This is not directly related to game development, but I’ve had a few friends fall victim to theft lately, and the devastation of losing years’ worth of family photos and client work files; not to mention everything else we store on our devices. Below is my list of tips for helping secure yourself against losing data, and maybe even devices. I’m regularly surprised at how few of these steps people actually follow, so I thought I’d post them here and maybe help someone out. This is what I do myself; if you have other steps you take, please share them in the comments.

- Get a paid Dropbox account ($100/year for 50 GB) and put your current projects in there. Not only does this backup off-site, it also gives you access to your files from anywhere, if you need them. This might not be enough for many people to store all their work *and* photos, though.

- Use iCloud for contact & calendar sync across all Apple devices, as well as iOS device backup. You can also use iTunes Match to “store” your music in the cloud; your mileage with this service may vary, depending on your music collection.

- Use Apple’s Find My Phone service to register all your devices. This lets you locate your iPhone, iPad, iPod and even your computer, anywhere in the world. Not 100% guaranteed, but it definitely can help. It can also let you remote-wipe your iPhone (which is no loss because you’ve backed up to iCloud, and can restore it later).

- Add an “If found” message to your lock screen. This is more likely to (potentially) help if you lose your device, rather than have it stolen. But it can’t hurt; maybe your phone will be found by someone honest. Download my Photoshop template to make one easily:

- Most important: Require a password to get into your computer and your iPhone. On the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Passcode Lock and follow the instructions. At the very least, this will keep people out of any sites you might have been logged into, like Facebook or Google Docs, as well as all your email.

On the Mac, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy:

- Create a guest account on your Mac with no password, so that whoever stole your computer can get online. This will help the “Find my Mac” service (above) locate the computer.

- Please note: These steps do not prevent someone with physical access to your computer (who knows what they’re doing) from booting with a system disk and wiping the computer completely, restoring OS X to its default settings. This would prevent “Find My Mac” from locating it. There is a way to prevent this, though. This is a bit more of an advanced step, but you can set a Firmware Password on your Mac, that prevents a user from changing the boot disk on startup (which is what is required to wipe the computer). Read more about this topic here.

This won’t necessarily protect you from theft, but you should also have everything you own backed up. Apple has made this very easy with Time Machine. Just get a nice big external hard drive and plug it in. Two quotes that hit this issue square on the head:
“It doesn’t exist if it doesn’t exist in two places.” and “The biggest mistake people make is to trust their hard drive.” Every hard drive WILL fail, eventually. If one Time Machine isn’t enough for you, I recommend getting something like a drobo, which makes sure all your data is stored on 2 drives, in case one fails.

I had the privilege of working with the awesome guys at One Man Left, to redo their website. Check it out:

This year for Christmas, my parents gave each of us (I have 4 older brothers) a folio full of mementoes and other things collected throughout our childhood. This gem was in a book I made in Grade 2 called “All About Me”. Now you see that the sentiment behind the name of my company began at a very young age…

“I like two things. I like dinosaurs and my computer. If I didn’t like my computer that would be dumb because all those games would be wasted!”

If you haven’t checked out Casey’s Contraptions for iPad yet, you really should. @noel_llopis and @mysterycoconut have created a really wonderful puzzle game. Each level can be solved in many different ways, and the beautifully-integrated solution sharing really helps you see other creative ways that your Game Center friends are doing things.

The puzzles are excellent, and the difficulty ramps up really smoothly. But the level editor is the icing on the cake. Create anything you can imagine and easily share levels with friends via email. Definitely give it a try; young or old, everyone will like this game.

I was chatting with Craig Sharpe (@TeaRascal) about GDC and iSketchADay, and he mentioned that I missed out on some impromptu sketch sessions. This got me thinking of doing some kind of live art-based performance session at @360iDev this fall. We’ve been talking a bit about it on Twitter with @LordBron and @arielmichaeli. It was starting to become a “more than 140 characters” conversation, so I thought I’d jot down some ideas here, and get more feedback from the rest of you.

Picture this

In an auditorium with several projectors, a game artist at each one, armed with their Wacom tablet. Through audience participation, a game theme is chosen (I really liked Owen’s method of choosing a location, an object and an adjective, but I’m open to other improv ideas).

To a loud Daft Punk soundtrack, the artists sketch, as quickly as they can, as many game elements as they can. Environments, characters, objects, obstacles… anything they can think of. While watching, the audience could shout suggestions or comments — though unlike the theme, these do not need to be drawn!

A game jam for artists

Why would we do this?

• To explore and expand the creative process of creating game art (and even game ideas) that you wouldn’t normally create.
• To witness and participate in part of the visual creation process involved in creating a full game’s worth of art.
• To have fun!

Afterwards any or all of the artists could be available to talk about game art, in whatever capacity.

I’d also love to have each artist’s screen recorded for the span of the session, and create a video out of it afterwards. If you know me you know I love time-lapse art-creation videos!

So what?

John (the 360iDev organizer) was saying it might be possible to do it at lunchtime one day, but this is about as far as we’ve come.

Here’s where you come in:

• If you’re coming to 360iDev, would you be interested in coming to a session like this?
• Would you be interested in drawing in a session like this? The number of people we get signed up for it will determine a number of things, primarily the amount of time given to each set of artists, and the physical space we’ll need to have — projectors for everyone may not be possible.
• Do you have any ideas for how to make a session like this += awesome? We’re making this up as we go, so all feedback is welcome!

As has been known to happen, something extremely cool has been created out of nothing more than a Twitter conversation. @mysterycoconut, @LordBron, @tearascal, @rje, and @chaoticbox were talking about sketching more, and #iSketchADay was born.

It’s a casual, no-rules way to encourage all of us wannabe artists to sketch more, and share it with everyone. Draw whatever you like, post as often as you want, and don’t worry about it looking “good”. We want to draw more. Join us.

Here’s my first entry. I hope to see many more of my own, and all of yours.

I’ll post more sketches as I do them, after the break:

Click here to continue…