- Wednesday 29th May
No problems with the live TV show commentary and draw in the chat room,
with the usual suspects turning up for the draws and, as ever, plenty
of late stragglers. I beat BBC and ITV teletext to the full results, which
were bizarre (one 5+bonus winner netting over £1m !).
- Saturday 25th May
Tonight's TV show was, as usual, too long and - ironically - was rushed right
at the end (all three draws with no pauses, which is highly unusual) to finish
in time for the Eurovision Song Contest. No problems with the live TV show
commentary or draw, but it came as no surprise when BBC teletext beat Camelot
by about 10 minutes to the full results.
Camelot sent me the complete list of Thunderball machines and ball sets by post
(nope, they still won't e-mail me any info !),
so I got an Internet exclusive with them (the official site only lists
the last 6 months of machines/ball sets). It also meant a new Machine and
Ball Set analysis page and an adjustment of the Thunderball All Winning Numbers
page to include the machine and ball set. I also mention the machine and ball
set on each individual Thunderball lottery page of course.
It was all made slightly trickier by the fact that the Thunderball ball set
isn't actually a number - it's "E" followed by a number (E1, E2 etc.). I counted
up to E7 so far, so I assume there's 7 ball sets. The machines are all called
"Excalibur" and are numbered 1, 2 or 3. "Excalibur 2" has never been used,
so would appear to be the backup machine. Interestingly, I got all three of
tonight's draws' machine and ball sets at about 5.30pm, so I might phone Camelot
a couple of hours before each draw and see if they can give me the info in
advance.
- Wednesday 21st May
When I joined the lottery chat room tonight 15 minutes before the draw,
there were already some 10 people in there, obviously fooled by the fact
that the show started at 9.25pm tonight :-) No problems with the live show
commentary and draw though, as usual, BBC teletext beat Camelot by about
10 minutes to the full results.
- Tuesday 20th May
Camelot's official site now displays the Thunderball machine and ball set, whereas
when I phoned Camelot (now "*15" rather than "*14" on the end of the number), they
said they didn't have that information ! Annoyingly, the official site has
purged any results more than 6 months old, so getting the first 130 or so
Thunderball machines/ball sets could be fun...
- Saturday 18th May
Well, tonight was "interesting" to say the least - a 50-minute lottery show
that failed to include three of the six draws, a seemingly complete failure
of the network connection of the official lottery
Web site all Saturday evening (a bit
of a disaster for the "Lotto" launch !), a loose ISDN cable at home had
me panicking for 30 minutes until I tracked it down, plus Camelot only got
the full results of the 6 draws on their phone with 2 minutes to spare before
they shut down the line for the night at 11.00pm.
It was interesting to note that the additional draw 1 full results took almost
an hour to come through, but draw 2 came through in 20-25 minutes, as did
draw 3. After the marathon 3.5-hour session tonight, I also re-coded the
pages to use "Lotto" for main draw 668 and Extra draw 158 onwards. BBC teletext
seemed to be quick on the draw (if you pardon the pun) tonight, but they
did mess up the 5+bonus prize (£1,000 too low) in the main draw, so they
weren't perfect either.
- Wednesday 15th May
It seems that a lot of people were keen to say goodbye to the
last ever main/Extra "lottery" draws - from Saturday, they'll be
utterly pointlessly renamed "Lotto" at a cost of £28.2m. Yes,
new playslips and ticket designs, but not a single change of the
main, Thunderball or Extra lottery rules at all ! Can you say the
words "100% cosmetic" and "absolutely shameful waste of money"
out loud now please ?
No problems with the TV show commentary/draw in the chat room (in
fact, the TV show started 4 minutes late, which would have only
given it one minute to do 2 draws if you believed the TV listings :-) )
and, as a bonus, I beat ITV and BBC teletext to the full results
of these "farewell" draws.
A colleague bought a lottery ticket today and showed me the new playslip
and ticket (I rarely see them because I have an annual subscription of
course). Camelot have made a huge balls-up of the playslip
design - they've "rotated" the game boards 90 degrees so that they
read 1-12, 13-24, 25-36 and 37-48 across the playslip, which isn't
the main problem. Spot the missing number ? Yep, 49 is on a fifth row
of its own and is followed on that row by Lucky Dip/Extra draw details,
so it's effectively "tucked away" in bottom left of the board. Any
bets that the number 49 suddenly becomes wildly unpopular ? It's a
design gaffe of fairly gigantic proportions and might have a few people
howling (or thinking it's now a 48-ball game :-) ).
- Saturday 11th May
We said goodbye to Jet Set and the Premier League soccer season today and
the chat room was moderately busy for the live TV show commentary and draws,
which went fine. BBC teletext beat Camelot by a good 15 minutes to the
full results, which should come as no shock to regular readers.
- Wednesday 8th May
I was busy in the official Liverpool FC chat room during a live
text commentary tonight (LFC won a 4-3 thriller vs. Blackburn),
but half time nicely coincided with the lottery show, but I could
stay for the draws and then leave a few minutes later to do the
second half of the soccer commentary. I got the full results at
full time (around 10.00pm), but I suspect BBC teletext well beat
me to them.
- Saturday 4th May
The lottery show TV commentary and draw went OK in the chat
room, though it was a fairly quiet night overall. BBC teletext
got the full results about 20-25 (!) minutes before Camelot,
though they initially messed up the number of 4-match winners
(they quoted them 20,000 too high). Camelot were disgracefully
late with the full results - took them almost 90 minutes after
the draws to come up with the goods.
- Friday 3rd May
Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover draw, though
it'll serve me right for carrying a Region 1 (Canadian) DVD
of Final Fantasy in my briefcase when walking into
W.H. Smith's to buy the lottery tickets - there was a security
tag in the DVD case [despite it being mail ordered to me !] that
set the store alarms off...
- Wednesday 1st May
The chat room was fairly quiet for the main and Extra draws
(which seemed a little rushed to me - the TV programme even
started 3 minutes early !), but at least the TV show commentary
and draw went fine. Even better was the fact that BBC and ITV
teletext were beaten to the full results (strangely, BBC teletext
quickly put up the fact that there was no main draw jackpot winner, but
then duly failed to put up the full results for some 10 minutes).
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