What's New On These Pages: August 2001

Next month: September 2001

• Friday 31st August
  Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover draw.

• Wednesday 29th August
  Surprisingly, the chat room was about three times as busy as usual during the draw as people flooded in (maybe the official site was down or something :-) ). No problems with the live TV commentary and draw and I was the first to put up the full results (about 40 minutes after the draws finished).

• Saturday 25th August
  The chat room was moderately busy tonight as the live commentary and draw went well. I waited almost an hour to phone Camelot (who claimed I was "late" phoning), but still easily beat ITV and BBC teletext to the full results. My main work desktop machine for building the lottery pages crashed this weekend (not caused by the lottery page generation before you ask !), so I used the backup work machine to update the site.

• Wednesday 22nd August
  It was surprisingly quiet tonight in the chat room - maybe everyone was hoping that Manchester United would lose the first ever Premier League Pay Per View game televised in the UK (they didn't - it was a 2-2 draw with Blackburn Rovers). Still, we had a few stragglers come in and the draw and commentary went fine. Despite Camelot taking something like a full hour to release the full results, I still managed to beat BBC and ITV teletext to them.

  Ran some spell checking on this What's New section and the main lottery manual comments, which picked up a fair few problems (that were duly fixed of course).

• Saturday 18th August
  The usual crew turned up in the chat room in time to see what looked like fairly routine draws, though there was a bit of a shock to see that there was a jackpot winner in the Extra jackpot (announced at the end of the show). Camelot then took an inordinate amount of time to release the full results (something like 75 minutes), but I still beat BBC and ITV teletext to them.

• Wednesday 15th August
  No problems tonight in the chat room as a larger crowd than usual witnessed the live TV show commentary and draw. I was distracted dealing with a machine problem to be too chatty in the room myself and the full results took just over an hour to come through (quite slow).

• Saturday 11th August
  Although the odd person drifted into the chat room prior to the Thunderball draw, there actually wasn't anybody but me in there when the draw itself took place :-( Shortly afterwards, the usual suspects turned up, though they had to wait almost 90 minutes after the main draw to find the full results, thanks to Camelot's procrastination (though I did beat ITV and BBC teletext in the process).

• Friday 10th August
  Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover.

• Wednesday 8th August
  This was the first of what I suspect will be many chaotic Wednesdays - I do the live text commentary on the official Liverpool FC Website and their fixtures are full of Wednesday games this season (Champions League syndrome). Fortunately, tonight's game (which they won 5-0) finished just as the lottery show was starting, so I was still able to go into the chat room and do the usual live commentary and draw.

  The chat room was only busy during the show itself - most people scarpered quickly once the draws had been made. I phoned Camelot up about 45 minutes after the draw and got the full results, conveniently ahead of BBC and ITV teletext.

• Saturday 4th August
  It was pretty quiet in the chat room tonight until just before the Thunderball draw - as usual, people have got their entry time down pat now :-) No problems with the live TV show commentary and draw, plus they announced the number of main and Extra jackpot winners as the show ended (which duly led to a predictable exodus from the chat room once that was revealed...).

  Camelot weren't exactly fast at releasing the full results - something like an hour after the draw - but I still managed to beat ITV and BBC teletext to the punch.

• Wednesday 1st August
  The usual suspects turned up for tonight's live TV show commentary and draw - conveniently, the live Arsenal soccer friendly on Channel 5 actually was at half time during the lottery show on BBC 1, so I got to see both :-) No problems with the draw, although Camelot actually took just over an hour to issue the full results - almost 10 minutes longer than BBC 1 teletext !

Previous month: July 2001

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