TABLE OF CONTENTS
Teknidermy Magazine - Issue 6 , Vol. 1
September/October, 2001
An Interview with Plastic
by JellyBeanSoup

Luuc van Hagen, better known as Plastic, lives in the Netherlands (aka. Holland.) with his partner Nikkie and two cats. He works with handicapped people, who by his admission, are pretty cool. During his spare time, he runs a site known to most as "Virtual Plastic."

I got a chance to catch up with this really neat guy via email, and during the interview I passed some real tough questions.

Tek: Are you "religious?"
Plastic No. But I believe in some things, strongly.

Tek: Which do you prefer? Pop music, or Heavy Metal? Why?
Plastic: As a principle choice, or solid concrete ? I'm into anything, really, if done with taste, pure emotional non-thinking. Grew up with punk/new wave, now it's folk mixed with anything really. The world is big. I'm into hardcore, stuff that really hits hard into my mind. Could be some Finnish chants, Maroccan disco or your version of ancient polka's (Brave Combo rules!). But really, Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris had it too, and schlagers ain't bad... and I still dig ska, my (lack of) hair still reflects that. :) Oh, and David Eugene Edwards (16 Horsepower) is... well, couldn't say that, right ?

Tek: MacOS or Windows? Why?
Plastic: Whatever. We happened to buy a pc, Windows pre-installed, didn't know
there was a choice then. I'm happy and familiar with it (got Linux and BeOS on my current box too, and emulating the Mac/Amiga, just never looked into it much...).
But it's obvious a Mac user likes his/her machine just as well, and I don't feel we need the competition between MS and Apple to spread to users and create some battle... Consider that the Mac was the choice for anybody involved with graphics a while back, and still is a popular choice. Might explain why you hardly see a bad designed page from them.
Dave Brasgalla (The Iconfactory), a great artist/guy, once explained that a (dying) anti- Windows attitude on the Mac side was caused by the fact Apple had to struggle to survive. Hence their user base feels much more strongly for their OS.
But my personal experience with people on the Mac is great. Well, I've spoken with artists mostly, and they were mostly pleased with having their stuff acknowledged, converted... etc. So mainly look with a lot of respect that way.

Tek: DeviantArt or LotsofSkins? (Before it's demise.) Why?
Plastic: Both. I don't see no reason to put one above the other, you might see sites
like LOS and Skinbase mentioned more often on VP, because they deserve some
more attention. DevArt and WinCustomize are settled already. All different
parts of the spectrum of sites around, we shouldn't judge, though we do make
a choice in what we wanna promote, which is the small sites with an
"attitude", mostly.

Tek: Who is your favourite skinner out there?
Plastic: Hard. Guess that would be Dangeruss. Not very original, I know, but he's got
the force, looks simple, but if you can really create a full customized look
for your desktop like he does, that involves some vision... likewise, I
could name Albie Wong, who does about the same on the Mac. These guys are
more than skinners alone, they're GUI designers.

Tek: Which OS do you think has the most going for it, skinability-wise...
Windows XP, Mac OS X or Linux?
Plastic: I'm not really comfortable running Linux, seen only screenshots of MacOS X, and just seen some example files on how "theming" is controlled in XP. You'd expect the *nix windowmanagers to be most configurable and all, but I don't really know about true skinnability. How 'bout replacement shells, then?
Maybe you'd better ask tin_omen ;)

Tek: What sort of future do you see in store for the skinning community?
Plastic: Lots of talk on that, lately. It seems decided there's gonna be some description models being set up - pay a small amount to have access to all resources. Guess that's reality and in the future, still, there's some site's running the oldfashioned way, hope they'll survive. And Tek's editors got a brand new concept in progress still, I'm hoping, and awaiting.
In general, I don't really mind and care what route the major sites are taking. There will always be alternatives to a commercial approach, smaller, less fancy perhaps, but alive.
Tek: Who do you see as a future great in the skinning community?
Plastic: I'm not so sure the future's so bright I'll need glasses. Discussion on
recent situation is all around, let me just add something people seem to
forget sometimes, when mourning about a site/program gone, or discussing
politics at some place. While it might seem valid to debate policy at
WinCustomize (I've done my share of whining), i.e., it just may resort more
results to contribute to, support other initiatives if you don't agree...

It seems there's a tendency to give the skin archives a different twist.
DevArt is much more than a skin archive, follow-up on Deskmod is gonnna be
(?!). I'm hoping Skinbase and LOS will stick with providing skins for
anything you'd like.

Tek: What about earth's future?
Plastic: Heh, it's almost done betatesting humanity, bug fixing didn't do much, so I think this feature will have to go :)

Tek: What is Virtual Plastic's goal?
Plastic: Guess that changed over the years. Started as something like "providing all
tweakage/links to really change the look of your Windows box". That still
stands, but we got a little known and there's some other motives slipping
in, like helping/promoting the "little" developer, provide an alternative to
anything "commercial" in this area etc. We noticed we could make that
difference sometimes (sorry if that sounds like bragging), so it's really
something we feel we need to do.

To be perfectly clear, that's not denying any other direction existence. We
just want that alternative around, always, and that needs to be promoted
(all around, VP is just that little piece). So, it may seem we're (or I,
since I did some writing on that) all anti-Stardock (could as well name it
:), but we're not. We just need to define our position, and setting it off
to Stardock, defining the differences, is one way of doing it (and very
clear, too).

Another thing that just started happening, and we'd like to expand, is
getting people more involved in the proces. We got some stuff accomplished
by just asking the questions out loud and people jumped in. We'll need to
set up some more means of interaction, ways for people to work together.

Tek: How long has VP been around?
Plastic: Since early 1999, as my personal tweak collection. Real development, if
that's the proper word, started when I invited some of the others in (after
a year or so). Though I'm still the guy working on it most and you'll see my
name around often, that was the best thing I did ever to VP. Beaker and
zenogias got in there. Could give you a list of what they exactly added, but
discussing, arguing is what really did it. Elastic and kmr got in later, and
basically, not counting real life influences, we're up to anything now.

Tek: What are your future plans for VP?
Plastic: If your readers see this, we should have a functional messageboard again.
That's what we're working on now. Well, we've purchased one, but it needs to
be tweaked to the max before it goes online (and this whole scripting
thing is kinda new to us..). We had one of those Ezboard things before,
banners/popups got increased to a maximum annoyance rate, so I, very
impulsive, deleted it. Never realized how important it was, I miss it. Not
that it was very active, but it was alive, and served it's purpose.

If we wanna play the role we would like to have, we need it, and set it up a
little different this time. Meaning we're bringing in a bit of focus on some
things we think are important, and require input from people. Some
specialized forums, ability to post your own projects etc. Hehe, dreaming,
but a little community building wouldn't be bad. I don't think it all will
be very big, but I at least want some of the people hanging around before
back, and while us asking things to people had results before, we can expand
it a little for sure :)...

Tek: What's the best part about working on this site?
Plastic: The interaction, with fellow crew and/or developers/visitors. That's the
best part of being on the internet in general. Most people don't realize
enough what they could do, the difference they could make, to a developer, a
fellow artist etc. If you hit that mail button once in a while, it's amazing
what response you get.

Tek: Whats the worst part about working on the site?
Plastic: Like you set up some scripts, following instructions, and then you want
something done, but realize you don't have the faintest clue on what
actually is going on there. So you just dive in and learn about the most
common ways to cause a server error... (which isn't really bad, cause in the
end you find out and you feel soooo good :).

Tek: How did you find out about all the stuff you present on your site? (Programs, Skins, etc...)
Plastic: Check out our customization links page :). Regular channels, I guess, spend
a lot of time surfin'. I'm happy to see developers/users are finding us,
more often, use us to promote their stuff. And then there's all those people
around who take the effort to submit us something and even don't feel bad
about ending in some mass update because we slacked again (I hope)...

Tek: Do you do any skinning, graphics or programming yourself?
Plastic: Personally, I'm just your average user. Do a little skinning etc if I've got
the time, but that will never be considered great (it isn't). The other guys
are much more into scripting/programming, that might show up some more in
the future.

Tek: What programs do you like to use?
Plastic: There's loads of programs listed at VP, but I guess you could look at our
favorites list to see it's mostly the basic, "leaving some resources for
yourself" stuff, that sticks around.
If I want something, I prefer a registry tweak. If that won't do it, editing a resource is second choice. Last is having a program running.
I would be sooo glad if some c++ (hint) developer would take it upon his/her shoulders to make Eppie run in Me/2k Other than that, I know Tclock is running on all crew desktops, some thing to hide the icon text background, and one or two additions. (personally, I run TypeSound, adds typewriter sounds to all my keyboard hits, I'm so used to have that sound around).

Aside of memory-resident stuff, there's lots of (skinnable) apps I fire up
quite often. Couldn't live without ColorPad (and desperately waiting for a
functional CodePad), and surely have all stuff around developed by Kobi,
neophile, redllar, : : em : :, Mercutio, Blake/felonious, some more...

Not skinnable, but can't live without: IconPhile (!!), Resource Hacker.

Tek: Are you ever going to think about running another site?
Plastic: He he, let me tell you about this little site, a personal sideproject, you
skinners should know about. :) The most simple, skinnable resource monitor
(only monitoring RAM status) has been developed years back.
The developer, LiON, quit the project, but allows me to keep Oxygenator alive, and some more of his stuff.
http://www.virtualplastic.org/lion/ - the Digital Dreams remembrance pages.
It's easy, send some skin in :)

Tek: What sites do you visit most often?
Plastic: Winguides (formerly regedit.com), shell x city/daily rotation, shellfront. Desktopian, though not much happening lately. After that, the skin related sites.

Tek: Have you got any tips for Wanna-Be-Like-Plastic people?
Plastic: Yeah, right :)... I'm nothing but a "collector"... gaining some knowledge
along the way. If I've done anything good, it involves "persistence".
VP is just on the break of being known around, and it took 2 years to get there.
Guess I need some really good comments then, really bad, or maybe we're just
convinced it's good what we do, and it's up to the world to judge, if anyone
desires.
There's a call around, in the skinning and mostly shell community, do your own thing, put up some pages. That's good, but don't be disappointed when it isn't an instant success.
Hang on, improve, give it time.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS