Gareth Jones

It was my birthday on Friday. I’m now 28 years old. Wow. It feels like only yesterday I donned my “18″ t-shirt knowing that it would get me a free beer in each of Dolgellau‘s pubs – and that was now 10 years ago. Scary.

Never mind all that though because this year, (for the first time in over 20 years!) someone made me a birthday cake! Nicola very kindly made me a very tasty Victoria sponge and even wrote happy birthday on it. She did crack a joke about not having enough candles (you’re only a year younger, woman!) but the slice of cake – which was still warm from the oven – was gorgeous so I decided to forgive her.

I recently became the proud owner of a Panasonic Lumix Tz7 after upgrading from a Casio Exilim EX-Z1000. The Casio was an awesome little camera and had lots of features crammed into its slim and elegant case, but while trying to photograph fast-moving cars that were travelling at a distance at the Nürburgring back in August, it became apparent that I needed something bigger/faster/better for next time.

An SLR would be the obvious answer, but I didn’t want something that I’d be forced to carry around all the time – after all, taking photos is only half the story at these events. I wanted something that I’d be able to fit into my pocket so that I could forget about it when I wasn’t taking photos.

The Lumix has 12x optical zoom, an infinite burst mode (assuming free memory of course) and 720p video recording among a host of other features. It’s just a little bigger than the Exilim yet it has features and specifications that rival some SLRs. The picture (and video) quality is fantastic, and while it’s not going to replace my HD dedicated video camera for recording important video to burn to Blu-Ray, being able to take videos of such quality quickly and easily is a great bonus for what was already an impressive photo camera.

For a full review of the Lumix, check out CNET.

On Saturday 5th, my father and I once again departed to Holyhead for the ferry to Ireland for this year’s American and Kit Car show. We went in the Detomaso, which is an awesome car with an impressive road presence, made most apparent when everyone gets out of the way when they see it in their rear-view mirror.

Despite forecasts of rain over the weekend (with the heaviest rain destined to be right over Kilbeggan – great), we were hopeful. As we got closer to Holyhead the weather wasn’t great and the signs said that the crossing would be mildly rough. Neither of us were particularly bothered by that as we can both travel well on a boat.

We got onto the boat, got some lunch and sat back for the ride. The crossing turned out to be very smooth which was unexpected but pleasant nonetheless. An hour and a half later we were in Dublin, where we disembarked to find the sun was out and surprisingly hot.

We found our way out of Dublin’s port and took the M50 ring-road to get to the other side of Dublin, where we could then get onto the N4 and travel pretty much due West for most of the way to Tullamore. Throughout the hour-and-a-half journey the sun was shining brightly in the sky. We got to the hotel – the same one we used last year – and checked in before getting a quick shower and change and heading into town for some beers.

At this point I should point out that in Ireland, a general rule is that everything is at least 1.5x as expensive as it is in the UK, and in some cases this is closer to 2x.

We had a good few beers in our 6 hours out before getting a taxi back to the hotel.

The next morning we awoke to the sound of rain, and indeed outside was grey, wet and windy. Disappointing, but we hadn’t gone all that way to be put off by some condensation! We arrived at the field to find that the grass was already starting to get muddy and cars were already wheel-spinning while trying to park. Vehicles continued to arrive as the rain fell but it was obvious that there weren’t going to be as many attendees as last year.

Eventually we decided to brave the rain and go for a walk around the field to look at what was there. There were some cars that were there last year but also a lot of new stuff. There were more trucks this year. There was also more entertainment, with a simulator and a fairground ride (the Yankee) in the centre of the field as well as some line dancing (no thanks!).

I took photos of everything that looked interesting before going back to the car totally soaked, and every so often went for another walk around the field to catch any late arrivals. Last year people were still arriving at 4pm; this year people had stopped arriving by around 1pm. At around 2.30 we decided to call it a day – both soaked – and head into Tullamore to get some lunch and then get ready to go out again for some more £4.50 beers.

The next day as we got up around 8am to start our journey back to Wales, the sun was shining and the skies were blue – as you’ll see in the photos of the speed boat at the port in Dun Laoghaire. Bloody typical!

Today’s learners are bombarded with all kinds of high quality digital entertainment; including big-screen movies at the cinema, high-definition video games on their plasmas at home and big-budget mobile video games when they’re on the move. As the quality and the availability of this entertainment increases, learners are expecting other forms of media to keep up and are looking for higher quality resources from which to learn; resources that can satisfy their appetite for impressive audio-visuals while still retaining relevant content.

Most elearning aimed at maths students is dry, static, stale and boring. Other resources succeed in being a little more creative with their ideas, but sadly fall short when it comes to their execution. This is sometimes because they have been developed by maths teachers who know how to do maths, but don’t know how to create engaging software with high production values despite their best efforts and intentions.

Learnalot is an exciting educational portal that fuses the subject knowledge of teachers with top-end software to create case study problems that truly engage and challenge its learners. Each case study is different but they all provide pupils, teachers and parents with problems that are fun to use whilst also being a rich learning experience.

Although we are currently focussed on developing a full suite of Mathematics resources for KS3, we eventually plan to cater for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 as well as GCSE across a number of other subjects and will be making frequent additions to the list of available resources.

Our case studies will be available to educational institutions on an annual subscription basis.

The portal itself is currently in development, as is our first resource, and we aim to have between five and ten resources ready for the launch of the portal early next year.

Active Goal Challenge has been translated into Spanish, which makes it our first non-English game. It’s hopefully the first of many such projects though so watch this space.