David Acevedo's Blog

Recently Latin American countries have voiced their opposition to prop 19 (it would legalize recreational marijuana use) because it will cause confusion. This is hogwash. While it might be a little curious to a Columbian that he can go to jail for growing pot while a Californian will not; it's no more confusing than a Bolivian growing coca legally and a Californian not. Wasn't Evo Morales a coca grower? Legalizing Marijuana if anything will lead to less confusion not more.

Recently worries about asteroids hitting the Earth are weirdly distracting. Why invest time or money on protecting ourselves from space-borne threats when we have an ailing and emergent environmental crisis? The boiling frog and the lottery. Yeah someone wins the lottery, but a frog in boiling water is the bigger problem.

I've played a few really great indie games recently and would like to share a bit about them. None of these games are brand-new and all are available in both Mac and PC versions. 1. Aquaria Aquaria is a gem of a game for those that loved the original metriod games. In Aquaria you play a young mermaid creature that decides to explore her world beyond her home waters. In doing that you guide her through many adventures that reveal a bit about her world. The game is visually beautiful and the game mechanics, though simple, are very nice. You can play the whole game with a mouse if you wish though gamepads are supported too. In the game you access special abilities by singing different songs. It is a neat concept.  The game was made by an indie outfit of mainly two people out of Canada. But it feels much more than that. It's very big like an underwater version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, with multiple treasures to collect and many secrets to uncover. It is available for ...

In a few weeks I'll be voting on whether Marijuana should be legal in the state of California. As a kid I never understood why hippies or California weirdos wanted to legalize it. I agreed with most opponents of legalization that weed was a gateway drug. Smoke grass and soon you'd be up with cocaine and you're screwed. You could see the junkies on the street, their bodies bony like images out of a pledge to feed Africa, signs asking for money to eat, pan handling at intersections through out the island when I was young. While doing my High School summer jobs I would catch sketchy characters trying to shop-lift t-shirts. And while on the boy scouts I was shown the video of a man breaking a heroin addiction in jail cold turkey. It was worse than any horror movie I've seen -- the suffering was so immense. This thin man lost control of all body functions, and shook like he was possessed. Heroine which mimics endorphine alters the brain chemistry. When you break cold-turkey...

Back in the nineties Apple made some key mistakes: 1. It refused to sell computers over catalogs, even thought it had one (Dell and Gateway took off with this) 2. It messed up the licensing of its operating system and 3. Having a better graphics platform than many PCs of the time it actively discouraged the use of the Mac for gaming. Now finally gaming is coming of age on the Mac. This year has seen the release of Valve's steam platform for the Mac. Which not only brings Valve's very popular games like Team Fortress 2 (TF2) but also allows cross platform purchasing. If you buy a game like Braid that is available for both Mac and PC you only need to buy it once and you can use it on both Operating Systems (OS).  Arguably the beginning of this period was the smart move by Bioware to release it's popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (WOW) as a Mac and PC release. Now the Mac has become a great gaming platform for most casual and occasional gaming. And Apple has learned it's le...