My Gaming Vent

Hi guys, anyone has an idea on how to identify then trace the IP address of someone you're chatting with over at an Instant Messenger?

My friend got harassed over the net, and I'm not talking about simple badmouthing, the guy sent obscene pics to my friend which can't be unseen. She wants justice handed over to that fucker, and I want to help her.:D

So, anyone know a legit program (the ones w/o viruses, better if it's just a website) that can identify and possibly trace IPs? thanks a lot. The email add is still alive.

My browser closes whenever I go to sites with those, I guess my anti-virus is overprotective.

EDIT: My friend really insists on getting the IP of the person, I tried to convince her on settling on spambots but to no avail.

So yesterday night I was waiting for 9 pm. Why? That was critical hour of super typhoon Parma, 9pm would decide if we should brace for the worse.

4pm yesterday it was already dark, 5pm it started raining.

8pm it was barely raining and it was just a light shower.
9pm there was nothing.

My friend told me that it may not be exactly 9pm since we were talking about weather. Maybe Parma adopted Filipino time* then?

9:30pm, 10:00pm - nothing. I have friends who got really hit hard by Ketsena and they were starting to feel better, they won't have to go through another traumatic experience.

around 11pm I had a feeling I was waiting for nothing so I slept...only to wake up to weak rains.

what the hell happened? People were joking around over at Facebook that PAGASA (the guys who warn us about storms and stuff like that) failed on their weather predictions because we were supposed to be experiencing another storm right now.

It turns out that this happened.



The storm took a steep detour to North of our country which is a good thing since that is pretty far away where the devastated people are. The people who got really hit hard are over at central Luzon (Luzon is the topmost island that resembles a head). My friends were able to breathe easy after I sent them the link because they were thinking that Parma got delayed or something.

Oh, people over the north were already evacuated because the winds of Parma could generate 15 feet high tsunami waves. People were generally happy they didn't have to deal with additional loss and relief operations got back on track.

The power of prayer is really something.

*Filipino time - we are always late, well, at least a good number of us are always late.

Ok, a few blog entries back, I made a rather lack luster analysis as a whole since I got lazy towards the end. So now, what I'm gonna do is to analyze them one by one so I don't get lazy over all. I'll try not to repeat any statement I said for the maps during my previous analysis. Oh yeah, before I forget, I haven't watched any vods on any of the recent maps.

(2)Asgard


2 major impressions:
- Proxy prone.
- Great landscape overhaul

Proxy
Well, scouting at 8 should still prove useful because of possible proxy detours. Looking at it, the possible proxy locations should be limited to the red regions indicated.


Why? Because that is one of the logic of a proxy - to greatly shorten a units spawn point to the enemy's base and in effect, do fuckton of damage. I'm not sure if a regular scout at 8 would efficiently scout the respective proxy locations and still make it to the enemy's base to do substantial scouting.

Landscape overhaul
Seriously, this map looks a whole lot fucking gorgeous compared to the previous version of the map. The ramps and paths leading to the center high ground will make the matchups much more interesting.

So now I'll discuss the map in the light of each race and their match ups.


Terran

Terran vs Zerg
Taking the Natural will prove difficult since there are two paths to the natural, lings can just pour in from two directions which will be difficult to defend. Blocking the backdoor path with depo's is not theoretically possible since the lings will have arrived by then. Going mech then? Oh look, the ramp is easily blocked by depo rax, you can try it out if you want.





The map is generally unflankable and it is not that open. Given that the following entrances can be easily walled,


*note: the encircled paths can't be blocked by a single ebay/rax and by that I meant that lings can still pass by.

pushing with mech should prove to be useful in this map. Pushing to the middle can prove tricky but being able to do the following will greatly make a mech push effective.



or this one instead



The blocked path and the pushing paths are actually interchangeable. Why? As long as you block a counter pushing path, you're free to push from the other path. This is similar to the logic of Heartbreak Ridge where armies can actually go to the opposing teams' base without having an encounter. In Asgard, however, it is very easy to limit the other guys movement in the other path, making it very easy to defend with. Adding in the fact that it is very hard to flank as Zerg against a mech terran, mech would really be effective on this map.

Or is it? At first look, the middle looks very flankable, but due to the crippling nature of mech during early game, the terran can just sit happily, wait to defend against mutas then push out. If you look at it, there are four paths leading to the center high ground, but 3 out of four paths are actually blockable just by securing the white path.


Then the scenario will be similar to the mech pushing paths which will just kill the Zerg. Expect Mech on this map.

Terran vs Protoss
Terran actually looks pretty invincible in this map. The map is unflankable. Once Terran secures the high ground in the middle and secures the flanking paths, attacking will just be easy unless the Terran gets sloppy. But will executing this play be as easy as playing mech against Zerg in this map? Note that int TvP mech units are the regular scene. Going fac port would look viable but S class Protoss players have a way of dealing with the build (look at Stork vs Fantasy over at RoTK).

It would then look like that Terran would play against Protoss the regular way. The back entrance to the natural would also make vulture runby and/or minetraps viable. This map would promote a Fantasy style of playing TvP. The expansions are really really vulnerable to vultures and tanks.

However, if you're the turret whoring slow pushing turtle type, this map won't disappoint you. Just like the mech push outlined on TvZ, securing the 3/9 path will make turtling easy, add to that the fact that you can just turret whore for all it's worth.


Terran vs Terran
Now we have a new way to spell boring, Terran vs Terran on Asgard. It's so easy for Terran to secure the 3/9 flanking paths. Dropship play over at middle game might be futile since everyone can just turret whore. Maybe we'll see safe play in TvT that proceeds to massing Cattle Bruisers.


Zerg

Zerg vs Terran
Two words: Air Distance

Or is it? At a first glance the air distances between the mains look rather short.
Air times from the two mains:
- Overlord --> 2 minutes 15 seconds (until over the Command Center)
- Mutalisk --> less than 20 seconds from main to natural

Battle Royal and Raid Assault had much more shorter air distance (around 1 minute 30 seconds via overlord). Mutalisk Air Distance isn't that minimized either. I ran the mutalisks from the top right to the bottom right of the map and it was just a little over 25 seconds. I think that 4~5 seconds during a two hatch muta attack would be great. 9 pool would have been a good preemptive strike for a 2 hatch muta but the ramps are blockable by depo-rax only, making mech really viable. 4 pool then? I'm not sure if KePSA will fix the ramp to make it a depo-depo-rax wall to give Zerg a fighting chance.


Zerg vs Protoss

Cheers to the tears that you Zerg guys cried over at ZvT will cry over at this map - it got repayed by the tears that Protoss players will cry over this one. Ling all-ins will be abundant on this map followed by 2 hatch hydras to seal the deal. Middle game would be a breeze because of the given economic advantage from early game. Lurkers would limit Protoss movements through the narrow passages and actually, every expansion can be harassed by lurks (except the 6 and 12 ofc). Making the Protoss starve would be a simple key play. Not much to say about ZvP here, really.


Zerg vs Zerg

A new way to get a comatose. I don't want to discuss how that match up will figure out on this map.


Protoss

Protoss vs Terran
If you're ballsy enough, send a scout at 4, build your base over at his base. if you want to play straight up though, it's still possible. Don't try to go toe to toe against the Terran here, it's nearly impossible to flank.
+ Show Spoiler +

Ok, I spent my week helping out over at our school's relief programs since Tuesday and a while ago, I thought I couldn't make it home.

I was over at our school at around 9am to go pay tuition and I dropped by at the area where they were having volunteer work. Well I stopped by for a good 2 hours and I know it was going to rain. There are telltale signs here that it's going to rain and I don't know what got into me but I still stayed. The guy in charge of the mic said that there was already rainfall in a nearby city, well, I didn't quite care and proceeded with my business. It didn't take that much time and it was raining already. Well it was just a 15 minute rain, nothing big, really. I managed to get home minimally soaked in rain because I was confident that the new storm (note: we just got raped by a storm last weekend) would still at least make it's presence known by tomorrow evening. Plus, the wind wasn't blowing the right way if the rain was indeed brought by the storm.

Anyway, I took a 3 hour nap, missed about 90 facebook stat messages full of apocalyptic stuff. Here are some:

(note: Pepeng is our local name for international storm Parma)

*** SUPERTYPHOON PEPENG: Maximum sustained winds of 175 kph near center and gustiness of up to 210 kph.
TAKE NOTE:
SIGNAL#1: 30-60kph;
SIGNAL#2: 60-100kph;
SIGNAL#3: 100-185kph. || WTF.

Storm Signal # 4 anyone? I can't recall a moment in my 17 year 9 month old life where our country declared signal number 4. Sure there were times when I was young that classes were called off for 2 consecutive weeks because of different succeeding rains but this shit is different. It's a one time big time storm that can (and I think it will) make us redraw the map of our country.


*** According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Parma's (Pepeng's) winds are forecast to strengthen to 259 kph by 8am tomorrow, making it a Category 5 storm, the strongest on the Saffir-Simpson scale of cyclone strength. Such storms are capable of causing “catastrophic damage” and can blow roofs off residential and industrial buildings.

and if you have time, take a look at this link

Fuck. Seriously? If Typhoon Ketsena washed most of my countrymen out of there homes (and some even out of the mortal coil), what will Parma do? Make them fly? I don't know about this one, my house wasn't flooded when Ketsena hit but Parma's wind will not spare anyone. I hope that it won't bring as much rain as Ketsena did. If this one is strong as Reming (Durian) last 2006, I'll be fucking ok with it since we only suffered blackouts + floods (floods that weren't comparable to the ones brought by Ketsena).

Damn, it's so fucking ironic since last night I was having a conversation with my friend and we were hoping that Parma will just wash away the mud and dirt that Ketsena left. With this shit, it will not only wash away the mud Ketsena left on the roads, I think it will also take some houses with it as it goes along.:|

Seriously, this shit is fucked up, I hope this is not as bad as we think it is. I hope it's just a few days' worth of blackout + light rain + howling wind, I'm cool with that. We haven't recovered enough from Ketsena and another one is coming. Fuck.

Meh, we're pretty much a fucking resilient bunch. We can go through this shit.

+ Show Spoiler +

Well, nature gave me (and probably the whole of Quezon City and Manila) the most fucked up weekend I could ever have by it's favorite agent - Mr. Rain.

I woke up at around 5am Saturday morning to find half inch raindrops happily hurling themselves outside while Mr. Sun was not there. Somehow, waking up at 5am and Saturdays don't fit together so I slept for another 2 hours. Well, the rain was a bit weak and sun was shining so I got up and had breakfast. My parents reminded me that they were going to be out because they had to drive my uncle to the airport but they'd be back before lunch. No worries, no, not really. Rain got really fucking bad. My mom sent me a text saying that they got stranded, traffic wasn't moving over at our country's main Avenue and they had to seek refuge over at a mall, they'd move once they see traffic is moving. She also told me to get lunch over at a nearby grocery, sounds good right? No, I was about to go out got my umbrella and started to walk absent-mindedly to our gate when I felt water. I wasn't even 5 meters from our gate and it was flooding over at the drive way, the water would be waist high outside, fuck, if the current is strong, I could have drowned. Got back to the ref, no good, nothing was there. Oh, on a second look, there was a handful of potatoes so I baked some and cooked some over flour, black pepper, and salt. Around 3pm, it wasn't flooding anymore and my mom had someone deliver meat so we'd have dinner. I also cooked dinner then my parents got back home at around 8pm. Good thing the car didn't run out of gas. It was also good that the water level didn't get any higher, the flood didn't even reach our doorway.

We had a little story telling and damn, the other houses got flooded, wiped out. I had cousins who had to seek refuge on their roofs and some of my uncles/aunts got stranded on their offices. A national state of calamity was declared and that is the first time in my life time that it was announced. Even the avenues were flooded, you'll only see the roofs of the cars, it was that bad. It turned out that 2 major water dams let out water because if they don't the dam walls will break and everyone will get flooded.

Yesterday, Sunday, everyone was offering relief operations. Schools, the Red Cross, and some organizations were accepting clothes, blankets, medicines, ready to eat food as donations so that they can help out and damn, the response was great! I dropped by our school a while ago for my own donations and damn, there were a lot of donations. I wished I could help by offering my car as a transportation unit to the places but my mom didn't let me since she wasn't that confident that I can drive to other places (they're only confident that I can drive from home to school and back). There's also a culinary school (Enderun) that was accepting food that needed to be cooked so they can cook and donate it. It was really fun, even in the radioes, every hour they announce numbers/places that you can contact if you need/want to give help.

It was the first time this happened because I think even the middle to high class in our society was hit. Even the high class villages got flooded. Some of my friends actually live over the flooded areas and it is scary as shit they're not replying or answering calls we hope they're ok. My mom's friend told her that one village was flooded up to the roofs and things were floating (including dead bodes). Usually it's only the poor that get affected so the outreach isn't this wide but this time, everyone was involved one way or another (damn, even some celebrities had to go to their roofs for refuge).


Anyway, that meant no internet so I was doing a project as a blind bat. We're supposed to do a Huffman Compression in C++, but I can't even make a Huffman Tree yet. So far I managed to create linked nodes by using pointers but I can't run the program again since I fucking forgot to delete the nodes I created - now memory is full and I don't know how to free it up again because I can't figure out which to delete.

I managed to finish the half life 2 trilogy and the ending of ep2 was bad. Portal was fun.

Well I'm hella bored and the internet is a bit slow over (and loading the bisu - lux match is taking forever) at school so I decided to take a peek at the new maps and analyze them. I'm not really doing this for contribution or whatever, I'm just writing it over here because I might need them in the near future. Open the spoilers, I also included the images of the maps inside. Any similarities to other posts are purely coincidental.

So first of is Asgard.
+ Show Spoiler +

The first thing I noticed is that this map is proxy prone. Due to the fact that there are many buildable spots near the main. In two player maps, players often scout after gas because they are sure where the other player is and therefore, would scout him immediately. However, there are also cases where players would tend to scour the map first to make sure that there are no proxies around. In order to play safe in this specific map, I came up with these lists of counter measures:
- scout the map at 8 or earlier then scout the enemy base.
- scout towards the enemy at 8, then proceed accordingly.

Of course the second one is a lot safer for practical reasons. Scouting at 8 would automatically tell you if there's a proxy somewhere, and due to the nature of an early scout, it would give roughly enough time to adjust accordingly. Most of the time a successfully defended proxy would give a decisive economic and sometimes technological advantage. But another problem easily arises, where could that proxy be? Killing the tree would be most effective, but in a map like this where you can plant that tree anywhere in this map. Mind games would be very effective on a map like this because one can just make his scout appear anywhere, giving an impression to the other player that there's a proxy somewhere. Aside from mind games, tactical positioning of units to gain control of the middle ridge might be considered essential. Any player seeking to gain map control should first establish control on one side of the cliffs and force the opposition to lift the control on his side. This is possible because there are two immediate paths to leading to that cliff so a well timed two sided attack would prove to be useful. The long path however could be take for granted and in the first place, can be easily blocked.

Hmm, here's also an analysis of the map based on match ups. I won't discuss Mirrors.:

PvZ
- PvZ will be hard on the Protoss since there are two paths to his main. Ling all ins and hydra breaks will be tough to defend. Though defending is feasible, in can leave the Protoss economy in shambles spending on front line cannons that will not be able to defend against a 2 hatch muta followup. A defensive style might be necessary to surivive PvZ.
- Sair reaver might be useful I think. Sit on 3 bases with cannons and fly around. The problem is taking a sneaky third. Another problem is being able to fly around safely, a lot of open space between the mains spell trouble to a developing sair reaver tactic. I think we'll just have to see how PvZ plays out on this map.

ZvT
- Terrans would have a pretty good time placing proxies, but they should be careful about a ling all in counter to their main.
- Passing through the main ridge is also risky since mutalisks can just spell death for MnM forces inside. scanning can also be useful though.
- The two inner paths to the cliffs can lead to flanks to the ridge or to the cliffs themselves. The outer ridges can lead to counter flanks or even help flank the natural if needed.

TvP
- Due to the nature of the map, Terrans should play extra careful here, 2 gate proxies might be anywhere but if they manage to scout the empty main on time, the game is not over. However, if the Terran gets the advantage after defending the proxy but fails to capitalize on it, then the game is still lost.
- This nature of the map would also allow Terrans to proxy a hidden starport or a second factory somewhere else and pull of some nice plays. Vultures wreaking havoc is also viable since most of the expansions are prone to cliffing from tanks or vultures and their positions can be easily defended with mines to delay dragoons and therefore, delay mining time.
- This map is very fun since it promotes the Fantasy style of Playing TvP, wreaking havoc anywhere.

It can be seen that the naturals have 2 paths, it also resembles the layout of Geometry and BlueStorm but the fact remains that there are two ways to the middle:
- via the low ground (brown wooden path)
- via the high ground (the silver-white thinggy)
I won't repeat my discussion about proxies that were postulated from Asgard. Battles would most likely take in the middle of the map and here is where the high path from the higher ground comes into play. Most of the battles might take place in the middle so anyone that can secure the access from their higher grounds have the edge. It's pretty much like bluestorm but the flanking part is a bit easier I think, because if the player is occupied with the mid ground battle, the high ground can be taken for granted and be the reason for defeat. Matchups won't be discussed. It might prove a bit challenging to do a forge cannon wallin though, because the space between the mineral patch and the nearest unbuildable terrain might be a bit too wide.

I have a question though. Is it possible to build a pylon from the 12/6 expansions so close to the wall that you can build a gateway from the other side?

They really want to give Protoss a hard time.

Anyway, at first glance, the center will prove useful to retain map control and an easy access to the expansions. Battles for center control should prove difficult since during that battle, a lot of units can just go around the map by passing them to the expansion after the natural and then redirecting them to the center. Though only a handful of units can pass through, it can still tip the scales at some cases. Again, dynamic vulture raids, zealot ambushes and ling runbys will test the players mental limits, the first one that gets irritated and loses his nerve, loses the game.

Air distance from the 4 to 7 main is also short, they should fix that.

My eyes are hurting from just trying to concentrate which bridge gets me to what place.

Hmm, I think the shortest scouting paths are via the outside half ring paths with an expo. Oh look, all expos have gas. Anyway, securing the wide bridges would prove essential to map control. (I really need paint to illustrate some useful regions but I'm too lazy.) The bridges at the dead middle would be a lot useful for gaining and retaining map control, jeez, I wouldn't want to watch TvTs in this map.... But of course the side half rings would again prove useful to divert attention and may be useful to do crippling flanks, but splitting the map could only happen if the spawn points are 2 and 7.

The other cross position (4 and 11) would be a different thing. For example you land at 4, it is possible to detour from the 6 half ring, to the 9 half ring and backstab. It is a long detour that will cripple the map control of your opponent but if you want a shorcut, you can take the 3 half ring. The problem with taking the shortcut is you will have to make do as your units are "filtered" within the 2 small bridges. On the other hand, the big bridges that are given to you via the long cut can immediately make you units flow through the middle for the flank.


Adjacent positions would be taken individually since they showed me something of great interest.

Take for example 7 and 11. (this will also apply to 2 and 5)
7 has his natural closer to the middle and also closer to the half ring shortcut. 7 would then have an easy time reinforcing units and maybe cut reinforcements from 11 by taking the shortcut. If 11 loses his control at the center, then 7 can just perfectly seal him off by sealing the 12 half ring shortcut. The 2 and 5 spawn points would also have this "positional imbalance" (which follows the imbalance for reaver drops I think). But note that if 11 and 5 manage to secure the bridges and leave a force dedicated to pushing via the half ring short cut, then the game will be fun.

Oh look the 2 vs 11 and the 5 vs 7 spawn points have the same imbalance - whoever has the natural closer to the bridges can ride that advantage to win.

*too lazy to analyze matchups, but they look a whole lot dynamic since reinforcing the units guarding the bridges is greatly affected by macro*

This looks like a very dynamic 4 player map. Not much space is available so flanking units are basically free to roam around and step on mines or something. Adjacent spawn points at top and bottom would have a little time to flank since the immediate middle path is blocked. Adjacent spawn points at the sides wouldn't have this problem though.

Looks like a macro map that opens the possibility of a one base play. I think we should anticipate andromeda-esque macro battles on this one..


and the 11 main ticks me off, go figure

This looks like a simplified version of roadrunner. Cross position battles should be interesting because of how the players can flank in 2 ways:
- taking the immediate split path from the natural to the middle to flank
or
- taking the split path to the other natural and taking the split path of that natural to get to the middle. (well actually if you take that route, you can go straight to the opponents natural)
I'll add details later.

Nothing much to say about this map. It's easily a 3 base macro map, but note that losing the third base will result to catastrophe because it will lead to another entrance to the natural. If a contain is successfully executed, cutting reinforcements by ferrying units between the 3rd base and the natural is very easy.

I discovered something great today.:D

My day started out normally, except for the part that I left home late for school but nonetheless I wasn't late for my first class. Usually Tuesdays and Thursdays are packed for me but one of my classes was canceled, giving me a two hour break. After eating lunch I decided to visit our org room. So a brief background, there's a building in our school where accredited school organizations have their rooms, usually there are two or more organizations sharing the same room but they have their respective tables. I knew what I'd see in our org room, the guys from the other org occupying our space. Well it's not really new since the seniors of our org were busy with their thesis and the freshmen, well I don't know if they know we have an org room or if they are just too lazy to climb 3 floors and do some walking to get there. Anyway, I knew which table was ours and even if some of our space was getting invaded, it didn't stop me from getting a seat.

Well anyway there were two guys playing on their laptop. Lo and behold, they were playing StarCraft. I was a bit happy to see that there are still people that appreciate the game like I do. Well they're pretty noobish, they still have 1.09 and they were surprised when I said that 1.16.1 exists. They were aware of the proscene but they don't follow it that much, actually one of them idolizes Stork. They're pretty much casual players that know decent builds but only the first 2~3 minutes of it, they eventually forget to pump drones/scvs/probes and wall in and defend until they mine out. I was actually shocked when more of them came in and said that they also played StarCraft, I was a bit overwhelmed but their reason was anti-climactic - They were playing in preparation for StarCraft II. I guess I can't blame them, but at least I now have playmates over at school. I also gave them the updated StarCraft from iCCup and they were pretty much grateful for it (actually one guy wanted it because of the specific race themes). Too bad I didn't have my laptop a while back, but I'd guess I can take them on 1v7 as long as I play Terran. Some of them claim that they know the pro-scene but they're kinda outdated. They're really an interesting bunch (I think half of their org plays) and if they're really into it, I can teach them a thing or two so I'd have decent playmates over at school.:D

So I was looking round tl looking for materials that I can use for my research paper and maybe some good articles/interviews that I can use to convince my professor to let me use TL as my primary source (it's not like I know how to understand Korean to use fomos.kr as my main source). Anyway I just realized that TL and Liquipedia does not have an article on the history of e-Sports or at least history of Professional StarCraft Gaming in South Korea that might be of trivial interest to newbies.

I know that this is not much of a big thing to actually put effort on but maybe just for the sake of having something? Because after all, this is a site dedicated to StarCraft news and a few pages on it's history might be good.

I'm an idiot...~_~

Well, not really stupid, more of narrow minded actually.

During the start of the semester, she asked us to introduce ourselves and share one thing that we are really interested in, nevertheless, I proudly said that I was into pro-gaming. Actually, the major thing that we will do for this semester is to write an argumentative research paper on our topic, and writing for pro-gaming to be accepted as a sport is really easy. Anyway, one time, our prof asked us to go to the library and look for 10 books for our topic. Fuck. It's not that our library is bad or anything (the school decided to create another library building, wonder what they'll put in there), but I know that there are no fucking books there on pro-gaming or anything that is related to gaming. Well I gave it a shot, the opac gave me books on marketing, finance, and programming. Fuck it. Well, maybe periodical entries can help me. Daebak, I found a whole lot of articles from locally published newspapers about gaming here in our country. So I happily took down those entries so I can go check on them on the microfilm section or something later. I got myself back to the classroom and asked my prof if she'd allow newspaper entries, she said she'd still require me to use books as the major references. What the flying fuck. I understand that I need books for a paper like this, but on a topic so great, ever changing, and greatly overlooked by a country like ours? There's no single book on pro-gaming on this country, because it's not that big of a thing yet for people here to write about it (hell, no one's even published even the history of pro-gaming, well at least in our country I can say that for sure). Well, back to the classroom, I was pretty much pissed for two things, the first being the fact that my professor has a narrow mind, and the second, me, for not being able to speak up at that moment.

So I planned to drop by the department so I can argue with my professor and hopefully, she'll let me use internet resources and periodicals because this greatness called pro-gaming has not yet made its presence felt in our country. Well I have a good number of arguing points and quotes, and most of them were stated above. Actually, the absence of evidence is not the evidence for absence. I think that goes to say that if you can't see books for pro-gaming, it doesn't really go to show that there are no books for it, I'm just looking at the wrong place. And I think that the books that a place holds reflects the things they give a damn about. It's like how language was formed, a certain language would tend to have a whole fuckton of words for a certain aspect of life, well I can give our language as a good example. Plus, its not like that our library has everything....~_~
+ Show Spoiler +

So, my parent's asked me to do a simple thing last week, to stop playing. They also gave me two simple reasons, the first is that I've been addicted so much to the game, the second, it's part of growing up.

So, the first one may be a little hard to explain, but StarCraft was the only thing that removed the stagnancy of my life. Before I played, everything was just academics, academics, and oh look what I found, more academics; of course the mandatory chores and periodic help to the family business were also there. I never really played any other game competitively, sure I'm one of the other high school kids that was a regular to the shops across our school to play DotA, but that game sucked, especially when flame wars go in the in game chat. After playing StarCraft with a couple of friends on a map I barely remember now, and after being stomped by my Zerg friend (who continued to eat everyone on that FFA game, which looked like 1v7), and after chancing upon StarCraft as a feature on National Geographic, I knew I just had to play the game and I made the right choice. So why stop now? Well, my parents are concerned with my health, they say that I'm tensed when playing StarCraft, well at least my heart beat rate rarely increases in an average game. My parents also told me that StarCraft is acting like drugs already, because after I play, I'm emotionally high. Well, the "emotionally high" that they're referring to is my emotions when I'm just happy. Maybe it's partly my fault for acting so reserved and "limited" around the house; I show my happiness to a certain level only. They don't want me playing around anymore because of the reason that StarCraft has already acted as a drug to me. Oh well, so much for having fun.

Now, for the "growing up" part, I understand that. I'm taking driving lessons and my parents postulated that I might keep a childish/gaming mindset while driving, which of course, is suicidal. Oh yeah I'll have to add something in here since I was a little drowsy while writing this (it's almost midnight). My parents really have a bad perception of how I do things. When I was a child, I'm always occupied by something that my mind isn't where it's supposed to be, I'm absent minded. Maybe now that I have something to occupy myself with, something that they think is bad, they want me to stop it. Plus, they told me that I needed to let go of some stuff that won't contribute to a better me if I want to grow up. Damn, this part really sounds bs to me, I think my parents made up this "growing up" part, it's not entirely my fault if I have a whole lot of time, it's summer break ffs. But yeah, maybe I'll reduce playing competitively from time to time. I also have to focus on studies, so yeah, basically I won't have time to play anymore..

So what to do now? I've sneaked a few handful games at night and when my mom is off handling some business stuff (my dad is at the office in weekdays). Aside from the usual advice giving and noob/ignorant flaming in Garena, I've never pressed on that "Start Game" button for a whole week now, and I'm happy that I did. Why? I've noticed a couple of things, one of which is what I usually have in my conversations. When my dad gets home I usually tell him about a game I had and looking at it, it's a little immature to do that, I mean, is that the only thing that's occupying my life? Games? Well maybe this is part of growing up, but this does not mean that I'll really quit on StarCraft, I'll still watch those games and give advices on newbies. Once a gamer, always a gamer.

"Through this book, I want to convey how someone worthless like me was able to stand up to the world; my own 'dreams and hopes' that I never gave up even when everyone ignored me. I want to share my bloody tears with those who cry because the road they chose was too difficult, or those that gave up their dreams to take the road that was a little easier." - Lim Yohwan

Maybe people like him are one in a million, to be able to stand up to the world and all. So yeah, better read the rest of his book.....