2010 NBA Playoffs Bracket is live

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The 2009-10 NBA season officially began today, and to kick things off right, we’re introducing our 2010 NBA Playoffs bracket!

If you are new to our brackets, here’s how it works: Throughout the season, the current standings are used to create a picture of how the playoffs would be structured if they began on any given day. It’s a fun way to track your team as they fight through 82 regular season games on their march to the Playoffs. The bracket is updated automatically with the conclusion of each game (refresh to see the changes after the games conclude.)

When the Playoffs arrive, the bracket will be updated with each team’s wins, along with game times and scores.

View the 2010 NBA Playoffs bracket now! If you have any comments or suggestions, please comment on this post. Thanks for visiting!

Introducing the 2010 NFL Playoffs Bracket

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Breathingfire.com is known for its popular NBA Playoffs bracket, and now we’ve reached into the world of the NFL to bring you live playoff-placement coverage all season.

During the regular season, the 2010 NFL Playoffs bracket is updated live as games finish, giving you an idea of where your favorite team(s) are in the Playoff picture. During the Playoffs themselves, the bracket will be updated with scores, and winning teams will advance along the tree.

We recently completed a total overhaul of the bracket CSS (our brackets are 100% XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1, of course,) so the bracket looks a little bare at the moment. But we will be sprucing it up over time. But the main theme of these brackets is quality over quantity and usability over flash.

If you have suggestions for how we can improve this or any of our brackets, please let us know by leaving a comment below. Otherwise, check out the 2010 NFL Playoffs bracket!

Note: We’re still working on getting the standings correct, as the current seeds are not lining up right. We’ll update this when we have that fixed.

Don’t adjust your screens

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…and no, this isn’t Naked Day.

I removed the graphics from this page because I was sick of looking at them after a year and a half. It was looking stale and amateurish as well.

I’ve played with some different designs over the past couple of months but haven’t gotten anywhere solid yet. I’ve got some big changes coming up in the next couple of weeks (in real life) so I’m not sure if I’ll have time to make things look better here during then or not. We’ll see.

In the meantime, you get white! (and a hideous logo. Wow that sucks.)

Test W post

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This is the caption for this image, typed int he caption box.

This is the caption for this image, typed in the caption box.

This is a test post for this particular secret category. If you’re reading this, you are invading my privacy. How dare you do that. Unplug your computer right this instant. I despise you and always will forever. That’s a long time. I might not get over it by the time forever is over.

This is a second paragraph to see how things go here. Hmm, not too shabby, eh? Boy, you really know your stuff, guy. Oops, almost let my name slip there.

Never Again

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In an attempt to save what was really in the whole of the universe and life a measly amount of money, I recently bypassed the wonderful and tasty boxes of cereal for the bag cereal. Yeah, you know, the bag cereal.

I thought, “Hey, here’s this giant 2 lb bag of cereal, for this low, low price. That should get me through quite a few days. More than that micro box of Life for $4.99, for sure. So what if it has a giant circus elephant on the front? Once I get past utter embarrassment at the checkout line, I’ll be fine. I can have yummy cereal all the time now thanks to this giant bag!”

Ha, yeah, all except for the yummy part. My mom brought me up better than this.

I bought the circus elephant equivalent of Cheerios. I could have gone with “Magic Shapes” or “Fruit Whirls,” but I thought “nah, I’ll stay healthy with ‘Toasted Oats.’” Oh my God they were the grossest thing ever. You know how Cheerios are like actual, rounded donuts of toasted whole grain oatey goodness? Well, someone let the air out of “Toasted Oats” and forgot to add the goodness. Instead I get fried, soggy wetness, and flat withered discs of sort-of oatey material.

Never, ever again. Cereal is expensive, but so is health care. I’m so sorry body, for putting you through 2 lbs of that stuff. I’ve bought some real Cheerios and some real Lucky Charms so that we can be friends again. Let’s go grab our new friend Mr. 2% Milk and chill together.

* munch-munch-munch *

Mmmmm, talking bees and leprechauns FTW

Le Big Mac, Mac 2Nite, other funny Mac-related title

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Between applying for six friggin’ jobs today, I made some major improvements in how I use my MacBook Air. This included adding some programs and doing this and that here and there:

  • I used to swear by NetVibes for reading feeds from my favorite websites. I still think it’s pretty nice, but I’ve officially made the switch to Google Reader. The thing is, I’m not really sure why. Maybe it loads faster? Maybe I didn’t need my web stories all grouped neatly by website, but rather like them in one big list. Maybe I didn’t think Google owned enough of my life. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. But I like it, and I’m sticking to it. So I’ve been using that website for a while, but today I downloaded NetNewsWire, a desktop application for reading news feeds that now syncs with Google Reader. So it’s much prettier than the GR website, and is probably faster. I’m giving it a try.
  • I dropped the standard Google Gmail Notifier, which did not support multiple accounts, and replaced it with Gmail Notifr which does support multiple accounts and checks those accounts more often.
  • Lacking a Microsoft Office installation, I downloaded the trial for Office 2008. I have 30 days to come up with $1000 or whatever it is to pay for it now.
  • Downloaded an excellent application called Burn which is free and does much of what the $100 Roxio Toast does (which is burn DVDs.) Love it.
  • I’ve officially switched from Adobe Dreamweaver to Panic’s Coda for web development. Gee, I’ll actually use most of the stuff in Coda!
  • It was a couple of weeks ago, but I used GarageSale to post an item to eBay. It was a very nice experience. I’m not sure if it’s worth $35, but if I did more eBaying it might be.
  • Paparazzi is a very cool little app that I’ll be using to take screenshots of websites.

I guess that’s about it, but it was a fair amount of researching and downloading and testing different versions of each application to see which I liked best.  Ok, I’m tired of staring at this computer now so I’m going to go fiddle around in the garage like I know what I’m doing.

The New Detroit Pistons

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As some may know the Detroit Pistons are barely recognizable from the team that won the NBA Championship in 2004, almost repeated in 2005, and continued on to an impressive streak of six Conference Finals appearances. The loss of Ben Wallace to free agency and the Chicago Bulls in 2006 and the trade of Chauncey Billups to Denver for Allen Iverson in 2008 (which I approve of, by the way, more later) removed the heart and soul of what was considered the best starting five in the NBA. They were also considered one of the true teams in the league, one that did not rely on any one superstar to get them through to the next level.

In 2009, another member of that starting lineup has been lost to free agency in Rasheed Wallace. Wallace, perhaps the catalyst for the Pistons’ 2004 title run, signed on with the Boston Celtics to likely back up Kevin Garnett off the bench. Antonio McDyess, one of the hardest working players for the Pistons since 2004-05, has left to sign with the San Antonio Spurs. The only two remaining members of the 2003-04 team are Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton.

The trade of Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson put the 2008-09 season in the trash for the Pistons. Billups was more than just a good player and point guard, he was a leader and a veteran who took care of the ball, ran the offense and kept his players in check. After reading about him, he sounds more like a player/coach than just a player, and his influence was not lost on the Denver Nuggets who stormed to 2nd place in the competitive Western Conference and faced the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals (they had previously not made it out of the first round with their current “superstar,” Carmelo Anthony.)

While everyone blames the loss of the 2008-09 season — 39-43 record, their first sub-50-win season since 2000-01, barely making the Playoffs and getting swept in the first round after 6 consecutive conference finals appearances — on the loss of Billups, I believe it was a necessary move. Ever since their back-to-back NBA Finals appearances, the Pistons could not get over the hump of the Eastern Conference Finals. They lost to Miami, Cleveland and Boston after posting impressive regular season records and storming through the first two rounds of the Playoffs. The team was becoming stale, and perhaps the players heads were getting a little too big as well. They could not agree to work with coach Flip Saunders, and you could tell he did not command their respect. An experiment that was successful early on had run its course.

So something needed to be done, and to make any sort of change the team needed money. Trading for Iverson’s expiring contract gave them that needed cash, and in theory would give them a superstar for 2008-09 to keep the success going. While Iverson turned out to be a bad fit for the Pistons, he’s off the books now and team President Joe Dumars has gone shopping.

He brought home free agents Ben Gordon from Chicago and Charlie Villanueva from Milwaukee. He also drafted small forward Austin Daye, who may be ready to back up Tayshaun Prince already. First year coach Michael Curry was fired and replaced with, oh, first year coach John Kuester, an assistant coach from Cleveland (who previously was with the Pistons under Larry Brown during 2003-05.)

The problem here is that the only big man on the team is Kwame Brown at 6′ 11″. Villanueva at 6′ 10″ will be undersized at power forward, and Brown is unreliable. It has been reported that Dumars is seeking to sign either Drew Gooden from San Antonio or Glen “Big Baby” Davis from Boston. Either of these guys is a bad move, in my opinion. Gooden is an idiot and “Big Baby” is a lumbering workhorse but there’s something not right about him. There are rumors that a recently released Ben Wallace could sign back with the Pistons, but those are just rumors at this point, and after a few years of injuries he would merely be a back up.

It’s becoming (especially if Gooden or Davis signs) a team that I’m just not that interested in seeing anymore. Billups and Wallace (and Wallace) were some of my favorite players to watch because of their abilities and attitudes. I found myself watching as many Denver games last season as Pistons games, if not more (definitely more in the Playoffs!) I’m not a fan of Boston but will watch more of them because of Rasheed. I like the Spurs especially now that Antonio McDyess and Richard Jefferson have signed there (I’ve always liked Tim Duncan.)

Of course I’ll continue to watch, support and follow the Pistons, but their identity as a team is becoming foggy. I hope they can get back on the path of success or at least continue the tradition of hard work and playing the right way as a team like they have before.