on the "leaving the the skin on [ginger] and just removing the gnarly ends", i don't know or understand what you mean, mate.
I don't have any ginger I can photograph today, so I'll just have to reply on prose. When you make garlic/ginger paste, both the garlic and the ginger go into a liquidiser (or are blended using a stick blender). So, whilst the skin of garlic is nasty stuff and needs to be got rid of before blending, the skin of ginger breaks down quite well, so all that is necessary before blending is to cut off the dry ends and any particularly hard parts, then cut up the remainder leaving the skin on and blend with the peeled garlic. In general, this is suggested to save time/effort when making a base, which also includes blended garlic/ginger, but if you are not too fussy about wanting your g/g base to be pure white and bit-free, it may work for g/g paste as well.
** Phil.