I have been playing with a couple new things over the last couple weeks. VMware released the vmplayer for free which allows you to run virtual machines on your computer. If you do a little digging you can also create new virtual machines. I started off with there borwser application which is based on the ubuntu version of linux. I then hacked it so all the volitile data is stored on encrypted disk.
I have also been reading up on VOIP, I installed a copy of asterix on a machine at work to see what it looks like. I am now creating a Virtural machine for my home network. If I think it is going to be usefull then I may dedicate a machine to it. I also ordered a couple sipura ata adapters to convert my analogue phones to sip phones.
I asked my parents to look into how much they are being charged for call to the US. I am not sure if it would be cheaper to get a UK number that forwards to my voip account in the US.

The general thought is that none of the VOIP providers appear to be prime time, but this is just to play around and investigate.