What's New On These Pages: July 2002

Next month: August 2002

• Wednesday 31st July
  The lottery show was shifted in the schedules again thanks to the Commonwealth Games (in fact, my boss was at them in person tonight !), which - as usual - allowed a lot more people to turn up for the draws [it seems that if the show is on at its normal time, the chat room is very quiet...].

  No problem with the live chat room commentary and draw, plus the official Web site, after dubiously being unavailable for about 30 minutes immediately around the draw [overload again I suspect because of tonight's rollover], did get the full results first, albeit about an hour after the draw.

  Well, it's the end of an era - after 7 years of being part of the University of Liverpool (strictly speaking, we were part of the Department of Computer Science, but that's on paper only - we are about half a mile from them and have no CS staff working in our building), the Connect organisation will be spun off at midnight tonight into a new company - "Connect Internet Solutions Limited".

  We remain on the campus of the University of Liverpool (but may eventually move into new off-campus premises in the medium term future) and this site continues to be hosted from our campus premises under its usual Web address, so no change there. Our ISP connections (to Telewest and Legend) have been commercial for years anyway, so it means nothing needs to be changed w.r.t. connectivity.

• Tuesday 30th July
  Bought two additional tickets for tomorrow's main Lotto rollover.

• Saturday 27th July
  The good old Commonwealth Games (complete with crippled 100m sprinters) nicely moved the lottery TV show back over an hour later than usual and slimmed it down to only 10 minutes. This actually meant that late stragglers turned up on time for a change in the chat room and we had a good dozen or for the draws, which went reasonably well, though my TV was fritzing out on bad reception and I almost missed the Extra balls because of it.

  Bizarre things then happened w.r.t. to the full results - Camelot were generally pathetic on their phone line as usual, taking 75-80 minutes to deliver full results which their own official Web site had some 30 minutes earlier (though the official site strangely only had the number of Pick 4 HotPicks winners [no Pick 2 or Pick 3 winners] for a good 30 minutes). BBC teletext nestled inbetween the two as you might expect.

• Wednesday 24th July
  It was pretty quiet in the lottery chat room tonight, possibly because people didn't realise the show was on at 8.30pm (somewhat earlier than usual). No problem with the live TV show commentary and draw, but Camelot were horrendously slow issuing the full results - they took 90 minutes !

  The official lottery site was, for the second consecutive Wednesday, surprisingly sluggish, failing again to have the full results before any of the usual sources. BBC teletext got the full results up first, but they got the number of HotPicks Pick 2 winners wrong.

• Saturday 20th July
  It was pretty well "business as usual" this evening - a draggingly-long 45 minute lottery show (the last one with this version of an inane quiz show - more inane quizzes will follow no doubt), Camelot being slow to issue the full results, the official site up to speed again [beating both the Camelot phone line and BBC teletext] and the usual suspects in the chat room.

  Although the official site was indeed the quickest this evening, they accidentally transcribed the lottery machines for the main and Extra draws (swapping over Vyvyan and Guinevere). I phoned up Camelot and told them about the problem, although it hadn't been fixed by midnight.

• Wednesday 17th July
  A moderately calm lottery evening compared to last Saturday's chaos - the chat room was fairly busy and the page re-generation went OK this time. Although BBC teletext got the full results first (about 40 minutes after the draw), they got the individual jackpot amount wrong by £100. Even more surprisingly, the official lottery site failed to publish the full results before myself, the Camelot phone line, ITV teletext or BBC teletext.

  A couple of minor notes about the official site's HotPicks results page (sorry, can't link to it because of the dynamic nature of the site):

  Firstly, the draw number for HotPicks should surely be 682 less than the main Lotto draw number (e.g. main draw number 685 is HotPicks draw number 3, but the official site dubiously claims it's HotPicks draw number 685).

  Secondly, the terminologies "Match 4 of 4", "Match 3 of 3" and "Match 2 of 2" are strange. I can understand "Match 4 of 6" and maybe the convoluted "Match 4 of 6 from 49", but the official site's way of stating it just seems eccentric to say the least. I ended up just calling them "Pick 4", "Pick 3" and "Pick 2", which is what the HotPicks playslip designates them as.

• Tuesday 16th July
  Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's main Lotto rollover.

• Saturday 13th July
  Sport Relief meant that tonight's show was a merciful 10 minutes long (3 draws in 4 minutes meant it was hectic for me though), but it also strangely aired over an hour later than usual. The recent HotPicks code I added for the site was exercised in "Twilight Zone" mode (i.e. inbetween the draw taking place and the full results coming through) and it failed dismally :-( After 10 minutes of hacking around, I sorted it out (division by zero because no results meant all the numbers were set to zero !).

  If that wasn't enough, the Extra "mini balls" on the home page refused to be generated with this evening's Extra numbers (they had Wednesday's), so I removed the image and displayed text numbers until I got it sorted [and don't ask me how I sorted it - they just eventually decided to be generated when I asked them nicely]. Fixed another home page w.r.t. the number of 4 from 6 Hotpicks winners (wasn't displaying the right number).

  After all that code fiddling, it was interesting to see that tonight's fastest source of full results was actually the official lottery site, which had them about 15 minutes before Camelot's phone line and an amazing 30 minutes before BBC teletext.

  Fixed the Lotto HotPicks table in the hi-res versions of the individual lottery pages.

• Wednesday 10th July
  The new Lotto HotPicks game and a 5 minute lottery TV show should have been enough to bring in the crowds, but - as usual - people turned up late and kept asking what the numbers were (despite them being on the chat room page and the home page !). Camelot were their usual slow selves (about an hour to release the full results) and I think the official site may have beaten me by a few minutes again (though why they are claiming "0 jackpot winners" for HotPicks when 15 people won the £7,000 top prize is anyone's guess :-) ).

  Started coding bits'n'pieces for HotPicks - I initially thought I should have a separate data file from the main Lotto and also a completely separate section, but then I thought that was pointless because there's a direct tie-in between the main game and HotPicks. Hence, the table of HotPicks results was put on the appropriate individual main lottery page and comments on each Hotpick game will be on each individual main lottery page too. Interesting to note that the game has basically cancelled itself out w.r.t. overall ticket sales across Camelot's online games - what HotPicks gained was almost all lost by drops in the main and Extra games.

  Amusingly, on the very day of the first HotPicks draw, I received my annual main Lotto subscription form through the post. I was a bit surprised that the form failed to mention HotPicks at all, so maybe you can't subscribe to that game ?

• Saturday 6th July
  No problems with the live TV show commentary and draw in the chat room tonight, but it was interesting to see that BBC teletext knew the number of main jackpot winners and the approximate jackpot prize before anyone else, but then proceeded to be very slow (a good 10-15 minutes) putting up the full results.

  This allowed me to beat BBC teletext to them, but the official site is (finally...) becoming a force to reckon with, because I suspect that they are now getting the full results the same as the Camelot phone line that I ring gets them. This allowed them to beat me by a couple of minutes, which is pretty unusual.

• Wednesday 3rd July
  The chat room was fairly quiet during the TV show commentary and draw (as often happens, more people came in after the draw than during it :-) ). No problems with the draw, but I did get embroiled in a discussion with someone on the Camelot line about Lotto HotPicks and the lottery in general, so I didn't track when BBC teletext put up their full results (but Camelot took just over an hour to get them and probably after BBC teletext).

  Camelot re-ordered their phone line options again (presumably in the build-up to next week's launch of the Lotto HotPicks game) - it's now *14 (like it was until the Lotto re-launch) at the end of the phone number rather than *15.

Previous month: June 2002

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