New Page 1 After the miner set back of having no power at the office today, Things are going ok on the Christmas Theme. I am not going to show any Screenshots tonight, as I am not ready to show what I have. But here are the things I got done today. 1) Established look and feel of the Windowblinds skin.     This proved much harder then I had hoped. Making something that is decidedly "Christmasy" that is not annoyingly bright, or to Cliché, What I want is when people see the skin for...

New Page 1 Skinning Christmas....     As most of the skinners out there know, I am one of the luckiest skinners arrowed. In that I one of the few who get paid to skin. While it is not my full time job here at Stardock, It is something I get to do for special occasions.  And Low and behold, its one of those special occasions, Christmas. I have been given the task over the rest of this week, to make a Christmas Suite skins. And I thought it would be kind of cool...

An Icon a day Keeps the Creative Block away. (I hope)        As some of you may have noticed, and gotten mad at me for, I have not had a new free Iconpack out for quite some time. This is not so much because I have been doing Premium Suites, it's because I just have not been able to find any time. Since I have started working at Stardock, over a year ago now, I have been doing a lot of fun stuff at work. Making video game UI's, Skins, and 3D. This has been sa...

New Page 1 Not that this will come as a surprise to anyone who has ever made a Windowblinds skin, I am running a bit behind the. But the good news is I think I am only about a half day behind my proposed schedule. My main problem today was I pretty much completely abandoned the Titlebar and Frames that I had finished yesterday. Brad pointed out to me that it was a bit Harsh. And I had to admit he was right. The funny thing is that once I got into rethinking it I decided to go with a ...

Ok, As I was saying yesterday I am a bit behind schedule. I was hoping to have the Windowblinds skin wrapped up tonight, and I almost got there. But not quite. I still need a XP start button, as well to tweak some of the system colors. But I should have no problem finishing it up tomorrow. Here is another teaser of the skin. I will have a full Screenshot for you tomorrow night. Click the Thumbnail to see full size Image. My Plan for tomorrow is to finish up the Windowblinds Skin, do t...

New Page 1       This morning I came in early to start on my Christmas theme, and low and behold, there is no power at the office. Luckily I had not stated the theme yet, so I jumped in my car and headed home. After a this hour or so of delay I am back on it.       I spent some time this morning just coming up with Christmas elements that I can work in to the suite. This allows me to come up with a color palette, as well as helps me ...

  I was never happy with the quantity of File Type icons in the original Icon-A-Day Iconpackage. I wanted to do more, but by the time I got to the end of the project I was about burned out. This time around should be easier since we should be able to keep almost all of the original file type icons. Day , 2 (Tuesday, August 5th, 2008) One of ...

Under The Skin: (Episode 3)   We are about a month late, but we finaly got the chance to sit down and recorded Under The Skin (Episode #3). This week we have Rich Kulesus, a.k.a. MrBiotech from skinyourscreen.com. He lets us know what's new with SkinYourScreen and his new podcast. We also fill you in on the latest in Skinning news, including the new beta of WindowBlinds 5.0   Show Notes: Under the Skin : Episode 3, Recorded October 6th, 2005. Host: Pa...

Under The Skin: (Episode 2)   This week on Under the Skin we do our first interview on the development side of skinning. We interview perhaps one of the most unknown, yet most important people in the skinning development world: Kris Kwilas (Nakor). We ask about Object Desktop, its history and its future. Show Notes: Under the Skin : Episode 2 , Recorded August 31, 2005. Host: Paul Boyer Guest Host: Kristin Hatcher. Special Guest: Kris Kwilas. In...

Under The Skin: (Episode 1)   In every episode of Under the Skin we are going to try and provide as detailed show notes as possible. Today we take the time to introduce ourselves, as well as let everyone know what our Podcast is all about.  Then we welcome Mike Bryant, one of the worlds most popular skinners, and co-founder of the SkinPlant.com . Show Notes: Under the Skin : Episode 1 , Recorded August 13, 2005. Host: Paul Boyer Guest Host:...

Under The Skin: (We have a home!) Last week we recorded our first episode of  the new Skinning Podcast , Under the Skin . My original plan was to host it on my Wincustomize.com website. This was a bit of a cheap solution because I was concerned about the cost of bandwidth. However, once again, Stardock has stepped in to give me a hand. Under the Skin , will now be part of the PowerUser.tv "network". We will have our own home page, at undertheskin.poweru...

 Skinning Podcast!As most of you know, Stardock and Neowin have joined up to do PowerUser.tv. PowerUser TV is going to be a tech news Podcast, and video cast. During the process of getting set up for this, I have been inspired to do podcast of my own about skinning and the skinning community. The plan so far: We are planning on doing two episodes a month. Maybe weekly if it is well received. I will be hosting it, and we will be interviewing a different skinner each episode. I hope...

While I was doing the Icon-A-Day Icons I realized how many Icons had been added to IconPackager over the last few years. Every once and a while I see screenshots of people using my FauxS-XP Icons or the LaST Icons . It has been some time for me since I have looked at them our updated them. I am wondering if it would be worth my while to do so.     I have 4 colors of LaST Icons, that I could finish up and post. I would have to create something like 15 new Icons to make the...

New Page 1 OK, so I eded up finishing the Windowblinds skin on the plain to California. Bringing us to a total of 34 hours on the Windowblinds skin. More then I wanted but not to bad over all. But now from the Starbucks in San Bernardino California. I have the chance to update the blog, and explain why I have been MIA for the last 2 days. I spent yesterday doing the Icons and the wall, though I want to tweak the wall a bit more so Im not showing it here. Icons ended up takeing about ...

Since I began running 3 years ago I have been looking for a way to bring my two passions together; Icons and Running. This year I joined the “Team In Training” to help raise money for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am running 5 marathons this year, including the Alaska Mayors Marathon, along with my wife, as a member of the “Team In Training.” We set a fundraising goal of $10,000 dollars between the two of us. This gave me my chance to finally bring my two addictions together. I’ve done this by creating the “Marathon” Icon suite.

In the Marathon Icon suite I tried to capture the scope of running a marathon by creating a uniquely colored IconPackage for each mile of the Marathon -  26 IconPacks for 26.2 miles. The result is an amazing variety and over 1200 icons that will complement any desktop. To top this all off I included three additional IconPacks, themed for the “Team in Training” so you can show your support to the world, making a total of 29 IconPackages. This, to my knowledge, the largest Icon suite ever.

Stardock has been generous enough to join in my efforts, and will donate all the profits from this pack as well, so 100% of the profits from this suite will go directly to the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to help save lives. 

I hope you will join me in supporting this cause. As someone who has lost family to Leukemia, it is near and dear to my heart. On June 20th of 2009, my wife and I will be running across the finish line in Alaska, in memory of my Uncle, and in support of my brother-in-law. In the end it will be those of you who support me by purchasing the “Marathon” suite that will have made it possible.

For additional information about our story, or to donate directly to the cause, go here:

For additional information about The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, go here:

If you don’t already have IconPackager, you can download try it out, get it here.

To help save lives, and get the full 29 pack suite, go here.