Some of you who have been in the SC scene for quite a while, might remember the name Storm[x-org] aka WetDream on TL (iLu.Wet).
A few years ago, during the WGTour days, the WGTour anti-cheating team proudly gave him the Hacker Most Caught award, with a total amount of 5 bans in seperate cases with multiple replays.
Around 2004, however, Storm completely disappeared from the scene, only to reappear in 2007 on cS.Wet. Again, he made a 'comeback' and started beating players seemingly way above his level. The Flag method came out soon after his reappearance, and he was found to be hacking in every replay we could find of him.
Just 3 months ago, WetDream decided to make another 'comeback'. With iCCup Antihack sealing off his opportunities to become a somewhat decent player, he only managed to get C- with around 40% win percentage on various accounts.
As we all know, iCCup antihack was breached not too long ago. Suddenly, Storm got to C+ with a bigger win percentage. Everyone knew what was going on.
It's only now though, that any specific evidence had been found.
In this replay, when he wants to move out to go for a natural bust with a 3gate goon/reaver build, he suddenly decides to send 5 goons back to his mineral line. 2 seconds later, a shuttle loaded with a reaver enters his line of sight.
WetDream has now been caught hacking a total of 7 times, and has always said to have stopped after. This is just a heads up for all you tourney organizers / clan leaders out there.
Why I posted this? Don't believe hackers who said they stopped. History has proven that the odds they haven't are just far far greater.
Been a long time since I did a blog. Last week I promised myself I'd do another when something worthwhile happened.
A couple of friends of mine decided to organize some barbecue/party in celebration of the start of the vacation. Just a standard 5PM-5AM gathering with 20ish friends in a guy's backyard.
The prospect of a barbecue didn't particularly excite me, who became vegetarian 2 days earlier due to a bet. I did, however, really look forward to getting drunk and stoned again after about 2 months of exams and doing barely anything social.
Apparently, a lot of my friends felt the same thing, and as we gathered all the booze (it was BYOB) we realized we had a clear abundance in volume. Due to circumstances, I arrived by car rather than bike. FML. After weighing my options, I decided to just drink away and either force myself to puke or wait till I sobered up before I'd drive home. The drive would only take like 20 minutes total anyway, most of it in remote areas where there would surely be no car around 5AM on a Monday night.
Flash forward to ~2AM. A couple of people had left already. The remaining 14ish were mostly drunk or stoned. Among those who combined: me. I totaled 12 beers, 4 glasses of champagne, 4 shared joints and one glass of wodka - fanta lime. I realized I'd have to slow things down a bit if I wanted to prevent a car crash on the way home. I decided I wouldn't drink more than 4 beers over the next 2 hours, but didn't really put a limit on the smoking. I'm pretty confident in my stoned driving.
3:45 AM. Some drama unfolded and killed the party atmosphere. Me, my gf and a friend of mine that I was giving a ride decide to head home a bit earlier. I wasn't completely sober yet, mostly stoned. I was certain I could drive without too much trouble though, especially on that pretty simple road between our respective homes.
Driving towards my friend's house, we encounter this very local super thick layer of fog. It was impossible to see through. Even still a bit drunk, and really stoned, I don't forget to turn my fog lights on. I enter my friend's street and drop him off. I see a car coming up behind me. I drop my friend off and I do a U-Turn at the end of the street to go home and face the approaching car. My gf: "Fuck it's the cops". The driving cop stares me down. I pretend I don't notice. I keep an eye on my rear mirror after we cross.
The cop car does a U-Turn as well. FUCK. There was quite some distance between both of our cars. I'd say about 150 meters after they U-Turned. I drove exactly at the speed limit, so they wouldn't catch me speeding and so they wouldn't gain ground on me either unless they crossed the speed limit. I also took a turn-filled detour hoping they'd lose me between turns because of the distance between us.
A look at the detour I made hoping they'd lose us. Note that the Bankstraat and Ziptstraat are even parallel, so I made an insane amount of unnecessary turns
They weren't stupid though, unfortunately. The distance between our two cars kept growing closer and closer. I also lost all hope that it was a mere coincidence that they were doing our exact route. I smelled defeat.
Just a car's length was between me and those 2 cops. I focused all my energy on driving without a single mistake, even clearly looking for crossing bikers at 4AM in the morning. After about 300 meters of being on my tail, they activated their siren.
My gf's face spelled panic. I told her to relax. The weed was talking. Cops walk to both sides of the car, I lower my window.
Male cop: Good evening, sir. Do you realize your fog lights are on in a non foggy area?
RELIEF
Me: Oh I had no idea. Let me take care of that. Male cop: Can I see your license, registration, insurance and technical checkup documents? Me: Yeah sure.
My girlfriend opens the glove compartment. The female cop was at the right side pointing her flashlight at it while holding her pistol holster. 10 CD's drop out on to the ground. Still pretty fucking stoned, trying to contain my laughter was a real challenge. I had this semi-burst of laughter followed by this twitchy awkward smile on my face. Unfortunately I didn't have the guts to face the cops to check their reaction. We find all the papers, except for the technical checkup documents. My gf keeps anxiously looking for them, but I give her a little non-verbal hint to stop. I thought, if the cops feel like they already 'caught' someone, they'd feel productive and wouldn't look for another "crime". I was happy it was missing.
Male cop: I'll leave the fog lights incident at that. You'll have to show your technical checkup documents at the police station within 14 days though. Me: No problem.
Woot.
Male cop: If you don't mind, my colleague will do a breath analysis test now.
Female cop: Did you drink tonight? Me: I had about 2 beers early in the afternoon.
I thought it'd be smart to play the innocent card, especially with my innocent looking girlfriend in the car with me.
Female cop: Then you should have nothing to worry about. We cops aren't nazis anymore these days.
She laughed. I laughed a bit to keep the awkwardness away. While she explained how the breath analysis thingy worked, some jokes were exchanged. Most were well received, some led to a bit of awkwardness.
I took 3 deep breaths, in and out, before exhaling through a white plastic attached to a device.
Female cop: Just look at the result with me here..
She turns the device towards me, revealing a screen with 'Analyse..' on it, meaning it was still analyzing. After a tense moment the screen spelled a capital S. My puzzled look must have revealed I wasn't so certain about the outcome. That I had a few more beers than two.
Female cop: That's the S for Safe.
Holy fuck.. What the hell.. I didn't even hope of getting that..
Me: Oh, of course it is. Female cop: Have a good night. Me: You too.
I still have no idea how I could have passed. Or how they didn't notice my burning red eyes or my general stoned behavior. I guess I got really lucky somehow. All my friends from the party have no reasonable explanation for it either.
Guess I'll give you a quick update of the other things that have been going on with me.
I finally got my good computer from Leuven to my home, so I can play SC again. I can stream again too, although with a shitload of top players streaming now I don't really see the use.
I got a question on my Information Law exam about Google Streetview, and the privacy law issues that would arise if they ever did it in Belgium. In my answer I explained why it would be legally impossible to implement this in a practical way due to our pretty strict privacy laws.
Then, today, when walking around in Leuven, this car with a Google logo and 8 camera's mounted on the roof of it drives through the street. How hard can a wrong answer slap you in the face?
I got my grades, they're ok. I still have to redo 5 courses during the summer though. Ugh.
A couple of months ago, Carnac introduced me to a guy who had a job offer for anyone that could speak Dutch. The specifics were nice. A job with flexibility and good pay.
It involved checking a log file for a web application that categorizes websites.
Now, yesterday my main HDD crashed. Full headcrash, the thing is worthless with like 1% of the files damaged. I used Knoppix (linux live cd) to try and recover data. Oh man was I glad when I saw that I could still browse the disk, only some folders made the file browser completely crash.
So me, having done 30 hours of work the past 3 weeks, sped through the file mapping towards my logrun folder. That folder was literally worth a shit ton of my time, and money too.
I click it.
File browser crashes.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu
I rebooted, tried again, it crashed again.
Then I did the only possible thing I could do. Smoked half a pack of cigarettes in 2 hours and called friends to say that I needed to get stoned fast and hard.
I've been having some trouble lately. I think it's hardware related.
Like 2 days ago I played CS and all of the sudden my FPS started dropping majorly (from 100 to 15). I monitored CPU usage and memory usage and neither went over 50%.
Now, my system is pretty decent, so this definately should not happen. So I tried looking for the problem. My heating in my room broke down so it was like ~ 0°C in my room (really fucking cold, I know), but it really seemed like an overheating problem. So I opened up the case. Every fan seemed to run normally. I kept the case open.
Today, I tried playing cs again. Same problem. 100 FPS at start, dropping down to 10 after like 5 minutes.
I reinstalled my GFX drivers, to no avail. I installed SpeedFan to double check if it was a heating problem and I got something weird I think.
Speedfan lists the following temps:
GPU: 33C Temp1: 34C Temp2: 65C (lol?) Core: 33C
I started up cs again, and noticed my Temp2 rising to 75C, with my fps dropping starting on 70°C.
Questions: 1. Is Temp2 my CPU temperature? How can I prevent it from going so high? I'm using stock fans btw. 2. How high should CPU temp normally go maximally? 3. I never got this problem before, and now I get it when my room is cold as hell. Can it be fried? Might the temperature sensor be fucked up and causing my CPU to slow down when its actually not warm? 4. Last summer my motherboard fried due to too high temperatures. I then got a new one. I had way bigger problems back then though.. Is the same thing going to happen again?
I have no idea what to do, and I'd really appreciate some help lol.
As most of you probably already know, I went to Mexico with my GF because of TL.net. She promised she'd give you guys something in return, and sing a song about StarCraft.
For simplicity reasons, I selected a simple song to rewrite lyrics for, and came up with Favourite Things from The Sound of Music.
If anyone has the karaoke (just instrumental, and please no MIDI files) version, or can come up with it, I'd greatly appreciate it. Otherwise we can't make this song.
Of course, if you reaally want to help us, you can always find nice star craft lyrics to another (cooler) song of which you do have the instrumental version, I can make her sing that too.
She's a pretty good voice (even if i say so myself), and is even considering making a career in singing, so you shouldn't worry it'd become some crappy song.
Age of 15. You read a relatively unknown book recommended by one of your close friends. As you start to read, it absorbs you. You get caught in it's strange but oh so familiar scenario. It has a way of looking at life that completely intrigues you. It changed your way of thinking, you feel enlightened. The book was perfect.
Eight years later, they announce a movie based on the novel you read when you were still a teenager. You reread it and extract more knowledge and values from it than you did when you were young.
Fourteen months later you arrive at the theatre an hour early, making sure you get a good seat. You are hungry, but refuse to buy pop corn as it may distract you too much. The movie starts. It sucks you in the same atmosphere the book did nine years before.
After two hours of an intense movie experience, you remain seated in the theatre and meditate about what you just witnessed.
The film was awesome, and you fully enjoyed it, but something was missing. It was made to mirror the book, and could therefor never transcend it's greatness. It could only disappoint. Through lack of depth, context and inspiring creativity.
StarCraft
StarCraft is a great game, and I doubt anyone on this website will deny that. Many of you will even claim StarCraft is perfect, a flawless game.
StarCraft 2 is being developped as a sequel, trying to combine the old SC1 gameplay with new additions and innovations. It's trying to copy the elements that made the original game such a success, while introducing more modern RTS functions and graphics to make the game compete with other similar games in the stores today.
The problem? As long as StarCraft 2 is being developped to follow up our beloved game, it will always be in it's shadow. What StarCraft 2 needs is more creativity, making it a stand alone game. Blizzard shouldn't be afraid to scare away the hardcore fans of the original game. They should make a completely new game, based off refreshing new foundations. That's the only way SC2 will never become 'the easy version of SC'. That's the only way they can win the hearts of the hardcore fans, showing the same creativity they did when making SC1, instead of reapplying the old ideas to create a raped version of StarCraft 1.
Oh well, those were some random thoughts. Please excuse me of my bad English writing style.
Read my previous blog entry first before reading this.
Me and Xeo got up just in time to get good seats for the SC finals, along with the rest of TL. Stork vs Sea it was, and except for Taiche, everyone was rooting for Sea. When we did our nice little pregame shout, the MBCGame camera crew came to film us. They made us do it another 3 times, and asked us 'Who's a fan of Stork?'. Everyone remained silent. In the end, they interviewed Taiche why he is a fan of Stork. The finals were pretty anti-climatic, featuring 2 pure build order wins.
After the finals we went downstairs to play SC2. I played a LOT of SC2 on the second day. In one of my PvZ's, a Blizzard employee stood the entire game behind me, commenting that I played nicely afterwards. I did the gayest thing. Cannons at Zerg's natural choke, with warpgates. Then proxy Colossus and gayed a bit around with its ability to traverse cliffs and rape up drones (thanks for teaching me the gay ability of the Colossus, Idra). We went to see the SC2 game with Naruto and his partner, which was actually a nice game, convincing me that SC2 could become a nice spectator sport. SC2 of course didn't have any observer functions yet, so they had to switch between FPViews, and Mani and Tasteless had to commentate off the big screen. The producer didn't realize this, however, and sometimes took shots of the crowd, leaving Tasteless and Mani to commentate about nothing haha.
We saw sAviOr and his coach again, as well as Sea. They both apologized for not making the TL meet cause of their very long games, but promised they'd come to the hotel lobby that night.
I played some more SC2, until a Blizzard employee came to inform us the event was closing. A very short day. A very long night though..
Me and Xeo went for some kebab with DKnight, Chill, Kennigit and haji. Afterwards, they all went to the hotel lobby, while me and Xeo went to our hotel to smoke and grab the liters of beer we brought from Belgium. Around midnight we arrived at the hotel lobby. Everyone was there, drinking and chilling. Some WoW and CS people were already shitfaced. We however, didn't see nor Sea[Shield], nor sAviOr anywhere. Chill told us they'd come in 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, I almost gave up hope, although the amount of alcohol I had downed wouldn't really make me sad. Right then, sAviOr and his very cool coach walked towards us, with sAviOr wearing his TL shirt. Following them, Sea and the MBCGame coach.
What ensued, was like July vs Rock on RoV. Hordes of people spawned from EVERYWHERE just swarming towards them. After the dust settled a bit, sAviOr was just walking around greeting everyone a bit, while Sea sat down at the head of the TL table, taking pictures and talking to us.
One of the most notable conversations was one that I already described in one of the newsposts:
Me: Sea, you know B.Net Attack? Sea: Huh? *writes down MBCGame B.Net Attack on a napkin* Sea: Ah yes, (insert weird b.net attack pronunciation). *draws an arrow MBCGame B.Net Attack -> TeamLiquid Attack Sea: YES, ME PLAY! Mingu no manner! Me play!
He was so excited to play, it was unbelievable.
I did a wodka shot with DKnight, sAviOr and Tasteless. Later we did a "wine shot" too cause we were out of wodka. Talked to the CJ Coach about various things. He was reaaaally cool. That mean diserves a lot of respect. Talked to Sea about various things too, till he asked if I played on west, and we all began exchanging accounts.
We kept talking with the progamers and with eachother. It's hard to tell all we've been talking about, since we really talked for about 3 hours. At around 3AM Sea brought me and zatic to his room. On the closet there, the TL cheerful lay. He grabbed us 2 MBC Game shirts out of his luggage and says 'U no sleep? Strong' 'Me sleep now'. We said goodbye after he took pictures of me, zatic and him, sporting the MBC shirts.
I went downstairs, laughed at a lot of overly drunk people in the lobby. One of the more funny situations was probably when Tasteless wanted to go sleep in his room, but lost his room key. He went to the hotel reception desk. Unfortunately for him, no one was standing behind it, so he just picked up the phone and started punching in random numbers. Xeo got behind the reception desk, and used a clean, near-British accent to immitate the fancy receptionist. Xeo: "How can I help you?" Tasteless: "Im looking for my room key" Xeo: "Now, usually when I need to find a spare room key, where do I look?" Tasteless: "I have no idea man.." *Xeo starts looking in random drawers behind the counter for keys* *Tasteless picks up the reception telephone and starts punching in random numbers again* *Another reception telephone starts ringing, Xeo picks it up, thinking it was Tasteless* Xeo on the phone: "Hi Nick!" Random business man staying in the hotel in french: "Can I get room service?" *Xeo shocked and wants to hang up the phone* *Real receptionist comes half-angry to the desk, takes the phone out of Xeo's hands, and demands Xeo to leave the reception desk*
After that, me Xeo and haji took a cab to our hotel. The WWI adventure had ended. It was great, but short. Way too short =[
Day 0 We (me+Xeo) arrived at the hotel the day before the event at around 10PM after a long drive with Nyovne and his friend. I decided we should call Haji to try and meet up with him, Chill, Manifesto, Kennigit and Meat. I called his hotel reception desk, asking for Hajime Murakami. They connected me to a hotel staff member named Haji. There was a lot of confusion when he started talking French to me while I was rambling in English about Team Liquid. Finally they connected me to his room. Haji, unfortunately did not pick up.
One hour later Meat called me. He said he, Chill, haji and Kennigit were hanging at some random bar. It was already 11PM and during the phone call it was suddenly decided it wasn't worth it still meeting up. Me and Xeo just had a few beers at the hotel and watched Saw 3 dubbed in French before going to bed.
Day 1
We went to the event at around 11 AM, not wanting to wait in a line filled with WoW players heavily sweating beneath the hot sun. We promptly went to the Diablo 3 reveal ceremony, which was really cool. That was not why we were at the event though, so we started calling TL members to locate the TL group. Shortly after that, we met up with them at the SC stage. Everyone was so laid back, it was pretty cool. Eventhough I had only already met Liquid`Meat, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all around the TL members. Everything seemed so natural. After introducing me and Xeo introduced ourselves to everyone, we watched Mondragon vs Sea. I guess I don't even have to say that watching a game like that live with a bunch of TL people is different from watching it behind your computer. It's so much more fun when you can discuss strategy live while watching it and when you can cheer for the players. Blizzard set the video feed up nicely, getting both player's FPView as well as the observer view up on big screens. Directly after the game we all met up with Mondragon, Sea, Stork, KaL and sAviOr. Like you probably already have noticed from the numerous threads, sAviOr and Sea were the most open and nicest players by far. They not only were grateful for what we gave them, they really did their best trying to communicate with us. They seemed to be trying to get involved in our cosy little community website. Stork vs KaL was equally awesome, with some nice matches and some nice cheers. Too bad Stork didn't see our various creative attempts to remember him to get Dragoon Range. He must have sensed it though, as he got it in each of the games.
Me and Xeo went outside for a bit to get some fresh air and smoke cig before the Dreiven vs KaL match. When we came back, we couldn't spot the TL members between the big observing crowd anymore, so we took 2 empty spots next to Sea[Shield]. Sea was nice, commenting on various aspects of the games. Quotes such as 'Dark Templuh bad mannar' and 'Dreiven many mineral, very bad' come to mind. He also rose from his seat in between the games to say something to his MBC coach but rushed back really quickly when somebody tried to steal his seat. He promised to come to the TL meet too. After Dreiven vs KaL he had to go play vs KaL, so he left us.
After those games, I played some SC2 and did a videointerview with IdrA. We then proceeded upstairs where me and Xeo went outside for a cigarette. Surprisingly, the CJ manager was having a smoke there too, with sAviOr at his side. I gotta tell you, that CJ manager is awesome. Me and Xeo approached them and we ended up talking for like 45 minutes. Both him and sAviOr were really amazed at how much the TL crew knew about progaming and how we got all that information. We kinda explained how TL works, talked about sAviOr's recent games and asked the CJ manager if sAviOr wanted to play on Team Liquid Attack. Of course the answer was positive. The CJ coach invited us to visit the CJ house if we ever came to Korea. Then they had to leave cause sAviOr had to play, so he gave us his business card to contact us that night, because obviously sAviOr wanted to be at the TL meet.
The day progressed further, with more SC2, until it was time to go the the TL meet. Thanks again to Taiche for setting this up for all of us. Upon arrival at the TL meet everybody started drinking casually and having group conversations. Again, it all felt pretty natural, as if we weren't random people from all over the world obsessed by the same computer game and its Korean e-sports scene. Unfortunately some people couldn't make it to the TL meet. SaviOr and Sea played for 2 hours and their games only ended at 11PM so they were too tired (the next day they told us they felt really guilty, more about that later). Manifesto also couldn't come because he had to get up really early to organize the cast of the Star Craft finals. After like 2 hours of drinking/eating a few more people joined us. First was the WGT crew, consisting of DKnight, Jaap, Error and some more guys I unfortunately not remember anymore. Following was Mondragon with his friend and girlfriend. Last but not least, an small Blizzard crew wearing their team liquid shirts! Now, the entire TL meet was set up as a trap to get Mondragon to play TL Attack. We forced him to get him in the middle of all the Team Liquid people when he had already downed a few wodka's. We then used peer pressure to convince him. He conceded.
The TL meet ended with a few people being drunk. Notably haji, Mondragon and DKnight. I, too, was slightly buzzed. When me and Xeo went back to our hotel, I had to piss really badly, so I just pissed in a garbage can in the subway station. Xeo filmed that for some reason. It was pretty scary too because there was like a huge crowd of rugby fans coming in our direction, and I dont perform well under pressure. Once I got that rounded up we went to our hotel, discussing how awesome the past day had been. Little did we know the next day (and especially night) would be even better..
