On 6 June 2026 I won another entry! This time it was only one but I have gone up in rank by two due to one winner, Anthony C Howe, being his own rank previously and going up in rank as well. I am now in the top five! See further down for more comments on that.

This one is an antipodal plotter. See the link below for more details on it, albeit not much for now (later on when the judges release the individual videos I will link to it).

I do enjoy the award title of this one. When I saw the it on the video I was surprised I won because not only had I forgotten about it but I would not have imagined this (for whatever strange reason) as the award title! I talk about this more in the entry's page itself.

• Opposite award - Antipodes map (New: 07 June 2026)

I must admit that I was a bit disappointed. That might seem odd; after all I won. But there are deeper reasons for this and not all are related to the contest results. The day itself (6 June 2026) was actually quite exhausting and overwhelming and it's been this way for quite some time now.

But in fact I am now more thrilled than I imagined. This is because as above I am now in the top five list. This, as noted, happened because although I only won one entry this year (which is still significant), another winner had his own rank and now went up one too, thus when I went up I actually went up two.

Of course this puts me in even graver danger for next time but that comes with territory and it's something I'm willing to deal with. It IS an honour and this is how contests go! Lately I have not been up to programming but this change in ranking might inspire me some if I can find the energy. Even so I have other things that I'm doing on my free time. The next contest is meant to open mid December and end mid March (or so) so I still have a lot of time: though I would have more if I was not an avid reader, of course.

Once again the quality of submissions is higher and that makes it even harder. But of course that means any win is even more worthy. I had thought, as did the judges, that it was higher quality in 2025 (contest year 2024) because of the five year gap (of which I was mostly helping the judges - whereas many had years I had mere months).

The judges remind everyone that they cannot give everyone an award. That would defeat the contest. Some of the entries that made it to the final round, as expected, were cut down.

I was interested (though when watching the video I was mostly just listening as I was not feeling all that well - and was not even sure if I would watch the video at all) that there were quite a few new winners. One from the UK actually won three! I would say congratulations to all the newcomers.

The judges hypothesised that maybe the contest is more well known now due to social media presence. Maybe but they were on twitter in the past so I don't see how that might be. I think they mentioned the website improvements but I also don't see how that would invite more submissions.

Of course since the judges have never stated how many submissions they receive only they know if the number of submissions increased or if they mean simply that the quality of submissions received are higher. From the sounds of it it seems like more are being submitted but the judges deliberately are vague and ambiguous about some things, and that is part of the contest's history. Thus we can at best only speculate and that helps nobody and it doesn't help anything either.

It was a nice thing to see I was acknowledged (at the end of the video) for helping with improving the website and also donating a small amount to help out. I have not noted it anywhere but one of the things I did is devise the try.sh script system that the judges now use for judging and also for releasing winning entries. A simple concept but it turned out far more useful than I anticipated! That is one of the things I did for the website but that's for another time (or very likely never).

I did not do any of it to be acknowledged; actually it's just a lot of fun and I have learnt a lot doing what I did (much more than the above)! But still we all do appreciate acknowledgement.

Nonetheless I now make my winning total at six and I'm in the top five: for now! I might add that Yusuke Endoh is now at 23 wins! Incredible. I have said for years that he is totally unassailable and that he's an amazing programmer. He keeps proving it. What he did this year - truly incredible. Well done Yusuke! As Anthony C Howe and I briefly chatted about on Mastodon: the only way he'll not win is if he gets bored (those were Anthony's words in reply to something I said and he was absolutely right). It's of course possible he does not at some point but at that point we might think he's bored.