When clicking Projects you can read about a bunch of my projects including my latest, Ken’s Today Screen. I hope to add all of my previous projects eventually. I’d like to add a new one each week until I’ve got all of the up.

As for Ken’s Today Screen, you can now download it and use it for FREE!!  Go take a look and let me what you think.

Check out my latest project:

***This is the old version. Click here to see the new version ***

It’s a simple and powerful “Today Screen” replacement for Windows Mobile. I wrote it in C# using the Compact Framework. In this project I implemented a few firsts for me, including finger gestures and animation. I’m very happy with the outcome. I also spent many hours on the Graphic Design of all of the icons and buttons. (Graphic Design ain’t my thing!) This program is far better than the original Today Screen in terms of ease of use. I can now quickly get to the things I use most often. I may post the source or the exe if people are interested.  Let me know.

***This is the old version. Click here to see the new version ***

Here are some of the features.

1. The Home Screen. Here you can get to your most used programs.

2. You can change the programs by right clicking on them.   (I made extra images that are installed with the exe, including a Calender Icon as well as a few others.)

3. The Contact Screen. Here you can call your top friends by just clicking on their face!

4. You can delete a contact’s shortcut by right clicking on the contact and clicking delete. To add a contact just click on the plus icon and choose a contact.

5. There are actually 16 saved shortcuts. If you make a finger gesture dragging from the bottom to top, you can see two more rows of contacts.
6. You can use finger gestures to change tabs as well as clicking on the tabs. To move by gesturing, drag from the right to the left to move to the next tab.  Drag from the left to the right to move back.
7. Ken’s Today screen shows more notifications than the default notification bar does.  Ken’s Today screen has: Email, text message, missed calls, voicemail, bluetooth connection, wifi connection, network, network strength, phone speaker, and battery power.

8. When there is music playing, the name of the artist, track, and album scroll across the screen under the time as a marquee.

9. In the settings tab you can change the phone to automatically turn the speaker phone on. Also you can change what happens when clicking on the time.

That’s it!

***This is the old version. Click here to see the new version ***

Introducing the Nike Plus Mini WordPress Plugin.

After creating a Nike Plus Mini avatar in the Nike+ website, this plugin will add a widget to your sidebar showing your mini avatar.

There are customizable settings for size and background color.

All it needs is your Nike+ screen name.

Installing:

1.  Download the zip file Nike+ Mini WordPress Plugin.
2.  Unzip it and upload the folder wp-nikeplusmini to your website’s /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
3.  In your WordPress dashboard, click Plugins and activate WP-NikePlusMini.

4.  Now go to Design->Widgets

5.  Add WP-Nike-Plus-Mini to a sidebar

6.  Click Edit

7.  Edit the Options and click Change. Be sure to add your Nike+ Screen Name.

8.  Save the changes and your done!

Disclaimer:

This is my first WordPress plugin and use of php.  If you try this plugin, let me know what you think in the comments.

Prima Theme for Sandbox

I spent last night diving into the design of this site. My mind is not very design oriented. If only I knew what I wanted the site to look like I’d be able to code it up. It takes me a while, but I usually can get a design I’m happy with. Check out some of my website designs: My Nike CSS Test Site My Work’s Site Neeps!

The first thing I did was installed Prima. Prima is a WordPress Theme that uses Sandbox to create a very simple and aesthetically pleasing blog. The plan was to use Prima’s well commented css file as a template to edit. Hopefully by the time I’m done there won’t be any resemblance between KennethBrandon.com and Prima.

My blog view in a wide browser

My Blog view in a thin browser

The second thing was to give Prima a new big header. What’s bigger than Crater Lake? I took this photo of Crater Lake on my last hiking trip across Oregon. Last night I spent most of my time doing some CSS magic so that the header has a somewhat liquid design. (Try resizing the page!) I wanted to reward all visitors who spent some big $ on large screens with a cool picture. The biggest challenge was to get the rounded corners on the header no mater how wide their browser is.

I think my next step will be to work on my plain home page.

Is Sandbox a step back?

WordPress' Default Theme

That may be true, however to do this, Sandbox strips most of WordPress’ formatting.  You go from WordPress’ nice, clean default look, to a horrid, cluttered, completely style-less mess.

I have to start adding some css fast!

This will hopefully become a place for me to share some of my projects with the world…  I have some big ideas for this site, but first I will have to figure out how to use WordPress and set up this blog!