Update: Comcast now offers ESPN360. So, if your neighbor has Comcast and you don’t, they can also now provide the initial connection goodness you’ll need to get it running on a different provider (instructions below).

Update: Cox now offers ESPN360 as well!

Have Comcast (or Cox, or other non-participating internet provider) and hate them (yet, secretly love them) for not caving in to ESPN and paying licensing fees for ESPN360.com? (ESPN is the real villain here)

You have a few choices:
#1) Change providers. Lame, and in many cases impossible.
#2) Convince a friend who has a participating provider to set up Dynamic DNS, OpenSSH, and Port Forwarding, then set up Putty so you can tunnel your traffic over a Socks Proxy through their connection. (WAY too complicated, and puts a huge strain on their connection, if it’s even fast enough to handle it!)
#3) Load and switch.

Alex, I choose ‘Load and Switch’ for $800.

The idea is simple: ESPN360 only authenticates your network provider’s IP when loading their player. So as long as you boot up the service on a supported provider, you’re all set! There’s a few ways you can do this:

#1) Take your laptop to Starbucks (or some other AT&T hotspot), start the player in your browser, put your computer to sleep (browser still open) and go home.
#2) Get permission from your neighbor who has slow AT&T DSL to use his wireless connection to connect and load the player. Then switch back to your connection.
#3) Wardrive. (I do not recommend this one!)

I happen to live on a campus where I can use my school’s slow, highly-restricted network to connect, (all .edu or .mil providers get access!) and then toggle over to Comcast for the real streaming.

Now, combine that with Fullscreen viewing on Mac OS X and you’re all set!

How many KU Jayhawks games did I have to miss before I discovered all this? Far too many. Thankfully, that problem has now been rectified. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I finally got some satisfaction to a longstanding annoyance today. You see, with Firefox on Windows, you can view webpages in full screen–no taskbar, no chrome, just full view web. On a Mac? No dice. I’m serious, it’s just plain impossible to do…or it was. Some online video services make your browser magically take over the whole screen (like hulu.com), but many don’t. Today, the problem was ESPN360.com.

Given that Apple is totally lame in not giving Safari a fullscreen mode, and that Firefox still hasn’t implemented it yet, I went looking for other solutions. After all, I wanted to watch ESPN360.com on my TV, hooked up to my Mac Mini, and all that chrome was annoying as heck.

So I did some searching once before and found…nothing. Today, somehow I got the Google Query right, or found the right forum, and ended up with megazoomer. That’s right, no more lame zooming tricks (like this), although those are ok for sites that don’t offer a ‘fake’ fullscreen mode.

The only drawback is that this only works for Cocoa apps, so you’ll have to use Safari. The plus is that it works for ANY Cocoa app! Wohoo, no more permanent, unmoveable, unhidable toolbar!

What are you waiting for? Go start watching free online TV in real fullscreen today!

If you have comcast, like me, and thus can’t watch ESPN360 at all…there is a way around it: watch ESPN360 on Comcast.

I got an email from Joel Osteen today, telling me I could pay $15 to come hear him tell me how much God wants me to get rich. Um, no thanks. But it did get me searching the Internet again to see if anyone else has caught on how much Joel Osteen really isn’t at all about the Gospel or the God of Scripture. And I found Nathan White commenting on Joel Osteen.

Unfortunately, while he starts out OK, he turns this into a plug for Calvinism? Where the heck did that come from!?!

“I must say that Arminianism, or an emphasis on free will, is certainly (emphasis mine) the root of this man-centered approach by Osteen. Sure, not all Arminians take their free will theology to his extreme, but most certainly he is only acting consistent with this foundational belief. When man is that captain of his own ship; when man gets to decide if he deems his Creator worth the time to submit to and worship; when man’s sinfulness is covered up to the point where he still has the innate goodness within to make the most important ‘decision’ in all of eternity; when God’s kingdom is more like a self-help club which members choose to enter into as they see fit, then these types of ministers and messages will only continue to flourish. This is precisely why we should proclaim God’s sovereignty in all situations, whenever possible.

This is certainly a gross exaggeration. Let me break it down: free will states that our will is capable of choosing between right and wrong, not that we get to decide God’s role, or make our own salvation. To claim that our ability to actually make choices somehow diminishes our need for (or the efficacy of) Grace is completely and utterly wrong. Arminianism != a self-help gospel.

Sure, it is certain that determinism doesn’t leave room for self-help theology, but that doesn’t mean that Joel Osteen’s bad doctrine is merely the result of him believing in free will. If you drink motor oil it will kill you, but if you put it in your car it will keep your engine running smoothly. In either case, reason demands that we attribute the outcome to you, not the oil. If you turn Arminianism into a self-help gospel, you’re to blame, not Arminianism.

Nevertheless, if you want me to proclaim God’s sovereignty whenever possible… “God’s sovereignty means that He is making Joel Osteen preach this health-and-wealth message,” so don’t complain when God’s will is being accomplished. Quit fighting against it! Why must you kick against the goads?!

Joel Osteen may be wrong and Arminian, but his being wrong is not the natural result of his being Arminian.

It’s over at Amazon.com, and it’s free shipping. Get the hottest thing to hit the XBox since…well…never mind. It’s a nice upgrade though from what you used to get.

Get it now!

OK, Harry Potter may not be in this book, but with the December release of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, JK Rowling is set to make a few more dollars off the Harry Potter universe. This book was referred to (and played somewhat of a big role) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so if you want to read these actual purported fairy tales for wizards, you can pre-order today!

The Tales of Beedle the Bard should be an interesting read by my estimation, but it won’t be quite as long as the Harry Potter books. Nevertheless, this isn’t stopping Amazon from offering the volume in an Amazon-exclusive The Tales of Beedle the Bard Collector’s Edition for a mind-boggling $100! (The Standard Edition can be pre-ordered for $7.79)

At any rate, either one is a steal if you consider the fact that Rowling published a mere seven copies of this book back in 2007, and Amazon bought one of those copies at an auction last December for nearly $4 million. Well then…what are you waiting for? Go preorder yours today!

The Dark Knight was good. In fact, a lot better than I expected. There’s action, there’s a decent plot, it’s not hokey like previous Batman movies, and it’s not loaded with sexual content. (Now that’s a new one in Hollywood!)

The story is a bit dark, but what do you expect from a movie titled “The Dark Knight”? However, it’s not overly dark. I was hesitant to watch it in the first place because I didn’t want to leave the theater all depressed and all, but while the plot has its dark side, it’s not film noir.

And yes, it’s long, but that’s a good thing. At a few points during the movie I thought to myself: “if this ends now, that’s just lame.” But it kept on going until a satisfying end. Definitely worth seeing.