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A Skyrim Chest Full of Links!

I am still battling away in Skyrim as a Breton female, level 15. I’ve played through some of the main quest storylines, but have sidestepped away from them for now to spend some time simply exploring Skyrim. There is a lot to explore – not to mention fights to pick, ingredients to find, deer to hunt and treasure to be discovered!

When not playing (or working!) I have come across some fabulous sites to do with Skyrim. Here are five of my favourites:

  1. Skyrim Nexus – One of the best sites to find game mods, view player screenshots and pick up a few tips from the modding tutorials in the wiki.
  2. 5 Personality Flaws Skyrim Forces You To Deal With – A humorous article about what Skyrim might teach some of us about our own personalities.
  3. Tasting Tamriel – A funny video guide to one of the Gourmet’s recipes from Skyrim; Potage le Magnifique!
  4. Ten Ways to Make Skyrim a Cooler Place to Hang Out – Tips on how to make your gameplay more interesting.
  5. Create an Ancient Stone Text Effect – How to make a text effect in Photoshop that is inspired by the stone textures in Skyrim.

If you have found an interesting site on Skyrim, please share!

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Jooming along

Time for some new skills for this alyshajane. First up on the list is Joomla and possibly also Drupal. I am still working in design and will continue to freelance while I finish my library course. Any and all IT skills will be as useful in information management as they are in web design.

I came across the JoomlaShine blog via Twitter, it looks to have a wealth of reading and links. Of most interest to me currently, is the list of Joomla books. The blog has a fantastic table of books for beginners and more advanced Joomla developers. I really appreciate the guide on what format each book is available in. I’m going to try them on the Kindle reader for iPad – much more affordable and portable. Another interesting blog is cocoate.com, looking forward to reading their Joomla Beginner’s Guide.

I’d love to learn a programming language as well, PHP would be the most likely candidate and one that I have wanted to learn for a few years. Time to get thyself in learning gear and improve, improve, improve! I love learning new things and am all excited to get started!

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Gaming in Skyrim

The Husbitect and I have been thoroughly enjoying playing Skyrim over the weekend. A game that was worth the wait not to mention the hype. The gameplay is enchanting and fast-paced, whether you are exploring the lands or following the main quests. The graphics are awe inspiring, although I wish my rig was up to playing in Ultra HD!

Skyrim - Solitude Harbor

My current character in Skyrim, a Breton but will play a Khajiit next!

I’m hoping someone creates a weight/encumbrance mod soon so your character can carry more items. It’s frustrating to get to the lowest level of a cave or other such location, find much treasure and not be able to carry it! Hurry up modders!

Are you a gamer?

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Very Pinteresting!

One of my favourite social media sites is Pinterest. For those who have not used it, it’s like having virtual pin-boards full of images and links that you find interesting. You can have multiple boards on any theme you want. You can also follow other pinners and view the images that they have pinned, and see what pins are popular and new. And it is free! A screen capture of some of my boards is below.

If you are on Pinterest, do let me know! You can find my boards here, I am alyshajane.

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I am a gamer (Blogtoberfest Day 2)

I love games. Computer games. I’ve been a gamer since way back in the 1990s when Apogee software was producing some of the best games to ever grace the PC. I remember the excitement of receiving the latest shareware games catalog. In the mail, printed on paper. Back then, the ‘web’ was in the form of a local bulletin board or bbs. Sidenote: First PC game I bought was Legend.

After a while, there was the beginning of the current web, accessed using Netscape. Wow! It was exciting! I wish I still had my very first web page. I possibly do, somewhere. If I find it, I shall share it. It has lots of animated .gif files and very basic html.

Anyhoo, back to games. The first PC game I remember being excited about was Doom (id Software). I remember seeing the full page artwork for it in PC User magazine. It looked so amazing and so different from the basic graphic games we currently had. Things like Paganitzu and Duke Nukem. And when it came out, I kicked death-match butt! I was good, even if I do say so myself (and it was usually death-match via null-modem cable). hehe For those non-gamers, death-match is playing head-to-head with another, real player.

I am still a gamer today, although I will admit, at times I am more of a casual gamer. I go between full on gamer when I have Fallout 3 or Oblivion type games to play, to casual gamer with my love of the simple, Farmville via FaceBook. Or even light-hearted games on the Wii like Animal Crossing: City Folk/Let’s Go To The City. In a couple of weeks when Fallout: New Vegas is released, I will turn back into serious gamer girl!

Do you play any PC/Mac games? How about web-based games? If you play Farmville, let me know – maybe we can be friends?! I also play games on the iPhone (AngryBirds, Peggle, Battleship etc), and within GameCenter I am SquirrelKitty.

Here are some pics of my characters in a few games, I’m missing one from Oblivion, shall find one tomorrow!


My character in Dragon Age.


My character in Fallout 3.


My character in Farmville, on FaceBook.

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Five Geeky Websites

I am a geek, a SciFi-loving geek. I present the above photo as proof of my SciFi-loving geekiness. It was taken in the city at Kinokuniya on Free Comic Book Day earlier this year. When we heard that ‘Daleks’ were going to be at Kinokuniya, we had to go (the Husbitect is also a SciFi-loving geek). A free comic was a bonus. The Dalek was patrolling inside the store while Darth was prowling outside the store. As you can see, I am taller than a Dalek but shorter than Darth Vader.

In honour of all that is geeky and SciFi-licious, I present a list of five fab websites for those who are similarily inclined:

  • Dalek City – Devoted to providing information on how to build a full size, working Dalek. Definitely on our to-do list!
  • Think Geek – Chock full of geeky gifts, toys and wearables.
  • Tor.Com – Fab site with SciFi/Fantasy stories, articles and an online community.
  • Make Zine – I’m sure you have already come across the fabness that is Make. One of the best sites for science and tech related tutorials and articles.
  • Blake’s 7 Guide – A guide to one of the best SciFi shows ever created, Blake’s 7.
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Blogging and Knitting

Today I am still re-cooperating from the flu and pondering how to make my blog more interesting so it has regular readers.

I’ve been blogging for about ten years on a few domains and blogs but recently had a big hiatus. I wish I hadn’t done that now as I lost all my readers. boo! I’m planning on adding all those previous blogs to this one, but that will take quite a while as I need to format them all for wordpress plus find any missing images. The image below is one I made five years ago to celebrate blogging for five years. You can see some of my past blog names and designs. Whee!


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My Place And Yours : Blog Headquarters

Eeeyha! Posting to you from alyshajane.com’s secret headquarters, complete with lots of pink, kitty and squirrel things. These are all required as alyshajane herself is powered by copious amounts of pink and cuteness. Amongst other things. This post is for Pip’s My Place and Yours. The theme this week comes from Ninon.
Click to see a bigger version (opens in new window):alyshajane.com HQ

For this photo I tried my hand at panography, a technique that gives a wide-angle view of a scene comprised of many photos. Like photo stitching, except you can see the joins. I’ve always liked this technique and now that I’ve had a go, I can see many more in my future. You can find a panography tutorial at Photojojo & more examples at Flickr.

The three white squirrels in the front aren’t normally in front of my keyboard; cute as they are, they’d make typing a bit difficult. My lovely hubby just bought them for me while we were out doing grocery shopping. Whenever he hears me take a sharp and awe-struck breath or shriek “Eeeeee” he knows that I have spotted either Kitty or Squirrel cuteness. If I see both together at one time, I’d possibly pass out from glee.

P.S: I recently tried making a video of my desk/blog HQ which you can see on Flickr.

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Fallout 3

Himself and I have succumbed to the addiction that is Fallout 3. What an awesome game! A highly detailed, massive playing area, retro 50s music, an awesome choice of weapons (not to mention the targeting system) and stunning graphics.

Fallout 3

Bonus points to Bethesda for realizing that women also like playing games and providing the option of female characters, not the standard male only format! The picture above is a screenshot of my character, Ash, in the foyer of Tenpenny Tower. Yes, after playing a high karma character for a while, I was tempted by the chance to have a suite at Tenpenny, so Megaton went kaboom!