Category Archives: Media

The Clockwork Doc makes the top ten list

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A good friend, Robin of mine just started bloging for the DVice website, her first article was on costuming so she asked about steampunk, which of course lead her to Tek’s Clockwork Doctor costume.

Click here for the article

If you click through the costumes you will find the description and how each person made their costume, some have more detail then others.  (Tek always likes to say, he glued himself to himself five times with three different substances while making the costume)

Please take a look at the whole article, there are some really cool costumes there other then Tek’s, including some nifty Dr Who ones.

Leave a comment too, this is Robin’s first article there and I think she did a great job.  Make sure you let her know you like articles about people who make their own costumes.

Well this looks different… New site design and back end

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This weekend I attended the virtual con (uncon) known as Dragon*Cant and that was a blast.  I attended a panel by SVAllie of allisondduncan.com on “tips on Blogging with SEO“.  [SEO=Search Engine Optimization]

It was very interesting and opened my eyes to a few things I’ve been ignoring for a while.  She showed me how to take a more of an active role in how my site is viewed by search engines and most importantly google. While many people prefer to use other search engines google matters when it comes to how fast people with find you.  I have installed a few new plugins (they work with more then just google but all the various search engines) and registered my site with a few places to help my rankings. I’m not sure how long it will take to notice a difference but I’m hopeful.

What I learn with this site will only help me apply these lessons to my professional web presence, which, there isn’t much of.  Professionally I have been too busy working to maintain a web presence, also I have a middle man for some clients who handles all of that and the other clients and the big clients have found me through real life networking.  I’m amazed at what a small world it is and how much professional relationships can make or break you.

I learned a few other things, like linking say your Live Journal account that is set to private entries shows up as a broken link, so the search engines rank you lower as a non relevant site.  It makes sense, but I never expected that.  So now my Live Journal site isn’t linked from this site.  Since it’s private only I guess there isn’t much harm in that, people can always find me there by searching for my name.  That lead to a broken link checker that was interesting because it showed me what links have changed in the years so I could make sure that every link works.  Now I get emails if a link changes.

I got a bunch of meta stuff figured out, site map done right and I now know how to keep track of my ranking.  In addition to all this boring stuff SVAllie has finally pushed me out of the 1990’s.  Yes, I started on the internet in the 90’s and I like dark webpages with dark backgrounds.  I know it’s old and outdated and my professional site even has a white background, but nimlas.org was always personal for me so I designed it to look how I wanted to view it.  Yes, that is the wrong way to think, you don’t design for yourself, you design for the viewer.  I knew the dark was “wrong” but I was stubborn.  Well I took the plunge and dove into some light colors.  Now you are treated to a minty looking nimlas.org.  It’s still green, so it represents me, and my branding is there with my pop art avatar and I even put a little star burst in the background, but it’s light.  It’s new, it’s stylin’?  I also have one of those Follow Me widgets, that’s all the rage isn’t it?

I hope everyone enjoys the site and if you can think of improvements or see something HUGE that needs to change let me know, and I will work on it.  I like to improve.

Nutty Bites Bonus Episode, Balticon Post Wrap up with Nuchtchas, Tek and Mark the Encaffeinated One.

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Tek, Nutty, Rory and Encaf1

Pardon the background noise, we recorded this in the car.
Learn about the Not Nude Media Convention and enjoy the many puns

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (58.4MB) | Embed

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OmNoms of Ice and Fire! I created foods of Westeros

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My Game of Thrones main feast.jpgTonight was the premier of Game of Thrones on HBO. As many of you know I have been looking forward to this series for a very long time.  Rather then go into detail about the show (I’m saving that one for The Beyond the Wall Podcast and for two I have vowed to be spoiler free as some people important to me have not seen the show yet) I will discuss my celebration of the show.

 

Tonight I decided to make a feast fit for Westeros, but rather then go crazy like the awesome gourmet chef Tom Colicchio of the Game of Thrones food trucks I had decided to make the food as simply as I do most dishes.  First off I was sad I don’t have a source for some good game meat, not the first time I have lamented this, so when I went shopping I looked for Cornish Game Hens, I couldn’t find any.  It is a good thing I couldn’t, when I told my husband this he turned his nose up at the idea, he would much prefer having a whole chicken… I can do that, and it’s cheaper.  For tonight though I bough some pork, while I can’t make a suckling pig I can make roasted pork.  I used a sauce we just discovered thanks to a friend and roasted it slowly in the oven leaving the center tender and moist.  The CousCous I bought ages ago was perfect, it had walnuts in it and field mushrooms and while I thought I was off mushrooms for a while, I can’t resist the tasty things.  Most importantly you tasted more of the walnut then the mushroom so that’s good.  Then (for me only as my husband shakes his head at my obsession for cheese and fruit) I sliced up a Gala apple and spread herbed goat cheese on it.  I swear this dinner was stupid simple.

LEMON CAKES.jpg

 

Next up was dessert.  Lemon Cakes are the signature dessert in Westeros, I swear GRRM must have a lemon fetish.  I looked for  Tom Colicchio’s lemon cake recipe and while it looks tasty it looks like a lot of work for something that will only last a day.  I wanted to come up with something I could transport and bring places, like Balticon.  Viv, one of my co-hosts on the Beyond the Wall podcast teasingly challenged me to come up with something for our Live Game of Thrones viewing.  So I tried it out.  This is stupid simply, anyone can make it.  I bought some generic lemon cake mix and mixed that with a can of seltzer till it was nice and creamy.  I poured that into a cupcake tin and baked on 350 for 20 minutes.  After they cooled I filled them with store bought lemon filling, yeah store bought.  I could have made it myself but why?  Even when I worked in a bakery we used the premade stuff.  To fill them I used a pastry bag, if you don’t have one just take some wax paper or a ziploc baggie, make a cone and cut the end off.  Insert the tip into each cake and squeeze out a little filling.  Don’t do too much or you will make the cake burst.  I then sprinkled confectioner sugar over then.  These look a touch rough, but it was my first time.  Next time I will not fill them so high and I will find my sifter for the sugar.

 

Before the show we ate the main course, it was delish!  You will notice the difference between my food and the food truck food is that it is in proper Westeros proportions :)  We ate the lemon cakes during the show, they were insanely good.  My husband said “Yellow is my favorite flavor!” and gobbled his down.  It was far too tempting to go and eat them all, but neither of us wanted to tear ourselves away from the show to get more, so I think it might be wise to only eat these while distracted hee hee.  I put two aside and plan to open their Tupperware in two days time to see how they kept.

 

What did you do special for the premiere?  Or am I the only crazy one?  I can’t be the ONLY crazy one.