Those of you on my Facebook or Twitter may have recently noticed updates on Movies and TV Shows coming from Boxee. I know you’ve all been staying up at night wondering what on Earth Boxee is and how does it work, sleep easy my friends as I’m about to tell you about my latest project.

If you’re a dedicated follower then you’ll remember my last project, XBMC, well Boxee is a fork project off the back off XBMC and is my new HTPC replacement (or should I say addition as the XBMC XBOX is now running in the bedroom). Boxee Beta (I was using the Alpha but it wasn’t nearly as good) is running on my Samsung laptop which I have connected to my new LG HDTV via a HDMI cable. The draw card for Boxee is its online content partners and social media integration but for me it’s biggest feature is the media lookup service. This indexes your TV shows and movies and downloads cover art, titles and descriptions from IMDB and TVRage.

Another feature I’m slowly getting into is the online content I previously mentioned. With Boxee you can browse through their App collection and add online content providers such as Joost, Justin.tv, YouTube and even BBC iPlayer. These come from the default Boxee repository but you can easily add more app repositories from users with custom built apps and feeds.

My next project is to build a NAS (Network Attached Storage) for my media and backups. My current 1Tb drive and laptop HDD are about 95% full so I need to look into something a little better. With media centres in multiple rooms, the laptop and 2 iPhones in the house means media on the network has become a must.

Download Boxee Beta here: http://www.boxee.tv/

Check out the new Boxee Box by D-Link: here & here

On Saturday Neil and I got up at 5am and headed to Wales to meet Alex and watch some rally at the Wyedean Forest Rally. It was about a 2 hr drive in the M5 but we got there nice and early and saw all the cars run through on the first stage. The event was much more professional than the previous Tempest Rallies I’ve been too but there wasn’t too many risk takers so not a lot happened on the day. The highlight was the above video where a Metro 6R4 took out a fence and got stuck in a ditch – Neil ran off to help and I filmed the rescue.

Andy Burton and his famous Peugeot Cosworth

Number 211 - pink poker-dots

Alex said the rally was amazing in 3D!

Neil bleeds orange and blue in his 2 Sign-Up.to tees

Overall a great day and my first time to Wales (admittedly not very far in) however next time I’ll heed Neil’s advise and actually wear two pairs of socks because it was absolutely freezing in the Forest, in fact I’ll just double everything I wear next time.

Last Wednesday was Australia Day and instead of heading into London and going to a Walkabout like I did last year I thought I’d bring the festivities to Woking, Surrey.

Even though it was a balmy zero degrees on the walk to work I proudly wore my green and golds in the form of an Australian beach Cricket shirt my younger brother William gave me and my tacky green Australian $100 note board shorts, all topped off with my Aussie flag thongs.

I brought in a couple of other tops for the team and was pleasantly surprised to see a few had brought in their own.

I hooked up the office ghetto blaster and cranked out my Australian classic playlist reminding the English of Aussie greats such as AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl and even a little Regurgitator.

For lunch I’d organised a BBQ outside, Stuart brought in a couple of disposable BBQ’s, Neil some sausages and bread so I ducked down to the local Co-Op (Bottle-O) for a case of… Fosters!
Given the mercury had only lifted a single degree we installed the assistance of Mr Geogre Foreman to help pre-cook our sangaas.

That said we only lasted outside for about 25mins before it become clear that the BBQ’s weren’t going to light and everything seemed to be getting colder than then cooking. We took Mr Foreman back inside and finished off cooking in our office kitchen with a combination of microwave, toastie machine, and George Foreman.

Everyone appeared to enjoy the food and hopefully had an enjoyable first Australia Day.

Tonight we had the first snow of the decade here in Woking and although I spent all my time in the snow only a couple of weeks ago up at The Lakes District it’s still really exciting.

Below is a photo at about 1am after the snow had stopped, settled and actually started to fall back from the trees.

Some more information on the photo here on Flickr

The original size (post-Photoshop exposure) here on SmugMug

Our hotel for the trip - Lake House

As Neil said we packed up yesterday and headed off to The Lake District. Emily and I have been quite ill over Christmas (caught the flu from work) so it’s good to get out of the house and go exploring. We had a good drive up with not much traffic and ‘True Lies’ on in the car. I didn’t get a photo but seeing my first Northerner driving his car with a crash helmet on was definitely a highlight. We are staying 4 nights in a place called the Lake House, the rooms are a decent size and there’s free WiFi so Neil and I are pretty happy. For the first night we put in some ale at a local free house and enjoyed a nice meal at a little place called Stampers.

The following day we geared up and walked from Skelwith Bridge to Elterwater in the snow and frozen over sheep paddocks. This would give me a chance to try the new walking poles Neil and Di bought me for Christmas and stomp around in some snow.

Showing off my new walking poles

I was actually pretty worried about slipping in at this point

Diane - Photographer Extraordinaire

Too many mince pies to cross this

One of the fantastic icy lakes

Once at Elterwater we had lunch at the locally renowned Britannia Inn and then made our way back to the car at Skelwith Bridge. For the following few hours we drove around The Lake District trying to get to Wasdale Head, however all the access roads were frozen over and pretty dangerous, so we headed back.

 

Mad Hatters - Italian restaurant on the 2nd night

On the second day we were up early again and off to climb Mt Hellvellyn. We didn’t have all the right gear on with the walking poles breaking but the new Camelbak from Neil and Di also got me for Christmas was nice. Given Em was still feeling under the weather I’m impressed we made it up at all but I think at the half way point we had to give in. The snow, wind and incline was rapidly increasing and with little left to hold on to it was certainly time to turn around. A great suggestion from Neil and now I really want to come back again and give it another go, perhaps without as much snow (or just more climbing gear).

Em looking at how far we've come

The view from halfway up Mt Hellvellyn

Neil in a bit of a snow storm

Once we made it back down Mt Hellvellyn we drove into Keswick for some lunch (and tea). Whilst wandering around the outdoor stores looking for crampons we found a good deal on walking sticks so I replaced my newly broken ones and Em and Di also picked up a pair.

NYE count down in Keswick

You're a goose!

That night we went back to the free house for a couple more ales and a whiskey before heading over to the ‘China Cottage’ for some extremely average Chinese dinner. The  next day we decided to go for another walk and try out new walking poles.

An old slate mine cave

Keeping up my fluids with the new Camelbak Neil & Di got me for Xmas

Di found another Robin that likes ginger biscuits

A little waterfall at the end of our walk

After our walk we drove over to Bowness-On-Windermere for a pub lunch and a little shopping. Another quaint little Lakes village with slate buildings and little boutique shops.

With this being our last night we went to the award winning ‘Log House Restaurant‘ for a fantastic 3 course meal and lovely wine.

Finally on Thursday we got up nice and early, had breakfast, paid our bill and headed home before light. The roads were fantastic and Neil got us back to Woking by 12:15, plently of time for some rest before the Mukerji’s big NYE party that night.

A fantastic trip and enjoyable way to spend the Christmas break, I can’t wait to go back.

_B