- Saturday 30th November
The chat room was moderately busy tonight for the TV show
commentary and draw, which proceeded fairly smoothly. As usual,
the official site was slow to put up the winning numbers and
fast (only about 45 minutes after the draw) to display the full
results. BBC teletext lagged behind tonight again (they hadn't
got the numbers up by 9.00pm).
- Wednesday 27th November
Maybe it was everyone watch Newcastle United getting a pasting on ITV2
(unliekly), but only a few stragglers turned up tonight in the lottery
chat room both during the draw and afterwards. The official site got the
full results first, albeit almost an hour after the draw - BBC teletext
was at least 15 minutes tardier than this (I didn't hang around to find
out how late they were).
- Saturday 23rd November
Considering there was a rollover main draw tonight, the chat room
was surprisingly quiet, with only one hardy soul venturing in for
the Thunderball draw and a handful more came in for the main draw
itself, which presented no problems tonight (more time to do the
numbers on a Saturday of course).
Unusually, BBC teletext beat the official site to the full results
by several minutes - they had the info up some 40 minutes after
the draws.
- Friday 22nd November
Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover draw, plus spent another
£5 on a Christmas Millionaire Maker ticket.
- Wednesday 20th November
My home connection was back to normal tonight, though the Extra
draw is aired so quickly (static sorted balls caption on Wednesday
shows because the BBC claim they can't air 3 live draws in 5 minutes)
that I actually stumbled a bit displaying those numbers in the chat
room [had to check the end-of-show caption to confirm things].
No surprise to learn that the official site was the first with the
full results some 55 minutes after the draw (slightly more interestingly,
they took "only" 20 minutes to put up the winning numbers tonight).
BBC teletext followed about 15 minutes later.
- Saturday 16th November
Although my home Net connection is still in a partly-working
state, I've got a temporary workaround to let me graphically
Web surf from my home machine, so it was back to business
as usual tonight for the live TV show commentary and draw
in the chat room.
It was moderately busy tonight and, as usual,
the official site that was the slowest to put the winning
numbers up and the fastest to put the full results up (yes,
you and I know this is bizarre, but it seems to be their
modus operandi nowadays). BBC teletext trailed in some
15-20 minutes later.
- Wednesday 13th November
Annoyingly, my home Net connection (still ISDN via a Max
box it connects to at work) didn't work properly (wouldn't
route out to the outside world), so I couldn't do the live
update or, indeed, update all the pages a few minutes after
the draw.
Eventually, I found a way to get onto the work machines on
the intranet about an hour after the draw and transferred my
updated data files to the appropriate machine and re-generated
the pages. I then phoned up Camelot and got them to read me
out the full results (I couldn't surf directly from home, so
I didn't cross-check them with the official site).
- Saturday 9th November
The show started slightly later than usual for a Saturday, so
there was an equivalent increase in the number of people
in the chat room for the
draw itself (it seems that people tend to turn up about 10 minutes
after they think the show starts, regardless of when it actually
does start :-) ).
No problems with the live TV show commentary and draw in the chat
room and the official site was the first to put up the full results,
albeit some 75 minutes after the draws took place. BBC teletext followed
on about 10-15 minutes afterwards.
- Wednesday 6th November
Another quiet evening the chat room (maybe too many people astonished
by the Worthington Cup shock soccer results ?) meant that only a few
hardy souls ventured in, but the TV show commentary and draw went fine
at least. The official site was the quickest to put up the full results,
albeit almost an hour after the draws, with the Camelot phone line also
managing to beat BBC teletext for a change.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the evening was that the BBC persisted
with refusing to show the Extra draw live - Camelot are now saying the BBC
are to blame for this because they "can't fit the third draw in the 5 minute
time slot". So does anyone care to explain the following about the BBC's
TV coverage of the Extra draw on Wednesdays:
- They won't show the Extra balls in drawn order.
- They won't even show a still video shot of the draw machine and
balls in their final resting positions.
- They had 8.5 minutes (gleefully announced by the Voice of the
Balls) to perform 3 draws [the show started 3.5 minutes early] and yet the BBC
still refused to draw the Extra lottery live and crazily finished the show
3.5 minutes early instead !
- Why can't the BBC extend the Wednesday slot to 10 minutes, particularly as
they seem to think we want a 45 minute lottery show on Saturdays (clue stick
for the BBC: we don't).
As it stands, we have zero evidence presented to the public that the draw
even took place - we just get a static caption with a coloured background
of the balls in sorted order. Tonight's fiasco of starting and finishing
minutes early prompted me to not only repeat my formal complaint to
Camelot, but also to phone the BBC Duty Officer and formally complain to them
as well (I added the suggestion that they show a still video caption as
mentioned above if they really can't show the third draw live).
- Saturday 2nd November
It was fairly quiet in the chat room tonight, despite it
being a rollover (maybe rollovers are becoming too common ?).
No problems with the live TV show commentary and draw and the official
site was the first again with the full results (Camelot's phone line was
about 10 minutes behind their own Web site). I won my third £10
prize in the last 6 weeks - things are looking up !
- Friday 1st November
Bought two more tickets for tomorrow's rollover draw.
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