Dundee Lad

So I’m relatively new to Skyrim, having only purchased it 4 years ago, and for the first couple of years I was pretty obsessed with it–as only an ADHDer can be. But then late last year I got bored with it and switched focus to AVNs. I still have a handful of those “games” I’m playing but I’m mostly back to playing Skyrim again. Of course, when I got bored I also got frustrated with the amount of mods and other files I had accumulated, so I did a mass delete of them all. Yeah, that was a mistake. So now I’m having to redownload most of the good mods I originally had, plus some new stuff.

One of the mods I did like and have redownloaded was an odd little follower mod called:

M.E.I. - Maven Elenwan Ingun - Followers & Spouses - Quest Expansion

As you may have guessed from the title, it is a mod that lets you recruit Maven Black-Briar and/or her daughter Ingun and/or Elenwan–yes the very same High Elf bitch trying to kill all the Blades and, by extension, you–into followers, and possibly your spouse. The mod author creates a new backstory for Maven and Elenwan, and you begin to realise they are not as evil as Bethesda would have you believe. It really is one of the most interesting follower/quest mods on the market and the author is still expanding it. However, because it rewrites the scripts for Maven and Ingun it requires a patch for any mod that replaces Maven and Ingun. There are some on the download page, including one for Dibella’s Blessing, which is the female NPC replacer I was once using, and which I may go back to because I really like the depiction of Maven in this one.

Anyway, I’ve also used a couple of other NPC replacers and I’ve made a patch for both of them. The first one is for Courageous Women - High Poly Head Female NPC Overhaul.
The patch isn’t on the Nexus yet but you can download it here: Courageous Women M.E.I. Patch.
I downloaded the 2k AIO loose version, which was second entry under Main Files on the Nexus files page. I can’t imagine it would matter if you chose something else.

The second NPC replacer I tried was NITHI NPC ENHANCEMENT - The Rift I just used the single main file, and didn’t bother with the 2k face tints. My patch can be downloaded here: NITHI The Rift Women M.E.I. Patch.

Damn, where does the time go? Can’t believe it’s been over 12 months since the last entry. I really did intend to make this a regular thing this time. Oh well. Shit happens.

Anyway, while I’m here I might as well add something worth adding. So I recently bought a new 2nd hand vehicle; a 2015 AWD, diesel, Ford Territory Titanium to be precise. Now this sucker has all the bells and whistles for a 10 year old Aussie-made Ford–which isn’t necessarily saying much because Ford always seemed to be behind Holden and others in this regard, but I digress–and one of those is the console Media Centre. This bastard is run by Ford Sync™2 which is fine but fuck the information for it is sadly lacking in actual details. So here’s what I’ve learnt about using this 10+ year old software in 2025 to play your tunes:

1. Do not bother trying to use a USB stick (aka USB drive aka thumb drive aka flash drive) larger than 32Gb because it can only read fat32. Elsewhere I read that it could read exfat so you could use a larger stick but when I tried it didn’t recognise the device. Correction: Okay, I was mistaken about this because it can recognise the exfat file system so it can read greater than 32GB. I think the mistake is due to me trying to play music on a 64GB USB stick that was still encoded at 96kHz. But wait, it gets even better! Not only does it recognise bigger USB sticks, it can actually recognise 128GB microSD cards when they’re inserted in a USB adapter, which is then plugged into one of the USB slots in the vehicle.
2. It does not recognise FLAC but it does recognise lossless WMA, so use that if you want the best possible sound. The size difference between FLAC & WMA isn’t that great, and the sound quality is the same. Remember, only losers use MP3
3. The bitrate doesn’t seem to matter but do not try to use a file with a sample rate higher than 48kHz. I had a number of albums ripped at 96kHz but it couldn’t recognise them and it took ages before it finally dawned on me that the sample rate was the issue. The encoder software I was using (dbPowerAmp) switched the file format to WMA but didn’t touch the sample rate. I switched to a different encoder (Xrecode 3) and it downgraded to 44KHz and all was well with the world again.
4. Good luck trying to find out any real information on the Ford AU website; one of the least-user-friendly websites on the internet.

Edited August 22nd.

Lossless Audio Checker is a free program that can allegedly tell if a FLAC or WAV file is truly lossless or whether it’s transcoded or otherwise adulterated. Yeah Nah. It don’t work, I’m sorry to say. How do I know this? I converted a .MP3 file to a .FLAC file, and L.A.C. told me it was “clean”. Wut??

At least Spek can see the difference.
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