Nike + iPod , match made in heaven. Setup from hell. I have not been blogging that much of late, since I have been very busy with work and life in general. I have decided to remedy that by giving myself a bit of a writing assignment, and hopefully give myself some motivation. Motivation? That's right I can use all I can get, and the reason why is that my lovely wife has dragged me into the torturous world of running. As we all know the best runners are people who sit in f...

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...

Mac Zealots Strike Again! Yesterday Microsoft announced Microsoft Gadgets. This came as a bit of an eye-opener to those of us who have been working with DesktopX for years. An eye-opener, but not necessarily a surprise... Way back with active desktop Microsoft played with this type of thing, and we knew that they had not stopped. XAML and Avalon are coming in Vista and have been in the works for years and it has been quite evident that desktop content, similar to what DesktopX can c...

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...

Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface, Part 4: Beta 2. Major Screen Changes.   I have not been keeping up with The UI design journals, mostly because I have been very busy doing screens, and because I have been doing some major changes - not all of them will be apparent to the testers - and some will not be even be implemented in Beta 2. But there has been allot of cool stuff done over the last few months. I will try and sum up some of the UI highlights. ...

E3, oh my god, too much stuff... XBox 360, Booth Babes, and Carne Asada. Warrning!!!! This blog is being written without my normal spell checking and editing by my lovely wife, so please do not flame me on typos or grammar. If that is the type of thing you are looking for, move on, I am quite sure there a 1000 blogs being written tonight by E3 attendees and not a single one of them will have a spelling mistake. After a year and a half in Michigan, yesterday I was brought back to ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface, Part 3: Getting ready for the Beta.      This week we made a few new screens and some major tweaks to several of the existing ones. One of the coolest new features in GalCiv 2 is going to be ship design. At first we were going to have ship building and ship designing done in one screen. After a little play testing it became obvious that we were going to have to break them in two separate screens.  ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizat Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface. Part 2: The Great Mini Map Controversy of Ought Five.       It seams odd to me that we are nearing our first beta for Galactic Civilizations 2 and I am only now on Part 2 of designing the interface. This is for a few reasons. I have been buried under the task itself, as well as 16 hundred other little projects that I keep trying to find time to ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizat Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface. Part 1:   I have been wanting to do a weekly blog on the progress of the Galactic Civilizations 2 user interface. Unfortunately I seem to have missed the first 12 weeks of it, so I will have to go back and cover some of the milestones of its design as time allows. One thing that is going to make things nice in Galactic Civilizations 2 is that the game...

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...

My new foray into Game GUI design took a bumpy side trip today, that rocky side street came in the form of, “philosophy” statistic. While making what should have been a rather simple “Edit Candidate” popup window, for the Political Machine. All seamed to be going well. I had everything in a expectable layout. With what I thought was a rather simple, and not to “Excel Like” Window. Everything fit together, just like a puzzle. Than the trauma began. While pondering if there was anything m...