The Skinventory - The FULL Story
By The Snowman

ed's note: it is thrilling to have the snowman on staff here. One of the first things we asked of him was to write an autobiographical piece about his collection. This is that piece...enjoy.

It all started back in the good old 90's, more exactly 1995. I was attending computer school to see if I could learn a bit more about those stupid things we all know so well; the PC! Between classes we spent the time surfing the Internet - a new thing at that time here in Denmark!

On the net, someone discovered the audio format "MP3", and along with that they found an MP3 player.... well I don't know if you've heard about it but it was called Winamp! ;)
So I started grabbing different MP3 files from all around the net, but that soon got boring, so I just went on doing the odd surfing, checking out this and that, nude women and stuff. But One day I stumbled upon something strange!! Skins for Winamp! Now what the heck was that??

So I dug into the matter and found that there were several hundred skins for Winamp around (today there several 10's of thousand!). Hmm.... Well OK that was cool and I sorta forgot all about it, until One day, One of my classmates showed me One cool skin! It's strange but I still remember the impact it had on me! And a matter of fact I also remember the skin, I don't know who made it but it was called "Gold".

It was before the time people started the "readme.txt" thingy. But compared to the stuff released today, it's nothing! But in fact, this skin sorta got me started looking around for other skins. One thing led to another, and I was searching all over the Net for skins. I still wasn't downloading much, but as I found more and more great stuff it just sorta caught on - "wow, look at that One I JUST gotta have it" - "WOOW, that one's even greater".

So basically that's the way my collection started. At this point I got to thank at least One special site for it, the legendarywww.layer3.org! From here I've downloaded at least the first 1,000 skins!! Oh the classes I skipped, just so I could download skins.....
But all good things have to have an end, and so did my time at the computer school. And I was without any Internet connection. But I sure didn't forget about my, at that time, small collection. At the time I left school the count was up to 2078 skins and they were all just for Winamp! (Still got the backup CD) ;) Thank God for for the CD-burner 'cause at the time my harddrive was starting to fill up (it was a staggering 1.2 gig HD) so I had to do something. So I burned all the skins, 157 MB + more on a disc. And sorta left it all behind me, once again.

Then in 1999, two years after ending computer school, I got Internet connection at home!! YEEHAAA.... Surfing at home, at last!! :) So now I could continue what had become kind of an obsession to me, skins for Winamp. But to my fear/happiness so had "millions" of other people around the world. A total skins-frenzy had caught on!! But I pick up where I left - at Layer3.org.

At least I thought I should, but if my memory is correct, the site had been taken down for "maintenance" and stayed that way for a long time! So I had to seek other grounds for downloading skins. Once again I searched the net for sites holding skins for Winamp. I found a few but not alot!

Then, One day, my brother-in-law showed me this great new audioplayer One of his colleagues had downloaded from the net - K-Jöfol. And I totally freaked out! It too was skinnable. Woah, a new player to find skins for! ;) hmm..... Were there more like this??

So I fired up the good old 36.6 and did a search for skinnable applications. During this search something caught my eye. Customize.com! And they had HUGE amounts of skinnable applications and skins!! (at least to me, they had - remember I still "only" had my 2000+ skins for Winamp!). From there I started adding the various skins...

In the fall of 1999 I had the great idea of putting my collection online, available to the masses on the Internet. So I did it! By doing that, the first steps were taken to create what I today call The Skinventory!!

The first "version" of The Skinventory was called "Snowman - All-Skins" and had One feature that The Skinventory haven't got today - downloads from the collection.
In the spring of 2000 I joined the "crew" at Skinz.org - later to become me "second home"! Dang things were going fast now! I was downloading skins by the bucket!!

And the collection grew rapidly, very rapidly!! So did the visits to Snowman - All-Skins. UNTIL.... I made the dreadful error of "advertising" about my site at the Skinz.org messageboard...... You see, all the skins available for download at All-Skins was sorta NOT authorized by the creators. hehe err.... *gulp*.
Holy smoke!! I was getting mails from skinners like treetog, Bakerstreet, Hippy(goth) telling my to pull their skins from my site.
You can easily say that I really had f*cked up BIG time!!! OK just for the record, some also said that it was OK by them that their skins were at my site!!
But basically I had violated the One skin-code that just may NOT be violated - Copyright!!!

Now I had two choices: Either ask permission from every single author (!!) or take the site offline! I chose the easy solution - and All-Skins was history!!!
But OK that "little mistake" didn't keep my collection offline for long! Just about three weeks after All-Skins was taken offline All-Skins Lite was created! An exact copy of the old site, this time just not with any other downloads than my own skins!
Then in May 2000 a disaster hit that might have resulted in, me not writing this!! The HD holding my collection (5000+ skins at the moment) crashed wiping out EVERYTHING. 5 years of work down the drain.

So once again I faced the challenge of restoring the collection! Luckily I still had the backup of most of the Winamp skins but I still had to download the rest all over again! And so I did! With the help of Skinz.org, Deskmod.com and Sonique.com, the collection slowly grew, again! When I was done "emptying" the various sites for skins the collection had grown to about 8000 skins and All-Skins Lite had changed name to The Skinventory!

Since then my collection just has kept growing and growing. But after the demise of Skinz.org things have really slowed down! But there's no business like skinbusiness, so I moved on to other sites like Deviantart.com, Wincustomize.com, Skinbase.org and LotOfSkins.com (my new home).

So what does the future look like for The Skinventory?

Actually not much. I still get requests for adding downloads but that's NOT going to happen, on two reasons: I do NOT want to write 20000+ mails asking for permissions!!! And I don't think there's any (free) ISP's that will host over 4.5 gig of skins!! (hehe) - Advertising, you say?? Not in a million years!! I hate adds!

But as you read this The Skinventory has gotten a whole new look! I've ditched the black and yellow look for a more "soft-on-eyes" look! But the general layout is basically the same!

At the time of this writing, the collection amounts to 20,595 skins divided between 119 different applications!

Now, that was HOW my collection got started. Now we're just missing the big WHY?!?!

Well basically I'm a collecting guy. I have a few "real life" collections going on, too!! The two "main" collections that I frequently try to maintain are my 2500 different disposable lighters w/adds and my vinyl records.

The vinyl collection is a "joint" collection I have together with my wife. This collection is the One that's most valuable to me in more than One way: My "Gasolin' " collection. Gasolin' was and still is One of the greatest Danish rock band of all time! This is the collection, which I'm fighting a brave battle to complete! It's not just other collectors I'm "fighting", but time is the greatest enemy.

Example: Their first single, was released in 1970 in only 300 copies! 128 copies were destroyed in a fire, so that leaves 172 copies and it wasn't even a hit single!!!
But our vinyl collection has an estimated value just about 100.000 Dkr
(about $12,500 - US/ 9000 £)!!
So you see I'm not just collection for the fun of it!!

---

I've also been asked to to the fnaD's five, so here we go:

1. what skin do you wish you'd written?
Dangeruss's Winstep suite! My all time favorite!!!

2. what would you like to have on your laptop if you were stranded on an island? e.g: skins, music, proggies, peripherals, games etc.
An exact copy of my stationary PC at home! Couldn't live without it. But if I should specify, these had to be my choices:
Skin: Anything by Dangeruss or treetog.
Music: Goldfinger (Doreen's gonna kick me for this. ;) )
Proggies: iNet-Tabs, PSP 7, Frontpage 2000 and Outlook 5.
Peripherals: Don't use any! (Other than keyboard and mouse.)
Games: Le Mans 24 Hours, Driver, Quake 3 and/or Unreal.

3. have there been any skins that have made you laugh? cry? orgasm?
Laugh - Any of chichigirl's WB skins! Not because the laughable or silly, but because they are so cheerful!!
Cry - When Skinz.org was still among us some guy submitted a wallpaper (I think) dedicated to a female singer who recently died. I can't remember the name of either her or the wp, but it really touched me. The WP was on a dark background with a spotlight coming from the top left, shining down on a stage, with a microphone stand. The microphone was laying on the stage picturing the end of the show! This piece of art almost brought a tear to my eye!!
Orgasm - Almost anything made by Dangeruss and treetog would be able to "get me off" anytime! ;)
These two guys have my highest and deepest respect!

4. boxers or briefs?
Uh!! I must bow down and confess that I am a *breifer*

5. list some sites you visit daily, weekly, hourly.
Hmmm.... where to begin!?! Well for starters I visit LotsOfSkin.com several times a day, when I do my "rounds" checking for new skins! But on the list these other fine sites frequent: Deviantart.com, Wincustomize.com and Skinbase.org. But I have to confess that I do have a peep in at The Brown Site (Skinz.org) from time to time! (Just in case... you know!!!)

Before I end I would like to thank all the good folks from Skinz.org (NOT the owners), the team at LotsOfSkins.com and every single skinartist out there! Couldn't have done it without you guys/gals!

Thank you!

-->> The Snowman <<--
Keeper Of The Largest Private Online Skins Collection In The World
snowman@larsen.dk
http://skinventory.cjb.net