Thought I should update my Journal considering this is my 100th post to Deviant Art. I never dreamed that I would submit so many when I first started at a time that doesn't seem so long ago.

I remember first spotting BlackBox on a shell site and absolutely hated it when I installed it. To be fair, there was very little finished at that time, so things like a systemtray didn't exist for it. I removed it and went back to what I thought was a superior shell – LiteStep.

Some time had gone by when I spotted NC-17s sweet UltraViolet theme on a shell site. Mistaking it first for a Step theme, I noticed the tell-tale toolbar at the bottom and realized it was for that damn BlackBox shell I hated so much. NC's superior choice of wallpapers and theme design won me over and I succumbed to downloading and trying BlackBox once again.

Had it not been for UltraViolet's sex appeal, I don't think I would have plodded through what appeared to me to be a very stripped down LiteStep with almost no plugins to come to the realization: that was the point.

Theming was not something I had planned to do. I was browsing the contents of a game CD that I liked when I came across a wallpaper section. The wallpaper was simple enough, but catchy, and looking at it, I could see how a BlackBox theme design could work for it. The wallpaper and consequent theme was Hitman.

I remember signing up here at Deviant Art and feeling out of place. I didn't belong here, this was where the real artists hung out, I just made shell themes. All that changed when Jark gave me the Daily Deviation for Radeon, I was beside myself.

Since that time, I have designed and destroyed numerous themes. Some of my favorites are the ones that no one bothers to download and some of the ones I think are crap get downloaded constantly. It's kind of like thinking that more equals better, it's all perspective – such is life.