What's New On These Pages: July 2006

Next month: August 2006

• Saturday 22nd July
  Started work on Dream Number results pages, but I'm having trouble generating the green balls I need (it's not a coding issue, but actually an X Windows authentication problem...and that's cutting a long story short). Hence, I've launched the home page change and the individual pages without the ball images for the moment until I sort it out.

  Bought four more tickets online for Wednesday's main Lotto double rollover draw. Fixed the ball images issue - ended up having to copy the vr-40 font (which is actually public domain if you hex dump its contents) from HP-UX to Linux, mkfontdir the font directory and restart my X session and font server to pick it up on Linux. This now lets me run X-using HP-UX programs (such as my ball generator) with the display pointing back to the Linux box with the font installed.

• Thursday 20th July
  Bought two more tickets online for Saturday's main Lotto rollover draw.

• Saturday 15th July
  Well, I just had fun listening to Suzanne Vega's excellent "Marlene On The Wall" via Camelot's phone line several time today. Why? Well, Camelot seemed to be very reluctant to admit that they either had the UK number of winners for each category of Euro Millions last night or even - as often happens - that the confusingly-titled "No of winners" column on their Euro Millions prize info page is actually the "No of European winners" and not the "No of UK winners".

  It started off on Saturday morning when I phoned and the woman who responded was initially convinced that the Web showed the number of UK winners and it took some persuading for her to go off to her supervisor and get the number of UK winners. She came back and then only gave me the top three tiers (there was one UK Match 5 winner for example). I gave up at that point and waited until noon to phone back...

  ...So I phoned back at noon, got stuck on hold for almost 3 minutes and gave up to watch the French F1 GP practice instead. I then phoned back after that and had another guy who was convinced that Camelot's Web site was showing the number of UK winners. I was in the middle of trying to persuade him that it didn't, only for him to dump me deliberately on hold with no warning whatsoever and I decided to type this up whilst on hold (but eventually I gave up on hold after 10 minutes - yep, the bloke never returned back from the hold...). This is ludicrous!

  So I'm on the fourth phone call as I write this. I went through a clear explanation with "Sarah" that the Web site does not have the number of UK winners in each tier (it's the number of European winners) and she agreed to talk with the supervisor and put me on hold. This time she came back and started reading across the Match 5 per-country row (which I didn't even know Camelot kept that info!). I explained I only wanted the UK winners in each category and, yep, she said "but that info's on the Web site" - cue muffled screams - arrrgh! So I explained again to her and I'm on the second hold now (which is lasting a good 5 minutes and we're on Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" now).

  Eventually, the woman came back and I did get the number of UK winners (4 phone calls!). I asked to get transferred to their "interactive" phone line and attempted to register a complaint about the Euro Million prize results page, but after explaining it all (and being put on hold twice again), it was eventually suggested that I simply e-mail the complaint in (why they couldn't have told me that when I started, I don't know!) to [email protected] - so I dash off a missive to that as you'd expect (asked for the table heading to be "No of European winners" and also asked for the "No of UK winners" column to be restored).

• Wednesday 5th July
  Received an e-mail from Johnny Gannon, who works for Initial (a TV production company that's part of the well-known Endemol Group). They are working on a new daily BBC 1 daytime lottery show and wanted me to appear as an "expert" to give advice on how to "increase their chances of winning" (tip - answer is only 3 words: "buy more tickets"). I turned them down of course, since what am I going to say on TV that isn't already on my Web site?

  Johnny says that he has to "have everything wrapped up by the end of the week", so the launch of the TV show can't be too far away. I'm wondering, though, whether there will be an actual draw in the show or will it just be a "lottery news and tips" show (surely you'd run out of things to say soon enough?). Also curious as to whether it will be live or not - I guess time will tell. If it's daytime, though, it's probably not going to be related to Daily Play, which typically takes place around 8.00pm in the evening or so.

Previous month: June 2006

© Richard K. Lloyd & Connect Internet Solutions Limited  2024