Strangely it has taken over a year for people to catch onto the fact that if you are looking at Birmingham on Google Earth you are seeing images which are at least three years out of date. According to gEarth we still have a brown car and a fish pond you know.
“WHERE’S the Bullring? That’s the question on the lips of many proud Brummies logging on the Google Earth to find the new cityscape strangely missing. Elsewhere, Masshouse Circus roundabout is still standing and the Forward statue, which was destroyed by fire in April 2003, can still be seen in Centenary Square.” Source
I’ve often commented about putting a massive “G” on the roof of our house, the ultimate “hello world” but thought maybe the satelite will never return to remap us. Personally I like the old version, I can remember when the area was a massive hole in the ground and I like to see the walkways which took us over the construction sites, the transformation is a massive part of our city and people are too quick to forget what it was like back then. However what is missing from this article is the fact that lower resolution images showing the glass bullring complete were available but they seem to have been over written by even higher resolution images, which are out of date. But do Google’s suppliers have Brummies in their team? Most likely not and it’s not going to be a quick process to acquire those images. About this time last year some parts of Birmingham in gEarth were enjoying a fine summer while other parts were enjoying a bright and vibrant autumn and even now you can see areas of the city where the shadows point in different directions.
What is also missing from the article is the technical understanding of how the system works, and that always saddens me, that people aren’t prepared to understand how or why something works or even motivate people to find out. I’ve heard comments such as “is that real time? can we see people moving” …. this isn’t like the movies or an episode of Spooks there are limitations, it takes some time to map and remap the world guys and cloudy days when the satellite may be overhead make the pass useless.
What an amusing article, I just wasted 5 minutes typing about.
Hey guys, firstly sorry for the almost month long outage of planet melanoma. A couple of weeks after setting it up in October, the computer which runs it crashed on me big time, hence I wasn’t able to do a planet run.
The planet is now back (here is the link) I had to redo the templates and stuff, it’s all very geeky but I have learned to back up my files now. The summer is finally over, after hanging on with an indian summer type breeze, we are now crunching our way through the autumn leaves, marching on towards winter.
New addition to the planet
Please welcome Helen from London, England. Helen is just starting out with blogging and is also at the start of an uncertain time after diganosis. Unfortunatly we have another young person affected by this, but together in the blogoshpere we can share our experiences, look for information, support each other and quite possibly push for better awareness.
Ok I’m ready to push this big time. I’ve created a blog syndication site which aims to be one central place to for blog content on skin cancer. Pulling in a wide variety of issues from the latest news on treatments and research, to advocacy and awareness, to peoples personal day to day expereinces, Planet Melanoma could easily give skin cancer bloggers an audience they might not have otherwise gained simply blogging on their own.
A planet is generally a geeky thing and seems to be one of these “micro formats” people keep talking about, but it aims to build a sense of community and act as a promotion platform for people publishing their own content through blogging, as well as being a place which takes the leg work of searching for these blogs yourself. Check out Planet Melanoma today, even if you don’t bookmark it you may know of someone who may be interested either in reading or adding their own blog to the planet.
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I was diagnosed with quite an agressive sounding form of the most serious form of skin cancer back in 2003. I posted my story here. I became frustrated that the information I gained to help prevent skin cancer, not only failed, but didn’t give me a chance to detect a problem early and my cancer went undetected for too long.
Eversince I have been seeking not only to raise awareness of the different types of skin cancer and why melanoma is different to the other skin cancers, but also to change opinion in how we tackle the problem of malignant melanoma. Current skin cancer awareness campaigns don’t go far enough and don’t equip people with the knowledge of what skin cancer looks like, so we can’t expect fatalities to fall untill we allow people, both in the general population and in the medical profession, to catch this disease early on, so moleaware.org aims to chage that and through blogging, is trying to build momentum behind getting people to check thier skin, not their sun protection factor.
Do you know what would be a really nice feature of Firefox 2? The ability to undo the action of closing a tab. The amount of times (like just now) that I’ve closed a tab and then actually thinking “I didn’t want to do that”. It would be great if I could edit undo the tab closure, maybe perhaps by having firefox dig into the history and making suggestions as to which tab it was.
You know everytime I tell people what the deal with melanoma is, in terms of risk factors and so on, I always get at least a suprised look. For example office workers are at higher risk of melanoma skin cancer because the daily grind is indoors, the lunch break in the summer might be an hour outside unprotected and to top it all off workers on higher incomes have greater chance of sun seeking on holiday. So when I say to people that audience is totaly oblivious to the skin cancer message it opens ears and helps people be more receptive to what is a very confusing subject.
All that exposure is infrequent, but intense and takes place over very many years, gradually building up damage as we go along. Also it might be no good to slap on the sunscreen now and take measures now suddenly because we know the sun damages our skin, because by the age of 21 you’ve had all the sun you need for that damage to be mounting up, which is another aspect which tends to get people’s attention.
So when I say actually if you stay indoors you might be at higer risk of skin cancer, it raises some eyebrows, because it goes directly against the notion of what causes skin cancer. Now I’m not saying that claim is true what I’m trying to demonstrate is you give people something to think about and they’ll be interested thus you have a better chance at educating them as opposed to telling them something they already know.
There was a study a while back which showed people who were shown UV photos of the damage done to their skin were more receptive and responded better to the ideas put forward by sunSmart. I wish to make the case that on the prevention side we should in no way be telling people what to think, but we should be enabling them to think and chose the best course of action for their situation. Much like each person is unique, each skin cancer awareness message must now start doing a better job, we are letting people down and I know given enough quality information which allows people to think for themselves, the messages are more effective.
I didn’t know, untill just. Sir Bobby Robson had a very rare form of Melanoma removed in 1995, from behind his eye. Also he was diagnosed with bowl cancer before that in 1992. Two weeks ago a tumor was found on his brain and the family has asked for no more enquiries from the press etc, this made me sit up and pay attention to the screen.
On May 8th this year an article was pubished where he explained a shadow was found on his lung during an xray he had for a sking accident. It was the Melanoma, remember his primary was in his eye, what gives? Then quoted, when speaking about coming through the lung op, as saying “It’s over. I am in extremely good health and I have got a clean bill of health” …….. oh boy, you know when you’ve heard this story too many times before? Well I have, trust me.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not being overly negative, but that news about Bobby’s suspected stroke being a brain tumor, given this information, is concerning. I guess all I can say is I hope for the best and hope for good news for him and his family. I know why they would rather not be hounded by the press and I just hope the next time I hear about it, the news is better. Although It’s not very nice to suggest, some good could come out of it, but he’s quite a high profile person. Having a well loved football manager speak out about how dangerous melanoma is would really build some momentum behind finally doing somthing about it at the detection and screening stage. We don’t have enough high profile people shouting up for us, I know that’s selfish of me, but what ever I might say would make only a fraction of a ripple compared to what someone like Bobby Robson might say to a peak time audience.
An update on the latest happenings with the melanoma. I think I mentioned I found a lump on my left arm, miles away from where the original melanomas were removed from. Two weeks ago I called in to the clinic and I was scheduled in fairly swiftly to have it looked at.
One of the consultants looked quite concerned after reading in my notes about the 6mm tumor which put me in this boat. Well, looks like yet another biopsy to remove part or all of this new lump, my first lump. I have to wait for the date to come through though. The consultant didn’t give anything away. Early days, best not to jump ahead, even though I know what might be ahead, as is normally the case it might not happen. I drove home feeling less stressed and better than I normally do.
It’s now actually running into the second week, since seeing the consultant and I’ve not had a date come though for the operation, usually this kind of delay is normal and might boil down to how many biopsies have to be carried out each day. It does however leave you hanging in there, knowing you might have a possible recurrence of your cancer on your hands arm. It might not be the case that it is back, equally it could be that, so the hanging around is actually the worst bit, and just latley you might catch me staring into space when I might be weighing up the possible outcomes. This isn’t a mole, this is a lump and that kind of means it’s a bit more worrisome.
Short on time, or want to catch this on a mobile phone? Why not try the lite version, which is just six minutes short and is less than a 3 megabyte download, to subscribe:
New intro music today, also new section on show looking at web technology. Geotagging is highlighted as well as an introduction to Wikimapia.org and getting your flickr photos into Google Earth. Music track included: Nefrit El Or - Scream. To download the full version of this show or catch the previous couple of shows visit www.leejordan.org.uk/podcasts.
New intro music today, also new section on show looking at web technology. Geotagging is highlighted as well as Google map mash ups as well as getting flickr photos pinpointed on a Google map and then in Google Earth. I also talk about my experience and what I found at the Summer Sundae music festival a couple of weekends ago. I had on the calendar a tour of Villa Park, the local football stadium and it was impressive, so I touch on that and also just a small update about the Melanoma situation.
Ok so a new addition to the show I hope to continue with is a web tips section. I hottly recommend checking out the wikimapia and also, even as a user, if you have Google Earth, check out the Yuan.CC web feed file below.
Even if you haven’t got Flickr or understand how to geotag your photos if you do have flickr, see other peoples photos in Google Earth right now by clicking the following link. It’s mega cool, you need to download Google Earth, if you don’t have it already:
You can stream the show from this page using the player below, or add my podcast feed to your podcatching software, such as iTunes, or Juice. If you are more of the traditional sort download the mp3. Comments can be left in the following form. This show has chapters encoded into the MP3 file, although not supported in players yet, this is the way to go. Whenever the letters “ch” appear in the filename, you can skip around using a player which supports MP3 chapters. Technology developed by the BBC and uploaded here
Normally I’m very strong, but I’m only human. I aim to be positive and genuinly I’ve felt happier that things are ok, but you get your moments, when you think oh crap.
I asked the wonderful folks at mpip.org about this lump I found, which is miles away from what’s called the primary site. It kinda made me a bit more aware of stuff I didn’t know about. You can do things with information you can make choices, get on the phone faster and ask better, more effective questions.
My stomach did butterflies when I read it, my focus has been on the scars to check them for lumps. It’s not like I’ve been living ignorant. Maybe I read too much into it because of the 23 months and because I’m coming up to my own 2 year mark, with a fat lump in my arm. If I’m wrong then I’ve only been careful and cautious. As of yet because I’ve had no battle with my cancer, my battle is the awareness and that’s how I feel I’m winning, my own situation backgrounds and pops up every now and then. Kinda shakes you up a bit to be brought back down to earth, to realise this is what I’m dealing with, it’s not something I just blog about, you know, it’s real.
So I fired up “Crosses” by Jose Gonzalez on the Zen, stared at the rain and savoured that moment when I saw him play that song on Sunday, after which a really upbeat song came on by Captain and the sun came out. It is like that, sunshine and showers.
