- Wednesday 29th November
I was commentating on the live Worthington Cup game
Liverpool were playing (they won 8-0 !) against Stoke
and the lottery show was supposed to nicely dovetail
at half time, but a late start and some injury time
meant that by the time I got to switch on BBC 1, the
main draw had just finished :-(
Hence I waited for the Extra draw, played back the
video tape, updated my draw data files and re-generated
the pages - took about 3 minutes in all, but it was
annoying not to do the numbers truly live. I didn't
check with Camelot until full time in the soccer game,
so I suspect teletext beat me to the full results.
- Saturday 25th November
The chat room was moderately busy tonight and the live
draw and commentary went fine on the site. Camelot took
a ridiculous amount of time to release the full results
(about 80 minutes - even 2.5 hours after the draw, they
still didn't know the carried over amount for the Extra
draw !) and BBC teletext had them up (ITV teletext
didn't) when I went to check, so may not have beaten them.
There was a 1,000 Swiss Franc winner of the virtual lottery
tonight - a record since the currency switched from sterling
to Swiss Francs.
Added "mini ball" graphics for the Lottery Extra draw on the
home page and half-completed work on individual Lottery Extra
pages, so that people can read the detailed info on each
Extra draw (even though it's a 100% waste of time playing
Extra of course). Added an updated ball applet on the chat
room page to handle the two latest machines, but the chat
room control codes need updating too (will be done shortly).
- Wednesday 22nd November
Only a few stragglers in the chat room for the draw
tonight (obviously watching Leeds getting beaten on ITV
held more attraction for most people) and the two draws
and commentary went fine. Camelot took some 45 minutes
to release the full results, but I still beat everyone
else to putting them up.
- Saturday 18th November
It was at least a little busier in the chat room tonight,
as we had 3 "regular" lottery draws on a Saturday night
for the first time. Needless to say, it all got a bit
confusing (people coming into the chat room after the
Extra draw, not realising the applet balls were for
the Extra draw and not the main one, so I "re-drew"
the main balls again for them :-) ).
Of course, Camelot had a sting in the tail on top of all
this - a new machine called Vyvyan (a Knight of
the Round Table perhaps ? Or just a character from the
excellent The Young Ones series ?). They didn't
show a close-up of the machine name tag, so BBC teletext
spelled it "Vivian" (as I did until I got it spelled to
me by someone on the Camelot phone line).
Camelot took an inordinate amount of time to release the
full results - something like 75 minutes after the draw
had taken place. By then, I'd managed to add coding to
handle the new machine and, despite the crazily long time,
I put the full results up before anyone else.
- Friday 17th November
Received a verified 163-ticket guaranteed 3-match win wheel
from Dragan Stojiljkovic and Rade Belic which beat the old
164-ticket record.
- Wednesday 15th November
Considering this was the first ever Wednesday TV show
to have two lottery draws, it was surprisingly quiet in
the lottery chat room this evening - I suspect people still
haven't got used to the 8.30pm starting time yet.
I actually did the main draw all on my ownsome in the chat
room, but people came in just as I'd finished that. The
Extra draw was done live on the home page as direct page
edits because I missed the stragglers coming in (I'd assumed
no-one was turning up the Extra draw).
To top off the evening, I had my 20th £10 win, so not
buying an Extra ticket paid off :-) Camelot took an age
to release the full results - about an hour after the draw
(normally it's around 30-45 minutes) and even then took
an extra 15 minutes until I could prise the Extra draw
ticket sales figure from them (and they couldn't quote
the exact amount that had rolled over [or "carried over"
as they now like to call it], so I just calculated it
at 45% of the ticket sales). I still put up the full
results before anyone else.
- Saturday 11th November
Well, it's the last time we'll see 2 draws on a Saturday
(the National Lottery Extra draw starts on Wednesday),
so I was hoping that some pre-Extra luck might rub on me
tonight, but no chance. The chat room was only moderately
busy, but we did have at last a few in for both the
Thunderball and main lottery draws.
The live commentary and draw in the chat room went fine
and I was the first to put up the full results, despite
Camelot taking about 45 minutes to release them.
- Wednesday 8th November
The chat room was pretty quiet tonight (too many people
watching Manchester United win on ITV ?) and only a few
stragglers turned up to watch the live commentary and draw.
Camelot were strangely slow (almost an hour) to release
the full results [it didn't help that one of the phone line
stuff was quite abrupt too each time I got her on the phone !]
and although I beat BBC teletext, I wasn't sure about ITV
teletext (I didn't check them until 5 minutes after I'd
put the full results up and ITV teletext had updated when
I looked then).
- Saturday 4th November
The chat room was moderately busy to tonight's Super Draw
and the TV show commentary and live draw in there went
reasonably well (although I had to correct the typing
somewhat [missed a number off and then sorted them,
bringing the bonus number into the main numbers !].
One wag was claiming, only 15 minutes after the Super
Draw, that there were 4 jackpot winners for the main
draw tonight. I told him to stop fibbing and, sure
enough, there were 32, not 4. I got the full results
up surprisingly quickly (only 45 minutes after the
draw) and easily beat BBC and ITV teletext to the
full results.
- Friday 3rd November
Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's
Super Draw.
- Wednesday 1st November
With the Liverpool vs. Chelsea Worthington Cup soccer game
taking hours to finish (I was doing live comms on it),
I just took a break of a few mins to update the numbers
live and do the page updates when there was a gap in the
game (so I didn't go into the lottery chat room or
advertise that beforehand).
No problems getting the full results naturally enough,
because it was 10.35pm before I could get some spare time
to phone Camelot ! I suspect a few people on the Net probably
beat me to those full results for a change...
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