Lose weight and feel great. Train with celebrity trainer Gunnar Peterson.

With Gunnar’s online weight loss and fitness program, you’ll look great in just 8 weeks. So if you’re ready for the A-List treatment and the body to match, accept the Challenge today! Starts May 21, 2012.

The Biggest Loser for 2012 has been crowned. Margie Cummins has triumphed with an astonishing weight loss of 73kg.

Margie entered the house feeling angry at the world and at herself.

“Who wouldn’t be,” she says, “carrying around 159kg?”

But as the weight fell off, the real Margie emerged, the loving, caring one.

The Queensland girl with the big personality worked hard – and she’s not finished yet.

“You only have one life. You have to make the most of it.”

Check out the results of Margie’s amazing transformation at our Biggest Loser Club photoshoot, and read all about Margie’s weight loss journey and plans for the future.

"If you put in the work, I promise you're going to get results." – Gunnar

We are all really excited here at SP Health to announce the Gunnar Challenge!

To kick off National Physical Fitness Month, SP Health, a consumer health business which develops the world’s most comprehensive online weight loss platforms, and personal trainer Gunnar Peterson are launching The Gunnar Challenge, an exclusive online community who participate in an eight-week program of online workouts and healthy meal plans to help achieve dramatic fitness and weight loss results. Once only available to celebrities and top athletes, now anyone who signs up can transform their body in record time with access to Peterson as a personal trainer, including his workouts, recipes, insights, and support tools.

Look great in 8. Register for The Gunnar Challenge. Starts May 21.

One of the great things about my trip to New York was being able to watch a bunch of programs on Hulu.  Hulu is a great service available in the US that lets you watch current programs over the Internet. There are a bunch of great shows on offer like House, Lost, Dollhouse and other shows not yet shown in Australia like Modern Family.

Unfortunately when I got back to Australia, licensing rules and IP addresses stopped me. When you try to watch anything, you get the Hulu black screen of nada.

How to set up Hulu to watch outside the US

Firstly, do not waste your time with a free service.  I spent numerous hours researching the internet and trying a bunch of different free services.  Hotspot Shield, FoxyProxy and IPHider do not work.  You just cannot get a connection to the US that is fast enough and Hulu is shutting down most of these free services.

Your best bet is to purchase a US Based VPN.  There are numerous VPN providers out there.  Some even give you the ability to switch between the US and the UK, therefore allowing you to watch the BBC iplayer too!

As an added plus, a VPN will also help you get around this ridiculousness Internet filter that is being proposed by Communications Minister Senator Conroy.  According to Adam Turner, writing for PC Authority:

“…the easiest way to access restricted content is to mask your location using a US-based Virtual Private Network. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer to the VPN provider, who then connects you to the internet.”

(Thanks to Anthill for this quote)

Steps to watch Hulu in Australia

1. Check your internet connection speed.  I have the Bigpond cable Ultimate and sometimes it still results in stuttery play.  Go to www.speedtest.net and check your download speed to LA.  If you get anything below 0.5Mbps then it’s probably not going to work for you.

2.   Purchase a US VPN from a reputable company. I like VPNAuthority.com because for $63/year, you get the option of using a US or UK based IP address at one time. Another upside, they do not restrict the number of times you switch between them. In the past, I used StrongVPN.com, but the switching restrictions to go between hulu and bbciplayer are prohibitive.

3. Set up your new network (Your VPN provider will have the details) and connect

4. Start watching shows!

Today is St Patrick’s day and I have Irished myself. Actually I have Irished my Nana Mouskouri self from my friend Andreas’ Eurovision Party last year. What do you think?

Tourism Ireland has released this great little Facebook app to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

Log on to Facebook and head to the GoToIrelandOz Facebook page to Irish yourself.

Go on, Irish yourself!  You know you want to!

While I am here in New York I hope to visit:

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019
There is a Tim Burton exhibition running until April that I hear is fantastic. You can also buy your tickets online beforehand which will save me having to queue up when I arrive.
Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Avenue New York, NY 10128
The Kadinsky, is coming to a close on Jan 13, 2010. The Guggenheim is currently exhibiting almost 100 paintings and 60 drawing spanning Kadinsky’s career from 1902 to 1942.
Jean Georges
1 Central Park West, New York NY 10023
My friend Daniel recommended the winter meneu at this 3 star Michelin restaurant. I can’t wait to try the Foie Gras Brulee and the Squab a L’Orange.
See my NYC map below for all the places I hope to visit!

View Ny Trip in a larger map

Airtoons is a parody site of airline safety cards and had me in stitches on planes in North America in 2000 when I recognised some of the images.  From memory the purple magician featured heavily in the Canadian Airlines (RIP -  I was on one of their last flights between Honolulu and Toronto) safety cards.

Thank you Airtoons guy for resurrecting your great website. You can now buy t-shirts and even have a custom airtoon portrait made – cool!

Link: http://www.Airtoons.com

Tim picked up on my tweet from last week:

“Just noticed that Expedia.com.au has @wotif like display for New York Hotels. Not the “prettiest” but functional http://bit.ly/5Avcoy”

“According to Nielsen NetView for October, Facebook’s “unique audience” was 8.1 million, followed by YouTube on 5.8 million and Wikipedia (5.2 million). MySpace was steady on 2.3 million users while Bebo lagged well behind on 358,000.”

According to the General Manager,  Francisco Cordero, Bebo focuses on the 13-24 market but Bebo struggled to get a foot hold here in Australia, and failed to really challenge either Facebook or Myspace.

Read the SMH article, Woe is Bebo: site to shut down in Australia by Paul McIntyre

Interesting Related Posts:

• Bebo may retreat form Australia

• Mayday, mayday – Bebo NZ is going down

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