Last week Granada Television were filming in Park Road Chelmsford for a documentary which will be broadcast on Sky Television later in the year.

Ultralab is based at Anglia Polytechnic University in Chelmsford, and our entrance is off of Park Road.

Down Park Road is two rows of boarded up housing, which belong to APU. These houses were built in the 1960’s (one was built in 1908) and were the home of students for years.

Two years ago the University closed up the houses, ready for demolition, although that has not happened yet. The building I write this blog entry in ‘North Building’ is also due for demolition one day, and I’ll write its obituary when that time comes.

Anyway, back to the story…..Park Road’s houses have been opened up and turned back into housing for a film set. Basically, if two planes were to collide anywhere in the country, it has been stated that Chelmsford would be the most likely place for that to happen….we have flight paths from nearby Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow and Luton flying over us.

The documentary follows the story of a fateful accident, and for the camera, Park Road was ‘messed up’.

Walking down Park Road with Ultralab Director, Richard Millwood it was interesting to view how the set had been created, bits of plane everywhere, one of the houses had been turned into a flower shop, and cars were overturned.

Take a look at the pictures I took on my phone camera:

Take a look at the pictures I took on my phone camera:

The people from the BBC ‘A Picture of Britain’ site emailed me to say my picture is on the site, ready to be voted for.

You can find (and vote for) my picture here:

Matthew Eaves - a Picture of Britian (BBC Website)

The picture was taken while walking about five miles with my brother, Andrew along the coast of Dorset.

Yesterday evening I headed to the Cineworld cinema in Braintree to watch Batman Begins.

I’ve not seen a Batman movie in the cinema since Batman Returns back in 1992.

The story follows how Batman came into existence, I’m not really a fan of these movies but the trailor for the film is excellent, and made me go and watch it.

The film is painfully slow to start, and even though it dragged on and on, the opening explanation was all still hurried. I’m not sure the story of the blue flower made any real sense at all, again, all too hurried, but still dragged on.

The story follows how Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents, all due to his fear of bats.

Lots of explosions, train derailments, deep ‘Batman’ style voices, roof scenes, cool ‘Batmobile’…..but no Robin.

The ‘Bat logo’ and the ‘Batmobile’ look very cool, I can’t understand why these would look so cool if Batman is to ‘downgrade’ to less for the later movies if this is the story of how ‘Batman Begins’….. food for thought…..

Worth watching.

Watch the Batman Begins Trailer.

“Why do we fall over? So we can learn to pick ourselves up” …

8 out of 10.

Thanks to all the staff and students at SEEVIC College in Benfleet Essex for making the team from Anglia Polytechnic University so welcome at your careers day. Ian van der Linde and myself spoke together at various sessions, Ian represented APU’s Faculty of Science and Technology and spoke primarily abou the APU campus and its computer based courses. As a former student, I spoke about APU’s learning, technology and research department: Ultralab, and its role in the field of applied multimedia. My talk discussed the potential possible after taking an APU course.

Of course, I spent the lunch sessions wandering around the careers tables, talking the the SEEVIC staff about the potential of APU’s groundbreaking degree for people fully occupied by employment, Ultraversity, which has been developed over the past three years by the Ultralab team.

If any students of staff have any questions, ideas, thoughts etc about what we presented today, please feel free to add a comment below.

I’ve been meaning to post up my thoughts on the purpose of a blog, and how powerful blogging culture has become for Ultralab, the learning, technology and research centre at APU.

We’ve now got a pretty powerful selection of bloggers at Ultralab, I’ve neglected mine over the past couple of weeks….

I’m still amazed at how many hundreds of hits the following article gets a week…Tips to Survive an International Long Haul Flight by Matthew Eaves.

I went surfing around to see if I could find a definition by others on the purpose of blogging. I started at Google (as you do!) and asked simply for ‘Blog Purpose‘.

Woh….look what returns in the replies by Google!….

Our very own Gina Revill returns as the number three reply from the Googster…

So why has Gina returned as number three in such an interestingly good search string? Other than being one of the nicest most professional people I’ve ever had to pleasure to call a friend and colleague I’m going to state the following thoughts as to why our Gina is returning high in Google…

First, its all about linking, keywords and what you write about.

Second, it is all about who you link to, and who links to you.

Third, it is down to regluar content - Google loves a good bit of updating.

Blogging enables fresh and easy ability to create new news, ideas and thoughts very quickly, and our friend Google loves that.

In running a network of Blogs we’re hearing from people all over the world who are reading our stuff, commenting and we’re making new friends.

So, to conclude, for me the purpose of blogging is to share thoughts, ideas, create debate and talk on subjects with people interested in those areas. Developers, shop managers, CEO’s of companies, travellers (and some very strange people too) have all found articles hosted within this website related to them… and they have commented, emailed and telephoned me…..and all comments are welcome - all constructive debate is healthy. Blogging is a very powerful tool - for the people, by the people. What is the future of the media? With RSS and Blog Feeds, we’re able to create our own magazines, our own newspapers our own selective reading sources.

Well done Gina, thanks also for what you wrote here.

The power of blogging eh?….who just read this item? Stick a new comment below….

I’m open to debate, I like rattling the cages.

I pointed out the other day some ideas to climb Google the search engine.

Read what I wrote here: The purpose of a blog….and the power of blogging, a whole new media source….be afraid, be very afraid.

…and our Gina was number 3 in Google, now she is number 1…..

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The power of blogging hey….a real significance in terms for Google….I strongly believe that due to the popularity of content hosted on this blog, the linking to Gina’s blog purpose article on her blog, helped push up Gina’s return in the Google ranking. In turn, Gina’s Google ranking will improve for her other blog content.

Thanks to everyone who organised and attended the ‘Multimedia in Education and Learning’ seminar at Anglia Polytechnic University today.

Thanks to Roger Clark and Emily, and to Ultralab’s Maureen, Claire and Neil for excellent organisation and food.

Martin Spaul, Richard Millwood and myself presented at the seminar.

Please click ‘Add comment’ below if you would like to continue the debate, ask a question or simply throw in some thoughts.

Thanks for coming. (thanks to James Brain for the picture).

Big big thanks also to Apple’s Leonie for sponsoring the event.

Links (as promised): Martin Spaul | Richard Millwood.

Gina Said….