Update: It's done now. If anything seems to be broken, let me know!
Little heads up: I have to do some back-end maintenance on this site, so if things here temporarily go kaput in the coming days, fear not--it just means I've done something wrong and I'll fix it up. Site's not going anywhere.
BCK is 23 today!
We launched at the end of 2001, when fan sites were much more of a thing and social media was much less of a thing--barely a thing at all, really. Somehow we're still here, still terrorising poor Charlie K. Back then, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Human Nature were all gearing up to hit screens in 2002. I've seen a lot of up and down in the Kaufman trajectory while I've been sitting here, typing away.
Thanks to everyone who visits the site, shares news and info etc.!
Hopefully 2025 will bring more good news re: The Memory Police, Charlie's next novel, and whatever else is hiding in his pipeline. So to speak.
I hope you all have a great Christmas/holiday and a super 2025!
Not only is BCK now on Bluesky, it's also on Threads. YAY. (It's also on Facebook and I'm an admin at r/kaufman, but that's old news.)
I think BCK will be transitioning away from Twitter, so if you're on Threads or Bluesky, give us a follow there, yeah?
BCK now has itself an account over on Bluesky! beingcharliek.bsky.social If you're there, give us a follow.
I'll see if I can import old tweets without destroying anything. Also looking at getting us on Threads, maybe.
BCK turned 22 yesterday!
Instagram is 13.
Twitter is 17.
YouTube is 18.
Reddit is 18.
Facebook is 19.
GMail is 19.
Wikipedia is also 22.
We old.
Your webmaster is 46. Two more years and I will have been doing this for half my life, hoo boy.
You may have noticed: finally finished redesigning BCK! Hooray! The redesign is mostly to get the site working better on mobile devices (long overdue!), and to keep pace with security updates and whatnot.
Still some minor tweaks to be completed over time, but I'm fairly sure everything is working the way it's supposed to. If you find something that needs fixing (links not working, downloads not downloading, something looks off), let me know.
Little heads up: hopefully, the fractionally new-look BCK will go live within the next two weeks! Which doesn't mean much, except that a) the site might go offline momentarily while I get it set up (or even longer if there's a hiccup, but you can always check the FB page or Twitter/X/ugh or Reddit while the site's down), and b) soon it'll look better on mobile devices if I've done everything the right way.
HOORAY!
Just a quick little check-in for anyone wondering how goes the site re-design/upgrade: it goes well. The major stuff is done--the updated functionality of the site. Now it's all about visuals, tweaking and testing and adjusting fonts and colours and whatnot. I'll be interstate shortly, for a couple weeks, but after that I'll get back to it. It's not a massive change, the main thing is it should look better on mobile devices and more like a site that wasn't designed 10 years ago.
I went ahead and did it--BCK's aforementioned webhost migration is complete, and seems not to have broken anything.
Now for the slow process of executing a little makeover, for better performance on mobile devices and whatnot.
I'm thinking I might move BCK to a different host within the next month. I've done this before. Sometimes the migration process leads to the site going down for a day, so if we disappear, fear not. And you can always check us on FB and Twitter, and I'm on r/kaufman.
Also, I want to FINALLY re-design the site so that it plays nice on mobile devices and doesn't look like it was last redesigned 10 years ago; the re-design process usually gives me headaches and takes forever and causes things to break and I begin to wonder why I bother to do anything. But it needs doing! So be prepared for that. (But again: FB/Twitter if BCK is ever inaccessible.)
Happy New Year!.
BCK turns 21 today!
The site's a mere 3 years younger than Google. It's been around longer than Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. (Which is one good reason to maintain a site like this: social media platforms come and go, taking with them all the content you've posted there, not to mention your audience and community. Build your own site, however, and you're not at the mercy of Zuckerberg, Musk, or whatever today's internet hotspot might be.) I remember when LiveJournal was in and Tumblr was big. I was here in the days when it took 5 minutes to download a jpeg on a dialup modem, man.
BCK started out as a stack of hand-coded static HTML pages hosted on a free Tripod account. We've had 4 different webhosts (possibly a 5th next year, though I haven't decided) and we're still chugging along. Sony Pictures once paid our bills, John Laroche was briefly active here, I've heard from Eternal Sunshine's editor and Charlie's former writing partner Paul Proch, and Duke Johnson, and Antkind's publisher, and old friends and family members of CK's, various media outlets, and of course the major contributors to BCK's existence: regular everyday folks who just like Charlie's work and want to talk about it or contribute something to the site.
I was 24 when I launched BCK and I'm 45 now, holy freaking God, and the site is what it is because of the people who visit here and the people who contact me. BCK wouldn't exist if I felt like nobody was interested. (On that note, I've made a lot of really good friends through BCK, too.)
ANYWAY.
Happy Birthday us! Here's hoping Charlie is able to put his art out into the world for years to come.
I had to upgrade BCK's backend, and unfortunately the upgrade doesn't play nice with the plugin that was making the site look half decent on mobile. So now I have to find something that'll get BCK looking okay on phones again. Ugh. Not sure how long that'll take, but just so you know: I'm aware that BCK looks sorta crappy on phones.
Happy Birthday BCK! (... a day late.)
Didn't know what I was doing when I built the site, and 19 years along I still don't know what I am doing. But I'm thankful to everyone who has ever dropped me a line or found the site useful in any way!
Thanks peeps. I'll figure it out eventually.
Hey all! Just a little site-related heads up.
Back in 2016, Felix created the excellent r/kaufman sub on Reddit--it's the go-to place for CK fans over there--and while BCK's not officially affiliated with Felix's page, I do pop in there from time to time with a post or a comment. Last week he asked if I'd be interested in becoming a mod, so I said Okey doke! and now it's done. Which is why you see a link to Reddit in the sidebar here.
This changes nothing over here and not much over there, but if you're a Redditor I figured it was worth a mention.
Back soon with more stuff!
