Please update your self and double check if you are in it, the OP is so kind to wait for all of us but this will be the last time.

Damn missed the giveaway, got my dates messed up. Well done to everyone else

I'm pumped. Last time I had 100 million + of any coin was Infinitecoin when it first launched 

Sorry for being a bit of a noob with this. I've typed what you wrote above. How do I know it's actually mining?

Its quite alright we are here to help the community.
if you use the wallet button then underneath it there is a "gethash" button if you click that itll tell you what you are mining at if it is 0 you arent mining

if you do not have the latest wallet the in the help>debug
type
getmininginfo

there itll have a prompt showing your hashrate

Thanks for your help, appreciated.

It looks like you are trying to mine to your wallet with the external miner.  To do so you have to add server=1 to your Espers.conf file and restart the client.  The file is located at  %APPDATA%\Espers\Espers.conf for windows, Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/Espers/Espers.conf for mac or ~/Espers/Espers.conf for linux.  And the port that you use when running that command would be 22440.

Hope this helps get you started.

Edit forgot to add that the line that you would use to run the miner: cpuminer -a quark -o (either put http:// or nothing before this, not stratum+tcp://)127.0.0.1:22440 -u your rpcusername from your conf file -p the rpc password from your conf file

this coin could be traded here https://novaexchange.com/market/BTC_ESP/ not a big exchanger though

Well done !

In regards to CPU mining:

Way back in 2013, CPU mining caused processors to heat up significantly and I remember it was advised to install an after-market cooler to prevent overheating. I've always stayed away from CPU mining since I got only 1 PC even though there's a decent cooler on the cpu.

Is it any different today or rather: how does this compare to Esper and its algo? Is it even applicable anymore?

Not trying to cause a stir, just wondering.