Whoa. When I intitially planned the book giveaway, I envisioned myself writing each comment number on a sheet of paper, ripping them into little squares and drawing three winners out of a hat (a baseball cap of course, likely embroidered with a “B”). What I didn’t anticipate was the 485 comments that were entered in a mere 48 hours.
Writing 485 numbers was out of the question. Ryan suggested I write or use a script to randomly generate the three winning numbers. A great idea. I even took an easier route — employing the use of a random integer generator that completed the task through a simple web form.
And so it went. I entered the range (1-485) and number of random numbers desired (3) and clicked the “Get Numbers” button.
The Winning Numbers
Congratulations to:
Kindly send me your mailing addresses so that friends of ED can send you the goods.
A Bundle of Links
First of all, a big thank you to all those that entered. I wish I could give you each a free book. The flip-side to this is that we’ve amassed a gigantic list (naturally there are several repeats) of quality articles on the topic of web standards.
I’d love to convert the comments to a nice n’ tidy list at some point (volunteers? :-) — as I think it’ll be a wonderful bookmark filled with some indespensable info.
Thanks again for participating. And I of course must mention that if you didn’t win, the book can still end up in your hands by way of more traditional methods.
Dribbble What are you working on? 
Instapaper Icon design 
Sass For Web Designers Paperback + eBook A Book Apart
CSS3 For Web Designers Paperback + eBook A Book Apart
Bulletproof Web Design Third Edition New Riders 
Handcrafted CSS Book and DVD New Riders 
Web Standards Solutions Special Edition Friends of Ed
26 Comments
Congratulations to those who won. :-)
Although I entered I’m glad I didn’t win as I went ahead and ordered the book myself yesterday, should arrive tomorrow. Looking forward to reading it Dan.
Next time, in PHP, just do:
<?php echo rand(1,485); ?>
I never win anything dammit! :)
I demand a recount!
Congratulations to those who won.
As I mentioned in my original comment, Amazon.co.uk tells me the book has been delayed for several weeks. Any chance I can paypal you the dosh and you can send me a copy? Then again, I suppose I could just be patient… Nah! :-)
All the best,
–
Ian
Methinks Dan is more proficient with Perl, if I’m not mistaken. And yes, I think that’s what the web form probably uses… He was probably just getting lazy. ;)
I didn’t enter, since I knew someone else probably have already linked to my article of choice, and I’ve only read those which are “out there” in the public.
I’m happy with trauling through the comments and compiling them into a giant list-o’-goodness (some time next week), if I’m not beaten to it.
Dan B. – And I thought the web form was easy :-)
Hans – I was lazy indeed. The work was already done for me.
Ian Fenn – Have you tried recently? I ordered mine yesterday and I’ve had no problems with stock. Expecting delivery tomorrow.
Remind me again why I hate XML? Oh, right: parsers break when they encounter the slightest of errors, such as a character from a different character set than the one specified.
I was writing a script that walked through the contest page collecting those artlce links, when suddenly:
xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 318, column 119.I might end up writing the script, maybe in javascript, which should be more lax (i.e. use the HTML DOM instead of XML DOM) or I might just get fed up with XML’s brokenness and quit. At least I tried.
I ordered mine last week on either Turs. or Wednesday and it was delayed for a couple of days but shipped out on Friday. (Amazon, US)
Many congrats to the winners,
Oh, and I ordered my copy this morning.
Dan, I have put together a list of all the links on your contest. I removed a few that didn’t fit into your original scope. I have posted them here: Simple Post : OrderedList.com. As I have stated in the post, Dan, if you want to take this list and use it, I’d be more than happy to remove the list from my site and link to yours, if you want me to. Great idea.
I did get my copy by way of more traditional methods. Read it over the weekend. Highly reccomended and worth the dosh. Get your copy now!
Thanks for running such an intsructive and useful competiton Dan and well done Steve Smith on puttling that list together.
Congrats to the winners! :)
Steve Smith, wow, you did an excellent job, amazing list there!
Out of the blue, Dan and Steve, would you mind it if that list were to show up on a dutch CSS site for dutch webdevelopers, as well? Fully credited, of course. :)
It’s really one of the best collections of resources I’ve ever seen :)
Steve – Fantastic! Great work. No need to take down from your site though — these links deserve to be spread all over over. That said, Faruk, I of course don’t have a problem with the list ending up on any site.
dez – Excellent — really glad you liked it! :-)
I ordered my copy last week, but Amazon.ca is saying there will be a 1-2 week delay! What up with that? It’s times like this that it makes more sense to order it from Amazon.com and pay the duties on it.
I ordered mine from Amazon and got in a few days (last Friday). Looks great! I can’t wait to delve into it. I’m sure I will learn alot.
Thanks for spending the time on this, Dan!
Dan, you just lost a book sale…because I’m a winner! I know I shouldn’t gush over $24, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me.
Thanks for a great site and thanks in advance for the book. I can’t wait to read it.
I’m actually a slight bit happy I didn’t win because the thought of calling up Amazon today to cancel my pre-order (which should arrive on my door today) wasn’t something that totally enthrilled me.
I had plans to keep the book and barter my way into a simplebits tee shirt so I can be extra buff at the beach this summer, if I had won that is.
Brian G, I received the same message from Amazon.co.uk. What a pain! I guess Dan’s silence on this means he can’t do anything about it. Oh well.
Ian – Right, I’m afraid I don’t have control over that. Perhaps they ran out temporarily (which isn’t a consolation if you’re still waiting for it to be delivered). Sorry guys – hope they arrive soon.
Why didn’t you just approach 3 strangers and ask each to pick a number between 1 & 485?
I ordered the book from Amazon.co.uk a week ago, and received the same message. To my surprise the book appeared in my mailbox on friday.
Normally it takes at least a week for shipments to appear here in Norway, so thats fast delivery from our friends at amazon!
Haven’t had the chance to read it yet, but after browsing through the book a couple of times I sure look forward to reading it! Looks great!
Congrats guys ;)
One “2″ left, and that was me =]
Great exercise for talking about web standards, congratulations to the winners and great idea on creating the links list. Of course, I did not win :) . I posted something similar at my blog, how designers get inspiration. I invited some well known designers with no luck until now. If you can take a look.