Random.org & NCAA No-Picks Tournament draw on my blog (sorry regulars)

For several years, I forget how many, I have either participated or have run a low-cost, no-pick NCAA tournament bracket including this year.

Sixteen people sign up and each player gets four teams randomly selected from the NCAA pool of 64 teams with a chance to win money. It makes things fun because after the draw you suddenly have four new teams to root for. To make things fair, each player gets a 1-4 seed, and one team each from the 5-8, 9-12 and 13-16 seeds.

The longest surviving seed in the three lower groups wins its owner a small amount of money and the overall tournament winner gets all the remaining cash. It adds some tension to games with teams that usually nobody would care about.

This year rather than doing the old school drawing with paper out of a hat, I went to Random.org to generate the field instead of paper. This is a very cool true random number generator (not the artificial random algorithms) built and operated by Mads Haahr of the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. This sounds very impressive. Best of all and most importantly, it means Dungeons & Dragons needs no dice.

Anyway, here is the 2010 draw, forever preserved in the Webiverse in the order participants signed up. I will update whenever possible rather than flood mailboxes with e-mail.

Jody - Kansas, BYU, Sam Houston State, Northern Iowa

Larry - Pitt, Marquette, Sienna, Georgia Tech

Amy - Purdue, Oklahoma State, Morgan State, Florida

Jared - Baylor, Xavier, Vermont, Old Dominion

Layton - Maryland, Tennessee, Murray State, Sand Diego State

Mike - Duke, Michigan State, Houston, Saint Mary's

Randy - New Mexico, Clemson, UC Santa Barbara, Louisville

Dan - Vanderbilt, UNLV, Oakland, UTEP



Mark - Villanova, Notre Dame, Lehigh, Minnesota

Sarah - West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Missouri

Cottle - Georgetown, Richmond, Robert Morris, Utah State (Cottle gets this team in this pool every time they make the field).

Dirk - Kentucky, Temple, Arkansas-PB, Washington

HiHo - Ohio State, Gonzaga, East Tennessee, New Mexico State

Heidi B. - Kansas State, Butler, Wofford, Cornell

Kent - Syracuse, California, North Texas, Wake Forrest

Emmie - Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Montana, Florida State

Celebration time!

I am so pleased to read today that HBO has given the green light to George R. R. Martin's series "A Game Of Thrones". Season 1 will have 10 episodes. Time to subscribe to HBO!

Hip hip HORRAY!

This barely has a place on my blog but it is a book I am passionate about and has the potential to be excellent drama.

If you care, you can read some more here.

Too good not to post

I read tonight that "Avatar" is one of the two favorites to win "Best Picture" at the Academy Awards. With 10 nominations I find predictions a little sketchy but there is a lot to be learned from other award shows.

I liked "Avatar" a lot. But it isn't the best film of 2009 by any stretch.

I found this little gem that is too good not to post:

CFV 426 - Avatar/Pocahontas Mashup FINAL VERSION from Randy Szuch on Vimeo.

Think you are a Tough Guy?

I saw this today, linked from a site I frequent. There are a lot of videos from several different years, including one set to "Eye Of The Tiger," but this one really gives the best over view. It also really makes me want to try this:



Anybody with me?

Another stint at Sundance

I covered, sort of, another Sundance Film Festival for the Deseret News. I made several blog entries that I thought were worthwhile but I only turned in one full story which wasn't about a movie at all but about a musician. On the plus side, when I saw her in Park City and when I saw her previously in New York, I left convinced both times that she is a future star. I do mean that.



I had terrible luck with Sundance this year, including transportation. One day my passenger side window refused to go down and my driver side window refused to go up. Driving to Park City in the snow pretty much makes this a car I just couldn't use anymore. Better, the catalytic converter on my other car (the one that didn't give out on the way to Mexico last summer) bit the dust.

When our refrigerator went out we remodeled our kitchen and when my 1996 Honda with 160,000 miles was just one repair beyond acceptable, we bought a new car. Pimped out Accord. Nice car.

Anyway the point was, I saw fewer films and wrote fewer stories than ever before and it makes me a bit sad. I did manage to see some films though.

Wow, "District 9" just got a "Best Picture" nomination from the Academy Awards. It was one of my best pictures to be sure.