- Saturday 30th September
Tonight's TV show commentary and draw went fine, although people
only started coming into the chat room in numbers just as the
Thunderball draw was taking place. Despite Camelot taking almost
an hour to release the full results, I still got them on my pages
first.
- Friday 29th September
Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover (and also a Lucky Dip
ticket which my mother paid for, which won £10 for her !).
- Wednesday 27th September
As usual, Wednesday's draw had to compete against the second half
of a European football tie on the "other side" (ITV) - this time,
Arsenal beat Lazio whilst I was commentating on the TV show and draw.
Sadly, there were a only a few visitors for the draw itself (inexplicably,
more came in 10 mins after the draw had taken place), but at least I
was the first to put up the full results.
- Sunday 24th September
It was pretty late on Sunday night (actually early Monday morning) before
I got the virtual lottery and ticket checking all working. Left the
Best Performing Tickets generation to churn (finished about 3.00am and, yes,
I even got an e-mail about that page not being updated - amazing someone
would bookmark that page !).
- Saturday 23rd September
There was an intranet problem this weekend, which took until late Sunday
night to fix, meaning that I was doing offline updates on my home machine
and uploading them to the live server (because I normally use a machine on
our intranet to generate the pages).
I still did the commentary for the live TV show and draw, but Camelot took
an age to release the full results (about an hour). Mind you, it took me a
while to get the pages fully updated (I did the individual lottery page
manually and then generated the rest of the pages later in the evening).
Despite putting a notice up on the home page that certain parts of the site
(including the virtual lottery and ticket checking) wouldn't be fully updated
until late Sunday night, people still e-mailed to ask why the ticket checker
wasn't including the latest draw. This is because they'd obviously bookmarked
the ticket check and never visit the home page :-(
- Wednesday 20th September
A quiet night in the chat room tonight, presumably because everyone was
watching Arsenal lose live on ITV :-) I actually started a large download
on my home PC an hour before the draw and unexpectedly, it was still going
when the TV show started, so I did the chat room commentary and draw from
the PC for a change and then switched back to my UNIX workstation for the
post-draw updates.
By the time I got back in the chat room on the UNIX box, everyone had
scarpered of course, but a few new people drifted in and out until I got
the full results (having to phone on my mobile because someone else in the
house was gabbing away for an hour on the house phone). Sadly, all
this messing around meant that ITV teletext beat me to the full results
by a few minutes, but I did beat BBC teletext.
- Saturday 16th September
No problems tonight with the TV show commentary and draws
in the lottery chat room - there were a reasonable number of
visitors to the room. Disappointingly, Camelot took just over
an hour to get the full results (initially, they only had the
prize amounts and not the number of winners) - by the time
I got them all entered and on the site, BBC teletext had their
results up too. I did at least beat ITV teletext to the full
results, which was some consolation.
Belatedly bought my two extra tickets for today's Super Draw
from Tesco's today (only 4.5 hours before the terminals closed -
one of the latest times I've ever bought tickets before a draw).
It was mainly because I'm on holiday for the Olympics, so hadn't
had a chance to go out (what with being glued to the TV and all)
and get the tickets.
- Wednesday 13th September
More Euro football competition tonight for the lottery
draw in the form of Manchester United, so the lottery room
was only moderately full. The commentary and draw went fine,
but Camelot took almost 50 minutes to release the full results.
Surprisingly, I still beat ITV and BBC teletext to putting
them up.
- Saturday 9th September
It didn't help that ITV's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
started just as the main lottery draw was taking place tonight,
but we still got some hardy souls into the chat room to watch
the commentary and 2 draws. No problems with those, but Camelot
was a bit slow with the full results and BBC teletext may have
beaten me to them (I beat ITV teletext though).
- Wednesday 6th September
I'm never a big fan of having to do a lottery TV show
commentary and draw right in the middle of the live soccer commentary I
was doing on the official Liverpool FC site (half time conveniently
coincided with the draw), but it went reasonably smoothly tonight,
even if I struggled to actually get into the chat room by the time
the draw happened. I didn't bother checking teletext tonight to see
if I beat them, on the assumption that by putting the full results
up just before 10.00pm, teletext would have been quicker than me.
- Saturday 2nd September
The chat room was quiet all the way through and up to the Thunderball
draw - people only came in there in numbers with about 3-4 minutes to
go before the main draw. The TV show commentary (for the few early birds)
and the draws went fine and I was the first to put up the full results.
![[UK National Lottery Logo]](/Lottery.gif){kind=small}
![[What's New]](/nav/WhatsNew.gif){kind=small}