Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

Cryptonovel, Behind the Scenes

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 18:37:29 +0000

I don’t remember exactly how it began. On one hand it was inspired by the hype around cryptocurrency, on the other it is a bit how I felt after suffering a breakdown.

It was a way to keep my mind focused and busy. And I took it serious.

The photos you see in the story are hand picked from unsplash.com and I make sure to give them all the same look and feel, to make the story more coherent. The initial inspiration on how I wanted the photos to look came from Death to Stock Photo, it was a photo pack called “Into the light”.

And it doesn’t stop there. Some photos just couldn’t be found and some places that I describe in the story actually exist. Those are the photos you see in chapter 3, chapter 6, and some other places.

The content for this project is actually the simple part. The complicated stuff happens in the code and in my head. I am not a programmer, my university training was in social sciences. This is one of the reasons why the chapters take so long to publish. I have to code the puzzle and test it.

This is possible because of a fantastic group of friends that help by guiding me and even correcting some of the code, and of course field testing the new chapters.

So, a big Thank You to The Lobsters!

And there is more research involved. One example is the story of the building in Chapter 6. It’s a derelict hospital along my commute and some digging around the Internet told the story of how it used to be college of the Jesuits until the expulsion of the Jesuits by Marquis of Pombal, who established a convent in the building. The convent was eventually turned into a hospital. The hospital had a crematorium, and that is the chimney that can be seen in the photo.

The coordinates in that chapter are also real.

And there are more, subtle hints of popular culture. In chapter 7 you see that Crypto is logging in to a server called Hack the Planet. It’s a reference to the movie Hackers. It’s one of the few films where hacking is actually more or less described in a realistic way. With the required special effects and gimmicks to make it entertaining, of course.

Some descriptions of what Crypto does to get around or to access networks are at least a bit plausible. These descriptions are only impaired by my superficial knowledge on hacking and intrusion. This means trying to double check the details as much as I can.

And I haven’t even begun to describe how hard it is to build a good story arch. The ending is already decided, and some of the details are clear in my head. The stuff in the middle still needs work.

This is not meant to be an excuse for my poor writing, it’s an explanation of its cause. Writing Crypto is at the same time my own learning exercise.

Getting the word out

The work that goes into building this story, and the experience around it got some interest from friends and a few acquaintances. It still felt like it was done to serve a very small and specific crowd.

This last Monday I took a chance and shared the work I had so far on reddit. It blew up! Over 600 people played the game, with many of them sending emails and direct messages with feedback and saying they were stuck. It got to the point that I couldn’t reply to everyone. Some people went as far as using programming to run all possibilities to crack chapter 2 and chapter 3.

It also helped uncover some shortcomings of the story’s writing and the puzzles. One of which is that some puzzles may need tiny adjustments. At least one needs another clue. I’m trying to work out how to make it better without ruining what is already in place.

The post was also shared on Facebook a few times, when the story had just a few chapters. I shared it again today, in a group devoted to digital marketing and to showcasing what’s cool around the web.

On Reddit, crypto got over 50 upvotes. On Facebook, it got 4 likes.

It’s not a surprise, at least to me. It’s not just because of that particular group, it’s also how Facebook makes people feel and act. Maybe if I had posted about “the gamification of storytelling as growth hacking” it would have got more attention.

Such is life.

What to do if you enjoy the game

The bright side is that this week I found a crowd that enjoys the game as much as I am enjoying writing it. The next few chapters are already drafted, I just can’t be sure when I will be able to publish them.

In the meantime I will keep making improvements and keep Crypto as alive and interesting as possible. If you want to keep track of the chapters, use this link in your RSS Feed Reader: https://brunoamaral.eu/story/crypto/index.xml

As an alternative, you can subscribe to the blog’s weekly email in the subscribe page.

Pablo Guerrero

Creating a 360º Photo Viewer

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 07:34:10 +0000

Photo copyright, Benjamim

This photo was taken by @Benjamim. He had been researching 360º photos and mentioned there were a lot of solutions out there, most of them expensive and requiring a monthly fee to host.

It's a fair service, but with a cost of over 5K for each 360º Tour, it's out of the reach of most websites.

In these cases, a little research goes a long way. And the viewer bellow is good enough to display any 360º photo, with hotspots and the ability to move from scene to scene and even with multiple photos at different resolution levels.

This example breaks on iPhones because the photo is too large. However, if this were the real deal, it would be easy to present different versions to the user based on the device used. Here, the prize goes to Android phones, because they allow for a larger threshold in image lenght.

A crowdsourced itinerary for Porto

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 10:59:14 +0000

The other day, a friend asked me where to listen to Fado while in Porto. The answer is harder than it seems. Fado began in Lisbon, and students took it with them to the universities in Coimbra. Fado eventually made it’s way to Porto.

And instead of searching on Google, I figured the best route was to ask friends from Porto.

And this blew up!

Not satisfied with recommending places for Fado, they began listing other cool things to do and see in Porto.

It was only fair to give their hard work the spotlight it deserves, so I added a page with the list to this blog. The same list is below this blog post, to save you a click.

And, hoping I won’t forget anyone, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to that list:

Bruno Rodrigues
Hugo Relva
Nuno Dantas
Pedro Pinheiro
Pedro Rebelo
Rui Oliveira
Sérgio Bernardino
Vasco Vasconcelos

Photo © by Nuno Dantas

Places for Fado

Casa da Mariquinhas
O Fado (near the Museum Of Discoveries)

Places to Visit

Museum of Photography (old courthouse and prison)
Museum: World of Discoveries (interactive and good for kids)
Serralves Foundation
The Crystal Palace
Travel to Régua by boat, and return by Train
Art District around Rua Miguel Bombarda
Livraria Lello(Harry Potter set)
Port of Leixões
Torre dos Clérigos
Wine cellars in Gaia

Places to Eat

“Tascas”

A “Tasca” is usually a small and quaint family owned restaurant.

Coffee Shops

Majestic
Imperial (One of Porto’s most beautiful coffee shops, now a MacDonald’s)

Podcasts

Sat, 30 Dec 2017 22:24:38 +0000

Clem Onojeghuo

Lately I have found that Podcasts are not just a nice way to learn, a lot of my friends have been using them for quite sometime. And the offering of shows is pretty amazing.

I have been focusing more on podcasts that teach new skills or share knowledge, and asking my friends what they recommend.

Here’s the list I have so far:

(*) My favorites

Sérgio Bernardino’s suggestions to me

Pedro Dias

List of my podcast subscriptions:
- Freakonomics Radio
- Hackable
- HBR Ideacast
- Invisibilia
- MozPod
- Note to Self
- The Outline World Dispatch
- Radiolab
- Reply All
- Rough Translation
- Search Talk Live
- Vergecast
- Why’d you push that button?
- WSJ Future of everything
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) December 29, 2017

Do you have your favorites? Please share in the comments.

What I learned from Benjamim

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 09:15:31 +0100

Photo copyright, Benjamim

These things may sound different and unrelated, yet they fired some of the same synapses in my brain.

First, a post in Bored Panda, showing the difference between an amateur and a professional.

Second, a conversation with a friend who is a photographer for over 20 years now.

Third, companies and brands lose time to market and sometimes great opportunities because they focus on price alone. It’s an issue of trust.

Amateurs and Professionals

Alright, Bored Panda may not be your go-to source of in-depth articles yet they made a great point about what makes someone a professional.

A professional photographer will look at the Dullest and greyest scenery and find ways to make it stand out.

“To be honest, I’ve captured my favorite street photos in the ugliest of all places,” Vijce wrote in his recent PetaPixel feature. “Sure, it’s a bit more challenging to find the extraordinary in the ordinary… but isn’t that what street photography is all about?” Indeed, he somehow manages to capture the industrial grit of the station in a softer, more ‘human’ light, an effect he insists can be achieved in any place a photographer has available to them.

Sources:

This is simple yet we sometimes forget. We tend to qualify others as amateurs or professionals based on their contract or whether they make a living from the profession or not.

We sometimes forget the role that Quality plays in making someone a professional.

This takes us to talk about Benjamim and the conversation we had.

Benjamim’s teachings

All right, let me tell you a bit about him first. He’s a talented photographer, and he does make a living from that work, he does have a high quality and most of all consistency. We’ll get to that later.

I have known him for a while now, and every time I feel he sells himself too short. And it’s amazing to see that when he focuses on a subject he finds interesting, he quickly develops a breadth and depth of knowledge and keen sensitivity to it.

This last part is important, because it’s easy to grasp a concept. It’s another thing to be sensitive to how it needs to be handled and the ripple effects it has on the surroundings.

Going back to that conversation, to that table and the beers. We were discussing on how the market is filled with photographers. Some better than others, some with academic training and others with none.

Benjamim made quite a point. He told us about some of his clients and the projects he is sometimes recurrently involved in.

One of them, I already know what the client expects. I know who his target audience is. I know that I need to capture a photo that represents that.

None of this is or ever was passed on to him in the project brief. He got it by listening and by paying attention.

Kids, this ability to listen and to empathise with the client is what your teachers talk about when they say you “need to pay attention to the needs of the client”.

The client doesn’t want a photo. He could get anyone to take a photo, he could do it himself with his new Smartphone. He needs to get a point across, to show his brand is interesting, to make an image stick to the viewer’s mind. Anyone can take a photo, people like Benjamim make a photo.

I deliver, and I deliver on time no matter what.

He wasn’t just talking about getting the work on time. He was talking about his process and quality. About how he knows where and how to get the best photos.

Delivering on time is being effective. Delivering work of a good quality in that time is being efficient. And the best way to make this consistent is to be methodical, as much as possible. He does have a method and a process that he has been improving over time.

And all this doesn’t just come from training. It comes from experience and it’s a set of soft skills that some people have a hard time finding.

How much does trust cost?

Let’s make a quick jump to another subject.

A while ago I found this video. The bit I found more interesting is at 12 minutes.

Sitting at a different table, with different friends, there was a similar discussion. Talking about clients that take time to decide, about how fast a brand needs to move nowadays; we were in a sort of group therapy session.

The problem is not even the time the decision process takes. Sometimes the problem is their approach to decision, based mostly on price but refusing to share their budget with the companies and freelancers that work with them.

I’ve seen projects slide because price was the most important factor. I’ve seen great work done cheap, and awful work paid like it was gold.

There is a great point in the video, where Chris Do says that clients don’t choose the best option, they choose the less risky option. That holds true for most of the cases I know, yet some are still price oriented. Both paths are valid, yet for some reason vendors, agencies and freelancers seem to be racing to the bottom and selling low.

For these reasons, I have stopped arguing price and instead focus on the level of service.

Clients have budgets and we need to meet them halfway, but we can’t compromise the things Benjamim was talking about: method, sensitivity, experience and quality of the delivery.

In fact, going back to the less risky options, that’s why clients may opt for the cheaper proposal. They will be risking less resources in case they are making a mistake.

Once they start to trust you, they will adjust the price to match your rate, right ? I’m sorry but I have never seen that happen. The way companies make decisions is most of the times procedural and not simply rational. Once a rate is agreed with a vendor, it is rare to see it increased.

The only way to break the cycle of this lack of trust is to have both sides sit down and be frank about what’s at stake. What is the budget? What are the goals? What do each of the people involved need to assure these things happen?

I’m sure I have friends reading this and in their heads commenting how romantic this peace treaty sounds. Romantic and impossible.

Maybe it is, or maybe it’s not. The only way to know for sure is to put it to the test.

Do something fun

Thu, 03 Nov 2016 04:17:10 +0000

There is a strange joy of doing things without caring, with little to no pressure on making it pixel perfect and even better, of stepping out of your confort zone to do something new.

And you don’t just do it because it’s fun. You also do it because you’re learning something new and you’re doing with a bunch of friends. (Or even lobsters for that matter.)

Remember that? When grades didn’t count, when there was no client. When you weren’t competing with your colleagues. It was fun and there was a teacher in the room that gave you tools and pointed out routes. Then came the surprise tests, exams, SAT’s, National Exams of all sorts.

That sucked the fun out of it. We forgot that feeling.

So I suggest we rebel against teachers. Let’s dismiss their grading cravings. Let’s save time to learn surrounded by friends and not caring for anything other than having a good time. Yes we may not finish the task, it may end up looking terrible, we may discover we don’t like it all that much.

Then we can do it all over again. We can drop it and go play with another idea, chase a new spark of creativity.

After that we will look back, and maybe, just maybe, see that we have become something else. That we have learned a new craft, that we have gained a new wonder for what is different and at the same time made friendships stronger.

Bring back my Web !

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:09:48 +0000

I remember a web before Facebook and before Twitter. It was a place built so that people could talk among themselves, share and collaborate to build things that would make everyone’s life easier.

Sure, you would also use to post funny pictures of cats or brag about your latest party. There was however a different way of doing things online that I can’t explain. Less ego and more community.

I still love that web, and I still think we live in that reality. (Even though it does sound a bit lyrical to say this.) Sometimes I do lose faith on that web, for a little while. Then something wonderful happens, like a new open source project on Github, a new and constructive subreddit, or a blog post to rally time and resources towards something worth doing.

Cidadania 2.0

Lately, it was Cidadania 2.0 that brought my faith back. It’s a conference on using the web to build social tools, forums and ways to practice citizenship and governance in a more effective and efficient way. This year it was filled with amazing new projects, blogs and platforms to help us understand what is going on in our own street or what we can do to improve our education system.

It is also a project built by the love and dedication of three people. Ana Neves, Ana Silva, and Vitor Silva work hard to bring everyone a free event, 1 day full with presentations and discussions and one morning to network with people who are behind new projects and look for partnerships and people to help.

And did I mention it is free to attend? I would gladly pay 50 euros or more to attend and meet so many interesting people. Yet, the team insists on keeping it as easy to attend as humanly possible. You would imagine that government institutions and other companies would jump at the chance to sponsor this initiative.

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to happen, as this year I didn’t see many public institutions in the list of sponsors. It’s not that the content of the conference isn’t interesting to them. In fact, most of it challenges the status quo or proposes new models of governance and decision making. From where I stand, every city hall in Portugal should be ashamed for not to being present at Cidadania 2.0 and listed as a sponsor.

The people

Every good story needs a hero, right?

My friend Basílio decided to use the web and social media to pressure a number of public institutions into doing their job of making a street safer to walk in. It took him 2 years to get them into doing the job they are supposed to do anyway. Just think about it: they had to be pressured into doing their job.

I talked about this when I was in BledCom last year and you can find the slides in the end of this post.

Upload Lisbon

This is more about the future. Today mostly everyone from digital marketing and social media in Lisbon will be at Upload Lisboa. They will surely talk about Facebook, Twitter, the latest campaign and best practices. They will talk about what is new and exciting, because it is indeed exciting and interesting and shows great promise.

But I don’t think they will all be talking about this web I know and love. Where the main goal is to get people to talk and understand each other, instead of increasing the reach of a facebook post. I risk saying they will forget about the importance of 4chan in monitoring, how to take part in a community on reddit and worst, they may forget to mention why #blogs are still so important.

Well, some of them might but I am here to talk about blogs and about the web I grew up with. How it is still alive and showing great promise even to those who seem to have forgotten about it. And thanks to Pedro Rebelo I know I am not alone.

BledCom 2013: Towards a connected government from Bruno Amaral

Meet the Lisbon Photowalkers

Sun, 24 Nov 2013 15:41:33 +0000

Over the last 4 weeks I have been working, together with Basílio, in building something new around the community of photowalkers in Lisbon. It is something very simple to explain. We feel there is too much talent in these photographers to just let it lie dormant.

So we contacted some of our friends, researched for the best way to build an online store, got to work in building partnerships and a brand that made the photowalker community justice.

Four weeks of work later, we are ready to sell the first set of photos.

To be honest, it feels daunting. We are aiming to sell to a new segment of people, in a country where online sales are low, in a time of economic crisis.

And yet, there is so much promise ahead.

We plan to add more photowalkers to the store, to expand to new cities like OPorto and Coimbra and if resources allow, to make the store bilingual. We don’t expect it to be easy and it’s is surely going to be a long walk.

If you would like to keep up with developments, please do leave a comment saying so. We don’t have an english newsletter at the moment but I will be more than happy to send the occasional email with news.