Update: There are some privacy concerns with using Sodaplayer, but you can download a new version of Acestream for Mac instead.

So you want to watch a football stream using Acestream, but you're on a Mac.

Sure, you can install a Virtual Machine, or boot camp, or some other thing. But that means infecting your Mac with Windows.

Instead, try using Soda Player. Here's a quick video tutorial:

And here's the steps you take.

First, download Soda Player.

Copy the App to your Applications folder, and then open that folder and right-click (or CTRL-click) on Soda Player to run it for the first time.

Now find yourself an Acestream URL and copy it (command-C). It looks something like this:

Great. Now paste that into Soda Player and you're off to the races.

The first time you do this, it will download a bunch of dependencies and take a long time. Take this opportunity to make a coffee or grab a beer. Seriously, it will take 4-5 minutes.

And there you go: the match is on!

Not only do you have Acestream running on your Mac, but you can also use Airplay to send it to your Apple TV or Chromecast. Neat.

UPDATE: Use this method to Install HTOP on Mac OS X instead. Much better.

If you’re a nerd (and you know you are), then you’ve used ‘top’ for monitoring your system:

Which is cool and nerdy enough. But htop is even nerdier. Linux nerds know this, which is why apt-get install htop is one of our first commands on a fresh install. It’s great for monitoring your webservers and other linux boxes.

Here’s themainframe.ca server running htop:

But this command isn’t part of Mac OS X.

Sure, you can follow the various tutorials out there, to install git, then grab the htop source code and install it yourself. Or you can be a lazy nerd and grab the binary that I’ve compiled and install it.

Copy and paste the following commands into a terminal window:

curl -O http://themainframe.ca/content/images/2011/06/htop.zip
unzip htop.zip
sudo mv htop /bin
rm htop.zip

You will need to enter your password for the ‘sudo’ line above.

Then you can run it from the terminal anywhere by just typing htop.

(I followed the tutorial at http://jeetworks.org/node/60 to compile)