A group of Somerset based cheese makers have launched the first piece of cheese into space. The mission which is hoped to be the first space flight by a piece of Cheddar launched a 300g wedge of Cheddar into the upper atmosphere. Unfortunately not everything has gone to plan and the GPS tracking system has stopped working causing the cheese to be lost in space. The organisers are now appealing for help to find the cheese once it lands.. It is thought it could turn up anywhere between Pewsey in Wiltshire and Hertfordshire.

This is interesting its a device that has been made by two Kenyan students which allows bicycle riders to charge their phone whilst cycling. The dynamo powered charger is designed to help people in rural areas who do not have electricity. According to the article people in some villages have to travel long distances to shops where they are charged $2 to charge their phone from a car battery or solar panel. The device is small enough to fit into a pocket along with a mobile phone. In Kenya bicycles are sold with a dynamo which is attached to the back wheel to power the lights. The lead can be switched to plug into the charger instead to power the device. It takes about an hour of pedalling to fully charge a mobile phone.

One of the best things about our new house is the large garden which is full of wildlife. On the day we arrived we discovered a hole at the bottom of the garden and were curious as to what might be inside. A few days later I came across a large fox sunning itself on the lawn and it now appears that we have a whole family of foxes. I have also noticed several squirrels and there are signs of hedgehog activity although I haven't actually seen one yet. We also have a variety of different birds. The most abundant appears to be the big fat wood pigeons and doves which sit in the tall trees surrounding the garden. I have also seen blackbirds, song thrushes, robins, green finches, coal tits, blue tits, great tits, wrens, crows, magpies, starlings, gold finches, woodpeckers, sparrows and some type of small hawk. As a keen birdwatcher I can see I am going to like it here. Once I have found where I packed the camera I hope to have some pictures of the wildlife so expect these to be posted shortly.

An orphaned elephant called Nellie has got a new lease of life after he was fitted with a false foot. The elephant lost his foot when he was caught in a poacher’s snare. The foot had become infected and it was thought that Nellie would never walk again. His rescuers cut away the infected tissue and cleaned his wounds before fitting the prosthetic limb. It will need changing as he grows bigger but it appears this elephant is very happy with his new foot.

Moving house can be quite stressful especially if you have pets. Having four cats this was one of the main concerns we had about the move. Not only did we have to get four cats into four boxes (a miracle at the best of times) we had to do it whilst they were stressed out because of the strange people in the house and we had an hours drive ahead of us to get to our new home. One thing that made the move easier was that we had decided to do it over the course of two days. On day one we locked our furry friends in one room in the old house. The removal men then moved everything out of the the other part of the house. Once they had left for the day we moved all the remaining furniture out of the “cats room” so that the following day the removal men could take the rest of our stuff and just leave us four cats in an empty house.

On day two the rest of the house was cleared very quickly and the removal lorry set off to the new house with all our belongings packed up. We then proceeded to catch the cats starting with Willow and Oscar, the most docile and leaving Lucy and Oliver (evil hissing balls of fur) until last. Surprisingly we managed the near impossible feat of getting all four cats into boxes within the hours and even more surprisingly we still had all of our fingers. We then packed the boxes complete with cats into the car and set off to the new house accompanied all the way by Oliver howling at the top of his voice. Just over an hour later we arrived at the new house, with Oliver still howling in protest. Once again we put aside a small “cat room” and put the cat boxes into the room. We set up a clean litter tray and some food and water, opened the doors of the cat boxes and put a sign on the door on the room reading “do not open cats”. With the cats taken care of we moved all of our things into the new home.

We then used the “cat room” as a base for the cats. Once the house was free of removal men we opened the door and gradually one by one the cats plucked up the courage to come out and explore. They were initially very nervous but curiosity quickly gets the better of even the most nervous cat. Now nearly a week later all of the cats have left the “cat room” and now spend most of their time sitting on the windowsill hunting the fat pigeons in the garden. The next step will be to let the cats outside to explore but we will leave it a few weeks before we introduce them to the outside.

Its been just over a week now since we moved into our new house and the place is just starting to feel like home. Whilst the inside of the house has all of our old things in it I must admit I am finding it hard to get used to being in a different location. Having been away from Sevenoaks for nearly ten years its strange to leave the house and not see the familiar surroundings of Egham. In many ways Sevenoaks is as I remember it but there are some changes and it frequently surprises me when I find a building has disappeared or its usage has changed. It will certainty take time to get used to the area again but it is nice to be just around the corner from my family and be able to just pop round for a cup of tea rather than facing a long drive on the motorway.

If you follow my Twitter updates then you will probably know we have recently moved house. Whilst the move went well and we and the four cats have arrived safely at our new house in Sevenoaks, getting back on broadband did not go so smoothly, hence why my blog has not had many updates recently. As I work from home Broadband is an essential service so we phoned BT before we moved to ensure it would be set up on our arrival. What we were not prepared for was the fact that the previous Broadband provider had left a marker on the line. As a result of this BT were unable to set up the Broadband as we had requested and instead cancelled the requested service leaving us without Broadband for a week. After many calls and a long wait we are finally back on Broadband and blogging once more.

If you don’t have the time to boil an egg then you can now buy them ready boiled at the supermarket. The eggs are produced by The Happy Egg Company. They are peeled boiled and peeled by machine before being packed and have a shelf life of nine to ten days. The eggs will be on sale at Waitrose, Asda, One Stop and Ocado at 89p for a pack of two or £1.49 for four. The Happy Egg Company is marketing the eggs as an ideal snack for picnics and a tasty snack that can be prepared in minutes. Personally I would rather just boil them myself.

Stan Hardwick is a man with a serious love of lawnmowers. So much so, that he owns 365 of them. Pictured left are just a few of the ones he keeps in his living room. The others are stored in a two storey shed at the bottom of his garden. The thing that stuck out for for me was the great contrast between the cheerful look on Stan’s face and the the long suffering one of his wife. Poor woman, she must really love him to have a living room full of lawn mowers.

This is interesting, its a new treatment which could prevent the onset of macular degeneration, one of the main causes of blindness. The treatment can reverse the effects of age related macular degeneration. It works by using a short pulse laser to clean tiny particles of debris which cloud the patients sight. The technique rejuvenates the membrane behind the retina and allows the eye to return to a more youthful uncluttered state. The treatment is currently still in the trial stages with the next trial focusing on people who have already been treated for AMD in one eye, with the aim of halting the onset of AMD in their other eye.

If you often have a sneaking suspicion that your cat has more power over you than it should do, then you might be right. According to this article cats have found a way to manipulate humans by using a special type of purr. Unlike a regular purr the sound incorporates a cry that has a similar frequency to a human babies. Apparently unlike meowing which people usually find annoying the purring sound is very hard for people to ignore and they generally give into the cats demands. The particular cry does occur in low levels in cats normal purring but it appears the devious little creatures have learnt to exaggerate it dramatically in order to get want they want from people. My cats certainly have a loud purring noise that they use when they want their ears rubbed and it usually works.

According to this article rhino poaching is set to reach a 15 year high. The warning comes from conservation groups who warn the animals are at risk due to the demand for their horns which are used in traditional medicine. It is estimated that the number of rhinos being killed in southern Africa has risen four fold over recent years. Although there have been recent successes in conservation efforts it is now feared that these are being undone by the huge increase in poaching.

I saw this story a few months ago about a hedgehog named Spud who has mysteriously lost all his prickles. At the time no one knew what was wrong with him and he looked rather strange. Staff as St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital are still baffled as to why Spud lost all his prickles but the good news is that he has now started to grow new ones and looks a little more like a hedgehog again.

I have been using Twitter for a while now and have been very careful to abide by all the Twitter rules. Always erring on the side of the caution I am careful what I link to, I don’t repost other peoples content without giving them the credit for the original tweet (retweet), I don’t impersonate others and I certainly don’t use my account for violence or threat, breach copyright or promote illegal activities. Likewise I have not created a number of serial accounts, I have not engaged in name squatting, I have not tried to sell user names, publish malware or use Twitter for the purpose of spam. I can only assume that my last update regarding the fact I was defrosting my freezer must have upset someone. So please tell me Twitter, what did I do?

I have posted a “suspended in error request” and am waiting to see if I get a response. Has anyone else had this problem?

Update
30 minutes after logging the request my account seems to be back, it seems Twitter likes me again. Lets hope it lasts.

This seems like a really good job. Its a position for a witch at Wookey Hole caves in Somerset. The job which pays £50,000 a year includes accommodation as the witch is expected to live in the caves. The applicant must be able to teach witchcraft and magic. Other than that they must live in the cave and simply do the things that witches do. Both men and women can apply, although it is a requirement that they must be able to cackle and cannot be allergic to cats. The job is open because the previous witch has retired.

According to this article Amur tigers are on the brink of extinction. There are currently thought to be only 500 tigers left in the wild. The results come after a genetic survey of wild Amur tigers. At the start of the 20th century there were nine subspecies of tigers with a total population of around 100,000 individuals. Three subspecies, the Javan tiger, Bali tiger and Caspian tiger are now extinct and world tiger numbers have fallen to fewer than 3000. The Amur tiger was also nearly driven to extinction due to habitat loss and poaching and in the 1940s only between 20 and 30 individuals survived. Since then the Amur tiger has seen a slow recovery with about 500 tigers thought to survive in the wild. The problem is that the remaining population of tigers is behaving as though it were the size of only 27 to 35 individuals due to factors such as non-breeding individuals and a skewed sex ratio. The remaining Amur tigers are also split into two populations that rarely intermingle reducing the size of the world population further.

If this article can be believed then climate change is responsible for shrinking sheep. The article is based upon a study of Soay sheep in Scotland. It found that since 1985 sheep have decreased in size by 5%. In addition to this their legs have also got shorter. The change has been put down to the fact that milder winters help smaller sheep to survive resulting in a decline in size. Younger sheep also tended to give birth to smaller lambs and eventually smaller sheep start to become more common.

This cute little guy is Fareeda the first white Bengal tiger without stripes to be born in Africa. Pure white Bengals are so unusual that none are thought to exist in the wild. Her brother and sister all have the regular stripes that you would expect to see on a Bengal tiger, as do her mother and father, although they carry the gene for white colouring. It is thought there are only 20 white Bengal tigers alive in the world today so she certainly is unusual.

According to this article Marks and Spencer is the worst supermarket for packaging waste. A study found that the supermarket is worse than Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Waitrose and Morrisons when it comes to packaging. Which? found that its packs of bacon, punnets for mushrooms and tubs for ice cream were all heavier than similar packaging from their rivals. Which? brought 27 own brand items from leading supermarkets including fresh and frozen food and washing up liquid and fizzy drinks. In each case the total packaging including the labels was weighed. The total weight of Marks and Spencer’s packaging was 415g, Sainsbury’s was the lightest at 369g and Tesco was just slightly more at 370g. Marks and Spencer said the study was flawed because it failed to take into account the amount of recycled material that was included in the packaging. They claim that in many cases their packaging may weigh more but is actually more environmentally friends because it is made from more recycled content.

I have noticed a huge number of greenflies in my garden over the past few weeks and it appears I am not the only one. According to this article the recent hot weather has created the perfect conditions that’s the flies need to reproduce. The cold winter has also meant that many of the larger insects that eat the greenflies have been killed off. The insect explosion whilst it is not good news for gardeners like me is however, good news for garden birds that rely on insect numbers to flourish.

Something that has been puzzling researchers for some time is the amount of frogs that are found around the world with missing legs. It was originally thought to have been caused by chemical pollution but it appears it might have a more natural cause. According to this article dragonfly nymphs are rather partial to eating the legs on developing tadpoles. The nymphs rarely eat the tadpole whole and instead grab it and chew on its limbs often removing them altogether. The tadpole usually survives and later turns into as adult frog with missing legs. It appears that the adult frogs are able to survive for a long time with missing legs which goes some way to explaining why there are so many legless frogs hopping around.

We have a large hedge all around the outside of our property which can be battle to keep under control so I can sympathise with this man. Tired of his unruly hedge he decided to turn it into a herd of elephants. He spent two days cutting the overgrown hedge into the shape of elephants and now has a 100ft trail of hedge elephants to the side of his house. I’m guessing that as my husband would not let carve the hedge into a cool hedge monster or a hedge whale, that a herd of elephants will be out of the question, but we will see.

Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of worm charming but it appears it is popular enough to have a World Worm Charming Championship. For those who don’t know what worm charming is, it is the art of coaxing worms out of soil. Apparently this can be done in a number of ways including playing them music or sticking a fork in the ground and hitting it with a stick. It appears that vibrations in the soil cause the works to come to the top of the ground. One worm charmer called Stan who charms them by playing music claims that rock music work best, apparently worms don’t like easy listening or classical music. The best technique for charming worms might be a matter of debate but what is clear is that the Worm Charming Championships are taken very seriously. In the past competitors have been disqualified for underhand techniques such as concealing worms in their trousers legs and sprinkling them on the ground and chopping worms in half to double their totals. Both of which have led to disqualification. There are no rules for worm charming but the code of conduct dictates that the worms must be treated kindly and that competitors must respect each others plots. This years winner was Sophie Smith who managed an impressive record of 567 worms.

This is unusual its one woman's project to recreate the Sistine Chapel ceiling in a cross stitch. It took eight years to finish the piece which is actually longer than it took to create the original ceiling. It certainly is impressive.

This is interesting, its a study that suggests being slightly overweight could actually help you to live longer. By slightly overweight it means being a few pounds heavier that your recommended BMI. The findings come after scientists studied the relationship between body mass index and death among 11,326 adults over a 12 months period. They found that underweight people were 70 per cent more likely than people of a normal weight to die and extremely obese people were 36 per cent more likely to die. People who were only slightly overweight, however, were 17 per cent less likely to die. Based on this I think I will have that bacon sandwich I was thinking about.

I came across this article the other day and personally thought it needed a revised headline. The article is about a pensioner who lost control of his vehicle when driving down a busy street and unfortunately ended up ploughing into the front of an opticians shop causing thousands of pounds of damage. The pensioner was wearing glasses but it appears they might have needed stronger lenses.

A man has invented a solar powered plane which he hopes will be able to fly around the world. The plane is 61m wide but weighs just 1,500kg. It uses solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to enable it to fly at night. It is currently only a prototype but the final version of the plane will try to cross the Atlantic in 2012 in an unmanned flight.

If you have a bit of extra cash to spend then you might be interested in one of these T Rex models. They cost £29,000 and measure 33ft long. They are hand made out of fibreglass and resin and are produced in the Philippines. They also feature a row of 8 inch teeth to make them extra scary.

This is interesting its a plant that pretends to be ill in order to deter predators from eating it. The plant produces patterns on its leaves which mimic the damage done to plants by mining moths. The picture shows actual mining moth damage on the left and the fake damage right. It appears that moths do not lay any further larvae on leaves that already have damage so they avoid the plants with the fake leaf damage. The idea was tested by painting white correctional fluid on the leaves of some plants to mimic the moth damage. After three the number of leaves affected by the moths were counted comparing green leaves and the pattered leaves. It was found that those with the patterns were significantly less damaged than the plain green ones.

This is Miss Ellie the winner of this years ugliest dog competition. She is a pure breed Chinese created hairless and her unique feature include only having a few teeth, cataracts in both eyes and only limited hair. She definitely does deserve her title.

A man in Liverpool had a welcome surprise when he was undertaking work to insulate his loft. He came across some forgotten paintings which turned out to be worth £100,000. The collection of 100 painting by artist Erich Wolfsfeld has been in the loft for about 20 years. They were left to him by his late mother and were family heirlooms created by his stepfather. The painting are now due to be auctioned on the 7th of July. Unfortunately a recent clear out of my loft revealed only junk and no priceless antiques.

Further to yesterdays post about the batch of 20p coins that were produced without a date it appears you might be able to get a good price for them online. One has recently gone on sale on eBay for £20,000. Experts had originally predicted that the coins could be worth as much as £50 but it appears some people are willing to pay a lot more to get their hands on one. Sadly, having gone through all my change I don’t have one, but will certainly be keeping an eye out. I could certainly use an extra £20,000.

According to this article some supermarket salads contain more fat and calories than you would find in a Big Mac and fries. The consumer group Which? looked at a number of salads on sale in supermarkets. It founds that a Smedleys Atlantic prawn marie rose salad from Morrisons contained 855 calories and 66.3g of fat. A Sainsbury’s tomato and basil chicken salad also had a high fat content with 27.7g of fat and 595 calories. In comparison a Big Mac and medium fries contains 820 calories and 40g of fat. The reason for the high fat content of most of the salads was the fact that they contained a large amount of mayonnaise, creamy sauces or pasta all of which are high in fat.

According to this article a batch of coins have been minted that contain no date. The error is thought to have affected between 50,000 and 200,000 of 20p coins and is the first time in 300 years that coins have been minted without a date. The date on the 20p coin was moved last year from the tails side of the coin to the heads side. The coins with no date were created accidentally by pairing up the new tails side with the old heads side meaning they had no date on them at all. If you are lucky enough to find any they could be worth as much as £50, quite a bit more that the face value.

According to this article Waitrose shoppers are increasingly choosing the supermarkets budget range as they try to save money. Their essential range of products are packaged in simple white boxes and packets are similar to the basics range of products produced by Sainsbury’s. Sales of the range are up 11 per cent compared to a year ago and the supermarket expects to sell £600 million of essential products over the next 12 months. Sainsbury’s have also recently published figures that suggest shoppers are choosing the budget range of products. What do you think? Are you cutting back?

If you are unemployed and are able to leave the country for a while then this job might be for you. Described as a Globe Trotter it is the opportunity to travel around the world for a year and have it all paid for. The job is being offered by lastminute.com and all of the £20,000 travel expenses will be covered. The successful applicant needs no specific qualifications but they will need to write reviews on the hotels, restaurants and attractions that they visit. They will not receive a salary but the entire cost of the trip will be covered. If you want to apply you have until the 15th of July and need to send a photo of yourself having a good time on holiday and a 200 word review describing your experience.