SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

At the request of some unnamed members of the community I will be detailing my journey here at SC2SEA. I wouldn't expect a completely comedic detailing of "this is your life" but thanks to my sarcastic humour, cynicism and clever use of the English language I do hope that you will find my exemplary blog an enjoyable read (I've said this before and I'll say it again... modesty was always one of my strong points ).

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1. Let there be cake!

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Like most people who lurk a website for a small period of time, eventually they unburrow and become part of the community. The length of time that they're a part of the community varies greatly but when I joined I didn't just want to post in the "Welcome Thread"... I wanted to start with a bang!

I officially joined the site on the 10th of April 2012 and made my first post after trying to determine what the rules were from what little information I could find (something I intend to help fix... but I had been on other forums before so I had a good idea of what was unacceptable). Indeed my birthday had only just passed (almost a month prior to joining) and so I thought why not show off my culinary skills in the form of a Nexus cake.

Related Thread: http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=4422


Since (and some prior to) this cake I have made many other palatable delights as seen above. From left to right these are: A chocolate pokeball mini-cake with a marshmallow centre; A chocolate Pacman cake... the missing 6th was thoroughly enjoyed; Coconut Ice (first attempt); Spawning Pool cake with a lime jelly centre; Game of Thrones cake (made for the a GoT board game day I was involved in); Magic the Gathering (MTG) cake for a games day I went to; Seasoned salmon and steamed vegetables; and finally a 21st cake I made with a crumbed cookie topping.

The next SC2 related cake I do will definitely be a Terran themed cake... in fact I know exactly what I'm going to make but you will all just have to wait to find out!

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2. Whether you like it or not...

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You of course all remember the reputation system. I mean who could look at this fellow ( ) and not smile at least a bit?

This heavily controversial system was the reason for so much drama on SC2SEA and the decision to get rid of it was not one taken lightly. The first real amount of contribution I had on this site came from the fate of our rep system thread and for the record I initially sided with the rep system. The rep system itself was a huge motivator for me as I always wanted to keep the "likes" higher than my post count initially by a factor of at least 3 and later but at least 2.5.

Eventually it was decided that neutral rep should be added as a third option because often people would like posts just to provide a simple comment regardless of whether they liked the post or not. in any case I provided several images of which the favourite was the smirk face ( ).

In the end though the reputation system was removed and replaced with the comment system that you see today... but at least I was a part of the process and the feeling of being involved in a community was awesome!

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3. Commentating 101.

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This year I had invested in a lot of audio equipment. A music stand, pop filter, shock (spider) mount and the AT2020 USB microphone (mic setup can be seen here). I had also invested in Adobe Premiere as a way to kick-start my YouTube channel (which does occasionally see content added to it). Originally I used this for a news series called the UNN report which turned out to be quite a lot of work even for just one person (each episode takes roughly a day of production depending on how lazy I feel with the graphical content, audio corrections etc...).

As a singer (choir boy) I had a confident and clear voice so I thought why not try my hand at commentating? I was already a member on this website I could just take a replay of some handsome nerd (talking about you PiG) beating some relative unknown and this was the result....


The original thread gave me heaps of confidence (of which I entirely thank you ) with many people approving of my meticulous use of the English language.

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4. My first article.

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My first article was put together by myself after an entire day of checking grammar, formatting and image creation and was created in response to the number of "help me build a computer" threads that had been occurring late in April. Using my knowledge as an IT professional I provided a solid article providing understanding of how a computer works, what parts to get and where to get them.

Whilst some of the links are out of date all the content should still be relevant and if you are looking at building a computer soon it is a read I would entirely recommend.

Article: http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=4513

This was also the first time I earned the nickname Gent by none other than our very own... Maynarde.

The responses I got to this article were numerous and positive once again encouraging me to continue with contributions to our little community and leads me to my next chapter.

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5. From articles to art.

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With my confidence in the community boosted and my posts being "liked" I was further determined to keep my like-to-post ratio high and I achieved this through my new graphical contributions thread.

It should also be noted that some of my graphical contributions were provided because the website at the time I joined looked a little scrappy with pictures having obvious pixel endings and a somewhat all over the place feel about it. It was already obvious what the theme of the site was meant to look like... you can see in the title that it's got a fun sort of cartoon-like style to it and so I used my skills as an artist to fix this. All achievements were replaced by my hand (1 or 2 exceptions) and I heavily based my art style off the SC2SEA logo.

Among some of my biggest graphical achievements are:

1. The addition of the kiwi to the SC2SEA logo.


2. A beardless Iaguz and short haired Maynarde


3. All achievements (a process which took about a month to do if you consider the planning and ideas and then implementation... and this doesn't even include the the icons which got rejected.


...a lot of the news icons as well (which I cannot be bothered posting).

4. Encouraging creativity from others.


5. And a couple of other masterpieces I'm conveniently forgetting to mention.


You can view most of my contributions in the thread: http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=4615

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6. A cheesy idea...

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The battle for the cheese shield was my first organised tournament. I personally thought that it was a Gouda idea but I had also never held a tournament before so really here I was praying that it would Brie easy.

I gave plenty of notice and the turnout was much larger than I expected. Because I had never hosted a tournament before I limited the number of contestants to 64 (though I don't think I hit that many participants).

With a map pool that can only be compared to an ugly Munster:
and commentators (Baldie and Flamga) who were a reel good help and put on a show better than Cheesus. fray`Ninja ended up winning the competition and taking home the cheese shield. It was truly a grate event!

Original post: http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=4809
Stream: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA07C24E9D733AAD8

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7. Breaking news!!

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So around about the 21st of July nirvAnA opened up a skype conversation with me and asked if I wanted to help SC2SEA in a bigger way. He proposed that with my level of commitment, attention to detail and organisation that I should spearhead the news team. This I will be quite honest is not something I entirely wanted to do... but I did want to help the site grow and so reluctantly I accepted with determination to do as good a job as I could.

It is now my job to ensure that slack members like dingobloo ( ) post news threads regularly, without grammatical and spelling errors, to ensure that the hyperlinks in these articles work and that they're of a high standard in general and deliver the SC2SEA Wrap Up monthly. I cannot say that I'm the nicest leader to work for because I certainly expect everyone on the news team to meet monthly post quotas (most of them do ) and chase them up if they do not... but I couldn't ask for a nicer, more mature bunch of people to work with. They all work hard and they all deserve your praise.

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8. Everything in moderation.

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At some point between becoming the leader of the news team and the end of this glorious year I became a moderator. I would like to think that I am a fair and reasonable moderator but I am still learning the ropes (turns out people don't like it when you hit the infraction button... who'd have thunk it?).

some other stuff happened too... (listed below):

• Joined Time of Rising (ToR is Here!!)
• Participated in the Platinum/Diamond State of Origin
• Became an MVP.
• Read a creative story about Diablo 3.
• Got promoted to Platinum (YAY!!)
• Participated in Mafia Round 8 (and Won!) ... thanks Zanderax and everyone who participated.
• Provided many suggestions to help improve the site.
• Got over ladder axiety.
• Helped with the SC2SEA Birthday celebrations including hosting the FFA tournament!

This year has also been a very big year for me personally... but I am not going to go into that. For now... I just wish to thank everyone here for accepting me into their community.

Stay classy!