Community Spotlight: Lindsey Sporrer

Whats this, girls in my Starcraft?

A new comer to the Starcraft 2 scene Lindsey Sporrer has been creating quite a stir ever since her first appearance in the recent North American Starcraft League finals.

Wow! An attractive model plays Starcraft you say? Well no, not yet anyway. Lindsey is a professional model that was hired by NASL to do interviews during the finals, this was her first exposure to the Starcraft 2 scene. In itself that caused a bit of an outcry, people were upset she was asking questions about Starcraft when she had no idea what was going on. Realistically it was just a job for her, but she has since taken an interest in the game. While it may be a publicity stunt, she has expressed interest in playing and plans to stream her very first game and while she learns so she and her fans can have a laugh while enjoying something new.

So shes just a pretty face then?
Amazingly this isn't the case, apparently she has Bachelor in Science with a 4.0GPA. To be honest she is a lot smarter than I am but of the two of us one was also runner up to Miss California 2011, Ill let you guess which of us it was. Sounds like she has it all then, if she gets into Starcraft seriously then surely she will be a media darling to the community, however women have an uphill battle in this area. Many people get annoyed that women can and do get special treatment in gaming, being much more popularized with fewer talent than their male counterparts. In theory female GSL caster Kelly Milkies should have done well, shes female, Asian and plays and casts professional Starcraft, but she has been the target of much criticism for not being perfect and having an accent. Lindsey has already been the target of slander and "trolling" attempts (interestingly she did a study on cyber-bullying and is now the target of it)but has also had a large following from Starcraft fans almost overnight. Definitely helping her get more exposure, they say there is no such thing as bad publicity.

The hilarious Zac interview, listen to the last couple seconds carefully.

What the future holds for Lindsey.
Of course Starcraft isn't Lindsy's career path, she dreams of being an actor as well as a model. But she does plan to be a part of the community and have her try at the game, she is currently setting it up so she can stream her first games for fans to enjoy. Of course it wont be easy to win some people over, and there will always be the thought in some peoples mind that this is just a career move to be a "girl into gaming". But with the right attitude and a little practice she could be a big part of the up and coming American Starcraft scene. Best of luck to her!

Intriguing! Where can I find more of Lindsey to, umm you know learn about her career and stuff?

Lindseys Homepage: http://www.lindseysporrer.com/Lindsey_Sporrer/Start.html
Lindseys Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/lindseysporrer
Facebook Fan Page/Modeling Album: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lindsey-Sporrer/120453541342029?sk=wall
Team Liquid fan page: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=242592

Season Two Starcraft Review

So now that Season Three of ladder has started for Starcraft 2 I would like to mention some of the thoughts on it.

For 1v1 ladder games I exclusively play Zerg (want to play random but its hard to change when you're set in the race you play). One of the major changes for Zerg in this season was the Infestor buff which changed the root duration from 8 to 4 seconds while still doing the same damage (but plus 30% to armored). This resulted in a wide spread call from Terran and Protoss players that Infestors are now overpowered and made most ZvZ games that went past the 10 minute mark into Roach Infestor Vs Roach Infestor. This can be fairly frustrating in ZvZ because it comes down to whos fungals the best and an entire army can be crushed without being able to escape. I can understand the other races frustration as well with being fungaled into oblivion, however is it overpowered? I dont really want to get into balance issues to be honest, every man and his dog has their opinion about whats too strong and too weak, but as a low master Zerg player if the fungal was changed to a slow rather than a root (similar to concussive shell) it would at least reduce the amount of people complain about Infestors and allow you get out of their fungal death grip.

Some tips for Zerg players, at least in my league one of the way out getting out Roach Infestors battles is trying to sneak in a Hive and adding a few Ultralisks into your army. With the Ultras in front it can panic the other Zerg and it may waste their fungals (with Ultralisks being immune to roots and mind control) even at my level people forget this, and my opponent told me after my last ZvZ that he was betting his whole army on mind controling the Ultras. Another fun thing I have been doing lately is trying to send 1 or 2 infestors around their army to mind control their infestors and cast their own fungals on their army. Is a lot of fun and very effective since it takes away their chance to fungal more than you.

Season Three is just getting started so we will see what this season will be like soon. My initial thoughts in ZvT is that a lot more hellion play is going to be showing up (I was having these thoughts lately, and just this weekend MLG is showing strong hellion plays, the ladder often follows pros trends so the ladder should be very painful for me vs Terran for the next couple of weeks, since I hate hellion builds so much).

Anyway, here is my results for Season 2 if you want an idea how much/at what levels I play. I think its a good idea for players to keep track like this (at masters Bnet shows your losses, but its nice to see an overview on the different races too). I play more on US than SEA so I didnt get my MMR up to Master level there, it seems like SEA is harder than US honestly, but its more a population thing. Less players to fill the top makes it a bit more competitive in my opinion.

Where is the Starcraft? You said there would be Starcraft.

Ok calm down people (read; no one since I just started this and no one reads it yet ;_;)

Been a bit busy with university but when I get back on Sunday I plan to do a post about Starcraft 2, hope to include an overview and some specific stuff on it. Ill include my season two stats so if you know about Starcraft you can gauge what sort of player I am. Playing around the low masters atm a Zerg though.

Since I'm new to this if the anyone comes across this and wants to give me some design tips for my blog I would appreciate it, hope to get this looking good soon =). Take it easy.

Hot Mulled Wine

Great for those cold nights on the wall, Winter is coming you know.

 After reading about this is a Song of Fire and Ice, I was tempted to try it. If you're in the southern hemisphere like me then Winter is already here and blisteringly cold so far. But if you're up on the top side I'm sure you're enjoying a nice Summer, so you might want to try this around Christmas or just when ever you feel like trying something you haven't.

The Recipe I used:

1 bottle red wine
65ml water
65g sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 cloves
1 star anise
1 bay leaf
a couple of pieces of lemon peel
a couple of pieces of orange peel
a pinch of ground nutmeg
(20ml brandy if you're so inclined)
Simmer together in a pot for 10-20 minutes till hot (don't let it boil)

So how did it turn out? Really well to be honest. My friends and I being late to the party only just recently (though before the tv series started) got into the Song of Fire and Ice series, and after reading about hot spiced wine to keep away the chills we just had to try it. Now we're a bunch of 24ish guys, no real cooking experience and mostly just drink beer but this was really simple (even for us) and really good.

After quickly searching for a recipe and one of my friends moving into a new flat we decided to give it a go. After a quick run to the local store (and a brief argument over what on earth star anise was) we found everything we need from the fruit, spice and beverage sections. Since I am Australian and biased the wine we used was a bottle of Wolf-Blass red label, cheap but nice.

Off back to my friends house we began to throw everything in the pot, after another argument on whether we should cut the Orange into quarters and add it to the mix for a more citrus taste such as I like (I was outvoted and we just followed the recipe, though we forgot the bay leaf and the store didn't have any brandy) and let it simmer on the stove for around 15 minutes (important not to let it boil that gets rid of the alcohol, where is the fun in that?) until the spices had time to soak in. The smell of the cooking process is amazing, reminds me of Christmas and holiday cheer with all the spice. After it was ready we drained it through a sieve and divided it by threes.

The results? Amazing, smelled incredible and did rid that chill of winter from our bones, even if we stayed inside to watch a bad movie, rather than stand out on a wall of ice. Try for yourself and enjoy.

Original Recipe Link:
http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/food-wine/165769/cooking-101-gl-hwein-mulled-wine

To be done: Everything.

Just getting started really.

This will be about my life, thoughts and nefarious plans.

Starcraft - A game I play to pass the time. Perhaps you have heard of it.
Me - 24 Year old Australian, doomed to live in New Zealand until my debt is paid.
SEA - South East Asia, including the actual place and Starcraft 2 server.