A house in Kensington has sold for £80 million making it London’s most expensive home. The previous record was £67 million for a property in Kensington Palace Gardens. This property is five storeys high and has an underground swimming pool, a sauna and a gym.

I came across this really cute article about a boxer dog called Billy who has adopted a goat called Lilly. Billy has become Lilly’s constant companion, sleeping with her, cleaning her and protecting her from danger. How cute is that?

We have been talking about moving house for a long time and are finally starting to do something about it. Whilst I love our house, it is starting to get a little small for our needs and with four cats and running a business from home it’s definitely time to move on. We made the first step by getting an estate agent around to value our property the other day and were surprised to find it is worth quite a bit more than we expected. Over the next few weeks we will be moving all of our stuff into storage in a major effort to declutter the house. Then we plan to replace the carpets and do a bit of painting, before putting the house on the market. We will also be looking at other properties over the next few weeks and months to try and get an idea of the sort of house we are looking to move to. We have two houses to see at the weekend as well as a meeting with Lok’nStore where we plan to store the contents of our house whilst we are trying to sell it. It’s all very exciting and there are sure to be many property related post over the next few months. If it all goes to plan, hopefully we will soon be settled in a new home.

It’s interesting that the elephant population in South Africa has now got so large they will have to start culling the population. The elephant appears to have become a victim of its own success with numbers growing from just 8,000 to nearly 20,000 in just over ten years since culling was banned. An elephant herd at the Kruger National Park now has 12,500 elephants which according to park officials is 5,000 elephants too many. A new conservation plan will include killing the excess animals as well as other methods such as contraception and translocation. Culling the animals will only be allowed once the other options have been ruled out.

Supporters of culling say that the growing numbers of elephants are reducing forests to flatland and threatening the biodiversity of national parks. Conservationists on the other hand say that the environmental impact is less severe than claimed and that culling is deeply inhumane. To be able cull its elephants a national park or private reserves will need the approval of the authorities and an elephant management specialist. They must also show that they have first explored all the other options. With the elephant population still growing at a rate of 6% if no solution is found there could be 34,000 elephants by 2020, a number that wildlife officials say is unsustainable.

PC2Paper, the website that allows you to send real letters from the internet has just launched a new and easier way to use their service. It is called the PC2Paper Virtual Printer and basically allows you to print your letters as you would do to a normal desktop printer. The letters are then passed to PC2Paper who print and mail them for you. To use the service you need to have a PC2Paper account with credit in it. Then you simply download the PC2Paper printer from the website and install the driver. When you have a document that you want to mail, you just select the PC2Paper printer from the list of printers on your computer. Then just enter what sort of paper you require, what class of postage and what printing station you want it mailed from. You will then be asked for your PC2Paper user name and password. Once you input these, the letter is passed to the PC2Paper printing station and they take care of the rest for you. It has currently only been launched as a beta but it seems like a really good idea. There is more detail on how to use it on their blog.

Facebook saw its first drop in users during January prompting the question of whether it is starting to lose its appeal. Users fell by 5% to 8.9 million from 8.5 million according to data from Nielsen Online. All the indications show that the site is simply not as popular as it used to be. An internet analyst at Nielsen Online said that it was inevitable that growth rates could not be sustained and that numbers were likely to level out. Personally, whilst I used to log in to Facebook daily I  found that the amount of applications now available make it very distracting and time consuming. I now tend to spend just a few minutes a week on the site and ignore all new application requests.

Weather balloons could be used to provide mobile phone and broadband services to rural Britain. An American company called Space Data has already used small phone masts attached to balloons to provide wireless internet access to remote areas. The group has supplied military and commercial clients for four years but is now preparing to link with broadband companies to offer services to residential customers. Space Data has patented the service in 41 countries and is now considering the US as a potential market. The service uses a small transceiver attached to a balloon which then rises to an altitude of 30,500m after it has been released. The company says that one balloon can beam a signal to an area equivalent to 80 mobile phone towers. The service does have one drawback, the balloons only last for 24 hours before bursting which means a constant supply has to be released to maintain the connection and the radio equipment on the burst balloon has to be retrieved by a team using location devices.

A restaurant owner in Michigan has created what could be the world’s biggest hamburger. The burger weighs 60.9kg (134 pounds) and contains beef, bacon and cheese. It took around 12 hours to make and takes three men to flip it. If you want to order one it would cost $350 (£178) and the restaurant requires that you give them 24 hours notice. That’s a lot of meat.

Spurs beat Chelsea by 2 goals to 1 today to win the Carling Cup. As a long time Spurs supporter I must admit that my expectations were not really that high. Although I thought there might be a slim chance of winning I did think that Chelsea would prove to be the better team. This coupled with the fact that Spurs have not won a major trophy since 1999 made me think our chances were not that great. However, I am pleasantly surprised and although it has been a long time coming, it really is a good day for Spurs. And for all you Chelsea supporters out there, let me just say “TWO ONE”. He he.

It is likely that beer drinkers will soon see the price of a pint of beer hitting the £4 mark. The drinks industry is facing huge rises in production and distribution costs meaning it will soon have to pass these increases onto the customer. A pint of beer currently costs around £3.20 on average but some sources predict prices could rise as much as 60%. The price could be increased still further if there in an increase in beer duty in next months budget.