Lee Jordan .org.uk

Hey guys, swift update here to say that I’m getting ready to take part in an interview about Skin Cancer, on an English speaking radio station, rem.fm in Spain. Visit the site here, and check the listen live link.

I think the solar eclipse has knocked my database connection on moleaware.org …. grrrr

Mainly touring the US and rarely touching her homeland, Imogen Heap defines the English Rose down to every detail, she is in a word lovely and has managed to squeeze into our iPod collections without telling us. Using technology extreamly well she really engages with her fanbase incredibly smoothly and keeps an extensive flicker photo sharing account active. The iGirl for the iAge, very creative and very innovative.

Immi, is sometimes stationed in London, perhaps-maybe, and writes and performs very cutesy, lovely, warm and friendly electronic music, however her vocals aren’t for everyone as I found out in my car once. A string of soundtrack appearences, most recently to the end credits of the fantasy film Narnia, as well as a new album, along with a very cool community focused website and iTunes sleekness has pushed Immi to almost cult status.

Immi introduced each of her instuments as the band

So last night was simply lovely. Immi waltz on stage to introduce her guest, Zoe Keating, who plays haunting music with only her chelo, making use of recording and sampling equipment to layer various sounds of the chelo into an amazingly small but big sound.

Imogen took to her set barefoot, standing upon a fluffy rug she launched into an acapella version of “Just For Now”, even without vocoda’s and computers her voice is strangely unique. If I had to plump for a genre I would have to go post modern, I dunno though it’s the kind of stuff that you wouldn’t think a 25 year old bloke would be listening to and I certainly felt a decade too old again, but what the heck she was charming and very zaney.

It was a very cute set up, stood bare foot on a fluffy rug it was mainly Imogen driving the sound almost alone. Her guest, Zoe featured on a few tracks

Oh look a closer look. This was the first time she had been back in Birmingham for 5 whole years, we loved her, she loved us, she played a Frou Frou and was very charming in between tracks, it was really great.

A Frou Frou track was sliped in there to make up for the lack of touring here, we loved her and she loved Birmingham equally. Normally the encore is something you have to wait for, but Immi told us that she didn’t want to keep us waiting. All in all a very nice night, I felt as if collectively we had made a very zaney crazy friend, you know the kind? To top it off Imogen came right out after the gig to chat with the crowd, try getting that with the X-Factor lot eh?!

Pleased to say that the MRI results came back as scar tissue. Cause for much relief and I’m now even more hopefull that things are gonna be ok The cause of the fatiuge I get in my leg is still a mystery, there’s nothing to worry about.

Been swiming tonight and I’m looking to get a new mountain bike.

Ok this reminds me partly of the plot of Frequency. I’m getting interference on all surround sound speakers of some kind of foreign speech programme, it sounds European, I guess shortwave radio. Fading in and out, this is not uncommon at all and is a well known effect of the ionosphere. Want to know something else? This morning in this area we had troubles with radio recpetion, it was mentioned and affected areas were marked out by very local motorway junction numbers during a traffic report, so all the way to work I had radio problems.

So going back to the ionosphere, there must be something happening there, extra energy at that level of some kind. We are just getting over a recent gemomagnetic storm, which didn’t come from the sun, waoooooh, there was a recent burst of energy from a distant sector of the milky way, I guess someone elses sun blowing up … I kid you not! I know it sounds geeky but it seems very interesting.

Read as a sign of a shift of energy, precursor to a natural event … welcome to the Jordy zone!

I gotta say, I’m not really one for covers of classics unless they really are better than the original. Ryan Adams’ version of Wonderwall is simply amazing and much more in line with my own music tastes. There is a point to this post, because I found the track through a blog. I wanted to highlight the growth of “MP3 blogs” and how the Web really has provided the best promotional platform for music, without it we would be lost, locked to what the commerical companies would like us to hear.

• Definition on Wikipedia : MP3 Blog
• Examples of MP3 blogs : 3Hive.com | Hype Machine

There’s a big lesson here in how record companies should treat music fans, ie with a bit of respect and trust. Some very clever artists have seen the light and released tracks for free on their sites as promotion material, some from their own CD’s. If you like what you hear buy the CD direct from the artist, thus giving the artist a better deal. MP3 blogs pick up this music and advertise it, yes they actually provide one central place that you can go to to discover music that might not have made it to your ears with reviews ordered into genres so you can find music you know you will like. It’s all good stuff.

I often get comments now like “You sure listen to music I’ve never heard of before”. So be eclectic, be your own John Peel, explore your own music tastes, find the music raw and follow its development, instead of having the music come to you pre-packaged in the same perfectly formed sterile way, and tell people once you’ve struck gold.

So after getting the new PC way back towards the end of last year and having it have a surround sound card, I thought why not buy some speakers for it eh? After agonising over which set to buy I went for the Logitech X530 set at about £40 it was a bargin. Normal stereo or mono sound is transfered to all speakers, DVD’s sound top, but I guess DVD-Audio simply won’t replace the CD.

Click the title of this post to read more details …

A view of my desktop, showing the right front speaker and the centre channel speaker in the distance. With the penguins in view obviously.

Wireless audio on the go

The transmitter is smaller than my mobile and sits under one of the surround sound speakers.

It gets even more interesting when I add the wireless headphones to the mix, because now I have access to all my live internet radio stations, music, TV output, DVD sound and external MP3 players … on the go with no wires.

So I’m all set now, too much technology? Perhaps but very fun to maximse potential, and it’ll be nice in the summer to listen to Internet radio, Podcasts or DAB radio in the shade or just inside from the patio, without dragging around anything other than the headphones! I could leave a microphone on up here to keep an ear out for Taylor from downstairs. Imagine washing the car at 5pm too without blasting the neighbours with the new acoustic movement

Having brought the new PC and having it have Windows XP on it isn’t too bad I guess. There are some things that I miss from KDE though, one of which was a funky tool that lets you run small desktop toys and information applications and integrate them to the desktop. I need a TV tuner so I can record TV shows on the PC. Oh I do use the computer for web development too you know

A view of my desktop, with the Yahoo! Widgets in action. The winamp skin is highly cool the speakers on the interface vibrate with the music. Click for a closer look.

So I found Yahoo! Widgets which are very closely aligned to the MacOS X look and feel. What I have is a functional desktop that rather than be cluttered with icons, is filled with a value added experience.

These little applications are brillient, I have a picture frame that loops round a directory showing my digital photos, there are weather reports that closely match what’s actually happening outside. Resource watchers, RSS readers, funky clocks, calendars, radio streamers, and a niffy plugin that after 5 minutes of inactivity darkens the screen before the screen saver gets chance to kick in, handy at night for falling asleep to wireless music with.

Aside from the recent spread of Avian Flu, there are a big number of significant Earth Changes occuring around the world. Put your global warming hat away for a sec, aside from the strange weather events there are signs to be read. La Nina may be building up for example and that appears to be a natural swing of energy, as is the magnetic pole shift from the core of the planet and/or the sun. The last memerable quake for me reading on the web was very deep into the planet, things are happening.

The 10th of Jan could have been a trigger day for some world events, building tensions with iRan as well as H5N1 in Turkey and H5N2 in Japan. The End Times folks are having a feild day right now, but it sure is interesting to follow some freaky deaky thinking. Something is in the air, some kind of change or some significant thing will grab our attention.

The Mayan elders are talking about this year, but that could be a natural process of new year or similar period of time and their up coming day of “lord of esquipulas”. Interesting times perhaps time to change or adapt.

Don’t know about you but I’m watching this one closely and highlighting this as it will most likely not end up being reported in our media, if it does it’ll be a passing mention. I suspect a double standard to be the undertow in all this If it is about proliferation why are we still allowing ourselves to get more nukes, more worryingly why are we closing our eyes to India/Pakistan in this respect. Regime change in iRan may follow, allowing tighter flow control of a resource we need.

How does the world look without fossil fuels? We my friends are perhaps unlucky enough to be alive to see it unfolding.

“The removal [of] the UN’s nuclear watchdog’s seals at Iranian nuclear facilities is not a violation of international law … ‘The seals were removed in the presence of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who must accept an invitation from a country to be present at such operations,’ Sergei Lavrov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.” Source

I suspect the demonisation to continue untill a strike is pretty much on the cards, I never understood how that kind of thing would be safe, that’s like a terror strike on Sellafield don’t you think? Anyway in the build up to stage three in the axis of evil you may hear much about Iran’s human rights record and may hear in the pub people claiming we should bomb them based on the fact that the guy in charge is a nasty man …… undertones of iRaq, don’t ya think?

A “Coalition” if you look at it this way is being formed, Britiain is part of a European meeting on the issue next week, Canada have become the latest voice to pop up. Syira also figures in this somewhere.

Just taking a break from an early spring clean in my room, I wanted to say hi to those who may be linking here from one of the two articles posted at the BBC news site. Thanks for the positive feedback, it has thus far been a busy night catching up with the email, keep it coming.

• Article 1 : Blogging to prevent skin cancer
• Article 2 : Cancer survivor launches website

I’m in so much debt to the people who made this happen. It seems that a lot of people know what causes skin cancer, but as for spotting it … an awful lot is left to be desired.

Mostly when I write about skin cancer I’m thinking about the people who don’t have it yet, or who could have it without knowing it. I’m also thinking about why in the face of such good awareness about the dangers of the sun, there should be such an epidemic of skin cancer cases. The more I think, the more it seems obvious that if we only try we can get things like national Melanoma screening programs in place. We can explain why a tan is also a sign of skin damage and why intermitent exposure leads to deadly skin cancers.

Hopefully we can use moleAware to promote an informal approach to skin cancer detection that anyone can feel part of, the main aim I have here is to get people to focus on detecting Melanoma’s because if left too late it can be a cancer that is unstoppable. I believe that if we take a step back we can alter the attitude towards Melanoma skin cancer and move it from being a beast to being a hurdle that can be overcome. If we can also get people to double check their moles too, we’ll be helping more people get better diganosis, we can’t simply stop it, we can however stop it before it gets too invasive, and as it so happens that is the best treatment around for Melanoma currently.