A quick last post of 2008. It’s been a great year and I’m convinced 2009 is even going to be better! For those already in 2009, Happy New Year! The rest of us: see you all on the flip side! Remember: be safe and don’t drink and drive…

My Yahoo! Fantasy Football league is coming to an end and I clinched a spot in the playoffs. I ended up second place in the regular season and this weekend the FF playoffs will start. The #1 and #2 (me!) will have a bye week meaning we just can sit and relax this weekend. The other 4 contenders will play and decide the semi-finals.

My team has a pretty difficult match up this week so I’m glad I’m on a bye week. Winning next week will guarantee cash money so hopefully none of my star players will get injured this week. Adam: I hope you win this week so I can kick your ass for a third time in a row!

We’ve all been there, zapping through hundreds of channels and nothing interesting to watch. It only get worst if you forgot to record a show or something similar to your DVR. You still want to watch the damn tube but at the end of the night ended up with unnecessary purchases of some retarded infomercial channel.

But there is a ‘new’ way of watching TV and the best thing of it all, it is free!

Well, not completely free but for one thing you can cancel your subscription with your TV provider saving roughly 40 bucks a month. That’s almost $500 per year! In extreme cases (DirecTV premier package $82/mo) you will save $984.00

How to save money and still watch TV?

You need a few things but I bet most of it you already have. Let’s go over the list:

• TV (HDTV recommended but any TV could do the trick)
• High Speed Internet
• Apple TV
• Boxee account
• Flash Drive

Since you are curious on how to save money on your monthly TV bill I’m guessing you already have a TV. You wouldn’t be able to read this post so you can check of internet access as well. A flash drive is a pretty common household item these days especially if you’re a geek. Flash drives are pretty cheap these days. Just do a Google search. Cheapest flash drive I found was 5 bucks.

That leaves you with the Apple TV and the boxee account. The low end Apple Tv (ATV) is $229 and is sufficient for the job. The next thing you’ll need is a Boxee account. If you don’t have one leave a comment with a valid email address and I’ll send you an invite. Boxee accounts are free!

The set up

Very simple. Connect your AppleTV to your TV. You just enhanced your TV viewing pleasure! Movies and/or music videos rented or bought through iTunes can now be viewed on your TV. Playlists can be streamed or created on the ATV.

But it doesn’t end here. There is more you can do with your ATV. Way more…

How to hack your AppleTV

To get the fullest of your Boxee account you need to hack your ATV. It sounds scary but it’s not. All it takes is five minutes. If your not tech savvy I recommend buying your AplleTV with Boxee pre-installed. If you think hacking is your thing head over to atvusb-creator and follow the steps.

Basically what you’re doing is download a program on your usb stick (flash drive) and stick it in the back of the ATV. The usb port on your ATV is only used for diagnostics when you bring it in for repairs but with the atvusb-creator you just have opened up this port!

Congratulations! You have just hacked you ATV! Wasn’t too bad huh?

You’re all set up! Boxee is a media station and offers a wide variety of channels: CNN, Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central, YouTube and as of today: Netflix. Netflix isn’t ready for the ATV yet but I’m sure it will in the future.

So what’s the big deal?

Well, since I’m only interested in a few shows I was able to cancel my account with Dish networks. The shows are now being streamed by hulu on my boxee. And it gets even better. The title of this post mentioned RSS feeds. I was able to successfully add video RSS feeds to my boxee account (Since I’m Dutch I added some Dutch TV programs) and I’m now able to play those feeds through boxee on my ATV.

There are tons of other video feeds out there and you can add the ones you like. It’s like creating your own TV station. No more zapping around to find good content. You decide what to watch and when to watch it!

What about the news or Sport events?

That’s a personal choice. Live broadcasting can’t be viewed on the ATV. I decided to give up those perks simply because I was becoming a couch potato. I read the news in the morning. No need to see it live. All it showed was another murder in town and it became depressing. I miss out on sports though. But hey! Go to a friends place and watch the game together! Have a social life!

Need a Boxee account invite?

So if anyone is interested in a boxee account lemme know. Leave a comment and I’ll send you an invite asap!

We’ve been back for almost a week but I simply couldn’t find the time to give a proper update. Having 4 days off from work means a backlog of accumulated emails and more work when you get back to the office on Monday… (sigh).

Anyways, here are a few pics from the trip to Los Angeles.

We decided to take the I5 (Interstate 5) rather then Highway 101 since it would take too much time to travel choosing the latter. The problem with I5 is that it is the most boring road to travel. It’s an endless straight road with nothing exciting to see except for a bunch of trucks heading to SoCal.

The above picture is one of the many stops along the I5 to refuel and stretch your legs. Again, nothing to exciting to see unless you’re in to watching bored families traveling for hours to their destination. Note: it took us 10 hours to drive from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles.

Don’t get fooled by the smiling face! Just a quick stop to eat a sandwich and make sure Lola did her #1 and 2.

Ah yes! The infamous LA traffic. This picture was taken on day 2 of our trip. We just visited the Yo San University and had some time to kill between a second appointment. We decided to drive up to Santa Monica (Yo San is located in Culver City close to Marina Del Rey, Venice Beach and West Hollywood.

Traffic wasn’t as bad as we arrived in LA. We hit traffic coming in to LA right at Burbank. It took us almost 2 hours getting from Burbank to La Palma. With no traffic this could be done in 45 minutes…

Blue skies and palm trees! Yes! This must be Southern California!

On our way back downtown we had a beautiful sunset at Santa Monica.

Lunchtime at Venice Beach. Venice Beach felt kinda icky this time of year. Lots of bums and people trying to sell all kinds of crap. I guess Venice Beach is not the place to be off season. I did however had the best pulled pork sandwich ever at this place!

Overall the trip was worth every moment. Seeing my family with Thanksgiving was fun as well. We’re really thankful to Julius and Linda for letting us stay at their house and keeping an eye on Lola on Wednesday! You guys rock!

Time for a road trip! Me and A will drive down to Los Angeles to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It will be a combination of business and pleasure and I’m really looking forward t it. I haven’t had a decent vacation in a while so this trip is pretty welcome. More later!

Tomorrow I’ll be in the Bay area. First we are going to visit the acupuncture school in Oakland and see if it’s any good. Afterwards we’re invited by David to go to the Green Festivals in San Francisco.

A speaker at the Green Festivals is Chuck D. of Public Enemy, one of my teenage heroes but unfortunately he spoke today… too bad. I’m sure there are lots of other things to do and I’m looking forward to what Joey Shepp has to say about The Green Web: Advancing Sustainability on the Internet. Could be interesting.

I’ll have my camera ready and will have some pictures up by Sunday!

Last week everything fell into place. Somehow I discovered hulu.com. I thought: wow, great concept. Finally a way to watch all my favorite shows. A few weeks ago we decided to ditch Dish network (our satelite TV provider) simply because there was nothing on TV (600 channels, go figure). Most shows can be viewed online these days so why pay Dish $70/month if I can access the content for free? Right?

Then I came across this link at popurls: The end of TV. YES! Simply brilliant. It’s called Boxee.

On a laptop or connected to an HDTV, Boxee gives you a true entertainment experience to enjoy your movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and flickr.

This weekend I got the 40G Apple TVatv. Hacked it with atvusb-creator and uploaded Boxee on the atv. It took me a little while to get it all working but the great community at the boxee forum helped me out. Altering my profile xml file and I was good to go! All my shows back on TV.

Now I can watch the things I want, when I want. Another great thing is adding your own RSS feeds (video or audio, even torrents!). So today I added the Dutch news (NOS journaal) as a feed and I’m able to watch ‘het 8 uur journaal’. Simply amazing.

Obama was right: A Change has come to America, it’s a new Dawn.

Dear Americans. Don’t screw it up like you did the past 2 elections! Vote for Change, not for fear.

PS: Disregard the Google ads on prop 8 posted on this blog. Vote NO on 8!

I wasn’t kidding when I told you the Nike+ training program was ambitious. Yesterday I had a 5 mile (8.05 Km) run planned and since 3 mile was the furthest distance I ever ran you can imagine I wasn’t looking forward for this. I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of running this distance. On top of it all it was pouring down yesterday morning… great.

But I came prepared. Recently I purchased the New Balance NBx Control Tights, some Nike Dry-Fit long sleeve shirt and of course my new Brooks running shoes. I had Aleisha drop me off 4 miles from home on the other end of the creek. Although the rain was puring down for the first 15 minutes of the run I felt pretty warm. There was hardly any wind and temperature wise it felt like low 60’s.

My run was close to perfect! I was afraid of mile 4 but I had enough energy left to finish the last mile. I felt a blister coming up but it wasn’t significant enough to stop running. Once again I had enough power at the end to perform a little sprint! I’m pretty happy with the result of my first 5 mile!

Some numbers:

Distance: 5.06 mi
Time: 54′05″
Pace: 10′41″/mi