We had a wonderful BBQ yesterday … it was my birthday and sort of a house warming as well :)

Thanks all for coming – it was great to have you here!

Recall some nice and funny impressions in my gallery if you like. Please let me know if you feel offended by any of these pictures, so I’ll remove it. Personally I think they are all great :)

CU around, all the best, Markus!

The last couple of days were great in Cambridge – lot’s of sun!

Yesterday I had a great thermal soaring flight – not Cross-Country (XC), but as you know I am just about to get back into gliding. In average I go two to three times a month – that’s just about right alongside my PhD work. I enjoy it a lot and I am so happy that I found this club ;)

Today we had a great BBQ, although it was not as sunny in the late afternoon as it was earlier on … but it was very enjoyable! Check the pictures …

A long easter weekend, 4 days off, so we said we take at least one day off to escape the computers, science and books ;) So we decided to travel to London to visit the Bramah Tea & Coffee shop/museum and to see the Earth Galleries (Natural History Museum).

Sadly it was not allowed to take pictures at Bramahs museum (How about Open Content to make the museum even more popular?). Anyway, I have learnt a lot new stuff about tea, real tea (not rubbish teabags!) and a little bit about coffee. We also enjoyed an afternoon tea and some sandwiches …

Afterwards we visited the Natural History Museum – highly recommended! Topics are nicely “wrapped” so that it is accessible to the public. Quite nice, I guess they try hard to attract many people. We managed to see the Earth Galleries only, but we haven’t seen the wildlife photo gallery *sniff*, another reason to come back!

Enjoy browsing the gallery!

Hehe – Mutlu send me this image today about our informatics research group :) I like it!

This weekend I went home to visit my family. It was quite nice as I haven’t been here since Christmas. The only drawback now: I got stuck in too much snow and I wasn’t able to fly back to Cambridge today (complete chaos with public transport, transport system out of order in Munich). I can’t belief all this snow, as it is already spring in Cambridge. Anyway, I am going to start working on my last and 3rd rotation project from home :) I will work on some Matlab imaging tutorials and examples, as I would like to use this tool for rapid prototyping and method development. I am looking forward to another 2 exciting months.

Mini-Review: VoIP with 1&1 and FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7170
In Germany VoIP for usual land-line phones is quite common these days. We decided to save a lot of money using one of these phone flat-rates which utilize the Internet for the connection. There are lot of different tests and issues, but the last days showed that we are more than perfectly happy with 1&1 as a provider and with the FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7170 box in particular. This wireless router and telephone system is amazing. Besides the common router and wireless issues, you can either attach some ISDN or some analog telephones, whereas both, the Internet and/or land-line can be forwarded to the phone (up to 3 which can be specified). Calling can be specified in detail as well, e.g. for us all calls to landlines go over the Internet route (no charge), whereas all calls starting with 010xx (Germany CallByCall numbers) among others are used for cheap calls to mobiles or abroad using the normal land-line. The decicion whether the internet or land-line is used is based simply on the number you call – great! Last thing: both lines are usual telephone quality …

Update: Wordpress 2.0.x and Gallery 2.0.x
Both systems you see in action here were updated to the most recent versions for security reasons. The Wordpress update was a major release and the upgrade went smooth without any trouble. The system improved and I am still impressed by the simplicity of the system and the amazing capabilities (e.g. the great support of Gallery2). The only minor drawback is the code quality in terms of clarity, but for simple changes it is fair enough and I am not a WordPress developer anyway :) Great job guys and thanks for Wordpress and Gallery!

On the weekend we finally moved into our new “home”. As previously said, it is a small nice house, offers 3 double and 1 single bedroom + dining/living room, kitchen with all mod-cons and a wonderful garden. The best thing is, that it doesn’t belong to an agency – the landlord is a professor here at Cambridge University, that’s much better and nicer!

We moved on Friday and Saturday with the help of Steve, Allyson and Martin, including their cars. THANK YOU for all the help. There were 9 big car loads, unbeliefable, as we don’t have much stuff anyway.

On Sunday we wanted to sort out the house, furniture and saddle a bit. Most stupidly I had a stomach flu or at least I’ve eaten something completely wrong, so Sunday and Monday was of no use to me at all. Dani & Peter (thanks!) tried to sort out as much as possible.

Now, a week later we are more than happy. Sure, we need to buy some more furniture and some need to be removed, but we feel very comfortable.

More comments about each room can be found in the description of each photo! Enjoy browsing the album!

To all readers: A happy new year!

We “celebrated” new year’s eve in Cambridge this year – it was very nice. Some friends came along and we had a very good cheeeeese fondue. Dani and me love it and I think everyone else liked it as well (hopefully). Rest of the evening was very relaxed. We didn’t have a big party, but I prefer a nice chatty & enjoyable evening with friends anyway – I think it is more personal and fun :)

We also did a very typical German new year’s eve thing: “lead pouring”. For all non Germans: lead (or tin) is melted and then poured into cold water. Your future is then read from the shapes the tin formed in the water in much the same way as reading shapes in tea leaves. It’s fun – and only fun – and please – don’t take it too serious *smile*.

We finished at 3am, quite tired :) Thanks for coming – it was nice!

PS (3.1.1006): Attached an image of our snowy garden in Germany …

After finishing the first rotation project at the Sanger Institute, we (all the 1st years) had some courses to attend, but there was also some free time. Mainly I used it to start a new private software project called MiniPauker, to meet friends and to work on “Espresso” research.

A bit more specific:

1. MiniPauker: It will be a J2ME product, related to the “real” Pauker. Well, I want to use the same file format and the same concept, except that it works for mobile devices. A prototype already works, but it’s a hack to test J2ME and get a feeling for this kind of programming. Currently I am working on a “clean” version which will go to Sourceforge at some point (approx. February 2006).

2. Friends: I met Flo, Bene, Tom, Pete & Steph for some coffees in various coffee shops. I mostly like the atmosphere (it can be done better though) but the actual coffee quality is bad to medium. Therefore the idea of opening a own “Coffee geek” coffee shop with Tom rose, but we are not sure whether we mean it serious or not :)

3. This leads me to the last point. I have to know how to brew perfect coffee and espresso. Well – I did not expect that it is actually a kind of research and art and NOT easy to learn. Becoming a real “Barista” takes months to years. Getting all the parameters right is the most important and complicated thing. Currently I am learning, reading, practicing …