at that time, as well as me being a salaried contractor in my previous life. Finally got an interview, and got the job. Getting paid doing what I love ... kick 4ss! Then the contract expires :( and its back to looking for work. Post resumes, job searches, etc... and it all comes down to getting a recruiter to call you. All my time and effort put into trying to excel, and it comes down to a recruiter entering some acronym into a search engine. More then likely they dont even know the words the acronym stands for. So they call me. Some are cool. They make no pretense of understanding the technology. They tell me the location, the company, and sometimes they even have a description of what the company wants done. Those cases are rare. Sometimes they hide info from me. Like which company. Maybe they assume I would try to go directly to the company. Unethical. Or they call and all they know are a couple of buzzwords. Their like C# and .NET in Dallas. I'm like f*ck that, I could code a million different things with C# and .NET ... what the h3ll do they want built? Then it comes to rate. I'm not shy, so if they are beating around the bush I will flat out ask them, what's the rate? They never say. They always make you say a # 1st. A couple times I play the game back and the conversations are just ridiculous trying to get the other to say a #. But they are always different. Some have a bill rate already, and then they want to find adequate people that will make them the most money. i.e. somebody that is average but a lot cheaper makes them more money then somebody that is a guru and more expensive. For one, the average person will take longer to get the job done ... more billing hours. Also, the bill rate vs the pay rate is higher meaning more money for the recruiter per hour work. Now is that better for the company ... h3ll no. Granted they could put somebody in that is mediocre and then hurt their image as a recruiter, so that is the trade off they have to weigh. So their target is just good enough according to rate. The real clencher is they have no way of really judging candidates technically. For one thing they really like certifications ... when it comes down to it, the best people I have worked with have absolutely 0 respect for certifications. They are pretty much a joke by my own opinion. But now I'm thinking of getting one just to appease the headhunters ... what BS. Now my new enemy is the recruiter. Mainly because I cant find work unless a recruiter submits me for a job. But they will not submit me if they find somebody else that is adequate at a lower rate. Just happened last week. Recruiter calls me. Really cool contract in one of my expertise. We do the rate dance, he has other candidates at a lower rate, and I am not even submitted. The company did not even get to look at my resume to see if they wanted to pay a slightly higher rate, which I still consider low for my skill set. I will leave the technology unnamed, but chances are they dont stand a chance (previous dev article links would go here). Maybe they would kick my 4ss, and they just dont write articles; but I really doubt they learn as aggressively. The times I do get past the recruiter to the client, I am 100%. Its that simple, get past the recruiter, and I'm in. I realized this problem a year ago. i.e. I started writing advanced dev articles a year ago. The thought was make my niche advanced articles with bleeding edge technologies. Try to make a name for myself and hope that companies start contacting me directly. Nothing. People contact me alright. Grad students wanting to recreate a portion of one of my articles for their masters project. Other developers asking questions which are explicitly answered in the article they half-way read. And entrepeneurs with no financial backing. Dont get me wrong, alot of people write me with cool things too and alot of people have answered my own questions, but I am ranting here so ignore the positive. Was hoping my efforts would earn me something else (unnamed), but it hasnt. Rumor is that it might be happening, but it hasnt happened, so it is 0 in binary terms. Really Really dissappointed when the last batch came out and I wasnt there. In other words, the ROI for my effort does not seem to be worth it. I might be shutting down brains-N-brawn permanently. Of course I would still spend all my spare time writing cool code, I would just stop sharing. Maybe I'll make a product. Maybe I'll rip the pr0n world a new one ... with a name like chesnut ... who knows