Derby Dead Pool 2018

[YoungWillz 21,023]

49 minutes ago, Spade_Cooley said:

So which deaths right now would change the standings? Jose Jose, Fernando Ricksen or Marieke Vervoot (lol) would give BoB the lead.  Tiffany Youngs or late pass obits for Cynthia Heimel or Ian Toothill would do for TJS. Greg Gilbert would give it to To Kill A Gabor Sister.  I think that's it excluding unnatural deaths or Christmas Day carkings?

Opening new year in about a fortnight or so?

 

Be good to have some idea of the new rules while we are preparing lists. Thanks in advance.

[msc 18,434]

53 minutes ago, Spade_Cooley said:

So which deaths right now would change the standings? Jose Jose, Fernando Ricksen or Marieke Vervoot (lol) would give BoB the lead.  Tiffany Youngs or late pass obits for Cynthia Heimel or Ian Toothill would do for TJS. Greg Gilbert would give it to To Kill A Gabor Sister.  I think that's it...

 

I'm putting all my eggs in the "Carl Piddington on Christmas Day for 17 points" basket...

 

53 minutes ago, Spade_Cooley said:

 ...excluding unnatural deaths or Christmas Day carkings?

 

...Oh, I see you've covered that one already!

 

[Bibliogryphon 9,569]

20 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

Opening new year in about a fortnight or so?

 

Be good to have some idea of the new rules while we are preparing lists. Thanks in advance.

1. Don't pick up the phone he only ever calls you when he's drunk or alone.

[YoungWillz 21,023]

2 minutes ago, Bibliogryphon said:

1. Don't pick up the phone he only ever calls you when he's drunk or alone.

This may be a song lyric.

 

This may also be the post when I realise I'm no longer "down with the kidz".

[Bibliogryphon 9,569]

13 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

This may be a song lyric.

 

This may also be the post when I realise I'm no longer "down with the kidz".

I am sure in 2049 Dua Lipa will be on someone's DDP team.

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

59 minutes ago, YoungWillz said:

Opening new year in about a fortnight or so?

 

Be good to have some idea of the new rules while we are preparing lists. Thanks in advance.

 

The rules will be identical except BBC regional news will return as an accepted QO. There's a very boring technical issue with the site that has held me up for about a month from doing anything important, which I won't dull you with. However, I think 2019 should see the end of "updates" in the traditional sense...

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

43 minutes ago, Bibliogryphon said:

1. Don't pick up the phone he only ever calls you when he's drunk or alone.

 

1. Don't pick prisoners on compassionate leave, you know they only bluffing cuz they wanna go home

2. Don't let breast cancer patients in, they have significantly longer stage 4 survival rates than other cancer

3. Don't be Ryan Buell's friend. Seriously, don't.

[msc 18,434]

Thanks for bringing back the BBC regional obits officially.

[Joey Russ 7,220]

11 minutes ago, Spade_Cooley said:

 

1. Don't pick prisoners on compassionate leave, you know they only bluffing cuz they wanna go home

2. Don't let breast cancer patients in, they have significantly longer stage 4 survival rates than other cancer

3. Don't be Ryan Buell's friend. Seriously, don't.

4. Don’t pick those who are wanting euthanasia. Generally they don’t want to actually die...

[Skinny kiltrunner 553]

5 minutes ago, Joey Russ said:

4. Don’t pick those who are wanting euthanasia. Generally they don’t want to actually die...

5. Dementia takes longer than you think. Way longer. Or is it shorter? Damn......

[YoungWillz 21,023]

7 hours ago, Spade_Cooley said:

 

The rules will be identical except BBC regional news will return as an accepted QO. There's a very boring technical issue with the site that has held me up for about a month from doing anything important, which I won't dull you with. However, I think 2019 should see the end of "updates" in the traditional sense...

Thanks for that.

 

Is there any way submitters can help you when submitting their team? I'm conscious I give a brief description of my picks, but would a hyperlink to Wiki/news story help at all? Would that make the job quicker of identifying picks more accurately/quickly? Just don't understand what happens at your end, but anything that streamlines the process would be good, right?

[Dr_T 254]

I have been out of town and too busy to follow the news or spend much time on the net so it was a surprise to get home and find Pita Da Foolz topping the table.  I had almost forgotten about Lima-I had pinned my hopes on Hamilton-Byrne and Ricketts (and Willesee to a very small degree). 

 

Time for the Reaper to take a holiday.

[Sir Creep 7,070]

20 hours ago, YoungWillz said:

Thanks for that.

 

Is there any way submitters can help you when submitting their team? I'm conscious I give a brief description of my picks, but would a hyperlink to Wiki/news story help at all? Would that make the job quicker of identifying picks more accurately/quickly? Just don't understand what happens at your end, but anything that streamlines the process would be good, right?

Perhaps we could at least include a photo with each name (or link to...).  That probably would save LOTS of time.  I usually include a 1-line bio if I think it's necess.  
6. Don't be a smart ass and enter a team of 20 people with the same name.

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

Update. First time I've ever updated on Southwestern Trains wi-fi.

[gcreptile 10,963]

Wonderful update. These unique octogenarians with interesting lives really add something to all this.

[Sir Creep 7,070]

One for the Lost:
Celeb pick Derek Yancik died back on or about May 15, 2018.

edit - DOH never mind.... I see that was covered now.

 

[Sir Creep 7,070]

OK here's some actionable info to update people:

First, Mr. Wangford (took his name after birthplace it appears)

Birth name	Samuel Hutt
Born	15 November 1940 (age 78) Wangford, Suffolk, England

 

June Watson was born in 1935 in Edinburgh, Scotland as Agnes June Watson.
 

EDIT: You can also put for Jeff Sessions, "FORMER Atty Gen under Turmp"

 

[Bibliogryphon 9,569]

Nicholas Roeg was my third unique hit for Unusual Suspects. My hits now look like a series of The South Bank Show

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

So to clarify.

 

I'm making two broad-ish changes to the DDP for 2019. One, I'm bringing back regional BBC/ITV obits. I know this might open the door for some things people aren't that keen on, but I'd say the main beneficiaries would be mayors, footballers who didn't play top-flight football and entertainers who were only on regional TV/radio. It's no more an advantage than, say, Australia has thanks to the Mail obitting every single convict-descendant that carks it.

 

Two, as alluded above, I'm going to try and switch to rolling updates. Rather than wait for 8/10 celebs carking and doing a front page update, I'm going to treat it like the scoreboard this year - updating as and when they die, or at least within 48 hours of an obit coming through (some of us have jobs).

 

Now the only possible problem with this, which I'm going to be given full disclosure to here, is that the history of the derbydeadpool domain name is a long and varied one. It dates back to the days when you could get free domain names online. The company that provided this was FreeNetName, which I think ceased operations sometime around the release of Westlife's debut album. Their operations were folded into the company Madasafish, which itself was bought out by Plusnet in 2007 (I may have some of these details slightly off, but the timeline is right). So, really, for the past decade the domain name has been owned by a company that doesn't actually exist.

 

As it stands, the way the site works is: deaths are loaded into a database (compiled at the start of the year, this is what causes all the grief between you submitting your entries and the site going live). Then the database is processed through a... thingy. It then spews out the 26 A-Z pages, the deaths this year and the scoreboard pages. Those pages are then uploaded manually, via FTP, to the site.

 

The homepage (as well as the theme team league and the lits of the lost/missed) are compiled manually. As in, HTML coded like you would have in an IT lesson circa 1997. I go into an old HTML editing tool (and they don't make those anymore because nobody programs with HTML in the current year), and type up the deaths, then I manually interlink all the links and so on and so forth. This is time consuming. And depressing.

 

Switching to a rolling blog format will make this much quicker because, hey, it's Wordpress software. We're in the 21st century baby! And it'll look more professional, I have the exact idea in my haed of how I want the site to look and I can get it for under £50. 

 

The issue is that as Madasafish doesn't really exist, Plusnet's customer service (which is meant to be the best in telecoms) couldn't give a shit about you. The domain needs transferring over to a new host (in this case, Ionos), that is aware the world has changed in the past 10 years. Madasafish literally only allows FTP transfers. No Wordpress. No SQL. None of the stuff that makes every site run.

My ideas about getting the site fully overhauled had to be stymied: to get a programmer to do it would cost north of £300. And as much as I love you guys, I don't love you £300. Plus I acn't be dealing with programmers, absolute nightmare. There are ways the process could be streamlined, but that may be a job for the next man in the saddle (@msc). 

So that's where we are. To be honest, writing the bios and finding pictures I do not mind, it's kinda fun really. But the way the DDP has operated has been identical really since the days that two hits a week was considered an avalanche of deaths. It'll need a better man than me to change it, but I'm laying the opening groundwork for you here.

[Joey Russ 7,220]

On 20/01/2018 at 16:35, Death Impends said:

 

Stephen Hillenburg another unique unlikely to be so next year.

 

For some unique old people who feel like they'd be on 4-5 teams rather than just 1, you have Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Marge Champion, and Stanley Donen.

 

Unrelated to uniques, but the Headless Church theme team reminds me a bit of DDT's Hartlepool teams.

I agree, he won’t be unique next year. 

Definitely a sad loss though, another one of my childhood heroes gone.  

[CastAway 488]

Site seems to be down, btw

[Spade_Cooley 9,515]

Yeah, this is what I was worried would happen. Expect outages over the next 48 hours...

[Banana 859]

Since the website is still down and I can't check myself, is pneumonia considered an unnatural death?

[Joey Russ 7,220]

27 minutes ago, Banana said:

Since the website is still down and I can't check myself, is pneumonia considered an unnatural death?

No it is not. Only those deaths where an external force causes the death are considered unnatural...

[Banana 859]

4 minutes ago, Joey Russ said:

No it is not. Only those deaths where an external force causes the death are considered unnatural...

 

So does that basically relate to any disease?