Like every year the BioMedical Image Analysis (BMIA) group of the TU/e, my former workplace, organized a weekend in the Ardennes for its group members. The Saturday evening of the event was dedicated to Markus and my goodbye party.
As every year the event was a great success. This year’s special activity was a GPS tour through Rochefort. The group was split up in five smaller groups and each of the groups got there own GPS device with way points. At each way point a number of questions had to be answered. It was a great way to tour the city.
For our farewell party the group had organized a “Who is the biggest Apple fan” contest. Which tested our Apple knowledge and iPhone skills. One challenge was that Mark would play a tune on his melodica and we had to find the link between that song and Apple. For example, he was playing “New York, New York”, which is the “Big Apple” (Markus got that one right). Next thing we had to do was SMS an incredibly difficult message to Hans’ phone as fast as possible (here I was faster). It was a lot of fun. In the end, however, Markus won first prize. A device which was much better than an iPad. A frame with a glass plate (an empty photo frame with no back). This device had infinite battery life, infinite resolution, adopts to the environment’s light, has flash support as Ralph demonstrated by holding a flashlight behind the glass plate and flashing it a couple of times. It even has face to face chat as he demonstrated with Tim, and many many more features.
My second price was a melon. Which was as good as a real iPad because, it also didn’t have SD card support, no USB connection, no keyboard, no flash support, no video camera, and no DVD drive.

All in all, like every year it was an amazing weekend!