Derby Dead Pool 2023

[Toast 16,132]

10 minutes ago, The Old Crem said:

I think rather than rushing they should announce a date - Say 31st January or 1st February and launch it then. We can then all build up to a set date for it’s launch,

 

I really can't see any point in that suggestion.  It'll be ready when it's ready    <gavel>

[msc 18,438]

4 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

I really can't see any point in that suggestion.  It'll be ready when it's ready    <gavel>

 

It's also trying to put a finite date on something which, well, isn't. Sometimes things work, and sometimes they don't till the nth attempt. Putting a set date just stresses folk out and causes more issue, because its never set in stone it can be reached. 

[Captain Hemlock 740]

It’s a good thing @gcreptile is German and therefore is a beer aficionado. 

[diana rots 24]

3 hours ago, Great Uncle Bulgaria said:

 

I'm the guilty one here. The problem with a 'list of annoying slebs' team was that people like Alison Hammond, Scarlett Moffatt, Su Pollard etc were not going to die. Having compiled a list of 18 annoying people I bulked it out with a couple of old people who had produced irritating records a few decades previously, one of whom was our Mr Barrie, in the hope that I might get at least one hit. As it was, neither they, or indeed any of the others on my wishlist, died and I abandoned the theme as a stupid idea last year. 

'No Charge' is still a really annoying record though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2B4UQDJqs

 

 

[diana rots 24]

40 minutes ago, msc said:

From behind the magician's door, from an ex-host:

 

Each year there's circa 8000 picks (this is every team, so uniques to Drop 40 names), of which about 3000 are different people, and of those around 1 in 3 at least tend to be unique picks. 

 

Of that number, around 800-1200 tend to be new to the database. Every single one of those names need updated manually with DOB, where they fit in the database (actor/politician/etc) and other little bits that help the game engine run. And it's not all porn stars needing looked into, there's WEP teams too. 

 

Before that, every team needs double checked for picks who are dead, picks misspelt, picks which don't seem to actually exist, picks which are actually pet dogs, picks which fail FFBI tests, picks people really ought to have read the previous years List of the Lost for, etc etc etc. Which is again, manual.

 

Once all those names are checked and their details added, then the pre-work by the Grim Character (now played by Banana) means each one should link from death noted to person to team, like magic. 

 

Removing several other time consuming steps for brevity, the bit where it all uploads to the website can cause issues too. In 2020, the entire website just crashed. Obviously I was in no position to work out what went wrong. Grim was perplexed. Outside help needed was the consensus of all (and apparently had been used by multiple hosts in the past)...

 

Except for Reptile. Who deduced the issue was in a long list of html code. 4000 lines of it in fact. The way to solve this, he said, was to sit down with a beer and go through every single line of code to find the faulty one. 

 

Almost all of us would have gone fuck that and cancelled the entire DDP.

 

Reptile had that beer and went through those 4000 lines of code, found the fault, fixed it manually and saved the entire Derby Dead Pool for everyone. And still doesn't get near enough praise for that imo.

 

My point isn't needed for most of you, who were always very understanding of the behind the scenes stuff - and hell, TMIB's meltdown over it showed it was far too much for one person nowadays. But just in case people think "where's the update?" there's shitloads to do, among three people, and one tiny little bit going wrong and it's hours of work to fix it, on top of the actual real life jobs that no one could fuck off to focus on the DDP for a bit! 

 

It's exceptionally time consuming, frustrating, and prone to errors, and if it does go up before the 20th, in line with the last few years, then it's due to insane levels of hard work by DI, Banana and Reptile. (And if it doesn't, you know, bare with them?) As someone who has been there and done that, I salute them!

 

But APART from that, what have the Romans organisers done for us?

[YoungWillz 21,033]

They will look after us in the early days of January.

 

It's up to the rest of us to look after them for the rest of the year by spotting the Lost, the Missed and the Hits.

[gcreptile 10,966]

1 hour ago, msc said:

From behind the magician's door, from an ex-host:

 

Each year there's circa 8000 picks (this is every team, so uniques to Drop 40 names), of which about 3000 are different people, and of those around 1 in 3 at least tend to be unique picks. 

 

Of that number, around 800-1200 tend to be new to the database. Every single one of those names need updated manually with DOB, where they fit in the database (actor/politician/etc) and other little bits that help the game engine run. And it's not all porn stars needing looked into, there's WEP teams too. 

 

Before that, every team needs double checked for picks who are dead, picks misspelt, picks which don't seem to actually exist, picks which are actually pet dogs, picks which fail FFBI tests, picks people really ought to have read the previous years List of the Lost for, etc etc etc. Which is again, manual.

 

Once all those names are checked and their details added, then the pre-work by the Grim Character (now played by Banana) means each one should link from death noted to person to team, like magic. 

 

Removing several other time consuming steps for brevity, the bit where it all uploads to the website can cause issues too. In 2020, the entire website just crashed. Obviously I was in no position to work out what went wrong. Grim was perplexed. Outside help needed was the consensus of all (and apparently had been used by multiple hosts in the past)...

 

Except for Reptile. Who deduced the issue was in a long list of html code. 4000 lines of it in fact. The way to solve this, he said, was to sit down with a beer and go through every single line of code to find the faulty one. 

 

Almost all of us would have gone fuck that and cancelled the entire DDP.

 

Reptile had that beer and went through those 4000 lines of code, found the fault, fixed it manually and saved the entire Derby Dead Pool for everyone. And still doesn't get near enough praise for that imo.

 

My point isn't needed for most of you, who were always very understanding of the behind the scenes stuff - and hell, TMIB's meltdown over it showed it was far too much for one person nowadays. But just in case people think "where's the update?" there's shitloads to do, among three people, and one tiny little bit going wrong and it's hours of work to fix it, on top of the actual real life jobs that no one could fuck off to focus on the DDP for a bit! 

 

It's exceptionally time consuming, frustrating, and prone to errors, and if it does go up before the 20th, in line with the last few years, then it's due to insane levels of hard work by DI, Banana and Reptile. (And if it doesn't, you know, bare with them?) As someone who has been there and done that, I salute them!

Well, slightly too much praise

 

There is a little program that translates the Microsoft Access game file with all 1. teams, 2. celebrities and 3. picks into the website output.

Every team has a code (so you can change the team name, but keep your "identity", the code is the identity). Every celebrity has a code, also. So you need to connect the celebrity database with the team database, and you do it through assigning the celebrity codes to the team codes (the picks).

 

Anyway, it was just the program that crashed, not the website itself. It's because the translation program needs a perfectly fine Access file, i.e. no duplicate codes, all valid entries, all correct formatting.

It was a little hard to figure out how it worked at the beginning. But it eventually worked, I still have a little trauma of these error messages though. That's when I had to go through the code to figure out what was wrong (all databases need to be in synchronicity, i.e. every celebrity in the game also needs to be picked, i.e. you have to delete unpicked celebrities from the master database).

 

Once the program does its job, you get the A-Z pages, the team pages, and the scoreboard.

LOTL, LOTM, obituaries and all other text is done on the website itself by Death Impends (or msc).

 

It also took a while to make the website look okay. You have to upload certain files each year so that it looks okay.

 

Anyway.... it took The Man in Black and Spade quite some time to get the game running initially, because they had to do both Banana's/Grim Up North's and my job at the same time. Accepting all the hundreds of emails, replying, checking and entering into the database. I seem to recall that the game wasn't usually up before February? Last year, we got it done in two weeks which was phenomenal. But well, the team submission via Excel REALLY helped. And we all had had some practice by then. (And then of course, TMIB and Spade still had to write the obituaries all throughout the year!)

 

I would expect that this year, we will need a little more time. The late deaths didn't help and I would like to have some free time to upload and start the new game, that's usually on the weekends.

It's not going to be done by next weekend, not possible. Maaaaaybe in two weeks? But it depends on how many new names there are. Doing it in three or four weeks sounds realistic to me.

[gcreptile 10,966]

By the way, I am working to update the team statistics, i.e. highest rank and no. of years in the game (maybe even a no. of hits statistic?).

I wanted to finish that when this year's game is up. Let's see if I can, but recent weeks have been busy.

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

It does make me wonder.... @Octopus of Odstock, back when you were GM, was the game running off the Microsoft Access widget that's still the cornerstone of the site today? I'm curious when the DDP made the switch from "guy with a pen and paper" to the current.... quasi-automation. 

[Octopus of Odstock 2,187]

3 hours ago, Spade_Cooley said:

It does make me wonder.... @Octopus of Odstock, back when you were GM, was the game running off the Microsoft Access widget that's still the cornerstone of the site today? I'm curious when the DDP made the switch from "guy with a pen and paper" to the current.... quasi-automation. 

 

2007 was the first year of Microsoft Access with Rude Kid trialling it out. So in 2008 and 2009, it was still the same format as I believe it is now.

2006 would've been the last year but it was actually Excel before Access. Probably Big Iain used pen and paper..

 

2008 was a stressfest with Access not working and thankfully Rude Kid had patience.

 

2009 I think I got the site loaded in about 10 days but....

 

There were less players, less picks, less teams, no theme teams and I remember taking holiday from work deliberately to do the DDP. 

Old Crem was well meaning with a date but all it needs is for something to go wrong and it screwed up everything and that was 15 years ago.

I knew with a child, now nearly 13(!) on the way, I couldn't do the same commitment and thankfully TMIB stepped in.

 

I really don't envy anyone now the task let alone the Pele and Benedict shenanigans. There's a possibility 2024 might see me actually have the time to properly help the DDP runners, but I doubt I'd ever solely run it.  Not sure anyone could on their own unless literally they spent all their spare time on it.

 

So when I see some people go 'why isn't DDP up yet', I despair. A lot of them are the same that misspell their entries etc.

 

It's MAMMOTH.

 

I get they are excited and curious (I am, as I want to know if I have two uniques) but patience ..

[Toast 16,132]

34 minutes ago, Octopus of Odstock said:

2009 I think I got the site loaded in about 10 days but....

There were less players, less picks, less teams, no theme teams .....

 

 

But seriously .... if memory serves, back then it was limited to one team per player.  Perhaps three teams is excessive and it could be cut to two.

[marinade 18]

18 hours ago, Toast said:

 

 

But seriously .... if memory serves, back then it was limited to one team per player.  Perhaps three teams is excessive and it could be cut to two.

 

Q. Who led The Pedants’ Revolt?

A. Which Tyler.

[Gooseberry Crumble 5,337]

Qualifying obituary for Fay Weldon 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/04/writer-fay-weldon-dies-aged-91

[Exu 250]

Fay Weldon is my first hit of the year!

[drunkasaskunk 194]

How many known, qualifying, hits do we have now?

Fay Weldon ( I wonder what she will get called in the DDP Obituary) 

Frank McGarvey

 

Any more??

 

[The Old Crem 3,583]

3 minutes ago, drunkasaskunk said:

How many known, qualifying, hits do we have now?

Fay Weldon ( I wonder what she will get called in the DDP Obituary) 

Frank McGarvey

 

Any more??

 

Walter Cunningham.

[drunkasaskunk 194]

1 minute ago, The Old Crem said:

Walter Cunningham.

Wasn't he a character in To Kill A Mockingbird?

 

[OneManJury 84]

On 07/12/2022 at 23:26, ladyfiona said:

I'm entering for first time.

I said that when I was 13 but that’s another story.

[drunkasaskunk 194]

Just now, OneManJury said:

I said that when I was 13 but that’s another story.

Come again?

 

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

1 hour ago, drunkasaskunk said:

How many known, qualifying, hits do we have now?

Fay Weldon ( I wonder what she will get called in the DDP Obituary) 

Frank McGarvey

 

Any more??

 

 

Gangsta Boo has been picked more years than not in recent editions, may well have been a '23 pick as well.

[TheKeysOfMarinus 390]

Bugger! One of my picks, Cledwyn Jones, is already dead. Died in October and I never saw! What do I do?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/63326738

[Death Impends 7,963]

7 minutes ago, TheKeysOfMarinus said:

Bugger! One of my picks, Cledwyn Jones, is already dead. Died in October and I never saw! What do I do?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/63326738

 

You caught it before the DDP officially opens so it's early enough for him to be subbed in.

[msc 18,438]

Yeah, my blushes have been spared once or twice by a bit of kindly substitution work by the hosts in January!

 

(Although one time, I'm not saying it was an under the radar death, but when Spade let me know, I let some friends of the (dead DDP name) know and it was news to them!)

[Sean 6,314]

I haven't had a confirmation email yet.Does anyone know if my email went through OK?

[Grim Up North 3,725]

1 hour ago, Sean said:

I haven't had a confirmation email yet.Does anyone know if my email went through OK?

what were your teams?

 

Found  them

 

Shaun of Dead 69

Slippery Soap 

No more Expenses

 

are all in.

 

If anyone thinks it strange that I can answer this question Banana just sent me a final draft of the entry file last night so I could review and complete next (final) stage of the instructions for what was my bit.