Frequently Asked Questions about the Live Updates System

• What is the Live Updates system ?
  It provides a way to easily re-generate a new top-level lottery home page, lottery chat room page and the appropriate individual lottery page, complete with a new 7-ball GIF, as each ball comes out of the lottery machine, enabling extremely fast updates to be achieved (in fact, probably a lottery WWW site world record, particularly w.r.t. the generated graphics).

  The system involves two forms, one CGI program, three other binaries run by the CGI (the page generator, bhs [a custom cpp -> HTML filter] and montage [ImageMagick's bitmap concatenator]) and two data files for tracking updates. To my knowledge, it is totally unique on the WWW.

• Why did you create a Live Updates system ?
  I now have a home ADSL Internet connection, so I needed a way to update pages with the minimum of effort and the maximum of speed. As an afterthought, I realised that I could expand what might have ended up as a personal CGI system into a more public one where anyone sitting in front of both a TV and a computer (or a PC TV !) could witness the draw and supply the winning numbers themselves.

  Of course, the chances of a mistake being made by people when submitting the winning numbers meant that I've had to impose a rule insisting that at least 3 people must agree w.r.t. the winning numbers or the jackpot prize pool before I re-generate the appropriate pages and graphics.

• Don't make me laugh - no-one's going to use it surely ?
  I suspect you might have a point there...the vast majority of people coming to my site are looking for the winning numbers and don't expect to have to type them in themselves ! However, it only takes 3 anoraks, er, I mean dedicated lottery enthusiasts, supplying concurring info for the system to work. However, it's likely the quickest submitter (who gets credited on the lottery home page and the individual lottery page) would only get a maximum of 45 minutes of fame, because the credit disappears when I post up the full results.

• OK, I'm curious - how do I contribute on a Wednesday or Saturday night ?
  Get your TV ready and tuned into BBC 1. Connect your machine to Internet and go to the Live Updates registration form at any time between 7.30pm GMT and midnight. Fill in and submit the form - you'll then receive another form showing your own personal live updates status (initially nothing, so all the balls have ?'s in them).

  The first figures you need to watch out for are the estimated jackpot prize pool, the machine used and the ball set used. These are announced on the TV show somewhere around 7.55pm GMT - type those figures in (the machine and ball set are selectable pop-up menus) and click on "Send Update". You can submit them one at a time or all three at once - it's up to you.

  You'll get back the same form again with the jackpot pool amount duly "nicely formatted" (commas put in, figure rounded down to the nearest £10,000) and the machine/ball set displayed. Next, shortly after 8.00pm GMT the draw will start - you need to type in each number and click on "Send Update" as each ball rolls out. After the 6th number has been typed in and submitted, they will be sorted in ascending order (which may initially confuse you - I'm just doing it a little earlier than the BBC does it !) and you then can type in the bonus number and submit it.

  If any of your submissions agree with at least two other people, then a couple of pages (the lottery home page and the individual lottery page) will be re-generated and you will be informed of this. The Live Updates overall status is treated as one external WWW site and is compared to other external lottery WWW sites. If the overall status agrees with at least one other site, then the appropriate pages are re-generated and the live updates system is then disabled. The system is also disabled if two external UK lottery WWW sites agree with each other regardless of the Live Updates status.

• What if I submit the wrong numbers ?
  Simply type in the corrected numbers and re-submit the form - you can change or delete any of the 7 drawn numbers or the jackpot pool amount using the form. Note that the bonus number will be removed from your submission unless you supply all 6 main numbers as well. The numbers "wrap" around, so typing "0" means 49, "50" means 1 and "99" also means 1. Duplicate numbers are also removed naturally enough.

• Isn't this live updates thing over-the-top ?
  For the amount of the coding I had to do vs. the length of time it is used on my pages (about 30 minutes per draw !), the benefits don't exactly jump out at you. However, as a way for me to provide live updates in the fastest possible manner, its complexity is a necessary evil. It took a total of about 50 hours of coding and testing spread over about a month to get it really "smooth" and how I think it should look. I suspect it will remain a unique system for quite some time to come on the Internet.

• What's to stop me submitting several times via different e-mail addresses ?
  Only one e-mail registration per numeric IP address is allowed. This may hit people coming in via proxy servers (because they'll be picked up with the same IP address), but it's the only easy way to stop multiple submissions by one person (though the devious amongst you will have already realised that this check can be bypassed).

• How live is "live" ?
  The time between balls being drawn in the UK lottery is 7.5 seconds and hence any system claiming to be "live" must refresh both the HTML pages and the ball graphics within 7.5 seconds of each ball being drawn. In tests, I have managed to generate a new home page, a new individual lottery page and a new 7-ball single GIF graphic in a total time of 1.87 seconds on my home system. I really don't think anyone else in the world will come remotely close to beating this time.

• Is anyone else doing live UK lottery updates on the Internet ?
  No - the Live Updates system provides the only place to see the UK lottery draw live on the Internet. Ironically, the two official Web sites that should be doing the draw live are Camelot (they run the draw) and the BBC (they televise the draw) and yet neither official Web site has ever shown the draw live on the Internet ! Nothing short of outrageous really :-)

© Richard K. Lloyd & Connect Internet Solutions Limited  2024