No offense to the ESPN selection committee who put together these rather fascinating rankings, but explain how George "Freaking" Mason is ranked #100, behind Old Dominion, Virginia Commonwealth and Drexel???

Go to the NCAA basketball page on ESPN.com and check out the rankings, because in a few days, they will have 1-300 on the NCAA Division-1 list of prestigious programs.

Yes, I realize they have their numbers in a certain way to get the rankings, but how many other CAA squads have gone deep into the NCAA Tournament other than George Mason? The Richmond Spiders, who are now in the A-10 conference advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1988 after defeating the defending champion Indiana Hoosiers and Georgia Tech before falling to top-seeded Temple. In 1991, they shocked #2 Syracuse, as one of the few 15-seeds to survive.

VCU's record is not bad for a mid-major (5-8), but they have never survived the opening weekend of March Madness. They did beat Duke in the 2007 tournament, however. Drexel has never made it to the Big Dance while a member in the CAA, but they have four appearances with only one victory. Again, they did not survive the first weekend.

Old Dominion has nine NCAA appearances with a record of 2-9, and they never surpassed the second round either. Unless they were referring to the Lady Monarchs, then how does a team with two tourney wins rank T-76 in the country?

If you want to look at all-time CAA Championships:

GMU: 3 regular season titles, 4 CAA titles
ODU: 4 regular season titles, 4 CAA titles
VCU: 4 regular season titles, 3 CAA titles
DU: 0 regular season titles, 0 CAA titles

Mason went to the Final Four after defeating three-powerhouse programs. We shocked the world, yet ESPN still thinks these three programs have had more success. It baffles me and other Masonites, but it is what it is. The only thing that matters now is the upcoming 2009 season. The past does not matter. What's done is done, but history has the power to repeat itself.

Only time will tell.

I guess Bill Parcells had enough of Jason Taylor, which may be a huge reason Taylor is now in the burgundy and gold in Washington. If you missed it, the Redskins have acquired long-time Miami Dolphin DE Jason Taylor. In return, the Fins receive a 2009 second-round and a 2010 sixth-round draft choice.

After months of agonizing trade discussion, head coach Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints have signed TE Jeremy Shockey, from the New York Giants. The G-Men will receive a second-round and fifth-round draft pick in the 2009 NFL Draft.

If you ask me, it was win-win situations with these two trades.
First off, Parcells no longer has to deal with Taylor's Hollywood life and the so-called "lack of communication." It no longer exists, because the six-time Pro Bowler is now a Redskin. The Fins have an opportunity to pick a high quality player in next year's draft to boot.
The G-Men finally can get rid of all the controversy that is Jeremy Shockey. New York got what they wanted, and Shock is in a new town to stir up trouble for a franchise. Soon, all of New Orleans will either hate Shockey or will hate Sean Payton. The Giants now have two extra picks next draft, and they have a good young TE in Kevin Boss.

It's early into camp, but players are on the move. Just wait until Brett Favre decides to stay in Lambeau and make Aaron Rodgers a pine warmer or create an absolute circus in another city for another team.

Only time will tell, but when it happens, you can read it here or on any other sports wire.

Remember the U.S. Open last month? Remember a man by the name of Tiger Woods? When Padraig Harrington tapped in on the 18th hole at Royal Birkdale Sunday afternoon, it capped off an amazing victory with the world's best in attendance. That is of course except for the world's number one golfer.

Had Harrington not won the 137th Open Championship, there might have been an asterisk next to the Champions' name. But luckily, it was Harrington's second-consecutive Open Championship.

It was not just that he had won two straight Opens, but how he won at Birkdale. After bogeys at 7, 8, and 9, Harrington was at 7-over-par. His back nine score speaks for itself, as he was able to not just win, but run away from the Greg "The Shark" Norman (3rd place) and Englishman Ian Poulter (runner-up). After his incredible second shot on he par-5 17th hole, he made his eagle to pretty much wrap it all up, much to the excitement of the English fans.

On a side note, Greg Norman's 54-hole lead was impressive, but as many will say, "I told you so." It was only a matter of time before he would collapse, but he was still in it, and at one point held a lead over Harrington in the final round. Ian Poulter said when he is playing at his potential, it will be just him and Tiger. Well, it's one thing to talk the talk, but he must know he has to walk the walk, especially if he plans on challenging Tiger for #1.
The fact is no one will be #1 but Tiger, at least as long as he has a pulse and heartbeat. He is purely the greatest athlete to ever step into the ring of battle. He has taken on the world and his stats outdo the field by a longshot. In his illustrious PGA career, Tiger has made 222 cuts of his 236 events, winning 65 tour events. This year, he has only played in six events, with four victories, one runner-up and never finished outside the top-10.
Now the question becomes, who takes over while Tiger is sidelined for the remainder of the season? Sergio? Furyk? Els? Mick? Or how about PGA rookie Anthony Kim? There is no replacing the greatest golfer to step in the teebox, but there must be someone to control the leaderboard until his triumphant return in the 2009 season.

FYI, I am on vacation this week so don't expect any miraculous articles too soon.

Just a tidbit for you...I had over 1000 hits on my Dr. Horrible articles....that's an order of magnitude more than I'm used to.

Thanks, hope you're having a good summer!
Blogged with the Flock Browser

Well if you haven't already noticed Folarin Campbell was not invited to any NBA summer league teams. This article from Gazette.net states that Campbell has drawn interest from teams in France, Italy, Germany, and Australia. Interesting quote from the article regarding his NBA try-outs:
‘‘They said a lot of positive things,” Campbell said. ‘‘They said I shot the ball well, but they already had point guard and shooting guard filled. I was basically trying to find someone who needs a point guard. So we decided to look overseas.”Could Campbell be staying at the point guard position overseas in hope of being successful enough to get another try-out in the NBA? I say this because honestly as much as Larranaga tried to make him a legit point guard I always thought Campbell worked better as a shooting guard. The extra responsibility of carrying the ball up seemed to hamper his shooting and often times left him out of position. I would think he would get more action overseas as a shooting guard but knows that in the NBA he would be more desirable as a point guard given his size.

I have to say I just finished watching Dr. Horrible's third act and I am completely speechless. I litterally haven't said a word since it stopped playing. Fortunately I don't type with my mouth.

This third act relies on the first two for background, but it is by far the most powerful. Anything more I say will need to be under spoiler protection, but I think you will agree with my by the end of it.



[Spoiler Alert] Act III Reacap:
First of all, the last act left me a little dubious about what was going to happen. The plot really isn't that complex so I felt like I'd seen this kind of thing before. I must say that I was both right and wrong.

The act begins with the city planning to open the homeless shelter in Captain Hammer's name (with statue). Penny and "Billy" duet again and it's clear through some visual clues (frozen yogurt, friends calling) that Billy is falling away from Penny and the rest of the world in preparation for the big event. Dr. Horrible is seen doing devious things in his lair while the news media fills us in that Penny and Captain Hammer are getting more serious. We also see who is wearing those shirts they sell in the Jinx store.

As the shelter is being dedicated, the room is set up with a presumed statue of Captain Hammer under a cloth in the room and a podium with the Mayor and other relevant people. Captain Hammer give a speech and it becomes clear to Penny that he really doesn't think much of anyone but himself. The crowd eats it up though as Penny edges her way off the stage.

Near the end of Captain Hammer's pretty amazing song, he is suddenly frozen by Dr. Horrible, who was (rather obviously) hiding under the statue's hood. It looks like the "Freeze Ray" is finally working. Dr. Horrible begins his song, telling everyone that they are sheep and if they only listened and thought a little they would see through Captain Hammer's veil of goodness. This is also a pretty awesome scene because you just don't know what's going happen...the climax, so to speak.

Finally Dr. Horrible begins firing his Death Ray (shown in a slightly earlier scene) in the air and scaring most people away. Just as he is about to kill Captain Hammer and seal his destiny, his Freeze Ray fails and Hammer punches him about 10 feet. Captain Hammer then picks up the Death Ray and intent on firing it on Dr. Horrible, it blows up in his hands. He hurtles away in pain, screaming.

It is at this moment that Dr. Horrible discovers that the bits of the blaster that exploded have impaled Penny and she is dying. She just barely recognizes, say, "Captain Hammer will save us," and then dies quickly. I'm not sure what to make of all this so if any one has any decent analysis of it, post in the comments. Anyway, the press immediately asks about why he murdered her and it is driven home that SHE, not Captain Hammer, will be the murder that gets him into the League of Evil.

The rest of the episode is a big flowing scene of his new status as a supervillan, his donning of a more evil looking uniform (pulling down the goggles), and his entry into the League. It is interesting to see that among the rather weird League members (Fake Thomas Jefferson?), Bad Horse is actually a horse and this is why he has cowboy messengers.

All of this slowly comes to an end and at the last possible moment, when the song goes, "...and I won't feel...a thing," the words are spoken by Billy, sitting in front of his webcam, out of his costume. This image was a real stunner because we really see how getting all he wanted in the end doomed him to not being able to enjoy it.
[/Spoiler Alert]

So, were you stunned by the ending as I was? I can't even begin to figure out what to do with this show in my mind. Absolutely incredible!

[Here are links to my thoughts on Act I and Act II.]

I am beyond excited. A few days ago Sarah Atwood (affectionately known as @w00d online) posted that she had just been hired by Epic-Fu, one of my all-time favorite video podcasts. She also made a post on the Epic-Fu blog about her first day on the job.

If you follow Mahalo Daily (a video podcast put out by Mahalo.com), you will remember Sarah from Mahalo Vlog Idol. She was one of the 6 finalists and that was where I first discovered her. She has a great style and I think if you asked me then whether she would be a better Mahalo Daily host or an Epic-Fu correspondent, I probably would have gone with the latter. After reading her blog and her geeky interests, I think you might agree.

Yesterday, Epic-Fu's latest episode featured her for the very first time. They have been trying out new people and her segment was by FAR the best one recently. She does a great job pretending to be drunk (unless she wasn't pretending...) and being that chick at the club who just kind of rambles on about stuff. In that way she gave reviews about The Dark Knight, Dr. Horrible, and a few other superhero things. Her expanded reviews are available on "Sarah's Rave Reviews!"

It was very entertaining and if they decide to make that her standard delivery method, it wouldn't be a bad thing. Then again, is it possible to get typecast on a podcast? Hopefully they will use more of her skills than the drunken ones. :P

Here is the episode...her segment is near the end of it, but it's a good episode overall, so I won't tell you the exact time signature:


All I can say is "GO, Sarah, Go!" I feel like Epic-Fu has been kind of wonky since the new "season" began and @w00d might be just the one to get everything back on track.

[Image of Sarah Atwood from her Flickr page]

I know The Beat seems to be turning into a TV blog, but really it just happens that this and Dr. Horrible are premiering at the same time. Anyway, I love Heroes and they have just put out the first in a series of web-only episodes that I assume will come out until the lauch in September.



The first one is here and is about a mailman with an unusual talent. It was pretty good. Hulu is at least one of the broadcasters and I personally prefer watching it with their player.

[Image from Hulu's Heroes page]

I was expecting something pretty decent from the first act of Dr. Horrible, but I was COMPLETELY blow away by it. The acting was extremely good, the story is very compelling, and if a regular pilot was as good as this one people would already be wondering about its second season.



My Take (SPOILER Alert):
The main character, Dr. Horrible, is basically a guy who has decided to become a super-villan but is struggling to pull anything reasonably evil together. He has been rejected from the League of Evil several times and has just gotten a letter indicating that he might be showing some promise. His roommate, "Moist," is the horny engineer guy from The Big Bang Theory (another GREAT show, btw) and has the amazing power to make things...unpleasently moist. They mention a few other characters but we may or may not hear more about them. Both guys are clearly in that awkward nerd phase of their 30-something lives. It is way funnier that they are both also comic book-ish evil doers.

The superhero is played by the same guy who played Captain Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) in Firefly. He is perfect for the role and plays the jerkish superhero. It reminds me a bit of Hancock except instead of not caring because he hates his job, he doesn't care because he doesn't have to.

There is a love interest in "Penny" (same as Big Bang Theory...popular name for girls that geeks love), but she has little character development except that she's nice and cares about people.

The action scene was good and I love how they used and iPhone!
[/SPOILER Alert]

Oh and did I mention it's like a kind of musical? Way to merge like 4 genres!

Definitely check it out and see how you like it. I know I'll be waiting with baited breath for the next act. Also, if this doesn't get turned into a show by the sheer love of the fans, I will be very disappointed!

Link to Act II Recap

After watching Act II of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I am still hooked with both line and sinker. One thing that you must come to realize is that the music is very good so, sadly, few people will actually be able to sing along.

Anyway, here is a run down of Act II and my thoughts on it [SPOILER Alert]:
Notice I'm not really into actors and such, so I will pretty much just go by character names. The act starts out with a great duet between Dr. Horrible and Penny as they go through shifts in their lives. Dr. Horrible is wandering the streets and secretly monitoring Penny and Captain Hammer as they go on a date. I particularly liked it when Dr. Horrible pretends to be working the soup line and only pours soup back into the container out of which he is ladling it. It's a great scene because it has a kind of funny characteristic to it, but also shows how Dr. Horrible is actually feeling hate build up inside of him for the first time.

The next scene takes place at the Coin Wash laundromat while Penny and "Billy" (Dr. Horrible's alternate identity) are doing their wash together. He does that thing that a lot of gelious guys do and asks her all about a date he already knows about to find out how she "really" feels about the other guy. Also, there is a very awkward metaphor about pie. Unfortunately for him, Penny is really into Captain Hammer and Billy is clearly losing ground with her.

There is a little break in the chronology as Dr. Horrible post a video blog post online and discusses his plans to use the Freeze Ray. After a very enthusiastic statement purpose, the blog cuts to a post where his shop is darker and he explains how the previous post gave him away to the authorities and he botched his whole plan. Even super-villans forget about the ubiquity of the internet sometimes. This part is pretty hilarious overall. :)

At the end of the previous segment, Billy gets a call from Bad Horse (or at least his cowboy posse). It seems his flubbed operation now leaves him with murder as his last chance at getting into the League. He now has to choose who to kill and how.

Back at the laundromat: Just as Billy and Penny get close to an intimate moment, Captain Hammer shows up and Dr. Horrible learns that Captain Hammer is only with Penny to mess with him. He promises a "great time" with Billy's crush later that night.

All of this leave Dr. Horrible with the clear decision to kill Captain Hammer and hope that Penny understands. I think you can probably guess where this is going...only the How? and Where? remain.
[/SPOILER Alert]

This episode was definitely darker than last time and I'm interested to see where it goes from here. Your thoughts?

If ever there were a double-edged sword, it would be "E-mail." How many great conversations, correspondences, or even automated services have you been exposed to through our magical electronic mail system? For free no less? How many millions of SPAM have you gotten? How many weird people have found you and sent you disturbing messages?

Email has been around for quite a while and despite it's obvious benefit to the world, there are a few inherent flaws. For this reason, developers and IT people have been trying to prop it up with spam filters, phishing detectors, and complex organizational controls. Few have been able to come up with any reasonable kind of alternative though. IM requires both parties to be present, as does the phone, voice messages are fought with problems, and microblogging is limited in both features and in length.



Here is a new service, though, that seems to have mulled over the problem and given their best shot at a true email alternative. It's called Corlive and it works by housing everything on an internal system that is best accessed by a URL. Instead of requiring messages to be sent between servers and loaded on to multiple machines, the entire process goes on within Corlive and generally stays in "the cloud." It's kind of like Gmail if every user was a Gmail user and all of the messages just hung out in your online inbox.

The way it works is each user who wants to recieve mail creates a nickname on Corlive.com. A bit of advice: almost every nickname is available right now so if you want to make sure you get the one you want, I'd grab it now. Registering creates a simple online inbox that you can can check for messages. The account holder can then distribute a link that takes anyone, registered or not, directly to a message entry form. The link can have several attributes (based on a simple syntax) that will either autogenerate a specific subject for the message or (in the future) send the message to a specific user folder.

Try it out: click this link to send me a message. I need to test it out, so really, say hello!

If you want to be notified when you have new messages, there is a small background app that can alert you from the system tray. So far it seems to be small and useful.

This closed system (in the sense that it is internalized, not that it is restricted to certain people) has a lot of advantages as well as some potential disadvantages. I plan on writing a detailed analysis for MakeUseOf.com, but I'll share of my initial thoughts with you here:

Advantages:

• Messages will always get from the sender to the recipient (unless all of Corlive is down)
• Spam is apparently impossible because robots can't use Corlive - I'm talking with Corlive about this and will update it with how they specifically prevent bots. Update: From the Corlive Admin, "Every user after sending more than x messages in 24 hours will see a captcha and will be required to answer it. So 'normal' users won't be bothered, and spamers or bots will be."
• The system is simple, compared to some of the crazy email systems out there
• It works a lot more like a social network identity than an email system
• Links can be filled with information by the recipient user - Corlive might even be able to build an app to generate custom URLs easily
• You don't have to wait until it is very popular to start using it
  

Disadvantages:

• As of right now, very few features
• A great deal of dependance on Corlive's servers
• There may be scalability issues - case in point: Twitter
• It isn't incredibly secure at the moment
• There is no API, interoperability with other services, mobile version, or even many profile options - a beta in the true sense of the word
  

All the doom and gloom aside, it's pretty good at what it's advertised to do. I like it so much that I've actually added it to my left-hand navigation bar as my primary contact method (aside from social networks, which are more fun). The link above adds a specific subject line, but the permanent one leaves that part blank. I'm excited to see what they decide to do with it in the future. Are you?

[Email diagram from Wikipedia under GNU-FDL]

I don't think I have ever been so happy to see a sports commentator go than I am to see Billy Packer leave CBS. Thank you CBS for finally bringing in a new era of accurate commentating and actually getting with the times. There can't be a basketball mid-major fan out there not happy to see him go after his comments about the 2006 NCAA Tournament, where he bashed not only George Mason but Wichita State and Bradley for being selected. Packer stated that between the two conferences these teams came from, they had only won one tournament game in three years despite committee chairman Craig Littlepage repeatedly telling Packer and his colleague Jim Nantz that past tournament performance was not a factor in determining the field. Let's also not forget his lovely little interview from CSTV and he once referred to Allen Iverson as a "tough monkey". Now that's some fine commentating. Clark Kellogg could not have an easier time replacing Packer. Let's see, he must be able to not be racist, not heavily favor bigger conferences at all times, not determine games are "over" in the 1st half, and lastly not call people fags over the air. I don't know Clark, you certainly have your work cut out for you.

Looks like I spoke too soon when reporting that Thomas would be playing in Vegas for the NBA summer league. From Sunday's Washington Times:
"Notes - The Wizards finalized their summer league squad Saturday evening. Lithuania's Vytas Danelius, George Mason's Will Thomas and Fairleigh Dickinson's Mike Peeples were cut from the squad. Washington will take to Las Vegas a team comprising Andray Blatche, Nick Young, Dominic McGuire, Pecherov, JaVale McGee, Dee Brown, Dontaye Draper, Frank Elegar, Gary Forbes, Taj McCullough, Veremeenko and Jonathan Wallace. The Wizards' first game is Monday at 8 p.m. against Portland. ..."Oh well, I knew Thomas was Euro-bound for his professional career but I was hoping to get one last look at him in the states.

Joss Wedon has come out with another project and as the Firefly-loving fanboy that I am, I will blindly post his widget and hope it comes out amazingly. Two days till launch!


For more info, check out the Official Site as well as the Fan Site.

Iran's Sepah News, the Revolutionary Guard's media organization, posted this picture last week. It is apparently of four missiles shooting up into the sky during one of their aggressive missile tests. The picture was carried on the front page of "The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites" according to the New York Times.



As it turns out, this image has been doctored. It's not obvious, but some clever people on the internet checked out the contrast and noticed where one missile had obviously been copied and made into two. Also, the clouds of smoke under the "new" missile are borrowed from yet another missile.

Original pic below:


Here is the analysis:


Good job Iran! We're not really sure why having 3 missiles is much worse than having 4, but clearly you felt it was worth the risk of looking foolish to every blogger on the internet.

[New York Times via Geeks are Sexy]

Hey Readers,

Since I usually plug my own stuff on here shamelessly, I figured I might as well group those links together in clumps so you can either read um or not. I'm calling it "Off The Beat," as in "off Mason Tech Beat." You know you like it.

This week I published two new articles on MakeUseOf.com. I can always use Diggs and Stumbles! Check um out:

• IrFanView Blows Windows Viewer Out of the Water
• Revo Uninstaller Will Hunt Down Your Bloatware

Also, I have been posting a ton of stuff to iPhoneFreak.com this week because of the big launch, so feel free to look at the recent posts on there too.

Have a great week!

Well this morning has been a bit not-fun for me...to say the least...

First of all, when I got up this morning to connect my iPhone to my computer, I got a nasty "Cannot Connect" error. I've seen this one before, but I couldn't remember what to do. After repairing my connection (which didn't want to do things like load web pages), I finally found the culprit was the dock. For some reason iTunes can be finicky about routing things through the dock and a direct USB connection is the only cure.

I dugg out another iPhone cable (I have quite a collection now) and got it to sync. Shortly after this I was downloading the giant file that is the iPhone 2.0 firmware. It took 15 minutes to download and another 10 to install, but I finally had it. Or so I though...

When iTunes tried to activate my "new" phone, I got an error about my connection. After reading the news, I discovered that I, like many others, was now trapped in the iBrick stage of firmware installation. Apple's international iPhone activation servers are down. I don't mean slow or sketchy, I mean down with a capital D. There are some weird suggestions to get on, but it seems that the system is completely FUBAR.

I just wrote this up on iPhoneFreak if you want a (slightly) more professional take on Apple's server explosion.

[Image via Gizmodo]

Update: The authorization servers seem to be back up and running now. I got my iPhone re-activated and the new Apps are amazing. More to come on them in the future!

It seems that Will has indeed earned a spot on the Wizards Summer League squad. Too bad they have him down as a Florida State alum. Fellow former CAAer Frank Elegar from Drexel makes the roster too. The first game is on July 14th and I now actually have a reason to watch that NBATV channel! Enjoy it because it will most likely be the last time we ever see Big Willie Style on TV again.

Chris Caputo doesn't have the glory job in college basketball but he damn sure has an important one. As Coach Larranaga's top assistant he's responsible for most of Mason's recruiting and scourers the country on a regular basis looking for that diamond in the rough high school player. Many people don't know how pivotal of a role Caputo played in the Mason's Final Four run of 2006. His scouting reports and strategy obivously made a difference as the Patriots went up against the big dogs. That is why I am glad to see articles like this in the Washington Post that highlight the sacrifices he makes and the dedication he has to the team. Recruiting in college basketball is 24/7 365-day a year gig and it can get ugly for a program if you don't follow the rules, be thankful Mason fans.

Hey Readers!

If you look to the left you should see a friendly Plurk button. It says "Come Plurk Me," and it you click on it and get a new account, it will automatically add me as your first friend. If you do have an account, it will just add me.

[Props to blankanvas for the plurk button design]