I got bored while watching shitty TV, and couldn’t sleep either. Started fooling around on the couch with my laptop, and remembered Rainmeter. If you don’t know, Rainmeter is a desktop customization tool, allowing you to download skins from other users and apply to them to make your desktop look amazing. I’ve seen some crazy things done with this program over the years, but when I set up this laptop years ago, Rainmeter slipped through the cracks. If you’re interested in it, you can visit their website here.

Now, let me just begin by saying that I’m a complete novice with Rainmeter. In my prior installations, I never really dove into creating my own skins, because of a variety of reasons. Ok, I just didn’t want to do that. So, I used other users’ skins, that they spent hours making. It took me 3 hours to make those two shitty folders on the left, and the Date/Time widget that’s off-center in the picture. (Not to worry, I fixed it.) Those things are the only things that I can say are MINE. The others are the default illustro skin that comes packaged with Rainmeter, and I find those to be the most simplistic to use. Sure, I could find something more flashy… But, no, I want the simple look.

It’s actually a pretty simple process, once you get it figured out. And you can use the pre-packaged skins as a guide to position things how you want. It took me over an hour to make the first version of the folders you see, and another 30 minutes to reformat it neatly. The date/time skin was rather simple, and it took me just over an hour to work on it. The issue I had was finding a decent font, which I used Razer Regular. It’s not much to look at, but it’s mine. And I’ll love it until design something with pictures. Just kidding, I love the text version I have.

UPDATE: I woke up this morning and was still feeling crafty. So, I spent half the day learning/designing my own skins. Once I got the hang of it, it went pretty well, and now I’ve got a common theme and color scheme across the skin. Here’s the screenshot.

If you have some personal Rainmeter projects you wanna show off, drop some words and/or pictures in the comments!