raymondpoort.com

Yessss!!

Finally I had (/took) some time to jailbreak my AppleTV 2g and install the XBMC App on it. The process was pretty straightforward although it took a little while to get XBMC to find and connect to my movie-share located on the Apple Time Capsule…but now it all works, beautifully!! 😉

Hehe, I love it when a plan comes together:

After buying the AppleTV early December, and anticipating the release of XBMC (end January) with the untethered jailbreak via Greenpois0n RC6 which was released some days ago, everything comes together…let’s watch a movie!

Happy geek in snowy Norway! 😉

The past days have very been intense, experiencing ups and downs and realizing that life is just all about that; without darkness, no light, without downs, no ups.

“Life can be like a roller coaster…
And just when you think you’ve had enough,
and your ready to get off the ride and take the calm, easy merry-go round…
You change your mind, throw you hands in the air
and ride the roller coaster all over again.
That’s exhilaration…that’s living a bit on the edge…that’s being ALIVE.”

Copyright © 1999 Stacey Charter

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygienne: “This Valentine’s Day, which is also National Condom Awareness Day, finding free NYC Condoms will be easier than ever. Today, the Health Department launched the NYC Condom Finder, a free smartphone application designed to locate the five nearest New York City venues that distribute free NYC Condoms. The application allows users to determine their location through either global positioning system (GPS) technology on their smartphone or by manually entering an address.”

Haha, brilliant!! I have never been in NYC, perhaps I should go?!? 😉

If you are interested in the App, find it here in the App Store!

Yay! As expected for some days, the Chronic Dev Team hero’s released Greenpois0n RC6, which makes an untethered jailbreak for my AppleTV 2g possible! Nice timing (not!) as I am in NL and not at home…it means that I have to wait for a few days to test the jailbreak and then finally be able to install the XBMC App!

Oh well, patience is a virtue, eh? I’ll keep you posted!

We’re having a typical NL trip; running from here to there, picked up by my parents, then visiting Kissy’s grandmother, her mother, her father, surprising Rob on his Birthday party and crashing at Robbert’s place…a pretty intense day, especially due to the family matters, and more to come tomorrow, it’s all good though!

Sometimes things move fast!!

We have had a dispute with the seller of our house for the past 1,5 years (indeed, that is basically right after we moved in!!). The dispute seemed to end up in a court case on March 1. However, yesterday the other party requested a settlement…we set the amount and apparently found the sweet spot, as they already today agreed with the settlement amount!

Oof, FINALLY this dispute has come to an end, yayyy!! (so, soon we will have the disputed items fixed: we *will* have floor heating in both bathrooms and get the electricity/cabling in the house properly done!)

New developments in the upcoming court case: the other party came with a request to settle the dispute out of court today…so, we’ve set the amount for a settlement, now let’s see if they bite! 😉

I believe everyone is better off without taking this to court, let’s hope they accept! (we would miss out on an experience though 😉 )

Life is so unpredictable…and while that’s often the beauty of it, today feels different; both Kissy’s grandmother and my aunt Jacqueline got diagnosed with cancer… 🙁

Grandma is 86, she was in the hospital last week and came back home this weekend, she will not be treated but can still be with us for several months…

My aunt is 54 and is in the hospital undergoing several tests at this moment…she will start chemo-therapy this Wednesday. The doctors say this type of cancer can be completely cured in 60-80% of the cases, and that is what she is going for. She’s strong and will fight…

Two persons I love…two spirits so close by…it hurts…I’m sending strength, positivity and above all *LOVE* to both of you, and everyone around you!

Time for some geek stuff! 😉

The hero’s of the  Chronic Dev Team (@chronicdevteam on twitter) recently released the latest version of Greenpois0n, which makes a untethered (!) jailbreak for your iDevice running iOS 4.2.1 possible…just what I was looking for!

I planned to use it on my AppleTV 2g this weekend, making it possible to finally install the XBMC App, but unfortunately the current Greenpois0n release (RC5) does not support the AppleTV 2g… 🙁

It should be doable *very* soon though, according to this tweet…can’t wait! 😉

I have been out on farmers land most of the day; participating in an ‘on-the-job’ lumberjack training! Hehe, it’s part of my integration into Norway (a.k.a. vikingization! 😉 )…I already had my chainsaw, but never got trained on cutting trees.

Well, even though today turned out to be mainly branch cutting, I got the hang of it and am looking forward to do some more tree cutting! It’s great to know a farmer who has enough trees to cut…as I can keep the wood I cut (and that keeps me warm!! 😉 )!

NASA’s Kepler Mission continues to discover new planets; the first one being Kepler-10b around a month ago and yesterday they announced the discovery of six more planets, the Kepler-11 planetary system (I guess they need to report success in order to secure funding 😉 )…the search of planets with life potential makes me think of a brilliant comment on the existence of extraterrestrial life that Theo Maassen made in his 2002 show ‘Functioneel Naakt’.

Check out this YouTube clip (in dutch)!

I noticed that more and more people have visited my blog over the past months, and January 2011 has been an all time high for raymondpoort.com: 3100 visitors generated in total 17918 pageviews!

(and that is excluding spam related traffic, I remember getting hit with that shit pretty serious back in 2005…and 2006, and 2007, and 2008, and 2009, NOT in 2010 though, mainly due to the Akismet plugin for WordPress…good! 😉 )

Even though I am mainly blogging for me, myself and I, it motivates me to keep up my habit of a daily blogpost, so, THX all!

(a nice side-effect is that the ‘On this day’ segment on the sidebar becomes really valuable for me)

Check this out: with Poopy-Time Fun Shapes, you make the bathroom fun again! Just stick the SafeGlide adapter up your kid’s butt, sit back and watch them poop stars, or uhh, hearts! 😉

Haha, it’s about to get Poopy!™

I recently signed up for a MUBI account. MUBI (formerly The Auteurs) is an online film website that integrates video streaming with social networking. It is your “online cinematheque”, anytime, anywhere. It will give you the latest buzz from the Cannes Film Festival or a restored masterpiece personally chosen by one of MUBI’s members, Martin Scorsese!

An interesting concept, check it out for yourself!

Hehe, a funny cartoon for the Friday…WiFi makes life harder and harder for birds, eh? 😉

(click on the picture for a larger version)

I’m in London for business meetings these days and last night was actually my first night ever in London! It’s actually crazy when you think of it; I traveled to many exotic destinations all around the world (Bali, New Zealand, D.R. Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Libya, USA, Costa Rica to name a few 😉 ), and yet never stayed in London before…wow!

The first night was rather slow, I got out for a walk to sniff up some London air, so no all-night out in town this time (no can do sir, important business meetings today! 😉 )…anyway, it was all good, streets are crowded even on a Tuesday night, so there is enough to see; you really feel the energy in this city!

Now, let’s see what the second night brings me!

The first and only App I purchased so far for my iPhone is Angry Birds, quite an addictive game that is topping the ‘Top Paid’ section in the App Store already for a long time.

There are currently over 6 million people playing this game (6.505.448 and counting 😉 ) and I made it into the top 10.000, that’s in the top 0,15%!! My total score at the moment is 17.079.170 giving me a sweet 9.812th place in the ranking!

Hehe, quite some hours of gameplay, but fun! 😉

My sister and my nephew Tygo have their Birthday today: Happy Birthday to you two!!

It is the first time in three years that I have not been in NL to personally say congrats, but nevertheless: Hurra for deg!! (of eigenlijk hurra for dere! 😉 )

Below is (a rather lame) version of ‘Hurra for Deg’, the typical Birthday song in Norway:

(I am posting this clip as a bonus since I just found out that this Birthday wish was for some unknown reason not posted this morning)

Kissy got stuck in NL as she can’t fly because of terrible back pain. 🙁 So I have been home alone this weekend and that means: geek time!! 😉

This week the XBMC team released a full XBMC iOS App that also runs on the AppleTV 2G…and *that* is exactly what I have been waiting for why (and why I bought the AppleTV!)

It requires a jailbroken AppleTV, and there are currently only tethered jailbreaks available (meaning that you need to have the device connected to a computer when it boots). No problem I thought, enough computers in the house 😉 , but…unfortunately no-can-do for me at the moment. 🙁 🙁 The jailbreak is only available for Mac OS X and my good old Mac Mini is too old (G4 processor running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) and cannot complete the jailbreak process…DARN! 🙁

Luckily there was another geek thing to do: now that Kissy has her iPhone4 I got my old 1st gen. iPhone back and wiped it so I can use it with my dutch SIM, a huge upgrade from the old Nokia 6110 that I was using as ‘dutch phone’, especially for sending sms’s!! (writing an sms the old fashioned way causes ‘thumb’-RSI) 😉

I believe that everyone has at least once in their life experienced call center terror; a computer answering you when all you really want is to speak to a real person to explain your urgent problem. Instead of a friendly person asking you how he/she can help you, you are forced into a bunch of unclear menus, and when someone finally picks up, you often get transferred back to…the same bloody computer!!

The guys of ‘Basta’, a Belgium tv show, decided it was payback time for Mobistar, a Belgium mobile operator with a questionable call center reputation.

The original clip is in dutch/flemish, but I found a YouTube clip with english captions, one of the best pranks in its kind, hilarious!! 😉