Monthly Archives: November 2014

Wanted to download StarCraft, and did it!

I wanted to play a few classic games as of lately, and StarCraft was one of those games. I lost my CD key a while back though, but a friend was kind enough to allow me to use his.

In the past, Blizzard games had a normal CD key. With the new feature of being able to add classic games to your Battle.net account however, this introduced another key. And to make matters even more interesting, the keys are not interchangeable (so only the classic CD key could be used with the classic installers, while the new Battle.net keys can only be used with the digital download installers). The key my friend gave me was the digital download version.

I knew Blizzard allowed you to download some of their game client downloaders, so I went over to their site to look for StarCraft. As it would seem however, Blizzard doesn’t allow you to download their classic games unless you have them attached to your Battle.net account.

So the next idea I had was to just find someone who had StarCraft attached to their account, have them get the downloader, and upload it somewhere for me to use. This proved a bit difficult at first, but I eventually found another friend who owned it, and he was able to provide me with the downloader. Blizzard’s ownership verification seems to stretch far however, and I was unable to use the downloader. I’m unsure how they actually verify ownership at this point.

I was curious as to what the View tab had on the downloader, but once the Error message appears, you can no longer interact with the downloader window, and pressing OK or closing the Error window results in the downloader closing. So in order to see what the View tab had, I just opened up a downloader for a game I actually had on my account (WarCraft III). There was a Connection Info option and a Log option, and both ended up providing some useful information.

So lets start with the Connection Info option. There’s a couple of interesting addresses shown here. Most notable was the rouge.blizzard.com address, but following up on that didn’t really lead to anything useful. The important bit was the Download Hash. Searching that hash on Google pulled up some torrents for the WarCraft III download.

Next is the Log option. It was less interesting, but the important bit here was the tracker address.

So the next task was to just get the Download Hash for StarCraft. I noticed there was a little bit of delay between when the downloader opened and the Error message appeared. I figured the downloader did something internet-related during that period, so I had the idea of just slowing down my connection a bit in order to delay the Error message from appearing (was as simple as just re-opening WarCraft III’s downloader). This worked surprisingly, and I was able to get to the Connection Info section.

I searched StarCraft’s download hash in Google, and managed to find a torrent for it. I also added Blizzard’s tracker announcer URL to the torrent as well, and gained some peers from it, and so far, it seems to be downloading nicely.

Once the download completed, I verified it, and installed it without any issue.

Information:
StarCraft Download Hash (enUS): 59688D4CC5EA7E2186F2651C8E87987B273972C9
WarCraft III Download Hash (enUS): BB58D8C639601EAC07AA6D6273B0F443B2836FF9
Blizzard Tracker Announcer URL: http://us.tracker.worldofwarcraft.com:3724/announce
StarCraft Magnet URL: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=5Z6jEV9g

My Process For Making “People Chow 3.0.1”

I’ve been making People Chow for about a week now, so I figure I’d just present how I prepare it.

These are the ingredients I use in order to prepare People Chow. Everything aside from the oil, salt, and corn flour was ordered online. The oil is Crisco Vegetable Oil. This recipe also uses water. To the right is a small scale and cup.

First I’ll start off with some salt, about 4 grams of it.

Next is the Whey Protein Isolate. It barely fit the small cup I was using. I’m using a Vanilla-flavored variant since it was the only kind I could find on Wal-Mart’s online store.
Next is 23 grams of Vanilla Bean GNC Mega Men Sport. It’s basically a multivitamin-powder. The vanilla taste is pretty nice.

In goes the Choline Bitartrate, 2 grams of it.

And next is 6 grams of Potassium Citrate. It’s a bit coarser than everything else.

Next is 6 grams of Calcium/Magnesium Citrate.

And here is 50 grams of Soybean Oil.

And finally, 345 grams of corn flour. Was no way that was fitting in the small cup, so I just found a larger cup.
I measure out the ingredients one at a time, and add them to a large container. The container I use is an emptied Green Tea container.
The corn flour was a bit of a hassle initially to get into the container. I’ve tried a few methods for getting it in, like taking a small spoonful and just pouring it into the container (boring and time-consuming), and then by pouring liquid into the cup and trying to get most of the flour out (a bit messy).
The method I use now is just scoop some out of the cup and place it into the funnel, and use a chopstick to stir the flour through the hole. Much faster than the other methods I tried.

Once all the ingredients are in the container, I add some water, and then shake the container to mix the ingredients. I find that filling it about 1/3rd the way full gives an ideal smoothie-like texture. I use lukewarm water.

After shaking, I put it into the fridge and let it sit overnight. I find this helps improve the texture and taste quite a bit. It’s also nice to have it ready for consumption right in the morning.

I use a small, but wide glass cup (not sure on a specific name for it) for drinking People Chow, and just grab a cup of it whenever I feel like it.

If I got the calculations right, all of the ingredients shown above (minus the oil and corn flour) should last at least a month. The Whey Protein Isolate should last way longer than that. Would need about 5-6 bags of the corn flour per-month, but the price of it should be really good if you can pick it up in-store (emphasis on in-store; online prices are usually much higher, especially on Amazon strictly because of this recipe).

I recently bought a new container with a large lid opening, so that should make future batches much easier to make. It was about $4 in a local store, and it has a nice secure lid.

Here is a list of the ingredients I used and where I bought them:

MASECA Instant Corn Flour Masa Mix (Giant Eagle)
NOW Foods Whey Protein Isolate Natural Vanilla Powder (Wal-Mart)
GNC Men’s Mega Men Sport Vanilla Bean (Amazon)
NOW Foods Cal-Mag Citrate (Amazon)
BulkSupplements Pure Potassium Citrate Powder (Amazon)
Morton Iodized Salt (Giant Eagle)
Pure Choline Bitartrate Bulk Powder (Amazon)
Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil (Giant Eagle)