Category Archives: Opinion

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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I had been hearing so much about Skyrim and how awesome it was but I couldn’t afford to buy it when it came out November 11th.  So to satisfy my Elder Scrolls game cravings I installed TES3: Morrowind which I’ve owned since it came out in 2002 but I didn’t play it much back then because my computer wasn’t quite up to running it well, so I never got around to finishing the main story quest line. This time I was determined to get though the main quest, which I did after getting quite a ways though the game then deciding to create a new character and starting over.  I also did something else that I hadn’t done in Morrowind before which is to actually use some mods.  I won’t get into which ones since much of this post is going to be about the mods I’m now using for Skyrim.

Around the same time I also watched all of HBO’s Game of Thrones series which only served to further put me in the mood for Skyrim.

So finally Thursday December 29th I came home from work and decided that since I’ve got a four day weekend why not spend all of it playing a video game, so I went on Steam and bought Skyrim.  I then spent my whole weekend playing Skyrim like it was my job.  From Thursday evening to Monday night I got in about 52 hours playing this game.  One of the neat and at the same time depressing things about Steam is that it keeps track of how much time you play games you’ve purchased through it.

Anyways after playing this game a few weeks and trying out some mods I wanted to list the mods that I’m currently using and why.

Glowing Ore Veins 300 this was probably the first mod that I added right after walking though the first mine that I found in game that I couldn’t see any of the ore veins.  Now that I don’t really do much mining I’ve decided to turn this one off since ore veins are actually everywhere out in the world and seeing glowing bits of ground while out wandering about can be distracting.

Calientes Female Body Mod Big Bottom Edition -CBBE- gotta have naked ladies none of that ugly underwear when you take off someones clothes that the vanilla game has. I’m using the Slim version of this since the regular version the breasts are just a tad ridiculous, and since my character is a lady I prefer her with small boobs.  I am anxiously awaiting new armor/clothes meshes that fit these new body meshes.

No More Blocky Faces simple does what it says

SkyUI this one is a pretty big deal, especially the latest version that was made available last weekend.  It changes many of the menus (inventory, magic, container, and barter) to be much more mouse friendly than the consolized menus that the game comes with.

TESV Acceleration Layer this helps speed up the game in some CPU bound portions of the game which is a big help for me since my computer is about 3.5 years old now and this is really the first game that I’ve played that it struggles with.

A Quality World Map – With Roads or World Map – Skyrim Hold Borders this adds all the roads to the map and the second one which is based on the first adds the roads and borders of the various holds.

Dovahkiin Hideout this adds a nice big basement with lots of weapon racks, armor mannequins, storage, all the various crating tables and is connected to all of the houses that you can own in the game which serves as a nice way to quickly get from one house to the next.

JaySuS Swords adds quite a few high quality swords to the game.  I got this since I’m not really a fan of how many of the swords in game look.

So that’s it I’ve still got quite a lot to do in the game and it should keep me busy for at least a few more weeks.  Although I’ve already got all the gear I wanted since I focused on leveling my smithing and enchanting early in the game and I have a pretty sweet set of enchanted Deadric armor.  It’s rather rare that I run into anyone that can hurt me much if I’m wearing that, even with the difficulty on the hardest setting.

Here is a shot of my character in my fancy around town outfit. (I think the body mod was turned of for this)

The Silly Reasons I Don’t Use Firefox

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One of the main reasons I don’t use Firefox and still use Internet Explorer has to do with how Firefox deals with drop down lists in web pages.  Drop down lists are often used on web forums to navigate to different sub forums.

Here you can see in Internet Explorer that items above and below the currently selected item are displayed meaning you’re less likely to have to  to scroll up and down if what you want is a few items down on the list.

In Firefox once you have moved to the middle of the list the currently selected item is at the bottom forcing you so scroll down to select lower items.

Since I spend a fair amount of my time on the Internet reading web forums and I use these drop down lists as my primary method of navigation though web forums this small difference really annoys me.

The other small thing I don’t like about Firefox is that the bookmark menu will close if I middle click to open the page in a new tab.  In Internet Explorer the menu stays open when middle clicking allowing me to open many pages quickly.  While I can do this in Firefox by opening the bookmarks side bar, I don’t like doing that as much since the side bar is a bit cluttered and I have to manually close it once I’m done opening pages.

So those are the admittedly silly reasons I still use IE, if it weren’t for those minor dislikes I would be using Firefox as it is an overall better browser.

Update July 1st, 2009

Firefox 3.5 was just released yesterday, and while it’s fairly awesome I’m still sticking with Internet Explorer for the reasons mentioned above.  Also as strange as it may sound to most, I actually (mostly) like the layout of the interface in Internet Explorer.

Update March 8th, 2010

I’m giving Google’s Chrome browser a try as my preferred secondary browser now that AdBlock is available for it.  Also I’m trying out LastPass as a replacement for Ai Roboform since it supports IE, Firefox, and Chrome since Roboform only supports IE and Firefox also because Roboform caused some minor graphical corruption in IE’s tab bar when it was setup to work properly with Firefox.

So far my only major complaint with LastPass is that it has crashed a few times in Chrome.

Unfortunately Chrome has the same favorites menu and drop down list behavior as Firefox that I mentioned which it preventing me from using it as my main browser.