- Saturday 31st May
The live updates and post-draw full results (faster than anyone
else to post these) went pretty smoothly. Annoying that the
draw clashed with Channel 5's live coverage of Poland vs. England,
so I had to tape the football and watch it later in the evening :-(
- Thursday 29th May
Received a fax from Camelot (I didn't get one last week because our
fax machine was broken !) and duly updated the sales figures, quicker
than anyone else on the Net as usual.
- Wednesday 28th May
The live update went pretty smoothly, although a friend walked in on my
updates (and was somewhat staggered by what I was doing !). After posting
up the full results [I beat everyone else, despite the distractions], we
went for a Chinese meal and I came back later to complete the manual
comments on the latest draw. Yes, the refresh tags are working fine now,
so the testing earlier in the day did come in useful.
I now issue a warning if the draw order indices in my lottery results data
file are incorrect (I ran into that trouble on Saturday and didn't notice
until Tuesday !). Also modified and tested the page refresh code (by changing
my computer's clock to 8.00pm or so this evening) - it had been playing
up in recent weeks, so hopefully tonight's refreshes should be OK.
- Saturday 24th May
I was distracted doing other things tonight (starting a flame war in a
few newsgroups for one thing, so what's new ? :-) ), so when I didn't get
the results at 8.45pm, I didn't phone back for 20 minutes (engrossed in a
posting about gcc vs. HP ANSI C) and hence wasn't the fastest on the Net
(didn't take Chris Prickett long to notice that :-) ).
Fixed a path bug in my lottery links checker which had been failing without
me noticing. Sadly, it meant I had to prune a fair number of sites that had
disappeared.
- Friday 23rd May
Bought another 2 tickets for tomorrow's long-awaited rollover draw.
- Wednesday 21st May
The live updates were OK, but yet again Camelot frustratingly
delayed the release of the full results until just after
9pm. Trying to get the person at the end of the Camelot phone
line to admit that they were delayed was impossible:
"...we don't release the results until 9.30pm" was their
standard line.
I must have phoned Camelot at least four times and eventually
got the results, although the delay really does make it a
"lottery" as to who (me, Chris Prickett or teletext) will
get the results up first ! I tied with Chris and we both beat
teletext, so not a bad situation I guess. Terrible sales
and prize pool though, even though there's a rollover on
Saturday at long last !
Oh, just noticed that Camelot changed their e-mail address on
Saturday...back to "[email protected]"
again for some inexplicable reason...
- Saturday 17th May
The live updates went reasonably well, although Camelot
irritatingly procrastinated until after 9pm before
releasing the full results (they've never been delayed
this long before unless there's been computer problems)
and this meant ITV teletext snuck in ahead of me to get
the full results (there's only so many times I can phone
Camelot asking for them !). I still managed to be the
fastest site on the Net to make the full results available
though.
- Wednesday 14th May
The live draw updates went well, although I've been "losing"
the auto-refresh tags during the 7-ball update (possibly
because it's very time-sensitive). Fastest to get the full
results (ITV and BBC teletext displayed some of
the results at the same time as my full set, but failed
to show the full set until after me !).
No sign of boy band Damage on the lottery show - is this
the first time there's been no musical guest on the show ?
Received the latest sales figures via a Camelot fax today and
duly updated my pages (quickest with the figures on the Net yet
again...).
- Saturday 10th May
The live update and subsequent page changes went very well tonight with
plenty of Internet exclusives: only site to have a live lottery TV
show commentary, first site to display the winning numbers, first
site to have initial statistics available and the first site to
display the full results (and I beat TV and teletext too). Seems like
Chris Prickett's site simply didn't update at all tonight...
- Thursday 8th May
The fax for last week's sales figures came through yesterday, but since
I had a day off on Wednesday, it wasn't until today that I could put
the info up (but I was still the quickest on the Net to put it up !).
- Wednesday 7th May
The draw was fine tonight, but I was annoyed that my phone was tied up
for over 10 minutes (no names here) when I wanted to phone Camelot
for the results. It meant that ITV teletext beat me to the full
results (I'm certain I would have beaten them if I had access to the
phone), but I still beat BBC teletext and the rest of the Internet
to the full results.
- Saturday 3rd May
The draw went pretty well (fastest with the full results - Chris Prickett
didn't have them at all this evening), although the fuse went on the
mains plug to my Pipeline 50 ISDN box 5 minutes before the draw and
I frantically scrambled around for a replacement lead (found one just
in the nick of time). The biggest problem tonight was the "multi-tasking"
required - lottery updates, Liverpool vs Spurs
updates and trying [dismally]
to get through to the Kasparov-Deeper Blue IBM chess
Web site from 8pm onwards.
Finally had some spare hours this afternoon to fix some recent problems.
Firstly, I no longer auto-refresh the current or previous individual
lottery pages from 7.30pm onwards - this is a mistake of course that's
been there for quite a while...it's the next lottery's individual
page that needs the auto-refresh.
Secondly, I forgot to put back virtual lottery entry disabling at 7.30pm
on draw evening (I'd disabled during my US trip for the virtual lottery
Super Draw). No, it didn't mean you could enter after the closing date, but
it did mean that the entry form was still visible after 7.30pm. Anyway, I've
fixed this now.
- Friday 2nd May
The Labour Party won the UK General Election, so I figured it might be useful
to make their plans on the lottery more readily
available.
- Thursday 1st May
Just had a weird phone
conversation with someone at Camelot about finding out if yesterday's sole
jackpot winner had claimed their prize yet. The woman said "can't tell you,
that's confidential"...huh ? I've always been able to find out how many people
have claimed the most recent jackpot (I'm usually told during the working day
following the draw), but apparently such info becomes secret when there's
only a single jackpot winner ! I phoned up later in the day, got someone else
on the line and they quite happily told me that the yesterday's jackpot has
been claimed, so it isn't secret after all.
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