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!