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by mesh 760 days ago
I owe my entire career to the fact that Winamp added the ability to re-skin.

I had just graduated graduate school for international economics, and was working for a government contractor who only hired me because I had a masters (they could charge the government more). Because of this, I literally had nothing to do and would just sit in the office.

I eventually figured out an excuse to get my employer to buy Photoshop for me and I started learning it on company time. When Winamp came out with the update to add skins, I ended up making one of the very first skins (meshAMP) which became really popularly.

https://archive.org/details/winampskins_meshAmp

(I am cringing looking at it now)

This led to contract job with STB (to design interfaces for a TV Tuner card they had) and eventually 3DFX (paid in 3d video cards), and eventually a career change and a job as a graphic designer.

Except, I was not a good designer, so I quickly learned to program (ASP.net and then JAVA), which led to Macromedia Flash, which led to Macromedia Generator, which eventually led to a job offer from Macromedia (now Adobe), where I still am (sadly, sans Flash).

Anyways, thank your WinAMP!

2 comments

I've felt for a long time that hacker News was dead, then I read your post and it made me warm inside
Did you create Macromedia Flash? Or otherwise worked on it

Anyway your winamp skin is cool

I worked with the team and had input on the Player, but my job was in community / evangelism.