- Wednesday 30th January
I was doing live commentating in the chat room on the official
Liverpool FC site, but conveniently, half time coincided with
the lottery draw, so I popped into the lottery chat room then
and did the draw (and duly left again !).
Because there was a higher load than normal on the LFC site
(it was an "open turnstile" allowing anyone to play the audio
comms), I kept an eye on that for a while and it was just my
luck that there were "freaky" draw results when I phoned up
Camelot at about 10.20pm (all due to the playslip pattern).
- Saturday 26th January
The live TV show and commentary went OK (even if the second
ball to come out in the Thunderball draw took an age to come
out !) and, for a change, I beat BBC teletext to the full
results (despite Camelot taking just over an hour to announce
them).
- Wednesday 23rd January
No problems with tonight's TV show commentary and draw
and Camelot had the full results some 45 minutes after the
draw (but BBC teletext beat them by several minutes yet
again). I got my name and phone number on Camelot's somewhat
obscure database that they'll use to inform players when
there's a Super Draw coming up. Would be nice if they
could e-mail me this info, but nope, that's 20th century
technology of course :-)
- Saturday 19th January
As usual, it was quiet in the chat room until just before
the Thunderball and then we had a reasonable crowd for the
live TV show commentary and draw. Predictably, BBC teletext
beat Camelot by 10 minutes to the full results, with the
later delivering them a poor 70 minutes after the draws
took place.
- Wednesday 16th January
There were quite a lot of users in the chat room tonight to
see the live TV show commentary and draw. Annoyingly,
Dedicoat's voice is difficult to make out (I can't see the
TV screen) and I had to correct one of the Extra numbers.
Worse was to come when it turned out that a colleague had
set the permissions and owner of a parent directory above
my lottery code incorrectly and I couldn't generate the
pages for 5 minutes until I tracked it down...grr.
As usual, Camelot were hopeless releasing the full results
(just over an hour after the draw) - some 15 minutes after
BBC teletext had them.
- Saturday 12th January
No problems tonight in the chat room, which was moderately
busy for the TV show commentary and draws. As usual, Camelot
over an hour (about 70 minutes) to release the full results
and it looked like BBC teletext updated around the same time I
did thanks to Camelot's lethargy.
- Wednesday 9th January
I was doing the live text commentary of Southampton vs.
Liverpool (which the Saints won 2-0, somewhat surprisingly),
but luckily I managed to "escape" at half time to do the
chat room TV show commentary and draws for the folks waiting
in there. I couldn't hang around afterwards and I only
got the full results at full time in the soccer game
(which was predictably after BBC 1 teletext had published
them).
- Saturday 5th January
There were a fair number of people in the chat room for
tonight's lottery draws. Annoyingly, I mis-heard the
first number that Alan Dedicoat read out (I thought he
said 31, but it was 41) - it wasn't until the balls were
read out in ascending order that I realised the mistake.
This then put me about 30 seconds behind (having to fix
stuff) and I barely got the Extra numbers up in time.
After triple-checking the numbers on the video taping
I'd make on the show and also with BBC teletext, I then
relaxed and waited for Camelot to release the full results.
Unsurprisingly, they reverted to sluggish form as it
took almost 60 minutes after the draw to get the information.
This was slow enough for BBC teletext to update at about the
same time I did.
- Wednesday 2nd January
There were plenty of people lined up in the chat room
tonight for the double rollover draw, which went ahead
without a hitch. Even Camelot "behaved" tonight and
managed to release the full results about 45 minutes after
the draws and actually ahead of teletext for a change.
Bought four tickets for tonight's double rollover draw, not
that it did me any good.