This is quite an amusing link http://boortz.com/mp3/archive/countdown.swf

Many of you have been wishing for it and now it has finally arrived! The BBC have released a version of the iPlayer for the Wii!

I've just tried it out on my Wii console by going to the URL www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer (using the browser on my Wii) and selecting the 6 o'clock news and within a few seconds I had the 6 o'clock news streaming through my Wii console. The only problem is, is that you have to move the browser around a bit until you can get the video to take up the full screen. It would have been nice if they had released a full screen button for the Wii version of iPlayer like they do on the Windows version.

Eggs Benedict has always been my favourite breakfast, however it has been a dish I have never made myself until now. Partly because of how difficult people told me it was to make. However I was inspired to make it myself after trying it at a cafe (Bar 163) in Egham.

So I started by searching the Internet for the best recipe and as before I ended up on Delia Smiths website you may have seen my earlier article about making poached eggs (another difficult thing to cook). I soon discovered from reading the notes about her recipe that the main issues with making the Hollandaise  Sauce to go over the poached eggs is.

• Stopping the sauce from curdling
• Keeping the sauce warm while you are poaching your eggs (without it curdling)

I found the best way for this was to follow Delia's recipe for Hollandaise sauce however when it came to melting the butter to blend with the rest of the ingredients I followed Delia's other recipe on how to poach an egg. As soon as the water started to simmer for poaching the eggs I started to melt the butter for the Hollandaise Sauce and put the eggs in to poach (this doesn't take long), at the same time I put the bread in the toaster. As soon as the butter was melted and simmering I turned the food processor back on (this contains all the blended ingredients as per Delia's recipe for Hollandaise Sauce) and poured in the melted butter (very slowly). Then I turned my attention back to the poached eggs but left the blender on to stop the sauce curdling. As soon as the toast pops up I placed the poached eggs on the toast and pour over the Hollandaise sauce from the blender. If you want you can flash the eggs under the grill for 20 seconds to give it that tinged golden look (this doesn't take long so be careful). And there you go Eggs Benedict!

"Isn't Easter Fun?"

"What? I can't hear you!"

he he I couldn't resist :)

I had been working on site with a client (can't reveal the company name because of work confidentiality) who very kindly got me 2 going away gifts. One of them was this rather cool and trendy WiFi T shirt! I don't have to emphasize how coveted an item this is amongst geek's like myself! 

You may laugh at how excited I am in owning one of these but that's only because you secretly want one yourself. Just think when your in the middle of city somewhere with no 3G or broadband you can tell your mates where the WiFi is at!

If you've seen the above error when using your BT Yahoo Internet access you've probably been tearing out your hair trying to figure out why you can't send email using your your own domain name instead of the @btinternet.com or @btopenworld.com account. There are many people who have their own domain names which they use for sending email and BT in their infinite wisdom have decided that every single one of them will have to authenticate their email addresses. BT have not introduced this as a measure to reduce spam, but rather part of an "ongoing programme of security improvements" according to an article in The Register, BT customers are fuming. 

Solving the issue
Anyway if you received the error message you probably would have been taken to the following link which shows you how to verify your email address. But if you like me still got the error message, you've probably missed one important thing the article doesn't tell you. The email verification is case sensitive! That's right the email address has to appear exactly the same in verification as it does in your email program otherwise you will get the above error again.

  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 :)