31
October
2008
How apt that Heather Champ, flickr.com’s director of community found the Birmingham flickrmeet group and arranged a photo meetup while she was in town for the Hello Digital festival!
Embrace the Chaos
Her talk at millenium point on the Friday was very interesting, talking about how flickr started and how the project could have continued to be an online game with a community aspect. However a vote was taken and so one of the best photo sharing websites started, subsequently the project was taken under the wings of Yahoo! and now hosts around 2.6 billion photos! Heather talked about some of the changes to the site, including the use of video and offered some colourful uses of geotagging as well as highlighting how quite often flickr users know a lot more about how to do things than it might at first appear. It’s not just about photos, a lot of it is about people.
Flickr has for me turned into a slight addiction, a healthy one, because of the range of content and also the friendlyness of the people I encounter on the site. I guess flickr users also get to see the world in a different way, there are some 2.6 billion photos, spanning the entire aspect of human life and Heather highlighted this as a strength of the site and her job as you can see personal stories as well as insights into news events that you might never have seen in the main stream media, and crucially get feedback and comments from entire strangers. In a silimar way people get feedback on their photography skills, there’s also the chance that flickr becomes a different sort of microcosm of the world, with commenting not just on composition or lighting, but the stories that people are telling with their photos. How long before there are more flickr photos than people on Earth?
The most interesting points for me were about the social ascpets of the site, from the online groups to the offline relationships that were foster through the site. I know many people offline, I would not have known if I had not been active in local flickr groups. There was a QandA session at the end hosted by an FT.com journalist. I raised the prospect of flickr being more supportive online, of the offline communites that spring up through the site and perhaps in the same ways we have an explore page for photos, we could have an explore page for people. The site could ask where you are from and suggest local meet up groups.
Her closing comment was to Embrace The Chaos!
The Flickrmeet
Flickrmeets for me have become a great hobby and escape from the normal way of looking at the world, I see things through photography that I would have otherwise been too busy to see. Going around in groups of people also gives you the confidence to take photos that normally might appear to be strange or bizzare, or get you ridiculed by family, plus there’s the aspect of saftey in numbers and often I find myself chatting to people more than taking photos.
We are lucky in the midlands that we have a large community of active meet members, who are just great people, as I’m sure up and down the country and around the world many other population centres have the same joy of exploring photography with other people because of flickr.com, I guess perhaps that really has steamed from the sites starting point of being a gaming community, but the meets are more about having fun with photography than taking it seriously.
Flickrmeets are great for geting some fab shots, like this one! We were treated with swag too by Heather, which we are very thankful for and it was really cool that she took the time to hear our feedback, plus I hope I helped raise a couple of things about how hidden the offline meetup communities can be and how to make flickrmeets a lot more visible outside of upcoming.org.
The rest of the meetup set is here, along with some other photos from Hello Digital 2008. The festival, was the first of it’s kind in Birmingham and I hope it grows in future into an essential event for the creative industry in the Midlands and surrounding areas.
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27
August
2008
An amazing story which shows how important it is for the general public to be aware of what some cancers can present outwardly as symptoms.
“Madeleine Robb spotted the unusual shadow in the left eye of one-year-old Rowan Santos’s emailed picture. Suspecting there was something wrong, she went on to the internet to find out more and discovered it might be cancer. She immediately emailed Rowan’s mum Megan at her home in Florida, America, to warn her. Within hours, Mrs Santos had taken the baby to a doctor, who found she had eye cancer retinoblastoma”.
Full Story
What I take from this is imagine the number of moles which don’t look right? People tend to know what is and what isn’t right, but 3 simple rules known as the ABC of melanoma can, very much like this story, be a life saver. Thus it makes sense for people to stop talking about the sun 
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23
August
2008
The Big Picture Mosaic
Originally uploaded by Lee Jordan.
Guinness book of records confirms that at over 100,000 photos, this is the current largest photo mosaic in the world. Get down to Millenium Point in Birmingham by the end of Monday to see it.
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19
August
2008
Yet again another story about a young person facing melanoma, who recalls vividly being careful in the sun and taking steps to avoid skin cancer, yet ending up with the worst kind.
“I vividly remember always having to wear a sun hat or a sun visor when I was playing outside, too. Every few hours, Mum would call me in from playing to put more cream on - especially if we were abroad on holiday. I definitely wasn’t a child who got sunburned”. Story
It’s this paradox which has always been at the heart of my questioning on how effective sunsmart is at preventing serious skin cancers because the evidence suggests contray to common sense that staying inside and out of the sun puts you at higher risk of melanoma.
Sunsmart pretty much targets the most common form of skin cancer, non-melanoma, which is less serious and caused by over exposure to UV, so how is it that being careful and being sunsmart can wind you up in a worse off position? because there’s no focus on skin!! I mean it shouldn’t be sunSmart it should be skinsmart, I only hope the right people are listening?
It’s the short intense bursts of UV which could have an effect on Melanoma, simply because if you think about it pigment producing cells are not having to do any work, then all of a sudden, they have to go into ooverdrive and work overtime to produce melanin. In Type One skin that can’t happen and if it does, then might it cause these cells to go mental and not shut off, thus leading to melanoma?
It’s a serious issue that cancer research UK have so far failed to address in their education on skin cancers, they need to think along these lines with sunSmart. The notion of short intense infrequent incidental bursts of UV doesn’t even figure in the advice on sun exposure. The type of exposure you’d get by waiting for a bus to college, not the kind of exposure you get on holiday. Have you noticed the advice is to go outside after 3pm when UV levels can actually be HIGHER, depending on the day? If it’s cloudy at 12pm, but clear at 3pm, it’s slightly better to go out at midday under cloud, even though cloud isn’t protective, the advice for sun sensitive folks, should never have been to go out in the hotest part of the day!
Sunscreens are an issue too, UVA could now be the cause of melanoma, not UVB and if that’s the case sunscreen makers should ready against law suits. “UVA rays remain the same strength year around and can penetrate such things as clothing, windshields and hats” is perhaps a line we all need to read over and over until we get why action on melanoma awareness is shamefully ineffective.
Filed under: Melanoma | 1 Comment »
28
July
2008
Column of smoke
Originally uploaded by dobbo_sf.
OMG!
Birmingham by the sea in flames 
Also on this day three years ago, our Tornado.
Join the facebook group, Rebuild Weston-Super-Mare Pier
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21
May
2008
Melanoma; it’s a puzzle with peices missing. I’ve thought about this one long and hard, what if UVB doesn’t matter? Let me entertain yet another example of where we might be going drastically wrong.
“Most sunscreens do a good job blocking UVB, but fewer sunscreens filter out most of the UVA, so they do not help to prevent the beginnings of melanoma formation … The precise wavelengths of ultraviolet that contribute to the formation of skin cancer still need to be sorted out.” Source
We could be getting damaged melanocytes without the sunburn, right so how can you get skin cancer without being sunburnt? Well this question has never been asked. Nor has the “stay out of the sun between 11am and 4pm” bit of sunsmart been challenged.
UV index varies
I’ve noticed that peak UV hours and the times where I burn are after 4pm and before 6pm, not only the hottest part of the day but also what’s to say the UV index isn’t lower at 12pm because of cloud cover and greater at 6pm because of clear skies?
UVB might not be doing the damage
There are three types of UV radiation, and each type bassically vibrates the skin more or less. UVB is often connected to the burning effect the sun has on skin general rule is UVB = burning. Even if you get factor 50 sunscreen, SPF only measures effectiveness against UVB radiation not both UVA and B. UVA is often thought to really only age the skin and thus sunscreens have been utterly useless against UVA, but isn’t cancer linked to the ageing process?
Still we think UVB triggers most melanoma’s, but how can this be if most people with melanoma admit to making good use of sunscreens? UVA protection is measured by the star rating not the SPF and the star rating is really only a recent introduction and Ambre Solair’s UVA photostable filters have only just made it from Europe to the USA.
Sunscreens never protected against melanoma?
What if in the 1980’s and 1990’s we were told sunscreens would protect us, but it turns out that in fact it’s UVA which triggers melanoma and thus the protection we thought we had, simply never existed and still may not exist? Some retailers don’t sell lower than SPF 15, but what if it’s SPF 30 and still UVA rating of 1? Isn’t that also as bad as stocking SPF 2?
What if you can get melanoma skin cancer without a long history of sunburn, ok it is a bit far fetched, a lot of people did burn most of the time by accident and without intending to. But what if you can damage your skin even if you don’t burn, if you are genetically unable to produce melanin? What if it turns out UVB is attributed to non-melanoma and UVA to melanoma, suddenly you would need to advise people at risk of melanoma to not rely on SPF as a guide but the star rating.
Let’s get sunSmarter?
Everything you know is wrong, everything I know is slightly less wrong and everything they know is really wrong, so let’s re-write this. sunSmart needs to get smart about the UV index, for instance it might be safer to go out at 12pm under cloudy skies than it is to go out at 5pm under clear skies. so the 11am - 4pm curfew needs chucking out in favor of words on suncreen bottles explaining the UV index, what it is and how to check it for your location.
sunSmart also need get smarter about the advice given out to people at risk of melanoma and non-melanoma, each risk group needs different messages not the same messages and I was pleased to see that at least that bit of my campaign got through to Cancer Research UK.
Re-write the rules!
Filed under: Melanoma | No Comments »
19
May
2008
Owh my back, I should be used to it as I do the flickr meets every two weeks! Walk for Skin in Sutton Park went well, was over far too fast though, quite a chilly day compared to what we had last week.
The walk aims to fund raise for various skin charities from changing faces to skin cancer research. Andy came over and we headed over to the park and waited for my parents, who had walked roughly a mile or so to get to the park anyway. At the end I spotted Lorna, who had helped organise things and had a brief chat. Many thanks for a great event, it just needs some race for life eyeballs really as dermatology touches more people.
We found the tent and had a look around, a brass band playing music to the group of people and a balloon man on stilts entertaining children. Me and Andy took a few photos and then we were off, with bacon buttie in hand.
We were trying to catch up with the front of the pack to get some good photos so ended up jogging certain bits, the walk for skin, just became the jog for skin.
Nice stroll through a nice and very local park (it’s a huge park too) and at the end we collected our goodie bags, went to get our forms stamped and headed back to the car.
There are more walks for skin, going up till June so check out the site:
Walk For Skin 2008 Venues
Filed under: Melanoma | No Comments »
15
May
2008
Unfortunatly the US presidential race just took another nasty turn with Senator John McCain’s melanoma coming out of the shadows and into the sunlight.
Already Barrack has used McCain’s survival as a swipe and he’s not alone as I’ve seen bloggers across the web pick up on this too. While it’s good that melanoma is now getting some higher profile names mentioned and thus getting mentioned in the press etc it has to be upsetting for John as it wouldn’t affect his ability to do the job at hand.
Ewan Mcgregor
Recently a much loved British actor spoke of his run in with skin cancer, but details seem vauge and as such I can’t work out if Ewan’s run in was with Melanoma or Non-melanoma, we can only hope it was either the latter or a very shallow melanoma. It was a good positive story hopefully which will encourage young men in particular to seek advice from their GP if they suspect something is wrong with a mole or group of moles.
Scotish Football - Celtic Legend Tommy Burns Dies
Story has been around today in fact. From looking into the story, again details are a little vauge, it looks like we’ve lost another high profile melanoma warrior. From what I can make out Tommy Burns was diagnosed with melanoma in early 2006. The story has been getting coverage but melanoma has not been mentioned, so the public in the UK are now unable to tell why Ewan Mcgregor will make it and why the odds were stacked against Tommy.
There is no difference being made in the press as to why Non-melanoma is a lot less serious than Melanoma, so I feel I should recap that it’s all to do with the direction of growth. Melanoma’s dig downwards into the lower layers of skin, so action is needed as soon as possible, non-melanomas tend to stay in the upper layers of skin and are as such a lot less life threatening.
If you are concerned, google “The ABC of melanoma”.
–
English Football - Bobby Robson
We can only hope Bobby Robson will carry on with his not so recent discovery of a very rare melanoma skin cancer.
A list of famous people who had melanoma
- Eva Cassidy
- Pat Sharpe
- Bob Marley
And Non-nelanoma
While it’s saddening that more people are being affected by skin cancer, it is a great opportunity for the media to start educating people about skin cancer and not about the sun. We can only hope anyway.
Filed under: Blog, Melanoma | No Comments »
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