So I am a bit behind on the news, like I said before I have been a bit preoccupied as of lately. As of the 22nd many big time bloggers out there published the news of Jason Kottke leaving his permanent job and working on his blog full time. Kottke is huge among the blogging community. His personal blog space is one of the better known sites on the Internet, as well as some of his side projects, such as his work with Gawker Media. Jason is going to be making his money via reader donations which is much more possible than one thinks. It just takes a set of brass ones to actually quit your job and blog professionally. Personally it’s all I want out of life. Of course I think I have a long way to go before I begin packing up my desk. Good luck Jason, you truly are one of my computer dork hero’s. If I win big in Vegas I will drop a healthy donation.

It has been a few days since I last added to my weblog of random findings and rants, and for that I do apologize – of course I highly doubt I really need to -, but I have been working on a few things and that has eaten up much of my time. In addition to the things that have been taking my attention away from BerfNet, I am also packing for a week long journey to Las Vegas. Yes I had mentioned this trip in a prior posting, but for those of you who are new comers let me add a bit of back round to set the mood. I will be flying to Vegas with 8 –oh yes count them 8- of my old high school buddies to see just how much alcohol we can consume, how much money we can hand over, and exactly what type of trouble can we find while in Sin City. So needless to say I am pretty damn excited. We will be flying out of Buffalo tomorrow and landing in Vegas around 6:00pm. Then after finding the rest of the crew –not all of them are from Buffalo- we will settle in and then get right to the misbehaving –why waste time-. I was going to attempt to take my laptop with me on the voyage and blog while sobering up from the nights of too many Johnny Walker’s. But then I thought I don’t want to miss anything while farting around with my computer. I will be returning on Sunday of next week, and I do plan on publishing all of the pictures I take and a little blurb about what I can recollect. Catch ya later.

UPDATED: I wrote this post late last night after going out to dinner with a friend, so I was a bit tired and did not have my creative cap on - of course not many of these are very creative, yet I try -. The main reason I linked to Bukezilla was because of the sample track from the upcomming release of Fantômas's new album Suspended Animation. Bukezilla and I are big fans of Fantômas, and we are even planing a trip to Toronto to see them live, which will be an experience if I can get the time off from work. If your not familiar with the experimental sounds of Fantômas, ask Bukezilla all about them he would be happy to teach you the ways.
Bukezilla thanks for the great link I havn't herd new Fantômas in a long time. A bit over due don't you agree? I hope I can make it to Toronto! The cover lookes great.

Posted on Slashdot today is a post reiterating the rumor of Apple’s interest in acquiring TiVo. Since the rumor hit the streets yesterday TiVo’s stock rose more than 17%, which is a significant jump from the tech company who has been receiving strong competition from cable providers Time Warner and Adelphia – due to the similar DVR features -. Keep an eye on this one the match makes sense and Apple has been on a role as of the release of the IPod. Apple Computer Inc. is a low risk stock and TiVo – at the moment – is also low risk. So if you are someone - like my father - who is weary of tech stocks, this could be a good opportunity to do some experimenting. I would still wait a bit longer to see if any new news generates and the possibilities of other companies hunting after TiVo.

UPDATE: See I'm not the only one thinking about this Gizmodo's Connecting the Dots.

Bledsoe signed a three-year contract yesterday with the Dallas Cowboys, one day after being booted by the geniuses of the Buffalo Bills. Mainly due to Drew’s “Soe Soe” performance during the start up of the 2004 season, that depressing final match up versus Pittsburgh’s J.V squad and of course to free up some cabbage so that the Bills franchise can have more play room with their salary cap. At the press conference Drew bashed the Bills a bit which is rightly so, I think the Bills are making a terrible decision and I hope Drew goes to the G.D Super Bowl next season.

"I was very hopeful that this would be the opportunity for me," said Bledsoe. "I'm very excited to be a Dallas Cowboy. I can't wait to go home and dress my kids with the little stars and get rid of all the old gear from the other team."

He continued to mention how disappointed he was with how the Bills organization simply handed over the starting spot to youngster J.P. Losman. I agree, it is so funny – and I am sure other Buffalo fans may disagree with me – that every time the Bills show some signs of light, we go and change it up ruining our chances of success. In a perfect world Losman will emerge as the next Tom Brady and lead the Bills to the big show in 2006. But let’s get serious people, this is going to divide the players and the fans resulting in friction much like the vibe generated during the Flutie and Johnson days. The Bills will need at least a seasons worth of development and I can assure you that the Bills fans here in snowy Buffalo are not looking forward to another rebuilding period. But what the hell do I know.

I just recently agreed to build a site for a couple I know. Of course I am always up for a good challenge, and I am especially excited about this project due to its content subject. It is for a wedding planner consultant business, and I will be diving into the pinks and pastels to design a look and feel the client will truly want to spend the rest of their life with. I think the most difficult portion of the project is going to be the design itself. I mean lets be serious here people, any one in the web biz knows how easy it can be to build a site –simple static, nothing dynamically produced-, but it’s the design that takes all the time. As you can plainly see with the appearance of this site, I have a general concept of color and layout, but I am no CGD guru, and that is where I will have to really dig deep for this one. I would like to step away from using pictures for the primary focus of my sites, and lean more towards the custom graphics side of things. Well this one should be a lot of fun to do, and I already have a few clients lined up for after the launch of the wedding planner site, so things are looking positive in the world of freelance. Because how cool would it be to have the kind of freedom that will bring?

This morning on my way into work I was listening to local radio morning hosts Shred and Regan, and while reading the news they let us know of the death of writer Hunter S. Thomson. Aparently Hunter commited suicide by blowing his mushy brains out of the back of his head. For those of you who are familiar with the type of character Dr. Thomson was, he was a bit on the kookie side - and this exit is not so off color for him -. A life of drugs, alcohol and what ever else he could experiment with, a true psychodelic explorer - so needless to say his mind was a little off -. Hunter was also a fan of armory, and it was well known that he kept many loaded guns and other weapons in his house and on his person. So at the age of 64 the inovator of Gonzo Journalism has left us to persue other adventures. He will be missed, and Hunter is you are out there, look out for the bats.

Thanks to Rotten Tomatoes, I am able to tell you about the up comming James Cameron 3D Imax adventure film Aliens of the Deep. It is about a group of scientests that explore the ocean studing it for concepts of space exploration. Amoung the group is WWE wrestler Kevin Nash aka "Big Sexy". If you are not familiar with the wrestling icon - and I only know of him from when I was a kid - you may remember him as the big ass russian guy from The Punisher. It seems that this aging muscle man has dove head first into the movie biz, and he must be doing something right, if Oscar winning director James Cameron is casting him in roles - even if it is a G rated Disney movie -. The trailer looks pretty good, lots of clean special effects, and if you have not yet sceen a 3D Imax film, you don't know what you're missing; it's amazing. I last saw Polar Express during the holidays, and it was the most fun I have had at the movies since ... Well I can't think of when I was that blown away. Needless to say the 3D Imax experience is fricken sweet, and this flick Aliens of the Deep appears to please, plus there is a big ass wrestler guy in it acting all smart and stuff.

Six apart, the company created by Mena and Ben Trott has just launched their new corporate web site today. Since I have a very close attachment to their product - I use it now, I have recommended it, and I completed my thesis on it - I check out their site on a regular basis. Looking for news, and new plugins, whatever. But today I see the new design of the corporate site, with sections for all of their ventures. Typepad, MT, Newly aquired Live Journal and of course their support section. The site looks great, and I am truly enjoying watching this company grow from garage days, to international.

Jeff Tweiten from Seattle Washington is very excited for the upcomming Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith film. In fact he is so excited he has decided to be fist in line for the show. Jeff has camped out side the doors of the Seattle Center IMAX. Thats right, Jeff has chossen to wait until May - when the film is to be released - and camp it out in the name of Lucas. Knowing that what he was doing was a bit stupid, and funny. Jeff started his own blog to catalog his adventure - which is rather cool, since I love blogs and Star Wars, dude it's f'n funny -. You can check out his blog Waiting for Star Wars and route him on, and talk via his commenting sections. Jeff has been getting some pretty good press for this as well, he has apeared on radio talk shows for the past few months, and plans on contacting Lucas for support.

Last night, in the heart of Buffalo's artistic district Allen Town, artist Tammy Wetzel hosted an exhibit titled "The Divine Feminine: A Goddess-inspired interpretation of the Tarot" a digital montage. Invited by a friend, I asked if it would be OK to bring along my camera and snap a few pictures of the night. Tammy was extremely nice and allowed me to click till my hearts content. The evening attracted quite a turnout, packing in over 50 or so local art coinsures into the studio at 91 Allen St - I even saw my eye doctor there -. The main attraction - the digital prints - were hung along the perimeter of the studio, and if I may say so - and I am no art critic - the Tarot prints displayed complete mastery of both photography, digital art/media and of course knowledge of the subject matter. The wine poured freely - perhaps a bit to freely for myself, so if the pictures I took came out a bit blurred you know why - the food was fantastic and the music - performed by local talent which I failed to get the name of - aided in setting the tone of the night very well. The exhibit will be showing through April 2nd on Wednesdays - Saturdays from 12:00 - 5:00pm, I highly recommend checking it out if you had not last night. The following are some of the better pictures I took from the event.

Richard from The Movie Blog tells us about the squack forming and a possible new Predator movie. He tells us that this film is not targeted to be a remake of the original starring Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse "The X Gov." Ventura, but rather a new film based on the son of Dutch -the character Schwarzenegger played-. Aparently John Cena from the WWE is rumored to play the lead. I you don't know who John Cena is, he is the anoying white rapper wrestler who wears a thick chain and pad lock around his neck 0hey John I have one too, but I use it to tie my dog up-. This film is posed to be a restart of the great action movie from my youth. Freeze Dried Movies has more on the story, but if you ask this synical scripter, I say keep the muscle heads in the ring, and the Predator in the past. Don't even get me started about AVP -predator and a chick fighting side by side, I don't think so-. Of course that is just what I think.

I love Weblogs, and I love having one. It is my baby my hoby love, but I feel that I am not getting the reaction I would like to have. So I am thinking of redesigning the site, attempting to make more trendy or edgy. What do you think? I have gone trough a few designs in the past and I think I have had enough practice were I can truly make something catchy. Here are a few shot of past designs.

Today is the Chinese New Year. I know this because my buddy Hang is celebrating it today. Last night I watched some animal show, about the Chinese Zodiac and it was very interesting to me. So I did a bit of research online to find out more about this. This year is the year of the Rooster, the people born this year will be loners, deep thinkers and hard working. Of course there is much more, but hey I want to talk about me here. I was born in the year of the Horse (1978). I checked out the traits of Horse people and I was surprised as to the number of characteristics that I carry that were on this list. The following is one of the definitions I have found -all of them are roughly the same- and I have taken the liberty of underlining the items that best describe myself.

I was checking out Gawker's new magazine Life Hacker this afternoon and read up on the post Human Clock. I must say this little project is very clever. Basically people send in pictures of themselves in the mists of daily activities -sometimes staged activities- that also contains a time of day. Again very clever, and to conclude I think that Life Hacker is a great new site, props to the editor Gina Trapani (also a writer for Misbehaving.net).

Here is the Human Clock.

Late last night my comerade Bukezilla published his sceduled date to travle to Toronto -land of army surplus stores and titty clubs- to see Fantomas on the 15th of April. For those of you who do not know who Fantomas is, well I will tell you; and hopfully Buke can better explain. Fantomas is a group that Mike Patton put together, they are loud, odd and rather experimental. They F'n rock. So check out the post and leave a comment for Bukezilla.

More people watch the Super Bowl than any other event on television. Each year fans huddle around their boob-tubes to watch the favorites dominate or the underdogs make history. This was the first year I can honestly say I had little interest in the outcome of the game, until I began to watch, and was surprisingly captured by the war that unfolded. I share a mild hatred for the Patriots, mainly because they dumbed Drew Bledsoe, and much for the same reason people hate the Yankees -I get tired of always seeing them win-. But I have a new found respect the the Patriots and their leader QB Bradey. Hell they are a dynasty, and you can not take that away, regardless of how you truly feel about the team. I would like to add that I wasn't really cheering for the Eagles, but on kick off, my feelings were that I did not want to see New England win. McNaab did not have an impressive game, he wasn't scrambling like we normally see him do, and his passing completions was un-regularly low. This was a deffensive game, which provided us with many hihlight reel type plays, and what was thought to be a kicking game certainly turned out to be a back and forth TD battle all the way to the end. My friends and I stayed in and drank a few brews, we were disapointed in the comercials -but the - and stayed up to watch the preview of American Dad -very funny-. All in all I would call it a successful Super Bowl on many levels. How was yours?

I work full time, and I am a programmer so needless to say the last thing I want to do at the end of the day, is sit infront of my computer and do more work. That is the primary reason for the time it has taken to build this site. But I do get to it here and there, and tinker around. Recently I have been very upset with the format of my content. After creating a blockquote -which has it's own CSS definition- the following tesxt seems to be double spaced. I can't for the life of me figure it out. I know it is due to the blockquote tags in my post, but I terminate each tag. So why does my templet refuse to use the content definition following a blockquote?

Earlier I created a post all about the glory of Groundhog Day. But my machine crashed and I lost the whole thing. So this is going to be a sloppy second version which is not going to be exciting or remotly interesting compaired to its original. It was such a great post, I bashed Puxatony Phil -whos website seems to be down- for being the most popular groundhog, when we have plenty of them out there to love and admire. Such as General Beauregard Lee Ph.D from Liburn Georgia -I just love the name Beauregard-. There is also New Yorks own Dunkirk Dave from Dunkirk N.Y -I work in Dunkirk and I know why the seats are empty for that one-. Finally my favorite is Mr. Prozac a weather telling Lama from Oxford Michigan.

Noah John, Oxford’s beloved one-eyed weather prognosticating groundhog passed away on April 22, 2002 as a result of injuries sustained in a traffic accident in 1998. Before Noah John died, he met several times with his llama friend Mr. Prozac and instructed Zac in the art of weather prognosticating.

I thought I have seen some things, but these towns people are just plain wacky. You can view the complete list at Groundhog Central and surprissing enough, it's a pretty funny site. So have a happy Groundhog Day -even though Phil saw his shadow this morning-. There's a question for you. If Phil sees his shadow in Penn. and Beauregard doesn't see his in Georgia, how does the whole weeks of winter thing work? Must be one of those pradox's of the Universe or something

I am a big fan of Gawker Media sites. I like to consider myself as a CMS guru, preferably in Movable Type and I think that the creators of Gawker are not only cutting edge, but quite briliant in that they are the only ones showing great success with this medium. Recently the Gawker Media group has launched 2 new online publications. Life Hacker, who is sponsored by Sony. And Grid Skipper, which is sponsored by Cheap Tickets.com.
Life Hacker is a online magazine covering the world of ... Oh you should just let them say it;

Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live.

This is a very well designed site -which does not break the path Gawker Media has laid- and covers topics such as Spy Ware blockers, search engines, CMS and Web Publishing File sharing and more.
GridSkipper is an online magazine dedicated to cheap travel, and vacation hot spots.

Scouring the world for discount flights, chic hotels—and pretty people. Gridskipper, the decadent travel guide.

Again, very well designed, and all around kudos to the minds behind these ideas. I do not think these will be the last installments from the Gawker Media group, so keep your eyes out, and give them a look see. I personally read them daily, have you?

Even though it still needs plenty of custom work completed on it -my time is limited so I need to take it slowly- Bukezilla is the first blogger added to the Berf Network. What is the Berf Network you ask? Well my vision is to create a series of weblogs; each with their own unique personalities, then on the main BerfNet site displaying all of the updates and articles via RSS -or some other fashion not yet figured out- as kind of a community magazine. Hopefully I can create a handful of these blogs for bloggers that wish to add themselves to a blogging community, a great way to start out your blogging hobby, since it can take a very long time to be recognized within an online weblog circle. So check out Bukezilla and post a few comments to support his new online hobby, and tell him Berf sent you.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the Berf Network, please email me with your request with this form.