As mentioned below, I setup the mannequins mod in Oblivion the other night. Its really nice to have a good way of storing those nice suits of armour I just can’t bring myself to flog.

This mannequin sports the Imperial Dragon Armour you get for completing the main quest

While this one sports the trusty Kvatch curiass, chain mail armour, Northwind sword and Turtle Shield that got me through most of the main quest.

Well, as predicted, I ended up playing with those Oblivion mods last night.

The mannequins mod (Reznod Mannequins) is a really nice bit of kit. As someone who collected various complete sets of armour in the game, and didn’t like throwing various nice outfits away, its great to have something to display them on. My only problem now is that I tend to prefer using the Bruma house, which isn’t filled with a huge amount of room. However so far I’ve got two set up. One in my Imperial Dragon Armour, while the other is wearing my trusty chainmail and Kvatch Curiass, complete with the Northwind sword and shield that saw me through most of the main quest. I’ll need to get some screengrabs of them sorted out.

The Bravil Undersea Domes mod is a great bit of eye-candy. As I say, I tend to use the Bruma house as my main base of operations (I grew to love that town during the main quest), but this provides a really nice house (and I’ve not even done it up with the upgrades yet). The ability to swim down and see the domes from the outside is a really nice touch as well.

Here’s a second video. This time the interior of the domes.

Although I’ve been playing Morrowind a bit recently, I ended up browsing the Oblivion mods listed under the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages today, and found a couple that look really neat.

One adds the ability to buy mannequins for your houses to display your armour on, while the other is an undersea house, just outside of Bravil. I guess that sorts what I’ll be doing tonight

Picture shamelesly nicked from here:
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=20726

Freaky as all get out. Not what I was expecting at all. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Joker, but this has definitely got my interest.

I picked up a couple of new additions to my action figure collection the other day. Here, in all their glory are Booster Gold and Supernova from 52, and the Wonder Woman and Donna Troy Infinite Crisis figures. And yup, that’s classics Optimus Prime and Bumblebee lurking in the background.

I must admit to liking the new “posed” style DC has adopted for the Infinite Crisis figures, although you do lose posability which is a shame. Donna’s hair also means she’s permanently looking to the left. They’re really nice new sculpts though.

Now I just need GL wave 3 to be announced and for it to contain an Ion figure.

There’s more good news for fans of Booster Gold as well, as Geoff Johns has announced that rather than being co-writer on Booster’s new book for just the first 6 issues, he’s now going to be co-writing it permanently. Really good news, as this is easily the new book I’m looking forward to most at the moment.

Well, as promised, I played a bit more Morrowind last night. This time I decided to create a custom class, focusing on mage skills, but adding a few of my favourites (long blade, light armour, sneak and security), just so I’m not completely lost.

I’m also trying to avoid joining the fighters guild this time. Previously I’ve always used them as one of my first sources of income in Elder Scrolls games, but in this instance, I’m trying to take myself out of my comfort zone, so I’ve joined both the thieves and mages guilds and I’m curious to see where their missions take me. Certainly in Oblivion the thieves and assassins guilds offered some of the more interesting quests, so I’m looking forward to it.

Well, over the weekend, I completed the main quest for the Shivering Isles. Of course, there’s still a bunch of side quests I need to do, but completing it gave me itchy feet to play Morrowind again.

I bought Morrowind years ago, but missed out on the expansions. I’ve never played that deeply into it, so I’d never bothered buying them, however I decided I’d pick up the Game of the Year Edition so as to have all the expansions now.

So now I’m being a complete Elder Scrolls geek, and I’ve got the disc for both Oblivion and Morrowind sitting in the DVD drives on my main PC.

Playing Morrowind again is a bit of a wakeup call. With the compass, and fast travel system, Oblivion gives you a fair bit of hand-holding (partly, I suspect to entice console gamers), however Morrowind is far more about the immersion.

Sadly, my gaming session last night didn’t go as planned. I rolled my usual longsword/archer, started to find my way around the first town, and was promptly slaughtered by a bandit mage in the first dungeon. And I’d forgotten to save. Nuts.

However, I think restarting may be a blessing in disguise. I always tend to roll archer/swordsman characters, so I think I’ll be a bit different this time, and roll some sort of mage. I last did this ages ago for the Shadows of Undrentide expansion to Neverwinter, and it was a lot of fun. It should take me out of my gaming comfort zone, and force me to approach the game in a new way, which I figure can’t be a bad thing.

The full theatrical trailer for this summer’s Transformers movie is now up on Yahoo!

http://movies.yahoo.com/summer-movies/Transformers/1808716430/trailers/31

While I’ve been a fan of the Transforming robots for many, many years, what’s really surprising me is the number of non-fans who’re getting really excited for the film. It does look so far that it could be a big hit of the summer.

Granted, I’m still not a huge fan of the aesthetic for the Transformers themselves, but I do appreciate that it was probably a necessary change in order to make the Transformers look good on the big screen, and not silly.

Meanwhile, in TV-land, there’s a 4 minute preview for the new Bionic Woman series up on NBC’s site:

http://www.nbc.com/Fall_Preview/Bionic_Woman/index.shtml

I’ve been interested in this since I heard about it. I was always more of a fan of the Six Million Dollar Man, than The Bionic Woman, but since the rights to Steve are tied up in legal hell, pushing ahead with a Bionic Woman remake was a great idea. From the preview it definitely looks like it could be good, although we’ll know for sure once the pilot comes out.

I just hope it gets a fair shot at success. A lot of shows spend their first season finding their feet, and US TV has become increasingly impatient with shows that aren’t mind-blowing from the offset. Still, hopefully the success of Heroes will maybe convince the networks to give this a fair chance.

I finally took the step of fixing my Sky+ at the weekend. I’ve had it for over 3 years now, and with the hard disc in constant usage, its pretty good going that it lasted this log. It picked up a dodgy sector about a year ago, but I was able to live with that. However over the last month, it deteriorated further and further, until most of last week’s recordings were knackered.

So, I decided it was time to sort something out. I contacted Sky about a replacement, but I was worried about receiving one of the notoriously bad Amstrad boxes (my current one being a Pace V2 - one of the best makes available). Instead, I opted to take a chance, and upgrade my current one. I purchased a new hard disc, and cracked open the casing.

(Image from http://www.morlocks.co.uk/disc-change-v2.htm)

It was pretty worrying. Its difficult to imagine for non-Sky+ (or equivalent) owners, but once you’ve got one, it really does alter your TV-viewing habits. I’d be lost without mine. Fortunately it was a complete success. The new hard disc appears to be operating fine so far, and while the original hard disc was a mere 40Gb (about 20 hours of recording), the new disc is a far more meaty 250Gb. The extra space being very appreciated

For reference, I used this excellent site to talk me through the upgrade. While I was a bit worried about the outcome, the actual process itself was a doddle, thanks in no small part to people who’ve researched this kind of thing thoroughly and put these handy guides on the web. Certainly, if you’re not too bothered about the prospect of opening your Sky+ box and swapping a hard disc, then its a really good alternative to a whole new box.

http://www.morlocks.co.uk/sky.htm

Bit of a panic yesterday when a hardware failure knocked over the forums me and my mates use. Its all back up and running now, but minus the last week or so’s posts. It did make me stop and think though. I’ve never really bothered backing up any of my online stuff. Granted, my online stuff is largely for me to muck about with, but still, I’d be annoyed if I lost my blog or something (since its meant to be something I can read back through in a couple of years time).

The joys of Wordpress though, I found a nice, easy plugin which will automatically backup the MySQL databases and email me the backup. Easy Now I just have to remember to backup the actual files now and again, so I’ve got a copy of any images or videos I attach to the blog.