I’ve been running Boxee on my mac for a while now and I love it. Boxee is a software media player that also incorporates a lot of content from the net. There are several alternatives to Boxee, XBMC and Plex (mac only). They are nice but I really like Boxee. All of the media players/streamers are capable of playing video without unpacking the archived files in your downloads folder — saves a lot of time. Boxee is currently in league with D-Link to produce a physical, real box that hooks up to your TV and it will ship with this awesome RF-remote.

The RF part (Radio Frequency) means that you can use the remote without pointing it at the TV and this fact makes it easier and more comfortable to use the QWERTY keyboard on the back of the remote. The Boxee interface is really good too.

It feels snappy and navigating is a breeze, even through my iPhone running the Boxee Remote app. The Boxee Box is expected to be released Q2 2010 and I cant wait. Expected retail price is $200 and that’s on par with the Xtreamer, a competitor with a huge following. So, Boxee, get this device on the shelves or I’m giving my money to your enemy!

UPDATE: New release date is November 2010.

Links:
Boxee
Boxee Remote app for iPhone
Plex
XBMC
Xtreamer

I’ve been in my new apartment a few weeks now. When I woke up Saturday a truck was on fire down the street. Fire fighters, the police and smoke. I’m used to sirens since the fire department visited my old building about eight times during my two year stay. Turned out all the visits had to do with an old lady using the fireplace in her apartment even though it wasn’t permitted. Trucks on fire — serious stuff.

Assembling furniture from IKEA is not easy, especially when you’re doing it all by yourself. In spite of that I’ve managed to assemble a coffee table a media center desk and a nice bluish/gray denim sofa. There are still things to put together but the sofa is so damn inviting when I get back home every day. The sofa is winning!

First thing I always do when moving to a new place is to set up the computer, monitor and speakers. I’m sitting on the floor typing this with the monitor on the coffee table, the Macbook is sitting on the lower part of the table. This lack of a decent blogging area — and the actual move itself — is the cause of almost two weeks of no updates on the blog. Shame on me!

I go to the TED site every now and then. You never leave the site thinking you want your 20 minutes back, it’s always worth it.

I spent a few hours waiting for the Tsunami expected to hit Hawaii last night. I knew the media was hyping the thing well above reason and that’s why I kept a close eye. I followed a live stream from CNN. Experts and idiots gave us their thoughts, no one actually knew anything — as usual — and in the end a woman came forth telling the media that there would be no Tsunami.

I absolutely hate the way modern day news media thrives on scaring viewers and readers. Just look at the “headline” in that video player window above. They tell us that the waves are hitting Hawaii and yet there are pictures of sailboats, guys standing on the shore fishing and a few surfers trying to catch waves that are so small they are better off surfing in their bathtubs back at the hotel. Mainstream media takes us for fools, sure, some of us are but I’m not and I don’t like the way they do their reporting — if you can call it that. That’s it for now, cheers.

So, I figured it was about time to log in to MySpace, my account have been somewhat dormant since 2006. I have found a bunch of new artists/bands lately and I wanted to friend them — it’s amazing how fast all of the friend requests where accepted. Bang! Nice stuff. Then it all went to hell. The pic above says it all and the next one I’ll post underneath this illustrates what I was greeted with at their contact page when I tried to talk to them about my problems with their service (well it’s free so it’s not EXACTLY a service — but you get my point):

Wow. Now I wonder if it’s a common occurrence, does this happen all the time nowadays? As I said, it’s been ages since my last visit. How often does this happen and does this last long before it goes back to… working?

Facebook is working fine but I miss the music stuff over at MySpace.

UPDATE:
Alright, I managed to get a message through to the almighty MySpace ‘Technical Team’, it took a few tries. I explained what I had done on my part, flushing cookies and the cache in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. The response; Clear your cookies and cache and install the latest Adobe Flash Player. The version of Flash Player on my mac was about a week old, I went to Adobe and got the ultra latest release. It still didn’t work. I guess I’m at loss here, still waiting to hear from the guys at MySpace. I’ll get back to you, my dear readers, when there’s more to tell. I’m clearly not alone in this mess, people seem to go crazy all over the web about this (un)expected error…

Newscorp, owners of MySpace and Fox News — explains a lot, doesn’t it?

The picture above is nothing special, it’s kind of a crappy shot I took from my balcony a few hours ago. What IS special about it is that it’s the first pic in my 365 Project. Starting today I will upload one photo every damn day for the rest of the year. I’ve created a Flickr set and here’s a link. It’s a starting point for kicking the new year into gear.

I thought long and hard about making various Best Of-lists for this post summing up what I liked in the year 2009 but I grew tired of list just researching what other people wrote about. Best and worst, who would rule in 2010 and who people wanted to completely disappear from the face of the earth in the year that we now live in. All of a sudden ranking stuff seemed so trivial and — well, unnecessary.

I’m already losing track of this post, what will it be about? I feel I have to go Ad Lib on this one. 2009 wasn’t that bad, I’ve seen worse. Some bad stuff happened, no denying that. My awesome moped was stolen, I had surgery and spent a few days at the hospital and just before the end of the year I got word that I have to move out of my apartment, the landlord is renting it to his cousin.

Good stuff happened too though. I fell in love with woodworking, I got a Macbook and the iPhone3GS. I will write a post about my experiences with it sometime in the near future. I set up this new blog and I’ve been updating it fairly regularly since the start, proud of it too.

DJing is picking up, it’s a great way to spend time in a bar/club setting when you don’t drink — I have something to do, something to keep me occupied and not missing the joy of grabbing a cold beer. My friends are amazing, I love them all — mostly for their flaws.

I still get more out of good TV compared to movies. I’ve started to appreciate good, reliable shows a lot more during 2009. A few comes to mind, The Colbert Report, Better Off Ted, Beautiful People, Star Wars The Clone Wars, The Office (US), Mythbusters, Glee, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Torchwood, Two and a Half Men and especially BBC’s Top Gear. The show where three middle age men talk about cars have actually brought me to tears in 2009. Jeremy Clarkson contemplating the demise of ridiculously expensive muscle cars set to a beautiful score combined with breathtaking photography actually made me cry. Not a single movie brought me to tears last year but a show about cars did. I’m currently following around 20 to 25 different shows on TV, I love it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cheers.

Mick Jagger was indeed correct when he sang ‘I’ll never be your beast of burden’. You see, only animals can be beasts of burden.  To be able to give the Rolling Stones an ‘A’ the song would have to be called ‘I’ll never be your slave’. You get the idea.

Hound Dog, Elvis Presley – That person is neither a hound nor a dog.

Stairway To Heaven, Led Zeppelin – There is no stairway to heaven.

When Doves Cry, Prince – No known animals have the abillity to cry.

Every Breath You Take, The Police – Sting, you Sir, are a liar.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps, The Beatles – Only people can cry.

Purple Rain, Prince – Water have no color.

The Sounds of Silence, Simon and Garfunkel – Silence is just that – silent.

I Only Have Eyes for You, The Flamingos – No you don’t. You have eyes for everything around you.

I Can’t Stop Loving You, Ray Charles – Yes you can – and you did since you died several years ago.

Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone, The Temptations. Not just unlikely. Impossible.

Free Fallin’, Tom Petty – Tom, you might be free but you’re not falling.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door, Bob Dylan – First off, heaven has gates, not a door. Oh, and there is no gate OR door to bang on in heaven.

Sweet Child O’ Mine, Guns N’ Roses – No one in Guns had children when this song was written.

I Fall to Pieces, Patsy Cline – Patsy, you never did whilst alive. Liar.

(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher, Jackie Wilson – If you’re in love with a crane you have a big problem.

Chain of Fools, Aretha Franklin – Chains are not made out of fools.

Highway to Hell, AC/DC – You can’t drive a car to hell.

Heart of Glass, Blondie – Dear Debbie, in love with a gas? It was not a gas and it didn’t have a glass heart.

Paranoid Android, Radiohead – Androids are not that evolved yet.

You Are the Sunshine of My Life, Stevie Wonder – I know you’re blind Stevie. The sun is whats emitting sunshine.

Heart of Gold, Neil Young – Not glass, not stone, not frozen water, not gold – just meat.

Piece of My Heart, Big Brother and the Holding Company – Not possible, even if you are a donor. The whole heart or nothing at all.

Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton – No tears in heaven.

Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival – The moon is neither good nor bad.

Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack – If his knife or gun was named ‘Song’. Otherwise, a lie.

All You Need Is Love, The Beatles – And oxygen, nutrition and sleep. Ad Absurdum.

The Wind Cries Mary, Jimi Hendrix – The wind does not have vocal chords.

Tiny Dancer, Elton John – A small dancer perhaps. Tiny? Not a chance. A blatant lie.

Beast of Burden, The Rolling Stones – A person can not be a beast of burden – only animals can.

I Wanna Be Your Dog, The Stooges – Probably the drugs talking. Mr. Pop is a liar.

I Shot the Sheriff, Bob Marley and the Whailers – No you didn’t.

Standing in the Shadows of Love, The Four Tops – Love doesn… Well, you know.

Welcome to the Jungle, Guns n’ Roses – The band was not in any of the known jungles of the world when this song was written.

I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor. No you won’t. Stay alive for a really long time? Hopefully.

Running on Empty, Jackson Browne – Impossible.

It Takes A Fool To Remain Sane, The Ark. Anyone would agree – it takes a sane person to remain sane.

The Sun Always Shines On TV, A-Ha. I know for a fact that this is a blatant lie.

Ocean of Noise, Arcade Fire. Oceans are filled with water, not noise.

Jesus is my Girlfriend, Babybird. No he’s not.

Heaven is A Place on Earth, Belinda Carlisle. If heaven was real it would be up in the sky.

There you go. If you’d like to contribute to the list of lying song titles, be my guest — post them in the comments!

Bigger version available on YouTube!

I actually ended up in intensive care on Wednesday morning with appendicitis. I still blame Sarah Palins legion of morons. The hospital was nice though, it’s called S:t Görans Sjukhus (Saint Georges Hospital) and it’s located in Stockholm city. They took care of me imediately, I was there for three days, had surgery, got clothes and food. Total cost: $ 34.42. Update: I got the bill a few days ago; $ 22, even cheaper than I expected. That’s universal heathcare for ya, Swedish style. Really nice staff at S:t Görans, I would recommend it to anyone!

I’ve been home for about a day now and it’s going quite well. It still hurts from time to time but that’s a given since I’ve got three (or it is four — can’t see through the tape) nice little scars on the lower part of my abdomen. I guess I’ll be back to normal in a week or two. Going into surgery was a first for me and it was really exiting, too bad I got knocked the hell out in an instant when they told me to inhale the anesthetic — I wanted to see all the machines! I remember I said it looked like the future before it went black.

I brought my MacBook AND the iPhone in case I needed to kill some time but I never really got to use them, it’s quite hectic being a patient; tests, trying to eat, the actual surgery and wake-up stage, visits and talking to other patients. I was stupid enough to restart the iPhone after I came to the hospital (I think it was the Facebook app messing with me) and when it started up it was asking me for my PIN-number and I couldn’t remember what it was. I blame that on the morphine. Damn you morphine, damn you Palin and your stupid fans!