Lee Jordan .org.uk

Guys if any of you have subscribed to my feeds here, would you mind updating your feed readers soon? Advanced notice that the new site is nearly complete and I’ll be running my feeds including my podcasting feed through feedburner.

Over and out.

Recently I’ve been drowned by comment spam to the tune of 8,000 comments, all with about 30 links per comment. I hate this kind of spam and it has completely clogged everyones comments. I can’t bulk delete the whole lot because it will get rid of so many wonderful comments left by visitors.

However, I’m trying really hard behind the scenes to bring version 2 of this site upto speed, I’m creating my own custom theme and exploring some new ways of displaying photos and doing podcasts.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Located just outside of millenium point in Birmingham is an area set up for footie fans to see world cup matches on the big screen. It is a really neat idea, a controlled environment should mean that there is little trouble, but there’s much more to it than that as you’ll see from this photo post.

Non England games are free entry and because Brum has a fair few communites dotted about the place, even for the smallest netutral game, there is usually some supporters who turn up to cheer their team on. The following photos give an idea of the kinds of things which are down there and how show what a great idea it actually is, as screens up and down the country are being turned off due to crowd trouble.

Fan park is Birminghams controlled world cup viewing area, behold the Magenta overload!

As seen from a distance there is a huge and I mean huge wall chart, click either photo to see more!

I’m on BBC Radio 5 tonight, talking about if people are listening to the skin cancer message, if it’s working etc and if people are being forgetful. Also I hope to be scoping over the stuff about the sun protection being just half of the story and actually one of the more important things to focus on is getting people to spot the signs , having doctors keep a record of any skin changes and so all that information and awareness can be used get it dealt with early on before it starts running amok.

Tune in 22:10!

[Edit @ 22:15]
Interview moved to 23:40

I’m having my personal dot to dot game taken away!

I have to go back to hospital tommorrow very early in the morning to have mickey, thats a mole, removed. I actually told them I wasn’t worried just aware, but nope it’s coming out. In terms of it changing, well yes very slowly, patches are getting darker, some are getting lighter and there’s a white blob in the middle, which I read ages ago was an immune response ….. in this case probably not to cancer, I’m certain it won’t be. However I don’t trust my melanocytes and neither does anyone else given history, I think if you were me you’d want some type of rouge melanocyte shooting device. I expect to be back out again about 15:00 ish?

There is currently no real alternative to biopsy, I’ve obviously seen the future in Cambridge, with the SIAscope, but right now a histology report is the gold standard. I don’t even have a lot of moles and I really thought I’d moved on from the mole stage to consider other signs, so far my main focus has been and remains on lymph nodes and bumps under the skin.

Hospital is so boring.

This needed doing and we all did a great job in freshening this room up. Apart from decorating our bathroom was getting on a bit, we’d always had the original suite and a whole wall of mirror tiles. On an impulse I brought a modern white suite, hehe and that was the start of many a trip to Homebase! Click the first photo to enter the photo post.

I really like this wall, it used to hold the mirror tiles

I’ve been booked in to two radio shows to talk about detecting skin cancer early. I’m on Nicky Campbells show in the morning (Tuesday) on Radio Five Live around 8:10am via Skype!! Before that I’m on BBC Hereford and Worcester at about 7:30am. Skype!

In a similar way to what happened when I was on Rem.fm (I couldn’t have made it to Spain in person), I’m also in hospital tommorrow, this is a routine nothing to worry about thing, but the two conflict by the smallest of margins.

I’m so sorry for the lack of updates here, I’ve had quite a bit on recently.

Speaking up for early detection
Last week I travelled to Cambridge for a very interesting meeting with a company who are using light to see under the skin which gives a lot more information about moles. Somehow somewhere along the lines we have to switch to early detection and make the reasons behind all this more real.

I wrote a detailed account of how it felt to have my moles scanned by Astron Clnica’s SIAscope over at moleAware.org.

Routine checks-ups show nothing of concern
My check ups are showing nothing to worry about, instead I’m having much more of a battle with the hospital. I’m still not convinced about this whole Melanoma thing being ok in the end, but as long as the journey I’m taking leads more people to become aware, and ultimatly it gives me a better respect for each day, I’m ok with it.

Bathroom
Some of my online readers may know at home we are doing a major task on our bathroom. About three weeks ago we ripped out the old suite which had been there for over a decade and replaced it with a new suite. The decorating is now reaching an end and we are almost ready to put the finishing touches in. Feels good to do something that will last another decade or so.

@media 2006
A while ago I made sure I got tickets to a very exciting web technology show in London. I have the hotel booked and the train down there and will be in London between the 14th and 17th June. Recently I’ve not done much with web technology, I guess because of other things, but @media I think will kick me into gear. This site needs a revamp for sure.

So much more to say, but I’m sure you all skipped to the end and missed the middle bits

Credit to Freshly Squeezed on E4 Music, which is a show that promotes new music. Anywho Broken Social Scene’s track Shoreline has recently been featured, wooo! Unfortunatly the show is on when I’m at work, so I have to record it on the Media Centre PC. The show gets some good videos on and I highly recomend it.

I’ve caught another bug that is going around, damm it so am not feeling great, I have however been working on a verbose UV index reader that will allow people to input their location and skin type and see a forcast of the suns strength which is customised to their own personal situation … service with a smile. That will make it onto moleaware.org soon enough, although I’m still having database issues with my host.

This is the predicted UVi for the next 4 days in Birmingham, what I want to do is use this as a pin code system, 4 numbers are easy to remember, so if you are going away for the weekend and have no UVi information at hand you can recall the 4 numbers

It’s my last week at my current job, I’m dropping out of the nine to five for a while, because I feel I want more time to myself, to spend more time on my projects, to slow down the pace a bit and learn some new things and also to spend better time with friends and family, rather than being too worn out all the time, I feel this is a positve step for me to take.

As they say onwards and upwards, I’m gonna enjoy this summer I really will.

I think I’ll call this day international sunny-jordan day, today

Radio interview
Just finished an interview for the Spanish radio station rem.fm, which went really well. I am amazed at how well moleaware has gone around the world to be honest and how many people have been inspired by my key strokes. I never thought people would have responded as well as they have and I know you make your own luck and so I really do want to make it work and get detection taken seriously. Waste away on the nine to five, or stand up for what you believe is right, I know which path I want to take for the next few years.

I think there’s that feeling of the “sun’s really dangerous” going around so everyone is running around protecting the kids and stuff, which is great, but protecting them from what? Because it takes decades to show, if it does show, it’s hard to communicate that melanoma is a real issue, and it needs much more funding on the awareness side, because your eyes are the best form of skin cancer detection technology we have.

Solar Eclipse
Totality in Turkey was, well immense, I got back from the hospital (tell you more about that later) to see on the web, the moon slowly creep in front of the sun. Complete with sunspots, filaments, prominences and the biggest diamond ring you could ever hope to see (even bigger than the 1999 one), the eclipse was spectacular and very moving.

Hospital screw-up (again)
Do I even have cancer, its so abstract because I’m perfectly healthy, the way I get treated at my quote unquote non-cancer clinic doies make me wonder about the focus given to other forms of cancer. I was booked in for what I thought was a regular melanoma check up for today. Seems someone booked me in for ENT again, it’s quite simple but would take me ages to explain. Even though I was upset, I wasn’t about to go screaming the hospital down, it’s hard now to get cross with such things, because life’s too short. Hopefully if all works out I get my check up (2 months late again), in 4 weeks, 20th April.

Luckily nothing is wrong, there are no scan results or anything waiting and as long as I keeping checking my lymph nodes, I’ll be fine, I have to be, the world needs mole awareness and baby taylor needs his uncle Lee. You are more than welcome to join my 2 year No Evidence of Disease party 14th October 2006, 2 years is a big milestone for me and I’ll get there.