28
September
2006
I just found a nice workaround to get RSS content from a news source which may not publish RSS feeds. Why not use Google news? By stating the source id in the search box you can easily craft a search page which can be output to RSS … nifty eh?
I will be away from home for a week and would like to keep in touch with a news website, which doesn’t have RSS. I’ll only have a slow GRPS connection on my mobile phone, so getting an RSS feed for this site was not only fun but useful too.
Take a look at the search page for icBirmingham and notice you can subscribe to this content through the google news service. The resulting RSS feed I found is here. Never go without RSS news feeds ever again.
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21
September
2006
This is a topic I will expand on in the future, it started when I wanted to create an enhaced podcast without Apples iTunes, which was compatible with every mp3 player out there. Currently as it stands creating an enhanced podcast in iTunes produces a file which cannot be played back on any device and takes away the universal compatability which allowed podcasting to rise to the levels it is at now, which was before iTunes came along.
Recently Mell over on the Glastonbury Podcast allowed me to send in an audio clip explaining how I looked at the alternatives such as the SMIL file format and even the BBC’s developments in inserting chapters into MP3 files. If you would like to hear my thoughts on this, head over to the Glastonbury site to download the podcast.
Here’s the rough example I was hand coding with SMIL, you’ll need Realplayer for the chapters to work as it does use non standard seek commands, but hey it works, would be ideal if I had a better solution for quicktime.
If by any chance you’ve come here from the Glastonbury Podcast, please do leave your thoughts here on this post, using the comment form below. Thank you for listening / reading and hopefully this willl be the basis of a service which may allow fellow podcasters to create their own non-iTunes enhanced podcast, with chapter markings and slideshows, maybe.
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21
September
2006
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.
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13
September
2006
Not more new cool stuff to keep up with? GeoRSS, yes subscribe to feeds based on location, why didn’t I think of it?! See the site. So hmmm, how to encode xy coords into RSS feeds, maybe a wordpress plugin? Yes indeed there is.
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11
September
2006
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.
Nice to have, not piority, but nice.
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9
September
2006
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.
Filed under: Melanoma | 1 Comment »
3
September
2006
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.
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3
September
2006
I’m in the process of setting up my own planet!! This is a fantastic way of bringing together people who blog about a particular subject, like skin cancer.
Last night while meeting up with the guys I used to live with at Univeristy, Jono mentioned that he had seen some of the awareness stuff I had been doing on the moleaware site and gave me a run through something called a planet. A planet is a series of web scripts which trawll through a list of peoples blogs and brings a copy of their recent blog entries into the planet. Usually blogs have an invisible file, usually called an RSS feed, which you can hook into to be notified of new blog posts, a planet uses these feeds to populate the planets homepage.
I know there are many bloggers out there actively talking about their experiences with Melanoma, and possibily using those personal publishing spaces to raise awareness. Trouble is unless you are searching for a blogger who writes about melanoma, chances are you won’t stumble across what they have to say. As soon as Jono showed me a planet I suddenly saw that this would be a benefit to spreading the word about melanoma and early detection.
Many melanoma bloggers, either have no comments or in some cases you might find a melanoma blog with the first words reading “unfortunatly this person passed away this year” and that’s sad because that person had something to contribute, but maybe didn’t get the exposure to an audience. So I’m on the look out for blogs and in particular I would like to add to the planet people who really want to push this up the agenda, because there are so many myths about skin cancer and so many people with personal expereinces about it to bust the myths that we could really make a difference.
Maybe, just maybe some planet inhabitants might get the chance to publish at moleaware.org.
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3
September
2006
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.
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