The Zereps

a couple days ago i finished marion zimmer bradley’s the mists of avalon and it was SOOOO good!

here’s the lengthy amazon review: “Even readers who don’t normally enjoy Arthurian legends will love this version, a retelling from the point of view of the women behind the throne. Morgaine (more commonly known as Morgan Le Fay) and Gwenhwyfar (a Welsh spelling of Guinevere) struggle for power, using Arthur as a way to score points and promote their respective worldviews. The Mists of Avalon’s Camelot politics and intrigue take place at a time when Christianity is taking over the island-nation of Britain; Christianity vs. Faery, and God vs. Goddess are dominant themes.”

i’ve noticed that there are some books that are just absolutely perfect little packages, complete in their own right. this is one! i absolutely loved it! the characters and their stories are almost perfectly worked out.

i can’t recommend this book highly enough…read it! and don’t think that just because the author is a woman and the main characters are women, that it’s an overtly feminine book…it’s just a fantastic book for anybody. 😀

i really really want to read some of her other books in the avalon series, but i’m forcing myself to jump around a bit, so i don’t become mired down in only one genre. right now i’m reading ‘treasure island’, but that’s mostly because i don’t have another book to read at work. i *think* i might move on to kim stanley robinson’s ‘blue mars’ next, having read both ‘red mars’ and ‘green mars’ in the past. ::shrug:: we’ll see.

Yesterday, Candice and I headed to the Javits Center in Manhattan for Wired’s NextFest. It was a huge showcase for new and emerging technologies ranging from energy efficient houses, fuel cell & hybrid cars, medical technologies, and robotics to name a few. Unfortunately, we forgot our digicam again, but luckily my phone has a camera on it, albiet with photos that look like they came from a $40 digicam (but it’s better than nothing!)

One of the coolest things at the show was a thing called a vein viewer (pictures/videos: here) by Luminetx. Basically it shines and captures non-visable light that is reflected by blood (and scattered by other tissue) to capture vein patterns on any part of human skin. It then uses a small projector to overlay the image of the veins back onto the skin–essentially allowing you to see inside of your skin without using any xrays or other radiation. I tried to take a picture with my cell phone, but as you can see the phone camera was not good enough to capture the vein patterns:

More pictures from NextFest in the gallery: here.

In other news, I just got a replacement for my ‘Ducti‘ Duct Tape wallet I got from James as a groomsman present. They have a lifetime warranty on it… if it ever wears out, you just mail it back to them and they send you a new one for $5 to cover shipping. Yay!