Пятница 21 Сен 2007, 4:09

I have added many options to the wave graph that add a lot of flexibility to its generation, but that high number of options can be also confusing, so I'll try in this journal to make a bit clearer what is the function of each of them.

The minimum that you need to know to create a wave graph:

Just enter your username in the box and press enter :)

Time Line:

You can select any time interval using left click for moving the first date and last date and middle click (wheel click) for moving the whole interval around preserving its lenght

Auto Checkbox:

The Auto checkbox is used to disable or enable the automatic calculation of the graph every time that you make a change in the settings. If you don't have a very powerful CPU or if you want to make many changes to the graph settings quickly, you should uncheck this option.

Appearance:

The colors are used in the following order:
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/5445/colorsyi8.png

If you want to change a color, left click it and modify it using the options in the box that appears.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3954/colorpickingzv8.png

More about how they are applied to the graph in the 'Date Based Colorization' section.

Average:

It's the interval of time that will be used to average the play counts when calculating a graph, it allows you to view trends in different levels of detail, select 'week' for the highest detail and month and above for more global trends.

http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/9862/averageza0.png

Mode:

It simply allow you to select to graph artist, albums,tracks or tags. The graphs tag calculation may take very long time due to the high amount of data that is necessary to download from last.fm

Items:

Overall Top:
The graph will be made using ONLY the top 'X' items (artist, albums,tracks or tags) from the selected date interval.

Interval Top:
The graph will be made using ONLY the top 'Y' items from each interval. for example if you select 'Month' in the average option and select a date interval of one year, there will be 12 intervals, the program will check each of them to find their top 'Y' artists and the final list with all the top 'Y' from each interval will be used in the graph.

Custom:
Only the items in the list will be used in the graph, you can add,remove and clear them by right clicking the list and selecting the appropriate command. (TIP: If you are making a graph of albums or tracks you can add all the albums or tracks from an artist at once by adding to the list the artist name)

Settings:

Labels:
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/8171/labelsvsnolabelsdl4.png

Symmetric:
http://img451.imageshack.us/img451/1228/symmetricvsnotsymmetrichd0.png

Date Based Colorization:
Do you remember the colors and their numbers?, here they are again, we will need them :)

http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/7509/colorspurplebluews5.png

If checked, the color of the waves will be calculated having into account the time that the item (artist, album, track, tag) first appeared in the graph. If it appears close to the first date in the range, it will have one of the first colors in the list (1,2 or 3) and if it first appears late toward the end of the interval it will have one of the last colors in the list (8,9, or 10). If this option is unchecked the colors will be assigned to the waves from bottom to top using the following scheme 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3 – …(where each number represent the corresponding color)

http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/1664/databasedcolorizationef6.png

Random Positions:
If checked the waves will be added in random order otherwise the newer items will flow in the border of the graph.

Legend:
If checked the list of the items in the graph will appear in the left side of the graph.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5499/legenddt3.png

H. Zoom and V. Zoom:
They control the horizontal and vertical size of the graph

Smoothing:
Controls the smoothing of the vertices in the graph.

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/5639/smoothingpm2.png

Lights/Shadows:
They are used to allow you differentiate from items with very similar color that are next to each other, besides they also make it look much better :), you can add lights moving the slider to the left or shadows moving it to the right.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3554/shadowsandlightskc7.png

Border:
http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/1204/bordernoborderzj0.png

Normalization:
The normalization slider allows you to specify the sensibility of the width of the graph to amount of tracks played in each interval.

http://img453.imageshack.us/img453/8598/normalizationra7.png

Rating Graphs:

The rating (AEP, Mainstreamness,etc) graphs have an additional Checkbox "Per Period?" . If checked it will graph the rating in each period of time. If unckecked it will calculate your cumulative rating from the start of the selected date range to each of the dates in the interval.

Sharing your stat image:

Now that you have a very cool personalized wave graph, why don't you share it with your friends or post it in your about me? :) it's very easy:

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/8310/sharestatimagegr7.png

Saving and loading stat settings:

So you have spent a lot of time playing with the settings and you have found a combination of them that makes your wave graph shine, you don't need to lose all that work, just click 'Save stat settings', click 'Save Stat View' add a name to the file and save it.

To load it just click 'Load Stat Settings' button and open it.(TIP: when you click 'Load Stat Settings' you can find a folder named 'Wave Graph Color Themes' , inside it you can find some color schemes for your graphs)

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2761/statsettingssavingql5.png