Starting to cook - Need a bit of help from the chefs here

[JohanDC]

Just starting to cook my own ROM with the kitchen from Alex.

I was wondering if there are any other tools available to do the cooking?

I also started to create my own packages which works well but I have already run into some issues, so please help. ;-)

I have created a package to auto-configure the today theme, unfortunately the reg key that I am setting in my package does not stick!

The key that I am configuring is:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today]
"Skin"="\\windows\\Htc.tsk"

After flashing, it changes to:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today]
"Skin"="Htc.tsk"

So the \\windows\\ part has gone missing... Any ideas?

I was also wondering how I can update the ROM version so that I can keep track of some versioning?

One more item, how can I change the screens of the config wizard (after flashing), like align screen, set date/time, etc...
Also how can I change the default date/time displayed as it is always pointing to a date in 2007?

TIA for any help offered! I have searched alot but could not find anything related to this.