This morning my wife an I decided to have poached eggs, seeing as she took care of dinner last night it was left to yours truly to prepare breakfast this morning (after cleaning the kitchen of course). So as usual I took out the egg poacher cracked the eggs into it perfectly and left it on the stove, placed the bread into the toaster ready to go down while I sat down to sip my coffee. It wasn't long before I smelt a burning plastic type of smell. I rushed into the kitchen to discover the inner plastic frame had melted into the pan. I'd forgotten to put water into the pan! Doh!

Well now that the poaching pan was completely ruined I had to find an alternative method to poaching my eggs...bummer! The thing is the reason we had a poaching pan was that none of us were very good poaching eggs the other way which involved a pot of water. The eggs usually turned out as a snotty mess! So I decided to do a search on Google for "how to poach an egg" clicked on the first link I found which was a comical article put together by someone in more or less the same predicament as me. They had gone to the trouble of googling "how to poach an egg" and had written a piece about each technique. Eventually favouring the place it in a Microwave proof cling film sack and then boil it. I was going to use that method but discovered we didn't have any microwave proof cling film doh!.

What I did

So I decided to brave it and use the Delia Smith method but instead of using a frying pan of simmering water I used a pot with little simmering water at the bottom (enough to cover the egg fully) and a teaspoon of vinegar. I cracked the egg and gently placed it into the simmering water where it sunk to the bottom of the bottom (no need to form a vortex). Letting it simmer (this means there are lots of little bubble at the bottom of the pot, but no bubbling which you usually see when you boil water. To my surprise the egg stuck together (it didn't spread all over the pot), it seems as long as you let it simmer gently the egg kind of stays in one place. So after all this time that's what I was doing wrong! The important and the nicest thing is that the egg only needs to be in there for a minute tops before its ready.

Several years ago I went paintballing for my stag do, it was a funny occasion that saw me covered in bruises at the end where my friends took great pleasure in painting their names on my back as I ran for cover. It so happens one of my good friends David Hedges also decided to go paintballing for his stag do at exactly the same place. Now I would be on the other side of the paintball gun dishing out the punishment .... excellent!

As you can see in the picture above we wasted no time in kitting Dave out with the latest fashion in stag wear - bum shorts. I think this paintballing excursion was definitely the funniest I had ever been on, in many cases our team was winning the game. But as the paintball Marshal said "I can't believe it you only had 1 more person to take out on the opposition team but instead you started shooting each other!" Well to be fair we couldn't believe we were actually winning so when we saw players far ahead of us we naturally thought they were from the opposite side and decided to shoot them!

I suppose its pretty easy to see how "friendly fire" happens in war fare. Thank heavens we were only using paint!

The real fun was at the end when we joined up with the other paintball games to participate in the old ritual of shooting the stags while they ran the gauntlet. I started with 200 bullets and ended with 50, I believe I emptied most of them into Dave ... poor bugger :)

You may have already seen this article in The Register, apparently Apple are being sued over using caller ID in their iPhone. An inventor named Romek Figa  claims Apple infringes the patent he took out in 1990 that identifies a callers phone number coming in and associates it with existing details of the person calling in your phones phone book. To be honest this sounds like just another patent cowboy getting on the band wagon. Some how people seem to be checking existing technology that is in common use today and has probably been in use for almost a decade and are taking out patents on it if no one already has. They then appear to go after the biggest user of the technology or the one with the biggest wallet and sue them.

To be quite frank its pretty disgusting and inhibits technological advances. The last type of case I remember was one brought against Microsoft for automatically starting embedded Java or Active X controls in their Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft refused to pay the fee and got around it by asking you to click on the control to activate it. Web developers got around it by getting JavaScript to activate the control, the holder of the patent however didn't target Firefox or Opera he only went for the big fish.

I think who ever is in charge of the patent office needs to wake up, too many times have such bogus patents been made. Caller ID has been available on phones for more than a decade now, why target Apple? Why not target Microsoft as well they use caller ID in their smart phones too? Don't get me wrong I think patents are important especially for hard working scientists or novices who have come up with a great invention they need to sell so they can get a reward for their hard work. It should not be for get rich quick scheme people.

If you like me can't be bothered to walk down to the post box to send a letter, then you've probably heard of PC2Paper. Its a service that has become increasingly popular over the years especially with us "techy people" who like to do everything from our laptops. Sending a real letter from the Internet has never been easier!

I've just installed a new bit of software from PC2Paper called the PC2Paper Printer a really clever bit of software that installs a printer on your PC. Print to it and it sends the output as a letter straight to your PC2Paper account! What a clever idea and it works brilliantly!

  When our mates Dave and Anita purchased a PS3 for Christmas I couldn't miss the opportunity to have my phone taken with one (very geeky I know!). Anyway I got my first chance to try out a PS3, I had really wanted one for Christmas but I couldn't get hold of the 60gig versions for love of money (these are the ones that are backwards compatible).  Dave and Anita's PS3 was a 40gig version this meant that older PS2 and PS1 DVD's would not work on their console.

The game I was most interested in was Singstar for the PS3. I'll openly admit now that my wife and I were converted a few years ago to the joy of Singstar karaoke by a couple of friends and since then my wife has purchased just about every English Singstar game for the PS2. Its not that we fancy ourselves as rock artists but that the games are so much fun when you have a few friends over and have had a few drinks. The PS3 version actually allows you to download new tracks off the Internet, how cool is that? I can fast see a new market springing up.

Ever since I was a kid I have always loved Robotech. It was one of my first introductions to anime, of course in my youth I lived in South Africa and TV really didn't start until 6PM before then we spent most of our time playing outside. So naturally I missed quite a lot of episodes of this great series. But not to fear through the magic that is Amazon I have now purchased the complete box set of Robotech which I intend to watch in its entirety. 

Robotech for those not in the know is set in a fictional future (1999) where the world is embroiled in war until an alien space craft crash lands on Macros Island in the South Pacific. All of a sudden the wars on Earth stop and the worlds most brilliant scientists set to work investigating the alien technology and restoring it under the guise of project Robotech. From project Robotech comes SDF-1 its flagship and many Veriatech fighters which are effectively the coolest part of Robotech. Basically F15 style jets that transform into robotic fighters, later we are introduced to motor bikes and tanks that do the same thing. However its not long until alien badies are on the scene in the form of the Zentraedi who want the advanced technology for themselves and thus the war begins. 

He he just found this on Classic Funny Quotes

How cool is this a robot vacuum cleaner for £49.99 from eBuyer!

Once I have enough money in my gadget fund, I think this will be my next purchase. I only hope it can actually clean the room and is not just a bit of a gimmick. Even so I can imagine it being hours of entertainment for the cats.