Here’s a photo: Some train at the Rotterdam Station. I spent lots of time in these the past week.
… and here are four things, most of which happened last week:
- I was honoured to be invited by the International Research Training Group (IRTG) of the University of Kaiserslautern to visit their institute and give a presentation on medical visualisation (my field of research, for those of you joining very late). Unfortunately, I was only able to stay an evening and a morning, flanked by two 7 hour train rides. In spite of my short stay, the exceptionally friendly Kaiserslautern peeps managed to put together an enjoyable and especially very efficient program with dinner, a morning of research discussion and of course my talk, which was only 45 minutes over time, and a delectable lunch outside. It was interspersed with questions and discussions, which I do like, and most of the audience managed to stay awake (!), but I still do have to take a more serious look into accurately timing interactive talks like this. Thank you very much IRTG, it was a perfect visit!
- The Delft – Kaiserslautern trip is just so that taking the train seems to make more sense than flying. The total trip time is greater, but the difference is small enough to be justified by the great deal of work one can do on these long train rides.
- I tried out T-Mobile’s new pre-paid Internet “abroad” option, called Travel & Surf. One pays EUR 4.95 for 50 MB over 24 hours, or EUR 14.95 for 100 MB (which they call “unlimited”, HAHA) over 7 days. Without this active, my mobile internet works abroad, but in the zone 1 countries (Germany, Norway, etc.) costs me EUR 2 / MB up to a maximum of EUR 60 per month, so it’s definitely nice being able to pre-pay and control the possibly nasty surprises. However, an Android telephone sucks down 50 MB of data without even thinking, unless you remember to deactivate syncing and background data, which does help to quite an extent. This is certainly a good development, but T-Mobile and all other mobile providers are probably still making an absolute killing by acting like it’s really complicated providing internet just over the Dutch border.
- On the really good news front, Francois Malan’s paper on measuring femoral lesions despite CT metal artifacts has been accepted for publication in Skeletal Radiology! The full citation (so far, it’s online first) is: Malan DF, Botha CP, Kraaij G, Joemai RM, van der Heide HJ, Nelissen RG, Valstar ER., Measuring femoral lesions despite CT metal artefacts: a cadaveric study, Skeletal Radiology, 2011. Cite it sesame!
Here’s my final thing, a youtube clip that, to my surprise, I don’t think I’ve shown on this blog before. Pay attention, it’s full of braai-related culture and wisdom:
May your week be full of awesome!