Sky

Oh such fun to play on iccup after 3am when I'm sleepy. Couple nights in a row I've done this: check time, see it's 3am, decide to play a few games before heading to bed. Find a game that isn't on python and manage to lose by making retarded mistakes.

Tonight was quite lovely. Oh, what's that? 12 lings? I've got eight! I'll build 2 and no worries, I've got ramp advantage! Oh what's that? I put my lings on hold and forgot to select them all when he ran up my ramp, thus leaving half my lings holding position while I move the others? Brilliant!

Next was a zvp, which started out well. He almost cheesed with a cannon rush but stopped when I moved my overlord over and sent a few drones. Success there. Took my third quickly as per usual. Success there. Completely forget to make any units besides a few lings? Check. Ignore the fact I only had my main and nat making units with my third on drone duty, thus gimping me greatly? Check! Get overrun because I failed to make hatches before he attacked me? Check! But at least I had double armor upgrades!

Two shiny losses that might have been avoided by properly using my brain. I'm also continually surprised by zergs grabbing their naturals early. Not something I'm used to seeing, as that was a pretty bold move back when I used to play. I knew protoss FE'd all the time now, so it was only a bit surprising when every single zvp they went expo. A little bit more surprised when almost every terran went fast expand, rivaled only by the amount that go mech (another wtf!). But zerg? in a zvz? an awesomely-fun-earlygame-micro-fest-matchup? that's just too much. too. damn. much.

In other news, I'm at 37k for NaNoWriMo. I'm still quite disappointed with the story, but I'm managing to keep moving on with at least some kinda plot. I'm fairly certain I'll scrap it once nanowrimo is over, and focus all my attention back on the story I was writing before November 1st rolled around.

I had forgotten about this years NaNoWriMo until a post on TL reminded me. Unfortunately I was already in the middle of writing something else, so when November 1st rolled around I had no clue what I was going to do.

Deciding to wing it, the first few days went well, at least in word count, the writing itself was complete shit. I've managed to hit the half mark, 25k words of 50k, and it's getting really hard to move things along.

The plot is a very generic fantasy plot, mostly because I read a lot of fantasy so I figured it was the easiest for me to write about without planning ahead. As I said, it went well at first, but now at the 25k mark I'm struggling to find what my plot is, and where I'm going with the story. I can probably fill out another 10k or so pages with random fighting that has no real plot relevance, but I'm hoping to avoid filler as much as possible.

Assuming I ever come back to this after the month is over, I'll leave the first read through and edit for plumping up the chapters, for now I want to crank out as much plot as possible. While generally I can do well enough without much planning before hand when I write, I do usually have a rough idea of what I want to write. That not being the case for this story... is annoying, especially when I have another book/novel/story/whatever that I placed on hold to do NaNoWriMo. Every time I'm not writing and trying to plan out what I'm going to do next, I end up thinking of the other story and managing to mentally tune it instead of the one I'm working on.

I'm hoping when I open up the document on my laptop tomorrow I can get out a decent plot. I've taken a break from writing to watch WCG streams, with the idea that taking my mind away from it will help when I go back to it.

Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? How's it going for you?

      I started up broodwar again going on about a week now. I quit back in 05/06 (i don't remember which exactly) and played maybe a handful of games since then, including attempting TSL (for one day). I've been cutting down on my usual gaming habits, which mostly included dota, and in between breaks of that wow/aion/counterstrike. So now there has been an empty feeling because I wasn't doing anything that had a competitive edge to it, so I decided to dust off the ole broodwar cd and test the water for the first time in a long time.

My record so far is only a measly 9-6, which I suppose isn't bad for not playing in a long while, and having no idea how to play on all the new maps. I knew beforehand that the way most games are played in broodwar today have switched to more macro orientated gameplay, and I can see why based on the small pool of maps I've played on so far. I used to macro well enough, but the games back when I played all the time (and by that i mean 20+ games a day), there wasn't as much focus on macro. I've played a few ZvPs and every game the protoss has fast expo'd, and a few ZvTs the terran FE'd.

Good to see that a few things haven't really changed, such as no one ever wanting to play a ZvZ. Every game I join and pick z when they are z, I get banned. Yay. Or join, pick my race, and randomly get banned. Double yay. If I tried to TvT they would probably kick me. Mirror match-ups can be fun people! I keep finding myself falling back on playing passively, which is costing me any advantages I manage to get in games, and usually end up losing. Normally my play is very aggressive, but the way a lot of the maps are designed now, they seem to favor defensive macro play, which is annoying me to no end.

This will probably be the last time I play broodwar, so it is farewell when I get tired of playing it this time. I won't be playing starcraft 2, assuming it ever gets released it will be a good five years too late for me to want to pick it up and learn it

Besides people spamming in the channel, and joining a game, where else is a good place to find games on iccup? Or b.net, though i'm pretty sure b.net is a ghost town, at least on west.

whoops, totally fucked up my original post by not deleting my first post before editing it.

Piss me off. So the first laptop I got was two years ago this christmas. Just about eight months after owning it I have to return it to HP because something went wrong hardware wise. Ok, not 'too' bad, considering how often I used it and it is a laptop these things happen, right?

Well, first off. HP 'somehow' lost my laptop. So they sent me a new one, a much better one. I wasn't home at the time so when I got back I was glad to have my laptop back and it being better. I was slightly annoyed at it having vista but.. what ya gonna do about a free laptop? I mean it was much better than my old one. So I was happy enough with it.

So now, in July, pretty much the same time frame as my last laptop, it has once again died. And the same thing has happend, just a different route. The problems that occured prior to sending my old laptop in were the wireless wasn't turning on, and sometimes the laptop wouldn't even boot past BIOS. This time, the laptop would lockup after having colored lines across the screen and that led into the computer not getting past BIOS at all, with maybe the occasional time where it would boot, but thereafter only get assaulted by the colored lines, lockup and once again not start up.

SO, I've come to the conclusion that HP laptops suck balls, don't buy them. Even my parents laptop, which is also an HP, had to be sent in for almost the SAME problem as my old laptop. So in the course of a about two years, three HP laptops have had the same related problem. Random bad luck? Maybe, but probably not.

Moral of the story is stay away from HP laptops. Their desktops are ok, the laptops suck balls.

Ok as stated in my previous blog this is now the begining of my weekly guitar schedule blogthing. Reasons for this are stated in my previous blog. As I said before what I do each will will be defined more as I go on, so to begin with it's going to be rather unspecific. Also note that since this week is christmas week and all that I may not have the time to practice much..so this week is kinda screwy all the way around.

Goals this week:

1. Learn basic chords and practice them. This also includes being able to switch between them.

2. Continue learning how guitar is applied in music notation and learning a few basic songs out of the books I have in music notation.

3. Begin learning a few songs that I enjoy by bands I like. I'll be doing this using tab since I wouldn't be able to do it otherwise.

4. Continue practicing scales and building up dexterity in my hands.

5. Try not to look at my hands when playing so I can learn the sounds and learn finger placement.

So that's what I'm going to be trying to do this week, and this will probably carry over for many weeks to come.

Merry Christmas!

Ok now that I have some idea of where to start, thanks to the help people offered in my guitar motivation thread, I decided I'd start a weekly blog-type thing regarding what im going to try and do that week, based on what I want to do etc. it will probably be less defined at first while I find out everything I'm going to be doing.

This is a "pre"weekly schedule because I will start the schedule on monday, then the next blog with be how much progress I made with that etc and what I plan for the next week. Monday's I'm usually home so it's probably the best day for me to start this.

Why on tlnet? Well like many of you I visit this site quite frequently, and the blog system is the easiest to keep track of for me since I'm on here often I can just click my blog check my goals again and go to it. I plan to keep the schedule other places as well, but I'll be doing updates etc. on tlnet first before other places.

Why am I doing this? To help me stay motivated, and to keep a check on my progress. I don't normally do this but I think it will be a good thing, after some of the sites I've read and from some of the things Coagulation posted in my help thread, it would seem keeping a updated schedule/goal/progress system will be quite beneficial. As of right now I'm still in the early stages, but at least I know more of what to do then I did before.

For right now I'm just going to list a list of sites and books and my equipment but no real schedule yet, not that I won't practice during this time but I want to keep the schedule consistent, which will begin on monday.

List of sites I have so far:

www.guitarbasics.com
www.chordbook.com
www.guitar.about.com
www.justinguitar.com
www.start-playing-guitar.com
www.mangore.com
www.freeguitarvideos.com

*Note these aren't all the sites I have visited/visit, just a few that I've favorited that I refer back to(some more then others)

List of books on learning guitar:

The Complete Guitar Player; books 2,3,4 (they didn't have the first) by Russ Shipton (each book includes a cassest)

So Easy; electric guitar, level 2 (this is a dvd btw)

Step One: Player Guitar by Artie Traum (includes a cd)

Teach Yourself Songwriting (cd included)

*Note I will most likely get more books in the future, and also I plan to take lessons eventually.

Equipment:

Fender Squire Strat - black & white
Fender Amp 15G
Guitar case
Electronic tuner
Headphones (plug into amp) + assorted wires etc.
Extra Strings (i've already had a string break tuning my guitar (1st string), wasn't fun putting a new one in)
Whammy bar + strap
Some crappy pick

I listed everything I had(there's more I think) just to list it. Everything I have except the pick and extra strings I bought from a friend a while back, maybe two years ago. I think it all cost me a little over 200$, it was all brand new for the most part since he never used it. At the time I really wanted to buy a guitar but didn't know where to start, he had all this, I figured it was a good deal. I'm not saying it wasn't, just explaining it a bit more. Eventually I plan to get a different guitar and amp because from what I've heard what I have isn't that great, but, I am just begining so it works for me.

Yes I've had this guitar for close to two years, when I first bought it I had grand plans that failed. At that time I was still heavly involved in starcraft, so when I wasn't at school most of my time was spent playing broodwar. Now I'm out of highschool, have free time and don't play broodwar anymore or any game competetivly(though I do game still, dota and cs mostly) so the want and desire to play guitar returned. I plan, in the future, to learn the violin, piano and drums, but that won't be for awhile probably. I want to start a band someday, depending on how well I've done in the first year maybe around then, or sooner if I can find people.

Anyway that's what I have, and in the future my blog posts won't probably be as long. I'll be back on monday with my first weekly schedule of goals for the week.

I get bored really really easy, so I try to find many a ways to end that boredom. Generally I will either read a book, find a game to waste time on or do some other semi-normal time-spending activity. But there are those times when you really don't feel like doing those things but at the same time you really want to squash your boredom. Teamliquid is a wonderful place to spend your time at when you are bored, but, you can only browse things for so long before you must move on(well... maybe not).There are plenty of other ways to squash boredom, and I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface as there are tons of things to do... internet related and some non-internet/computer related. But for the sake of typing this online I'll go into some internet ways that I try to fill the boredom gaps with.

Wikipedia

I visit this site almost the most, only other site that I visit nearly as often is tlnet, and behind that myspace. Anyway, I find Wikipedia a great way to distract my mind enough to realize I'm not doing anything, and it has a lot of random information you can learn about. I'm not saying it's a reliable source of information, but most of the information is reliable enough so it doesn't really matter. Anyway, I can spend hours looking up things/reading things from just one thing because of links to other topics. Or I'll use the 'random article' and when I find an article that interests me it usually kicks-off my Wiki-session. So basically if you want to know useless things(and some useful things) waste away reading about things on Wikipedia.

Missionred.com and other mindless Flash games

There are a ton of random ass flash games floating around the internet to kill time with, though i really have no specifics to offer except missionred.com. There's not that many games on the site, but they are capable of wasting away plenty of time. Reflex games are great to test your accuracy/speed, which for Starcraft players is good thing. When I played bw I used to visit this site frequently only for the reflex games to try and get better speed/accuracy with my mouse.. but anyway, the other games are entertaining as well. Most of them are just remakes of old games but still they are entertaining to waste time on, and having a leaderboard to aim for highest scores is nice to. My only problem with this site is that 75% of the time it won't save my fucking scores even when i'm logged in. It just keeps saying 'you must be logged in' which is so very annoying when you get a high score on a game then get told it didn't save...gah.

Youtube/mindless videos

I don't really watch that many videos because I have rather annoying internet... and sometimes they don't load all the way, or load fast enough, but there are times when I'll just sit back and watch a ton of youtube videos for the hell of it(well, to kill time). I'm sure this site is self-explanatory so..moving on.

Online puzzle games/mind games

Similar to flash games in a way, just a bit more thought required(i guess). Just google puzzle games or mind games or any number of searches and you'll get random websites devoted to this stuff. I've never really been picky on what site I go to as long as it doesn't suck ass... of late I've been doing some online sudoku because it can be entertaining for a bit at least.. isn't really that great but isn't bad though. Anyway, these are again pretty self-explanatory so...you guessed it. Moving on!

Lastly, Music sites.

Music. Music music music. Wonderful music. Most of the time when I'm doing any of the previous activities I'm listening to music, but, not looking/searching/learning about music. There are some music sites I go to (pandora/lastfm) that I use just for listening value, but I also use to find new bands. When I find a band I wiki them, then go to whatever sites, then try and download a few songs for sample. If i like them i'll look up where to buy their cds/where they are available to get, if i don't like the price or can't find them, i download as many songs as i can(suggesting i can find them). this is a good way to kill time, for me at least, because i absolutely love music. Also, besides the listening to music part there's going and looking up bands/music styles. It's a good way to kill time if you enjoy music... well for me at least.

Well, that's all the ways I personally kill time when I'm bored, usually these things can provide a few hours of boredom-free adventures, or at least long enough for me to find something to do. Other people I'm sure have way more options in their battles with boredom but.. these ways work just fine for me. Also writing random things, such as blogs about ways of tackling boredom and what to do... well, it also is a way of fighting the disease of boredom. I don't expect anything out of this except the pleasure of writing something and killing time so... night! (well, technically it's morning here and for most people it's time to get up, but for me it's time to sleep...hence night..nevermind...)

So I recently(as in a day ago) found this band named Deadlock. Well not exactly found, a friend of mine refered me to them because we share very similar tastes in music and she figured I would enjoy them. So I've "known" about them for some time I just never listended to them(there are reasons). Anyway, to get to the point, I think they are great. Great sound, vocals, instruments, everything. Their basically a metal band with added in female vocals alongside metal vocals. So if you are a fan of music similar to that then perhaps you may enjoy them as well. When I get home I plan to buy their latest two cds(from what I've read the female singer, Sabine, only began singing two albums ago so..).

Anyway, here's some links and a video.

Deadlock's Myspace
http://profile.myspace.com/index.....viewprofile&friendID=5150881

Deadlock's Band website

http://www.xdeadlockx.com/main.html

Wikipedia on Deadlock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock_%28metalcore%29

YouTube video: Deadlock - Code of Honor

http://youtube.com/watch?v=T8000nRYyco

nevermind

Ok... so...
For the past few weeks I've been wanting to start playing BW again, as I haven't played it much the past couple years. I used to play it quite often, well, more then quite often, to put it simply, starcraft was my life. For the better part of five or six years I played ALOT. Of course during this time was filled with the random breaks etc. that I would take, but I would always end up back on starcraft.
The first few years in gaming was of course the single player adventures, then the money map/ums map adventures, then eventually I was led into 'low money' maps and competitive gaming. From there I was hooked for the next few years, trying to get as good as I could. Then as time went on there were other demanding things in my life that I began to slow down my gaming, and then stopped playing starcraft completely. Since that time I've played maybe a week or two at a time in the span of three to four months, but I pretty much stopped playing starcraft.
I still played computer games, mostly wc3 because my internet at the time could not run many games(i was on diaulup, for a number of years i could only connect to 14.4k then later 28.8k). I got a laptop for christmas and would go to a local area nearby and use the wireless internet, so part of the time I had fast internet and the other I had slow net. I got into playing CS while I used the faster internet and used the dialup for WC3. Then a few months ago I got wireless internet, or well, my parents and our neighbors got wireless together.
At first the idea of fast wireless internet was great, until they installed it. First day, forty minutes after it was installed the router they put in crapped out. They came back out, put a new one in, worked fine. Later that day it had more problems, it would turn off but you could reset the router and it would work again for another few hours, rinse and repeat. It was extremely frustrating and annoying to deal with, as trying to play any online game was torture as it could disconnect at any time. So it turned out there was something wrong with the equipment, they came out, did whatever it is they did, and said it was working now. Wrong! It wasn't working. Yes it worked better, but it still wasn't great. Now the wireless is really unstable, from one hour to the next you never know what the fuck it's going to do. Somedays it works just fine, others you're punching the wall trying to do anything and it just won't bloody work.
This is where my interest in wanting to play Starcraft clashes with my new "wonderful" internet. I finally got around to installing starcraft, got the patch just fine, got online just fine, but as soon as I went to join a game...it lagged. Joining the game took a few seconds, then after the countdown it lagged, then in game it was horrible. Massive lag that usually ended in me either disconnecting from the game or everyone leaving. It's quite unplayable. So in hoping it wasn't me, I tried for a few hours trying to join games/play games with the same result each time.
I've searched the internet in hopes of finding a solution, and there was part of solution that my friend found. I have to update the firmware on my router(if there is an update) and this should allow me to play starcraft without lag. The only problem is it requires accessing the router, and i do not know the routers username/password, and if i did theres still the problem of it 1) being the companies router we have our wireless from and 2) it's a shared service between five of us. So I have to try and get the username/password, if they give it to me, and then make sure everyone doesn't care I access it to try and fix my problem.
I'm begining to wonder if it's some sort of an omen that I shouldn't start playing starcraft again, I mean really, what reason do I have to play it now? I'm definetly going to buy Starcraft 2, so, maybe I should just wait until that comes out and neglect returning to broodwar. If I did fix my problem and started playing starcraft again...it's not really for entertainment value, when I play it I want to get good and play well. Sure there is some factor in there regarding it being fun, but for the most part it's the drive to be good that I played. So part of me wants to play again, at least for awhile... but then I might just not and wait for Starcraft 2, whenever that comes out. I'll probably stick to Dota though.