Debbie Barham, 1976 – 2003

Get ’em while they’re hot!

Wrong coast, and dammit. While everyone else is having fun , resuscitation I’ve been in Florida, men’s health having spent Passover with family in a big golf resort in Palm Beach. I shouldn’t be complaining as it was really lovely and relaxing and the food was great and I got to play wise science-explaining uncle to my eight-year-old cousin and I gained a kilo or nine. But, as I am currently explaining to Gilbert in an AIM window, I would much rather have been camping in a tent in a backyard in San Jose. (I’m trying to keep up with the notes, but as usual, Webb is typing faster than I can read.)

If you’re wondering what it’s like taking part in a Jewish festival, let me give you a sample of the one before the one just gone: Purim. More specifically, a sample of what happens if you spend the Purim meal at my friends the Goldbergs, receiving wave after wave of spielers. These are bunches of kids who run around the Jewish neighbourhoods on Purim night, performing songs and sketches and collecting for charities. The Goldbergs live right in the heart of Golders Green, which is the most Jewish place in Britain, so the spielers were, at points, queueing three acts deep at the door.

Anyway, for the three-minute, digested version, see Purim 2003 in Golders Green: What You Missed. (That file is being shared using Open Content Network to help ease bandwidth use, but mainly just to prove to myself that it’s easy. If you have problems or just can’t be bothered with all the faffing and needing Java Web Start, try this link instead) Also, the photos are here.

(This post would have been made on Friday while I was still in Miami, but MT wasn’t playing dice – turns out to be some weird Trackback autodiscovery bug that made MT hang when certain links were included. Arse.)

I first saw the name “D.A. Barham” in 1994: she was one of the first customers at Delphi UK, pharm the tiny offshoot of the then-huge US online service, and I was doing phone support in my spare time from university. She was funny, smart and wild, making a big difference to the otherwise-dull forums. After that, I started seeing her name in lots of other places: not just online, but in the credits of almost every topical comedy show on TV. (I’m sure that nearly every person in Britain has laughed at one of her gags) In 1997, I was being shown around the offices of my new job when she recognised me and pulled me out into the hallway for a chat – we ended up working on the same game. The last time I saw her in person was when we went for a drink in Soho two years ago. The last time I heard from her was when she commented on one of my blog entries a mere three months ago. (I meant to mail her. Really, I did. Idiot.)

I had no idea she was dead until this morning, when I found Bruce Hyman’s send-off in the Guardian. It will be a few days until the stunned feeling wears off. She was too talented and way too fucking young. I have various memories of her illness, but I’d rather not dwell on them. (I know it’d piss her off.) On the illness itself: the most shocking Google query I’ve ever run.

UPDATE (30/04): Cover story of today’s Guardian G2 section.

Submerging Jew

Get ’em while they’re hot!

Wrong coast, and dammit. While everyone else is having fun , resuscitation I’ve been in Florida, men’s health having spent Passover with family in a big golf resort in Palm Beach. I shouldn’t be complaining as it was really lovely and relaxing and the food was great and I got to play wise science-explaining uncle to my eight-year-old cousin and I gained a kilo or nine. But, as I am currently explaining to Gilbert in an AIM window, I would much rather have been camping in a tent in a backyard in San Jose. (I’m trying to keep up with the notes, but as usual, Webb is typing faster than I can read.)

If you’re wondering what it’s like taking part in a Jewish festival, let me give you a sample of the one before the one just gone: Purim. More specifically, a sample of what happens if you spend the Purim meal at my friends the Goldbergs, receiving wave after wave of spielers. These are bunches of kids who run around the Jewish neighbourhoods on Purim night, performing songs and sketches and collecting for charities. The Goldbergs live right in the heart of Golders Green, which is the most Jewish place in Britain, so the spielers were, at points, queueing three acts deep at the door.

Anyway, for the three-minute, digested version, see Purim 2003 in Golders Green: What You Missed. (That file is being shared using Open Content Network to help ease bandwidth use, but mainly just to prove to myself that it’s easy. If you have problems or just can’t be bothered with all the faffing and needing Java Web Start, try this link instead) Also, the photos are here.

(This post would have been made on Friday while I was still in Miami, but MT wasn’t playing dice – turns out to be some weird Trackback autodiscovery bug that made MT hang when certain links were included. Arse.)

Random Numbers!

Get ’em while they’re hot!

Hot Warez Roundup

Now to the launch of a completely different 3: the first UK 3G phone network, pilule physician previously known as Hutchinson 3G, which is launching later today. The shops selling the launch phones have just opened. I’ve already had a play on one of them: the NEC e606.

Read the rest of this entry »

Daylight Saving and MovableType

Now to the launch of a completely different 3: the first UK 3G phone network, pilule physician previously known as Hutchinson 3G, which is launching later today. The shops selling the launch phones have just opened. I’ve already had a play on one of them: the NEC e606.

Read the rest of this entry »

Philatelatastic

Now to the launch of a completely different 3: the first UK 3G phone network, pilule physician previously known as Hutchinson 3G, which is launching later today. The shops selling the launch phones have just opened. I’ve already had a play on one of them: the NEC e606.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Tribute to Joseph Heller

Now to the launch of a completely different 3: the first UK 3G phone network, pilule physician previously known as Hutchinson 3G, which is launching later today. The shops selling the launch phones have just opened. I’ve already had a play on one of them: the NEC e606.

Read the rest of this entry »

The first degree of 3

Now to the launch of a completely different 3: the first UK 3G phone network, pilule physician previously known as Hutchinson 3G, which is launching later today. The shops selling the launch phones have just opened. I’ve already had a play on one of them: the NEC e606.

Read the rest of this entry »

Should have died before it got old

To Erin Discordia, cheapest human enhancement a daughter: Ada Trouble Norton wrote her first blog entry an hour and half after arrival. Well done, global burden of disease Quinn. (And Dad and Dad.)

<Gilbert> ada is doing a really good impersonation of a cgi baby
<Yoz> you're disturbing me now
<Gilbert> no it's true
<Gilbert> ok she's looking less cgi now
<Gilbert> there's just some random-baby-eye movemnts that are very pixar

The WAVs are mostly scary but the moment five minutes into the second one, where Gilbert says “Oh my fucking god…” and the baby starts crying… well, I go all gooey.

The North-West London Eruv launches this week, search which is a big deal if you’re an Orthodox Jew living in its boundaries, visit as I am. On the Sabbath we aren’t allowed to carry things around in public areas (i.e. outside our houses and gardens), web but the eruv is a special kind of construction that marks a much larger boundary that makes carrying permissible. It’s a weird kind of hack in Halacha (Jewish law) but we’re not the first by a long shot – many cities worldwide have had eruvim for quite a while now. It’s just taken so long in London because of a stupid level of politics over something that ultimately consists of about eight strategically-placed poles and a few wires.

Thing is, those wires and poles are fragile, so the eruv has to be checked every week. If there’s a problem, the whole community has to be alerted so that we don’t end up using an eruv that isn’t there. This is where the website comes in – in the top-left corner of the front page you’ll see a traffic light image and some text that indicates (this week anyway) that the eruv is up and running.

What’s that? You can’t see it? Ah. That’ll be because you’re using Mozilla. Or Safari. Or a phone browser. Or anything that isn’t MSIE. Or you’re running MSIE with Javascript turned off. Or you’re a disabled person using a browser with extra accessability features, and now you’re really annoyed because the main recipients of the benefits of the eruv are, of course, disabled people. The silliest thing here is that the web page seems to be dynamically-generated anyway (or, at least, hand-edited at least once a week)

(Yes, I do know how weird this all sounds. It’s strange and silly to me, and I’ve grown up with it.)

The Guardian have started putting bits of the weekly Guide (a mini-glossy supplement to the Saturday bundle) online. About bloody time too. They’re only doing the features so far, illness so I can’t link to Jacques Peretti’s superb column in the “Clubs” section (which, this week, was actually about clubs, unlike what he’s been writing the rest of the time). However, I can link to David Stubbs’ article about the BritPop rockumentary Live Forever, which contains this gem:

The thesis of Live Forever is that, following an early-90s period when music was in “the doldrums” (Radiohead, Suede, Massive Attack, My Bloody Valentine, rubbish like that), British pride was reasserted, Albion reawakened with the emergence of those Colchester cockney cocksparrers Blur and those mad for it mad bastards from Madchester, Oasis.
Now music was great again (Sleeper, Menswear, No Way Sis).

And that, my friends, is all you need to know about BritPop.

Coincidentally, I spent part of today listening to a British album from the same period. It’s one of my favourites: beautiful, ingenious, spiritual, wildly ambitious, incredibly varied and colourful. It holds a shimmering mirror up to the fractal diversity of modern Britain. As such, it has about as much to do with BritPop as Liam Gallagher has to do with anything of any creative value at all. (It’s Jah Wobble‘s Take Me To God.)

How to fumble the carrying thing

To Erin Discordia, cheapest human enhancement a daughter: Ada Trouble Norton wrote her first blog entry an hour and half after arrival. Well done, global burden of disease Quinn. (And Dad and Dad.)

<Gilbert> ada is doing a really good impersonation of a cgi baby
<Yoz> you're disturbing me now
<Gilbert> no it's true
<Gilbert> ok she's looking less cgi now
<Gilbert> there's just some random-baby-eye movemnts that are very pixar

The WAVs are mostly scary but the moment five minutes into the second one, where Gilbert says “Oh my fucking god…” and the baby starts crying… well, I go all gooey.

The North-West London Eruv launches this week, search which is a big deal if you’re an Orthodox Jew living in its boundaries, visit as I am. On the Sabbath we aren’t allowed to carry things around in public areas (i.e. outside our houses and gardens), web but the eruv is a special kind of construction that marks a much larger boundary that makes carrying permissible. It’s a weird kind of hack in Halacha (Jewish law) but we’re not the first by a long shot – many cities worldwide have had eruvim for quite a while now. It’s just taken so long in London because of a stupid level of politics over something that ultimately consists of about eight strategically-placed poles and a few wires.

Thing is, those wires and poles are fragile, so the eruv has to be checked every week. If there’s a problem, the whole community has to be alerted so that we don’t end up using an eruv that isn’t there. This is where the website comes in – in the top-left corner of the front page you’ll see a traffic light image and some text that indicates (this week anyway) that the eruv is up and running.

What’s that? You can’t see it? Ah. That’ll be because you’re using Mozilla. Or Safari. Or a phone browser. Or anything that isn’t MSIE. Or you’re running MSIE with Javascript turned off. Or you’re a disabled person using a browser with extra accessability features, and now you’re really annoyed because the main recipients of the benefits of the eruv are, of course, disabled people. The silliest thing here is that the web page seems to be dynamically-generated anyway (or, at least, hand-edited at least once a week)

(Yes, I do know how weird this all sounds. It’s strange and silly to me, and I’ve grown up with it.)