I just opened a rather nice bottle of Circular Quay Shiraz 2006 Bin 30. From South Eastern Australia it is a rather smooth wine with a slight blackcurrant taste and a hint of cedar wood. For around £6.00 a bottle, I think its quite a good buy.

A pair of peregrine falcon chicks in Inverurie have died after being poisoned. It is not known who killed the birds but police are appealing for information. There are currently only around 1,285 breeding pairs of peregrine falcons in the UK. The species have long been persecuted by game keepers and pigeon fanciers because the falcons eat mainly small birds. The Scottish raptor group estimates that around a quarter of nests in Scotland are subject to interference and killing despite the fact that these birds are still greatly at risk.

I have an intense hatred of garden gnomes, so much so, that not even one is allowed to set foot in my garden. This article represents one of most nightmares, a garden full of the little critters. Jean Balcombe from Willesborough in Kent has 1,500 gnomes in her garden which she has collected over 20 years.

A businessman and 18 friends spent a record £105,805 on drink at a London nightclub. Among the drinks they consumed were £80,000 worth of champagne, 4 bottles of Cristal Rose, 6 magnums of Dom Perignon, 36 bottles of Cristal and 12 bottles of Dom Perignon Rose. I feel better now about splashing out on a bottle of wine with my meal last night.

I found this really interesting quiz. It has 10 websites and challenges you to spot which are the real sites and which are the fakes. I got six out of ten.

A hamster that was left out with the rubbish has been rescued and has now been adopted by council workers. They have named him Brian although it appears he may actually be a she.

There has been a lot of news coverage recently about banks charging their customers unfair overdraft charges on their current accounts. The competition watchdog today launched a case against eight of the UK’s largest current account provides accusing them of unfair bank charges. The banks currently apply large bank charges on customers who have gone into their unauthorised overdraft. The watchdog has challenged these fees, however, saying they should be limited to what it actually costs the account provider when the account goes overdrawn. In some cases banks charge up to £39 for going overdrawn. The eight banks involved in this test case are Abbey, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nationwide. As someone who has been charges unfair fees in the past I will be watching this case with interest.

Cats and rats have been helping Colombian police sniff out land mines. The rats are trained to sniff out landmines and are taught to freeze when they detect one. The problem is that the rats have not been doing the job effectively because they are frightened of predators. Putting the rat into a cage with a cat helps the rat becomes used to the presence of possible predators so they can concentrate on their job. The cat’s claws are covered so they cannot injure the rat.

You might have cause to be worried if Oscar the cat (not my cat Oscar) curls up next to you. The cat has an uncanny knack for curling up next to patients at a nursing home just before they die. Staff at the nursing home have now started alerting the patients family if Oscar sits next to them.

A giant bustard has laid an egg in Britain for the first time since 1832. The birds are part of a program to reintroduce the great bustard to Britain using chicks from Russia. Although the eggs have not hatched it is still an encouraging sign that the species should be able to breed successfully in Britain.

I went to the hairdresser today to get my yearly hair cut. My hair is very thick so it had got to the stage where it felt like I was wearing a carpet, and the weight of it was causing me to have headaches. Now I have considerably less hair. I must try and go at least twice a year in future.

Farmers in Macedonia have found some cognac which dates back to the First World War. The batches of cognac were buried in trenches used by French soldiers and recently several cases have been found. They are expected to fetch around £3,360 each.

I have noticed over the last month or so that most of the spam I get seems to contain simply a PDF attachment. I was wondering whether this was a new tactic designed to fool people into opening up a dodgy file. I came across this article today that claim spammers have stopped sending pictures in their emails and instead started attaching PDF’s. It appears that they are doing this to try and get around corporate spam filters. So far, it appears to be getting through my spam filter quite effectively with several hundred of these spam mails with PDF attachments arriving each day. Whilst my daily amount of spam mails continues to rise, I suppose one good thing about this latest trend is I don’t have to read about Viagra or penis enlargement unless I actually open the PDF.

A cat was thrown from a car in Cornwall, the frightened cat managed to run across several lanes of traffic to the middle of a roundabout. The cat was left uninjured but very frightened. Hopefully it will soon find a new home with someone who will look after him.

A man found a crispy rodent in his bag of crisps. The mouse had apparently been deep fried but the manufacturers say it could have entered the bag after the crisps left their factory. Either way, finding a crispy mouse is not a pleasant experience.

With the long hot summers we have been seeing in the UK (not this year) English wine seems to be enjoying something of a boom. I read this interesting article which talks about several different vineyards here in England and what type of wine they produce. It’s given me a few ideas about new wines to try and I will certainly be looking for some English wine next time I visit the supermarket.

A glue has been produced that can attach equally well to both to both wet and dry surfaces. It was inspired by sticky geckos that can climb using their sticky feet. The glue is similar in structure to a gecko’s foot and also contains a polymer that mimics the glue a mussel uses. It is likely to be used for adhesive tapes and water resistant adhesives for bandages.

A German zoo has been accused of selling its animals as food. It is alleged that wild pigs, goats, deer and an anteater have been killed and then sold for their meat. The authorities fear that the Erfurt Zoo has been killing for animals for several years to fulfil people’s tastes for unusual meats.

I’m still getting used to my new iPod that my husband brought me for my wedding anniversary and have been looking at iPod software that will make things easier. iPod Audiobook is a new conversion tool for people that own iPod’s. It converts audio files into a a format supported by your iPod. It can deal with MP3 files, Wav files, OGG files, Wma files and CDA files just to name a few. It’s made to integrate seamlessly with Windows so you can convert all of your audio files without even having to launch the program. It can also convert hundreds of files in one batch and you can get a 30 day free trial.

The TV remote could soon be a thing of the past. Scientists in Australia have invented a device that allows viewers to control the TV by using simple hand gestures. The gadget includes a camera that can recognise hand gestures and could be easily incorporated into set top boxes. A clenched fist turns the TV on, a thumbs up sign controls the volume and a sideways sign can change channels.

A Chihuahua called Zoe attacked a rattlesnake that had tried to bite her owners child. The brave dog jumped in between the snake and the child taking several bites from the snake. Following treatment for her wounds Zoe is now recovering.

This article is not about big dicks. It's about an article I read recently suggesting that links such as the words big dick seem to generate more traffic to your blog. The article in question was not linking to a porn site but to a blog entitled Big Dick's Blog. Anyway that's enough big dick links, I will be interested to see if my traffic increases.

My blogging has got a little bit out of control and what started out as a personal blog, now appears to be more of a mini news feed. With this in mind I have started a couple of new blogs to try and split the content up a little bit. This blog will remain a personal blog, and contain all the usual stuff I blog about. However, I am going to post most of the shopping related content at ineedashop and most of the news related content at atheniaglobe which will both be live soon. In addition to these you can already read my design related blog and my travel related blog.

My cats have been hunting frogs for several months now with no success. So little success in fact that I had become secure in the knowledge that the frogs were too smart to be caught. Yesterday Oscar (pictured) came running into the house with a large frog firmly between his teeth. At first I assumed he had caught a bird but upon further inspection I found it was a frog and was still very much alive. After a bit of persuasion I managed to get Oscar to drop his frog and returned it to the pond. Oscar was left with a very bad taste in his mouth, but is still hunting frogs.

A man pulled over by police on suspicion of driving whilst drunk was found to be completely naked. The man was wearing only his shoes and socks and had four friends in the car with him. They were so drunk they did not appear to notice that their friend was naked.