1. Don't BBQ your meat while your BBQ is still flaming wait until your coals have calmed down to a grey colour. This way you won't burn the meat from the flames, most people seem to think the meat is done when its burnt on the outside this is not true and is a major cause for food poisoning at BBQ's.
2. If you're burger patties have a lot of fat in them they'll inevitably cause flames when the hot fat gets in contact with the hot coals and end up burning the meat. To get around this use a water spray bottle to gently douse the flames as they appear.
3. Sausages usually explode if you put them straight on the BBQ. To get around this prick them fully with a fork so the juices get a chance to escape.
4. Marinade chicken for as long as possible before your BBQ. Leaving it to marinade overnight in the fridge in a covered container has good results. You can continue to apply marinade to the chicken as it cooks or when turning it. Remember to use fresh marinade to do this not marinade that the chicken has been soaking in before it was cooked.
5. If you like a flame grilled finish to your meat, save this to the end when you know your meat is cooked, then you can lower the grill and char the outside of the meat slightly or to your liking)
6. Remember chicken and pork take much longer than beef, sausage and lamb to do on the BBQ. If you can, set it going first on the BBQ to one side while you cook your other meat on another side of the BBQ. Remember to always use different utensil for chicken and keep it away from the other meat.
7. Sometimes a splash of beer (just a mist) can stop your chicken and sausages drying out when you cook them so they keep a nice succulent taste.
8. If you want to cook things in a hurry foil is your friend. Unwrap the meat when its nearly done to give it that grilled BBQ finish at the end.

Its rather unfortunate that what started off as a request for emergency funding from the Bank of England by Northern Rock has escalated into a mass withdraw of funds by its customers. What is more interesting is that if this information had not been made public the bank may have survived and the act of all its customers withdrawing their cash will effectively lead to a further fall in the cost of the banks shares and a possible take over by a rival bank.

An unfortunate side effect of the above is that people are starting to worry about the integrity of their banks. The real problem now is that the media is adding to the panic by showing people pictures of queues outside banks.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the times of easily available loans would keep on going but like all things they must eventually come to an end.

We already know that Barclays bank had had to borrow money from the Bank of England at its emergency rate twice and if you are a worried Barclays customer you can look at this questions and answers section to find out more. Now one of the largest mortgage lenders in the UK, Northern Rock is applying to the Bank of England "for emergency financial support".  

There's been a lot of gloomy talk about a recession on the cards and so far we have had it pretty cushy with low interest rates which are steadily increasing to try and beat inflation, hopefully this would bring the price of houses down. Sadly that hasn't been the case and when ever there is talk of house prices coming down people seem to rush out there and try and buy more houses pushing them straight up again. Well that's my theory anyway, because where I am the property prices haven't come down at all and this is probably because loans and mortgages are so easily available with very little security attached to them. Are we heading for a similar scenario of what happened in the US when 22 mortgage lenders went bust over bad loans?

Well that's what my friends have started referring to my blog as, seeing as I haven't posted anything in a while. Its strange how people think you must be ill or heaven forbid dead if they don't see a blog post from you every day. No I'm okay I've just been working hard and have come to the realisation that I actually need a long holiday. A nice hot beach with cool water (not too cold of course) and some nice cocktails. I've had a lot of interaction with Facebook lately and I just can't believe how many people are on there, its almost as though everyone I have ever known has suddenly joined one social network. Anyway I promise to blog some more soon.

This is so damn cool.

Its quite interesting how Western countries have accused China of hacking into their systems. What I really can't understand is if these systems are so critical to the country and there are so many secrets on them, why put those machines on the Internet to begin with?

Its not rocket science just pull the cable that connects the server to the Internet. Have your own private network not connected in any way to the Internet.

It looks as though Nintendo have taken the world by storm with their latest sales figures, the Wii sold 1 million units in just 38 weeks in the UK! This is faster than any other console in history and dwarfs the sales figures of both the XBox 360 and the PS3 put together in the same time frame.

I suppose the irony of the situation is that the Wii console isn't as packed with technology as the Xbox 360 and PS3, however it is the cheaper of the 2 and its a hell of a lot of fun! The console makes game play simple and that's probably something Sony and Microsoft overlooked. Both firms were so set on packing as much technology into their consoles, they probably didn't even realise Nintendo watching them and saying "Hey we don't need lots of technology to make games fun". Nintendo were right and the gamble paid of. It will take a little while but I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft will be looking at how they can copy the Wii way of gaming. There are so many games I have on my PS2 that I have bought again when they have been released for the Wii console (such as Splinter Cell) why? Because its so much fun playing games with the Wii remote.

Each morning for me is filled with the tactful task of avoiding all the white cats in the house...why? Because when you're wearing a black suit to go to work in, cat fur is the last thing you want on it. The most annoying thing is this is when the cats are at their most friendliest, I'm pretty sure its a little game they have devised and secretly laugh about it in their own little kitty way.

"There he is!"

"Get him!"

The thing is, I do eventually get some cat fur on me, so I have a cat fur remover in my bag. Which I started using while waiting for the bus and then looked up as an old lady looked at me rather oddly. Man there is some things you can't do in public and one of them is de-fur yourself in public.  

Just thought I'd post this article to stop all those poor developers trawling through hundreds of pages on Google like I had to, to work out why on Earth I kept on getting the error below.

The property 'SharedLegacyFile' must be TRUE for isolated file 'File Name'

Let me guess the answer you get to this response. is that you have to set the SharedLegacyFile setting to True in VSI File System explorer for the file you were trying to add to the application folder and even when you did this it still didn't resolve the issue right? Well the error message is misleading.

Solution
Basically if you rename your DLL or EXE that has been effected to say myfile.DLLX or Myfile.EXEX so VSI doesn't recognise it as an executable and then compile. The VSI project will compile successfully then rename the files back to EXE or DLL and compile again and the problem is solved.  

Hope this helps you out, hopefully I'll work out why it does it this way...

Thousands of prison officers in England and Wales have gone on strike, over pay being lower than inflation. Apparently prison officers are not allowed to go on strike because of an agreement their union has with the government. It has also been stated on the news that prison officers had been sent letters informing them that they could face jail if they go on strike. I found that utterly hilarious, if you throw all of the prison officers into prison, who is going to keep them in there? The word of the law? You really can't fall back on the army this time because they are all abroad at the moment.