David Acevedo's Blog

There is a new movie coming out with Leonardo DiCaprio, an adaptation of the Great Gatsby. A novel I feel a weird connection to because like Fitzgerald I too went to Princeton and saw the decadence of the very rich. A world behind closed gates, a world of cooks and servants a world so apart from my own I'd though it was make belief had I not seen it with my own two eyes. Seeing it, I felt like a voyeur, peeking indiscreetly into someone else's intimate affairs. And in many ways that is what the novel Gatsby is about. I read it in high school and I barely remember reading it, I think I probably gave up on it and watched the film at some point. I think this book is incredibly important because it truly chronicles an important period in America's life, but it can be hard to digest as a teenager. You read about love and obsession like space travel as something interesting that has no connection to you, something that you will probably...

With the incredible graphic by my friend Brian Manning, and this quirky video I made I set out to get a Kickstarter project going to write a short eBook on Environmentalism. Originally I titled it "Why Environmentalism Fails" in the style of the book "Environmentalism is Dead" but I realized that was not what I wanted. So I re-titled it "How Environmentalism can Succeed" and set out to promote it. My family did an all-star job at this sending my friends and family email far and wide and almost all the founding came through their work. Incredible support! I deeply awed and very grateful to them for this. Today I wrote an update for the project and did some research and writing. Then I spent a few hours freaking out. It's such a huge job! Or at least it suddenly seemed so. By hook or by crook I will do it. Lately I've been working on the tone of the book. I want it to be hopeful and profound. Now to create that... Seeking inspi...

In the movie " Doomsday " a post-apocalyptic film set in a Scotland that looks like a punk version of the 70's movie " The Warriors " crossed with the crazy Road Warriors from Mad Max a mo-hawked leader runs a group of crazy cannibals. But this is utter non-sense. The fallacy here is that a cult of personality would develop at all. One where people would tattoo themselves and live in brutality and violence. The reality would be very different. You see this culture of personality would require mass media to be generated. In small groups you'd have a culture of character. People wouldn't care if you look great or if you're crazy, or punk or violent. People would seek leadership in character not in personality. People like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt would be the real leaders not crazy charismatic leaders. With a lack of mass-media to celebrate this individual expression, it would be the strength of character that would rule the day. Cult of personalt...

My new Ubuntu 12.04 install keeps defaulting to my HDMI audio that I don't use. I looked on how to set a default audio on Ubuntu and couldn't find a solution that was simple and elegant. Weirdly I remembered having this problem before and then I saw I could disable an audio hardware in the dialog. Now it will default to the only other audio device, the one I'm using without me having to do any weird configurations.