This is the type of window you will probably use most. If you created this chart using ‘New…’ then your name and date of birth will already have been filled in correctly. If you need to alter the date of birth the chart will be updated and redrawn. However, the ‘Current date’ is also very important – it is the date for which you want to know your cycle conditions, and is represented by the first box on the left. • If you want to alter a date, click on the little arrows to either increase or decrease it. The interpretation given is for this date, as are the cycle conditions shown in the box in the top-right. The difference is the number of days between the date of birth and the ‘current date’ (you can choose to use weeks, months or years instead by clicking on the ‘Difference:’ text and using the popup menu). “Physical: Positive (12)” means that on the ‘current date’ that person’s physical cycle is in the positive phase (on day 12 out of 23). Next to each cycle name is a sample of the particular colour/pattern/size combination used to draw that cycle.
By default, Biorhythms 5.03c will draw another 29 days’ cycles after the current date, so you can see information for a full 30 days. You can change the duration with the Duration menu or by clicking on the UP and DOWN arrows at the bottom-left of the window, or on the text to reveal a popup menu. The next button along toggles the grid on and off; the next one toggles day labels on and off; and the next turns coloured conditions on and off.
The arrow buttons on the outside subtract or add the current duration (minus one) of the chart to the current day (or you can press the UP or DOWN cursor keys). For example, if the chart shows dates from 16th March 1995 to the 22nd March (a week), clicking the right arrow button or pressing UP will advance 6 days, thus showing from 22nd March 1995 to the 28th March. The ones on the inside do the same, but by only one day in each direction (or you can press the LEFT or RIGHT cursor keys). Clicking on the ‘Date of birth:’ and the ‘Current date:’ items will pop up the customary date utilities menu.
As you move the mouse over the chart area, the cursor will become a magnifying glass, and the date the glass is over is shown to the right of the toolbar, as well as the biorhythmic conditions for that day. To make that day the first one shown in the chart, click the mouse in the chart. That date will now become the ‘Current date’, see the start of the 'Chart Window' section for more information.
If ‘Phase Indicators’ is turned on, at the left of the chart image you will see, at the top the Positive (+) icon, the Critical (C) icon in the middle, and the Negative (-) icon at the bottom, to help you see which areas on the chart are which.
Schedule Window
This window allows you to save a list of your biorhythm cycle conditions, with or without interpretations, over a long period of time. As you would expect, clicking on the ‘Start or Finish saving on:’ items will pop up the date utilities menu. The progress bar will show how much has been saved. For each day I will save: the date, the cycle conditions [ eg. Physical (+), Emotional (-), Intellectual (C) ], and optionally the interpretation. The file is saved in plain text form; choose the wordprocessor you want to open it with, with the menu in the Preferences window.
Colour Information Window
This window contains a popup menu, which allows you to view the 256 colours and a little bit of information about each.
Texture Information Window
This window contains a popup menu, which allows you to view all of the textures and a little bit of information about each one.
Chart comparison Window
This window allows you to compare the charts of two different people to determine whether or not they are physically, emotionally and intellectually compatible. For each, type their name and choose their date of birth. The cycle lines will be drawn and the compatibility ratings calculated. The three cycles will be drawn using the following colours: physical in red for the first person and pink for the second, emotional in blue for the first person and light blue for the second, and intellectual in dark and light green. •In black and white, the first person’s cycles are drawn with thicker lines than the second’s, physical has a black pattern, and intellectual is the lightest.
With the checkboxes you can turn off either of the two’s cycles or both of the emotional cycles for example.
The nearer the two physical cycles are together, the higher the proportion of conditions that are ‘shared’, as is true for emotional and intellectual too. Generally, if a high proportion of conditions are shared, then compatibility will be high, because you will both feel positive at the same times, and so on. In the example, compatibility is generally good but look at the two intellectual cycles – completely contradictory!
By using the ‘Options’ popup menus on the far right, you can choose a chart from the file list, and that person’s name and date of birth will be filled in (you can do the same by clicking on the ‘First name:’ or ‘Second name:’ and choosing a Favourite chart from the popup menu), or you can create a new chart from the information in that person’s boxes.
Chart Summary Window
This window shows a summary of the current chart – information about the person it represents, the charts duration, the colours used, etc. This window can be altered in size, by dragging in the grow box. Furthermore its contents can be saved as a text file.
Grouped Summary Window
Upon choosing a date with the arrows, this window will scan through all open charts, showing the current biorhythm conditions for each person on that particular day. Remember, all of the charts shown here are using the same date. Click on the ‘Choose a date:’ text for the customary date utilities popup menu.
Date Calculator Window
This is a little calculator that handles not numbers or trigonometry but dates. It's easy to do 326+54 in your head, but 213 days after the 29th January 1957, or the difference between 4/9/1917 and the 23rd July 1976, is rather more difficult. Each date is represented by three boxes. The first shows the DAY, the second the MONTH and the last box is the YEAR. Use the arrows, or the utility popup menus, ?, to change these values.
There are two dates: the first and the second, and and a box which represents the difference, in days, between the two. Each of the dates can be from Jan 1st 1600 to December 31st 3000, as of version 5.01c.
When you click one of the three radio buttons, that area is the one to be calculated, using the other two: if you press ‘Calculate’ with the first date selected, the ‘difference’ (shown in the bottom box) is subtracted from the second date and the result becomes the first date. If you press ‘Calculate’ with the second date selected, the ‘difference’ is added to the first date and the result becomes the second date. If you press ‘Calculate’ with the difference selected, it is calculated by subtracting the first date from the second.
See below for the example: I set the first date to my date of birth, and the second to today’s date. To work out how old I am, I click the ‘Difference’ radio button, then ‘Calculate’. Lo and behold, 6841 days!
Interpretations Window
Each of the three biorhythm cycles can either be in a positive, negative or critical phase. Thus there are 27 combinations of phases for the three: +++, ++-, +-C, etc. Each of these has a particular interpretation attached to it. To view these, select a combination from the popups.
Search Window
5.03c’s search module is probably the most powerful aspect of the program. It allows you to search for particular combinations of conditions, for example: all the physically positive days in 1995 or all the days which do not have at least two positive conditions. Once you’ve selected your dates (clicking on the ‘Start/End on’ items reveals more date options), and clicked the ‘Search’ button, all the days that match your request will be placed in the list (or added on the end, if you prefer). This list can be saved as a text file. Double-clicking on one of the list items, or else clicking once and selecting ‘Go to day’ will update your chart (behind this window) so that it starts on that day. To choose what to search for, click ‘Settings’.
Clicking in the popup menu allows you to choose whether or not to use normal speed or extra speed. The latter will reduce search time by 64-77% (on my Mac, at least), the down side is that much of the progress information will be disabled. I'd stick to normal speed for short searches, or 'zeroing-in', and use extra speed for really long searches (more than a few months). The next time you search you can either have any days you found added to the list, or else replace it, choose which one using the popup menu. Furthermore, you can have the search results displayed as text (+)(-)(C) etc, or as attractive (with colour monitor!) pictures. Neither takes longer to draw or much more memory than the other, so it's up to you!
Search Parameters Window
Use this window to choose the conditions you want to search for. There are two kinds of search as you can see. The first radio button lets you search for specific conditions, the second is less specific. If you click the first radio button you could search for any day on which you are physically, emotionally and intellectually positive. But if you click the second radio button you can, for example, search for days on which just one of your cycles was negative (and the other two were anything else). If you check ‘all other days’ then you would be searching for any day on which you are not physically, emotionally and intellectually positive. It finds all days which were not what you have chosen below.
These settings will be stored in the Preferences file, so you can access them next time you run this application.
Preferences Window
This has been significantly enhanced for version 5.01c, so at present there are two pages: Main Preferences and Texture file.
• Main Preferences
If ‘Show line samples’ is turned on then whenever a biorhythm chart is drawn then next to each cycle name is a sample of the particular colour/pattern/size combination used to draw that cycle. If ‘Automatically Copy…’ is turned on then whenever a chart is updated it will be copied into the clipboard. If date labels are shown then for every day shown in a chart, its day of the month will be shown under the image, eg. 27, 28, 29. Whenever new charts are created, their ‘current date’ is assumed to be today’s date – this can be changed. If you do not want the dates of birth shown with the names in the Favourite Menu (if you have a small monitor) you can choose to see just the names.
If you check ‘Dim inactive controls’ then whenever a window is inactive all the buttons will be dimmed so you can see they are inactive. This should really be turned on, but it is at the expense of speed. If you check ‘Smart Summary’ then whenever you open a new chart the Summary window will automatically open too (if it isn’t already open). If the last option is on, then whenever Smart Summary happens, the Summary window will appear in its smallest size – where only four lines are visible. Clicking ‘Defaults’ will set the recommended settings, while clicking ‘Fastest’ will optimise them for speed.
• Texture File
In order for you to be able to use textures in chart images, 5.03c must be able to use a file that contains textures. By default, it will use the file ‘Biorhythms Textures’ which should have been placed in the Preferences folder inside the System Folder. However if you already have a different texture file (and there’s lots of them about) you can use this one instead. Go to the Texture File page, press the ‘Choose…’ button and select the file. Then press ‘Save’. Next time you start the program, textures from this file will be used.
NB 1: If that file cannot be used, 5.03c will revert to using ‘Biorhythms Textures’. If this file cannot be found either, then you will not be able to use textures.
NB 2: The eight standard colour schemes assume that your using the standard texture file, If you aren’t then they won’t look quite right.
NB 3: Some textures you may meet are compressed – I cannot use these, I’m afraid! Furthermore, if a texture uses more colours than your screen will permit, they may not look very nice. If this is so, their names will be italicised in the Texture menus.
Condition Colours Window
Use this window to change the colours used when coloured conditions are turned on, although I normally find the default set is best, you can have what you want.
Look for phases Window
As you know, on any day of your life you will be at some point in each of the three biorhythm cycles. So on a particular day you could be on any one of the 23 days in the physical cycle and so on. For example, if your age is 6859 days, you will be on Physical day 6, Emotional day 28, and Intellectual day 29. (Try it)
OK. But how do you work backwards? How old is someone if they are on Physical day 11, Emotional day 2, and Intellectual day 17? Doing it this way round is virtually impossible to do without a computer, so 5.03c can do it!
Fill in your date of birth, and the values you’re looking for. Clicking ‘Find first’ will reveal the first day that has these values, showing that in the example you would need to be 5461 days old. Clicking ‘Find next’ will find subsequent days.
Biorhythms Calendar Windows
Each chart window you use may, as of version 5.03c, have a Calendar window associated with it. Even though the Calendar may not always be open, the data that describes it will be stored within the host chart window, ready to be opened at any time. When a chart window’s Calendar is open, the two windows maintain a link, so they may update each other and pass data back and forth. You can have lots of charts and Calendars open and each Calendar will still know where to find its host chart.
At its simplest, the Calendar window shows you a calendar for the date shown in the window, which you can change. However, it can also show on the calendar the conditions (Positive, Negative etc) for each cycle for the person in question (the person in the Calendar’s host chart window. Turn on ‘Show conditions’ and you’ll see, for each day of that month, whether that person is +, -, or critical, for each cycle with the little coloured markers. Changing the data in the chart window will prompt the Calendar window to update these.
Alternatively (and more quickly!) you can see condition colours instead (or in addition). This means that (assuming the standard colours), if the person is in the Positive phase in all three cycles, that day’s square will be coloured dark blue. See the ‘Condition colours…’ menu option for more information. The font and size used can be edited at any time, and the window can be made bigger or smaller.
Choose ‘Copy Picture’ and the calendar image will be copied to the clipboard. ‘Copy Text’ will copy the calendar as text to the clipboard, arranged neatly with tabs so it can be pasted into a wordprocessor for printing.
