Picture it with me: an MMO based in the Italian Renaissance. Races could correspond to the various city-states of Italy, or to foreign nations, perhaps. Play as:

• Merchants (sea voyages out of Venice, perhaps?)
• Unscrupulous churchmen
• Stiletto-armed assassins
• Scheming Medicis
• Your typical painter-sculptor-scientist-architect renaissance genius (should be an epic roll, this!)

Imagine riding into battle atop some Leonardo-designed war machine! Fencing with rapiers! Imagine going on quests:

• Steal the head of John the Baptist for the glory of Florence
• Dissect executed prisoners to level up in Anatomy
• Bring back exotic goods from around the Mediterranean
• Earn yourself an equestrian statue in your city-state's palazzo with military exploits

There's something very appealing about this, at least to me. It would be just the thing to finally get me to play an MMO.

is Neal Stephenson. Without a doubt! I've read all of his books save one (haven't gotten around to Zodiac yet). I devoured all three weighty volumes of his Baroque Cycle, and bought Anathem the very day it came out, which I almost never bother with for any other kind of new release—artistic, technological, or otherwise. I didn't read the Harry Potter books until years after they were published, and I own no Apple computer products at all!

So there is some empirical evidence that Neal Stephenson is my favorite author. But lately I've been dwelling on why that might be, and I think I have part of an answer. Reading his books I am constantly running into ideas and observations, clearly and artfully developed, that I've thought of before, only vaguely. I've spoken with a friend of mine, also a Neal Stephenson fan, about this, and he confirms it is so for him also. It's a thrill to see someone with real talent flesh out the sketchier, dimly-lit parts of your own mind.

This is an intellectual pleasure, of course, but there is a more primitive reason as well. It hits that "someone gets it" part of the brain, provides the sense that you are not alone, that there are other people like yourself.

This is a feeling that all humans crave, but that unusual humans experience only rarely.

My apologies for the belated post. This was my first, though I certainly hope not my last, visit to the famous endurance races; I'd like to offer my thanks to our gracious host Bell Microelectronics, sponsor of the Panoz team that took third place in the GT2 class, for making it possible.

The pictures are all the work of my cousin Torm.

It's true: you can sprinkle them on anything to make it better. Some examples:

• Structures (obviously)
• Reverse Osmosis membranes
• Semiconductors
• Fuel cells
• Solar panels
• Scaffolds for nerve regeneration

Certain technologies seem to have this magical quality of near-universal applicability to engineering problems. They not only make possible what would have been fantasy otherwise (space elevators, in the case of nanotubes) but also have a knack of improving everything they touch, or of being applied to a breathtaking variety of already-familiar applications.

I'm sure that all three of my regular readers will notice the long-in-coming change now visible at eikimartinson.com. Most of my friends are probably sick of telling me what they think of innumerable design mock-ups, so I just went ahead and implemented one of my ideas, and I'm actually happy with the results. It's not too fancy, but I think it'll get the job done.

All the pages are valid XHTML and CSS, or they should be; if there are any exceptions to that, I'm interested to hear about them. That contact page, by the way, is a new feature; I've implemented a mailer form and script for purposes of spam protection. The site is composed according to the vertical rhythm concept (click the check box in the footer to see for yourself) with a new addition of my own—a bit of javascript to maintain the rhythm across images of any possible height.