What's New On These Pages: May 2010

Next month: June 2010

• Monday 17th May
  Fixed another couple of bugs introduced after last week's Thunderball code changes. I'd accidentally generated Numerical Analysis draw #965+ data into the archive of draws #1-#964 analysis, so I had to "go back in time" (i.e. remove draws #965+ from my data file temporarily) and re-generate the analysis again into the archive, before restoring the draw #965+ data. The other problem was that I'd messed up the EuroMillions draw range code when adjusting it for Thunderball - this has been fixed as well.

• Friday 14th May
  Finished off the ticket checker bug fixing (hopefully) - it can now handle Friday draws too, just in time for tonight's draw. Trivia point - did you know that there's actually been two previous Friday Thunderball draws on Christmas Eve 1999 and 2004? I believe they were moved forward a day because the lottery terminals are all closed on Christmas Day.

• Thursday 13th May
  I didn't think many people used the Thunderball ticket checker on this site (which is why I left it to the last to look at), but I was wrong - several e-mails came in today complaining about incorrect checking. I finally got some time tonight to look at it and fixed the most obvious issues, only leaving the Friday draw handling for another day because it's a bit fiddly.

• Wednesday 12th May
  I worked some more tonight on various Thunderball code sections, including Number Palace (looks to be working OK), Prize Winners and All Winning Numbers. Unfortunately, I've ended up introducing some new bugs:
  • Best Performing Tickets is badly broken - Total Prizes column has wrong figures, the "Top 10 tickets" are just nonsense and I've dropped off the Losers row in the bottom left table for no good reason.
  • On the Prize Winners pages, the Low/High/Avg./Tots summary at the bottom seems to have randomly bad figures in the "0+T" column.
  • The single and multiple ticket checkers haven't been looked at yet. Potential bugs include not treating Friday draws or the new 0+T/ball tier properly. However, it should handle 39 main balls OK at least, but I haven't even looked to check if that's true.
  
  Before you panic, I will be working through the above bugs and fixing them when I get the time.

• Tuesday 11th May
  Mostly sorted out the individual Thunderball draw pages and the Thunderball Numerical Analysis section by "faking" a line for draw #965 (35-39 and a Thunderball of 14) and testing the code generation. Numerical analysis for draws #1-#964 has been archived and the normal analysis pages will reset to include info from draw #965 onwards once tomorrow's draw is completed.

  Before you ask, I haven't looked at the prizes, winners or ticket checker pages yet, but I will do so by the weekend. Until then, it won't recognise the T/ball-only prize tier and may be "awkward" about checking Friday Thunderball draws.

• Monday 10th May
  Started coding for the Thunderball changes that are coming on Wednesday. Tonight's work was to generate the small and large main balls 35-39 in miff format for the new game (not easy when my home Linux box didn't have the vr-40 or 9x15b fonts, but I sorted it out in the end).

• Saturday 8th May
  Bought four more tickets online for next Wednesday's main Lotto double rollover draw.

• Thursday 6th May
  Bought two more tickets online for next Saturday's main Lotto single rollover draw.

Previous month: April 2010

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