Well, I have sad news personally. In early August, I was burgled (or as Americans now insist 'burglarized'(euch)) and lost not only my computer but every backup disc and a lot of other more personal things. I had a lot of work stored and, whilst insurance made things right financially, it couldn't bring back the essence of what I really lost.

I now really wish that I had made more use of the online backup and storage solutions now available, and I would advise anybody reading this to do the same. Anyway, I've ow received my new, and much improved Sony machine, which runs wonderfully smoothly and is officially very ready for Vista, which I'm dreading, unless AeroXP's retrophase project comes to fruition.

I have, thanks to the help of my beta testers, put back together the majority of my Aero-Redux project for Windowblinds, firefox and Thunderbird, although all of the original .PSD's are gone now, so editing things I was unhappy with has proved far more testing than previously.

Interestingly, my burglar or burglars seemed to have no interest in my (very) old laptop which runs Longhorn 4074 so I wasn't left completely in the cold. I must say, after using my modified and patched 4074 for almost 5 weeks, I have actually found it very stable, although a number of programs which I rely on to a greater or lesser extent never seem to work fully.

This post is as much a confirmation that my skin will be released across the next few days (where have you heard that before?) and the things are kind of back on track.

Thanks for all compliments, complaints and advice left on Deviantart for my attention. They have not gone unnoticed.