2013 was a very sad year: I did not watched many movies, nor plays, nor played many games.

The result is that, as you can see in the blog, I could not write about them.

But the worst part for me is that I stopped to keep track of them. My main spreadsheet that I control what movies, books, games or TV shows that I was consuming was almost entirely abandoned. It is a bit demanding and requires a lot of discipline to keep this wheel spinning.

In the gaming side, one of the major contributors to my laziness is the Humble Bundle. It offers some special game deals, mostly indie games, in bundles, in a pay-as-much-as-you-want scheme. It is great. But it also invokes our primitive instinct of irrational buying, and it is hard stop a moment to keep record of this.

I will try to make a better 2014, full of art. It will take some time but I want to do so.

It is another vacation! Hey!!!!!

After Argentina and Chile last year and Cube and Mexico in May, this time I will visit… nowhere!

The old plan

That’s it. I was planning to go to Disney World, USA. The idea was to go in a big group and have fun. I went to Disney when I was in college (I lived in the USA for 6 months in an exchange program) and I loved it! Loved it! Disney creates a magic atmosphere that one cannot ignore. They mastered the idea themed park.

Well, my original plan started to go wrong when I foresaw a complicated end-of-year in my job, due to a project in that I was involved. Things went worse with time. My boss said once or twice that we would stay in extra hours if needed.

Then I reached the moment of choice. With a lot of uncertainty, the dollar-real ratio in a bad shape, and missed momentum, I’ve finally decided to abort my trip and stay home.

The new plan

Cry no more! I have a new plan!

Besides my formal job, I invest a great deal of time in my lovely hobby: designing video games. I do all the processes, from programming, drawing, writing, painting, and whatever is needed.

I have about 8 prototypes that I believe can reach the market someday. One of them is a puzzle game called Picubic. It is charming, it is challenging and it is fun. But most of all, it is the closest one to have, at this moment, a shot in the wild market. I named the gaming division of Bruno Massa Corporation as Gamenific, a mix of Magnific (magnificent) and Game!

For this reason, since I decided to abort my trip I also decided to invest all my time to launch it. Finish it once and for all and sell it. The plan is to launch its beta ITS WEDNESDAY! Kind of… The plan is in fact, to launch a funding campaign on Indiegogo (the poorer cousin of Kickstarter) to help to leverage some money and close it. But most of all, to attract people. The company will only gain traction if there is a big enough audience. Let’s create a brand!

I can now only hope that this plan works. Otherwise, it will be a waste of a good Disney moment.

For those that knows me, it’s not a surprise that I’m a bit paranoid with digital security. But in a good sense, I believe, because I do not suffer from this condition. It is an active and rational decision to be constantly aware of digital dangers. I am also very tolerant towards including extras security steps on the daily habits.

Inspired on two Brazilian stories involving cryptography, I decided to take a closer look into personal encryption. One from the fraudulent banker that could never be convicted because all the evidences were in his encrypted desktop computer. The federal police were never able to crack it. The other one was a forgotten laptop with major corporate secrets. The company? Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company and one of the top oil companies in the planet. Petrobras said that the secrets were safe: the strong encryption would hold any eyes from looking inside.

Imagine if suddenly someone steals your computer. Aren’t you going to be crazy?! Your personal photos, family stuff, work notes and free access to email and banking from the machine.

Note: I am talking about only encrypting the hard drive, so it is only useful for avoiding losing data in case of someone stealing your computer. Nothing else. Simple but efficient.

About 2 years ago, I discovered an open source product that I loved: Truecrypt/Veracrypt. It promised total protection for people like you and me. Being open source also adds much trust: not only I will not be locked with a single provider, but the method could be tested and commented by hundreds of eyes.

My desktop is unbreakable ever since. With powerful processors we have today, it is easy to turn all disks encrypted. Even the main Windows and Linux hard drives are protected. So if a theft steals my PC, I will lose the hardware but not the software. The information inside is unreachable. Even for USA government 😉 Ever. Hear that Obama? Ever!** **And the performance drop is unnoticeable. Amazing. I’m a happy customer.

On whole in the wall I was always worried but never dealt until: my smartphone. No need to say that it is probably the most vulnerable hardware that we own (we carry it everywhere) and it is full with important information. Easy to lose it somewhere or to be robbed. The information can be shared through the world. Finally I tried on my beloved Galaxy S3. One thing I knew I would gave to give up is the convenience of easy and fast access to my phone; entering a strong passwords all the time, because the whole point of the encryption is to lock other people out! For some, it is just a too heavy burden. For me it was not. A small price to pay.

While the encryption of the memory card was excellent, using it on the main phone’s memory compromised too much the performance. Odd. From boot to app switching, the lagging response was irritating. After two weeks, I had to revert it. Immediately it started to respond. I’m now gathering some strength to try this again. I’m going to read more to see what I did wrong. I know it is worthy.

Do you scramble your digital life or it can be read in plain view?

The acclaimed author of Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown brought another story from his symbologist Robert Langdon.

Now, instead of sitting under Leonardo Da Vinci’s works to create the conspiracy and mystery, the author drank from another Italian writer: Dante Alighieri. This fellow was responsible for writing the Divine Comedy, a narration about the 9 rings of hell.

Without revealing too much information about the book itself, I did not like the book. The character seems to know all the places too well, from secret doors, geography, history, and local informants. He knows everything. Also, he remains too calm and lucid even in life-threatening situations.

All the characters, good or bad, including Langdon, are also too resourceful. Do they need to travel across the globe now? No problem, there is always a contact that can spare a private jet, boat, or helicopter. There aren’t any dead-end moments, It is too much of a straightforward adventure.

Dante’s material is fascinating, but it was overused. He is not Da Vinci, it is not believable that everything in the world somehow conspired to link to his works. Finally, Brown used too many repetitive artifacts in his writings. It annoyed me by half of the book.

I would not recommend this book. I going to read some technical books to change the air…

The Chilean designers from ACE Team are back with the new crazy game Rock of Ages. It’s a strategy and action game like none you have seen before.

You control a ball that will roll downhill until it crashes at the enemy’s castle front gates. Repeat if it is not damaged enough. Your adversary does the same. The first to break into the castle wins. You can put obstacles between your enemy’s ball and your castle, in a Tower Defense way. You should balance your time and money between preparing defenses and attacking.

It’s overall idea is really nice but actual gameplay is not that fun. Well, It is fun at the beginning. I believe that it is fun in a sandbox mode, which you might experiment a lot. But for a single single player campaign, it is very frustrating. In the defense mode, the match is too short to allow you to test different strategies (or you win, or you lose in 2 or 3 rounds), neither gives you hints of would be a good call. In the offense ball rolling mode, the strategy is simple: avoid obstacles that make your ball weaker and go as fast as you can in the final meters in order to hit the gates as harder as you can. The problem is: that’s it. Not much else to do.

Nor difficult, especially for a strategy/action game. I was able to finish the game without complex thinking. The basic defense units, presented in the very first stages will take care of most of your needs in the entire game. The extra unities, gained when you reach later levels, are just visuals, offering almost no useful functionality. In like manner, the collectible stars, which was supposed to be difficult to obtain and would give the right to pass some portals, are also a piece of cake. So, it is more a matter to go and take them.

Another polarizing aspect is the humour. I felt it is genuine and fun, but you have to give it a chance, because it is not obvious or for the masses. Each stage is thematic from historic figures like Pope, or ancient legends, like 300’s spartans. The jokes are silly and the application in the actual level is vague. Nonetheless, it reminds me the same weird fun style from Zeno Clash.

Bottom line: play this game if you want to explore an original and beautiful game. Does not expect deep strategy nor loads of LoL moments.