Summer's ended...thank all the powers that be. Caught the flu...and recovering, slowly. No smell of burning leaves...sorry, but I truly miss that.

So the month of September evokes powerful memories of leaves changing colors, "back to school", wrapping books in brown paper bags (anyone remember...time was it wouldn't occur to me to ask that...), diving in musty leaf piles, ah...memories.

So, this month's WB is 0 Maple Leaves...yes, adni18's. The docks are recolored V_O_X by vStyler and ported to Winstep by Giz. The wall is Gemini AI, and Ps...school kids and autumn leaves in Cubist style. If anyone wants it, I've posted it.

This is very hard to relate to you. I'll try to do it as factually as I can, but that will be difficult, as Nikos was a friend, as he was to many here at WinCustomize and Stardock.

I should say that I haven't found a public document concerning his passing, so I'm relying on emails I received from his widow.

I sent an inquiry and learned through his widow, Mrs. Adamamas, that he passed away suddenly and unexpectedly about a month ago. 

I don't know what took our friend and honestly, it really doesn't matter, in the end. All that really matters is that he's gone. So, let's concentrate on his life, and not on that fraction of an instant in which life departed from his talented hands...the hands of a reconstructive, cosmetic Dentist who practiced his art for many years in his home town, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and a digital artist of note who received awards and prizes...among them Master Skinner here at WinCustomize. 

Nikos Adamamas, aka adni18, has studied at Universities in Rome and Thessaloniki, in Medicine, Dentistry and in Design Arts. 

Our CEO Brad Wardell, said back in 2003 that: “…his downloads, rank him in the Top 15 most popular computer company’s worldwide, among them Microsoft, Yahoo etc with 8,000 to 15,000 persons downloading his work from the internet, on daily basis”. That was 22 years ago. Today, Nikos takes first and second place in downloads with Vista Plus having 966,239 downloads and XP Professional III having 794,737. That doesn't even begin to touch his site's (adni18.com) downloads and his downloads from many other sites such as deviantArt, Art Majeur, etc. It has been estimated, that more than 120.000.000 people from the entire cyberworld accessed and use his artwork, over the past 17 years, counting only some Internet statistics." - Art Majeur.

None of this begins to pay tribute to Nikos as a person and as a friend...a good, kind, funny and sensitive man. 

His art brought beauty to so many and more beautiful smiles to so many faces.

Bless you, Nikos. Rest well, fine man, great artist and good friend.

Please take the time to visit his sites here:

https://www.adni18.com/

here:

https://www.adni18.com/paintings.php

and his 45 pages of submissions here, at WC:

https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/all/search/adni18

The huge volume of his artwork is simply...superb. 

Νίκο, παλιέ μου φίλε, αναπαύσου καλά. Ελπίζω να μπορέσουμε να συναντηθούμε για ένα ποτήρι ρετσίνα κάποια μέρα. Αυτό θα ήταν υπέροχο...

Moved to our new house...wasn't fully ready so...the adventure begins! No sinks, no faucets, and a few other minuses...pelaird is briefed and I'll probably be posting some fun pix through the month. Working on my W10 lappy and using MS Paint. Don't ask.

Here it is, A wallpaper from the web, W10 on my lappy and W10 at age 10 years (yesterday). WB: Alpha Nebula Premium by Nikos (adni18), Winstep docks Cyndie's Ultimate Clean from her WB by that name. Wish I could give you all a more imaginative screenie...but next month should be better. (Please hear me up there...). The meters are part of Advanced System Care (iobit)

Yay! Independence Day! 

Hope you all have the best of all Independence Days and celebrate safely and have designated drivers...

And while you're enjoying...

Please take a moment to tell your kids and grandkids about all the sacrifices which were made so we can grill the burgers and hot dogs, brats and down the icey cold ones.

Thanks...now, where's my pizza, burger and beer?

[e digicons]:pizza:[/e] [e digicons]:beer:[/e]  

Going with either adni18's 0 Sci Fi 2, Winstep docks Armageddon WB by Xiandi and ported to Winstep by Picco14, wallpaper a combination of two walls from the net.

Trying to keep cool, calm and collected while we move to new digs, so won't be around here much. Hoping nothing prevents the move. Wish us luck!

Or...this desktop...adni18's A Quantum, with Giz's port of Galaxus 7 by roflmfaoo and the same wall.

Which one should be Doc's desktop? 

June, and almost half the year is gone. Where does it go?

Anyhow, I sort of let the cat out of the cellophane bag a few days ago...my desktop is pretty similar to what it was, just a bit simpler.

Using OD3 with Giz's Acrylic docks for OD2 (https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/objectdock_backgrounds/82/}

Wallpaper by adni18 (adni18_0100_48) sligntly modded by me.

Here ya go...

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance" - Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 2, 4.

Our friend BigDogBigFeet...Dennis...just lost his wife, Sarah.

They found each other later in life, but had some time in the sun. Yesterday, he found her at home in extremis, in heart and lung failure with seizures and a blood sugar of 30. An ambulance brought her to the ICU, but her Doctors couldn't help. Her family was summoned.

Her suffering was brief and it was treated, thankfully.

Dennis, thank you for turning to me. I know you are not as well as I and all your friends wish you were. Thank you for being part of us all, our community. You've given of yourself to the community for years.

Now it's our turn to sustain you.

Windows has bloatware. Lots of it, too. That's no secret. Because of it, W11 is slower than it could/should be without it.

"Winhance 5 (the latest version) allows you access to install or uninstall software which comes packaged with the OS: Edge, Recall, OneDrive, CoPilot as well as the ability to install other apps and packages directly from the app. You can choose from the Browsers, utilities, document viewers, and basically anything you want to install/manage or uninstall from the system you’re using, and if you reinstall your OS, not having to go through it all again as your preferences are saved (there's a portion of the video below which shows how). Moreover, it prevents MS from reinstalling stuff you don’t want in updates and patches. Best? it's free.

Along with all of the above, it gives you optimization tools, access to Windows security settings, privacy controls performance and gaming tweaks, update management, power settings as well as optimizations for Explorer, notifications and sounds.

It also lets you customize theme selection, taskbar adjustments, Start menu settings and more.

It only works on 64 bit versions of Windows 11, and the long term servicing channel versions of W10. It's downloadable from Github, or as an msi from Winhance.net " - Brian  Burgess, https://www.xda-developers.com/winhance-customization-optimization-tool-windows-11/

Here’s a video from the dev that explains it all far better than I: What’s new, what it does, etc.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVCaxNDQYs4[/video]

One word of caution, though...brought to you by a fellow whose computer knowledge I regard highly (I like Noah better, though [e digicons];)[/e] ) , Jorge Coelho (JcRabbit) the owner and mantainer of WinStep:

“Seems pretty useful from what I've seen so far... however, there is one reason I tend not to use apps/scripts that disable stuff/debloat Windows, usually you end up having issues with Windows updates later on, which are expecting some features to be enabled by default and croak if they're not. And when that happens it is VERY DIFFICULT to diagnose the cause.“

So in summary, Don't do anything irreversible without having a backup (system and registry) you can restore from.

Have yourselves a great weekend, and remember those in uniform and civilian protectors of America who make that possible!  [e digicons]:sun:[/e]  

Happy May! Spring is sprung...a simple desktop, with blues and greens.

My desktop is Atlantis by adni18, port to Winstep (by the late Master Giz) of Dani's Acrylic 7's docks, wallpaper from Apple Monterey (green mode).

March is upon us and new desktop screenies are in order!

I'm continuing with don5318's Dark Rogue blind, and Red's port of it to Winstep. The wall is from Alpha Coders and its number is 198951, alas no link. It's recolored, anyway...the Dark Rogue ship in a space port.