Rant 235 / Worship Nyx!

Here's a real epic Starcraft match from www.gomtv.net. It's stork vs keke, round 2. It began oddly and ended very differently from the usual. Both players started the round with strange moves; stork opened with a double Gateway and keke made a fast second Hatchery far from his main base.

It became a match that could be won only by the player who could adapt the fastest to unorthodox strategies. 5-10mins into the game, both of them were still having only the basic attack units - Zealots and Zerglings. I was like "Wtf?" when the commentators mentioned that and I checked the time.

In a normal match, withinin 10 mins both sides should have Dragoons and Mutalisks ready. Instead, both sides either couldn't or didn't expand enough to afford them. keke's second Hatchery was spotted early when stork's scouting Probe found less than the normal number of drones in keke's base. The early double Gateways then spammed enough Zealots to both rush the Hatchery and block the entrance to keke's base, effectively stopping reinforcements from saving the Zerg expansion.

stork spent all his resources on spamming Zealots in order to hold the Zealot barricade at the single entrance to keke's base while a few others attacked and eventually destroyed the Zerg expansion. So he couldn't expand either.

Meanwhile, keke tried to break through the barricade frequently by massing Zerglings repeatedly. The overall lack of success caused him to waste all his Zerglings to destroy Zealots that kept getting replaced as they died. Thus no reinforcement was able to save the expansion. keke did spawn some Zerglings at the second base but they weren't enough - eg, 4 Zerglings controlled by keke weren't enough to defeat a Zealot and a Probe controlled by stork. See the difference that good microing makes?

After some time, keke did break through and tried to attack stork's only base. We all thought that was it, but stork's freaking godly micro skills allowed his horde of Probes and 2 Zealots to successfully defend against a horde of Zerglings. It was almost as if stork was cheating or something. His units were controlled so well, sometimes it seemed they were moving on their own like they were intelligent. This was because he was able to make so many units move in different directions so quickly it seemed like they were moving simulataneously.

Of course the Zerg player was able to get a second wave within the minute, but stork was also able to get some units out. Plus stork spammed Photon Cannons all around the ramp which was the only entrance to his base. He decided to play extremely defensively, using a low-econ strategy.

keke used a low-econ strategy too, sacrificing all chances of expanding to spam Zerglings and 3 Lurkers. Soon, it came to the point where keke attacked. It was basically a slaughter and only 2 Lurkers survived while stork still had 5 Cannons, with an extra Cannon in his base.

So it became a boring stalemate because stork refused to attack and keke couldn't break through the epic turtling.

Suddenly, things became exciting again when keke researched the tech for Overlords to become transports. His army consisting of a horde of Zerglings and about 3 Lurkers climbed into 4-5 Overlords and sneaked into the Protoss base from behind.

A Protoss Corsair (anti-air aircraft) flew past but missed them and went on to harass the Zerg base. I think stork saw that it was defenseless then. Meanwhile the Protoss army was massed at the ramp for defense. So nothing stopped the Overlords from entering the base.

The Zerg army alighted out of range of sight of the Protoss base and entered on foot. stork was helpless against the attack because before he knew it, they were already attacking his one and only Nexus and it was all he could do to try to evacuate his Probes. stork losing??!?!

He didn't defend - stork went all out offensive. So keke began to raze all structures to the ground. If all structures were destroyed, the player would automatically lose. So he was going for that and ignored the enemy's army.

stork did just the same thing, going for the Drones at first, then the Hive and everything else. Both bases were defenseless and were getting destroyed.

Then the screen flew to a single Probe that was... collecting minerals next to a freaking Nexus. Unbeknownst to keke, stork DID expand just before the attack! But the new Nexus was barely complete and had only 1 Probe attending to it. keke had only an Extractor. In the end, both players lost their mains but stork had one Nexus and one Probe left, excluding the armies and Cannons, and each player had about 20-50 Crystals (not enough to build anything significant).

Thus, keke lost.










Kiefer Sutherland (Jack Bauer in 24) is the highest paid TV actor in the US, earning 350k per episode. I never expected that when I first saw him in his role in the movie "Dark City".








Episode 6 of Pro At Cooking is out. This time Dave made a vegetarian dish and hired a vegan as his assistant chef. I think he's improving because I find this latest episode better than the previous 5. The actress, his assistant, sucked at acting though. Dave probably suck at acting too, but he doesn't use much emotions on screen to make it obvious, no smiles or stuff. It may look like he's acting cool but I think it's just his way of hiding his lack of acting talent. Oh well, at least the show is funny.









So it turns out that photoshopping lotus seed pods on any human body part will make an incredibly gross picture. It doesn't matter which, as long as the seed pods are pasted on it and coloured to beige or anything close to the colour of the skin.

In fact, someone did print such photos on greeting cards or something but people vomited at the sight of them. For me, I just get goosebumps whenever I think of the photoshopped nipple. I don't think anything can beat that, not even pictures of giant cysts being cut open. Heck, the disgust I get from seeing mutilated corpses and gory stuff doesn't even compare to what I feel from looking at that picture.








http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trinity_explosion2.jpeg

This is the picture of a nuclear explosion, 0.16 seconds after explosion. Who would have thought that something so terrible can also be so beautiful at the same time?








Why do I keep using the same phrases over and over again? My vocabulary is shrinking. Must be because I'm not reading enough. It's hard to read when I don't have a lamp that I can move around in the room, plus it's troublesome to bring books over from home together with my laptop.

The most important reason is because I'm not forgetting any of the plots. Gah! Except for A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm not bringing them over because I know I can't sleep when I read them. They're just so good and at some parts, they incite such strong emotions in me. Like those from Tyrion's point of view because he always gets so mistreated by his own father even though he's a better man than Jaime will ever be. Hey, at the very least he doesn't fuck his own sister! His only crime was that he's born a dwarf, but it is true that he is a giant nonetheless.










Here's another Starcraft match quite similar to the one described above, except even closer. Very close, in fact. This game is more epic than the last game I described. Take a look, it's crazy at the end.