Hot Streak

I won five in a row in tonight’s games and earned the achievement.  It feels good to have actual proof of the improvement.  Although one game didn’t really count (a guy who was drinking quit after I GGed- whether he was just being nice, as he was talking to me afterward and going over the game, or drunk I don’t know), there is a noticeable improvement in my play.  My APM is up, my general game knowledge is helping me in picking units to build and I don’t have to quit after a semi-successful push from my opponent.  In a couple of games tonight, I was harassed but continued to build and just macro until I had enough units to kill off my opponent.

Scouting is a big area that needs improvement.  I know it’s coming up in my list of goals, probably after focusing on units, but the watchers on my stream were continually stressing how important it is that I know what’s going on.  A couple of things that I had been taught before but forgot to do (lost in the noise of everything I’m learning), I will now make it a point to do constantly: a ling outside of opponent’s base so I know when they’re pushing (and replacing it after a push kills it), and a suicide overlord around six minutes to keep myself abreast of where their tech is going.  When I do these incidentally, I can respond a lot quicker and generally do better in a game.  So now I will make it a point to do them.

My main goal tonight was to focus on supply and being sure I wasn’t blocked.  It did not go well, despite the wins.  I’m not sure why this is so difficult for me to focus on.  It’s right there in the top right corner of the screen.  But with tapping, building, teching, droning, scouting, defending, attacking, and everything going on, it’s slipping through the cracks.  For a while there when I was first focusing on it, I got into the habit of checking every time I injected with a Queen.  I stopped checking sometime, but will go back to this.  I did it in the last game and did better with supply but still was blocked a couple of times.

I received my new CPU cooler the other day and installed it.  Wow, did that help.  I no longer have to keep an eye on the temperatures, as it keeps my CPU under 55 even in game, streaming with music playing.  And that’s only a couple of days in, apparently the Arctic Silver 5 I used with it needs a while to break in and work optimally.  So, computer wise, I’m all good.

Speaking of music, I have recently started listening to dubstep while playing (recommended to me by r/starcraft) and it is great to play games to.  I have had a few requests for a playlist, but am not sure how to actually do that.  I put Foobar on random, letting it play all of the different stuff I have downloaded.  I got some of it from Beatport, but blanched at buying more than twenty songs or so at $2-2.50 a song for as much music as I like to have.  Generally, I will just download as much as I can find of specific music off of usenet (broke the first rule there), but dubstep is a lot harder to find.  And I don’t want to take the time to rip 200 songs off of Youtube.  I’m tempted to torrent some, but haven’t done any of that in years due to all the problems associated with it.  I guess I’ll just keep looking, which is fun most of the time, but the quality is very spotty.

A note on days off:  I have played on the last two days off and will play next Tuesday also.  I did this without really thinking about it the first day, but the last day off I played to kind of game the system I have set up.  Next weekend I will be going away, so I will not be playing for Friday, the 22nd through Sunday, the 24th.  I’m sure I will be reading and watching videos while away, but didn’t want anyone to think I had shrugged off my commitment.  So, by playing on my days off, I am trying to make up for those days that I will be gone.  I hope no one begrudges me a few days off.  It is mostly to just get out of town for a while and see some family.

So, tomorrow I will be continuing to focus on supply.  I have a list of specific supply points to build overlords at for the first 60 or so supply and will play with it in front of me. Hopefully this encourages me to constantly check where I’m at in supply.

Goodnight and GLHR.