The other day I was leafing through old 'bytes' in a dusty corner of a forgotten harddrive, and came across some ancient skins I did for a forgotten proggy or two...

Got me thinking....

What got me into this?...that's easy...was shells - messing with the GUI the 'brutal' way....but that's not what has me here still....around 10 years later.

So that reminded me of a 'feeling' I had at that old skinz.org site..... when I realised that skinning was nothing more than a new artform, like painting, or sculpting, except for one small detail.....People doing 'it' in the mid/late '90s were at the DAWN of the emergence of this new 'artform', and THAT was something no painter or sculptor could lay claim to....[at least none still living].

It meant that even as an 'observer' what was being done was genuinely fresh, new and exciting....and if you also happened to 'dabble in it' yourself then the fun was even more acute.

So....a decade later...the world has changed, skinning is far better-known now than it was then, and a lot of 'new' faces have been attracted to it all.  [skinz.org membership probably just made it into 4 figures...Wincustomize is in 7]

Question is.....WHY...?

Casual time-killer or outlet for expression?

The 'sad' part is knowing the people who have moved on, departed the scene...over the years.  People you think of...often....of whom many now are oblivious.  The 'happy' part is those who come after...to swell the ranks, even though skinning is now more complex [harder]...and maybe quite less divergent [fewer skinnable apps].

[I digress]

So....

Why are you here?