Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Anyone else heard of IOGraph? I saw it linked a few blogs a week ago and decided to put it on my MBP and my desktop Mac mini at the office. This is an app that simply tracks your cursor as it moves around the screen and paints the path on an image over time. I find it interesting how it visually reveals my different usage patterns of trackpad versus mouse.
Here are a few days worth of data on my MacBook Pro with trackpad only: I added a white border to highlight my use of Fitts' Law. It's readily apparent that I use hot corners. It's also somewhat apparent that I played Minecraft on this machine over the weekend/evenings because of the starlike spot in the center; MC resets your cursor to center whenever you pause or switch apps. Other than that, it's mostly a jumble, aside from the apparent favoritism towards the left side of the screen (but I'm right-handed). Here are a few days worth of data on my Mac mini with two displays and mouse only: The app only seems to track the primary display, but I tend to only use the secondary display for monitoring servers and holding notes. The most immediate usage difference I see here is that dark horizontal scratch in the middle. That's where the command-tab app switcher shows up. I have a habit of running many apps, punching cmt-tab, and running the mouse cursor over the display to choose the app I want to see. This screen also seems to have a more even distribution usage, and that makes sense since I find a mouse to be far more useful and precise than the trackpad. You can also see some dark horizontal lines in the top where I tend to be clicking around browser tabs, whereas on the MacBook I opt for the keyboard shortcuts to switch tabs. Anyone else want to take it for a spin and share your habits? Before I started recording, I turned on the "Ignore mouse stops" option because I spend so many long stretches typing. By default, the app draws an ever-growing black dot/circle when the cursor sits in the same place, and the first images I made were dominated by the black holes. I'd be especially interested to see what our resident artists' are like. Paul, I'm looking squarely in your direction. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Veteran Member
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I like graphs.. I'll play.
Unfortunately I also work almost exclusively on my secondary display, only using my main display for the same kind of things as you. EDIT : I take a lot of err... "cigarette" breaks too. So I'll turn on the "Ignore mouse stops" option too, I guess. 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Interesting. I haven't set up my desk yet, so I'm just using my MBA with the trackpad. I definitely use less of the trackpad than I do with the mouse. I use more keyboard shortcuts without a mouse present.
Downloading now and will share my graph once I get one. No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I'm in. I'll set it up on Beast and my MBP.
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Veteran Member
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Here's my log of the main screen on my 17" MBP from today... I swear to god I wasn't drinking!
My dock is on the right of my screen, and it is clear from the positions of the heavy scribbles that I go to Xcode and Twitter more than any other app! Kind of reminds me of global flight path videos. The scribbling on the left is actually overflow from the scroll bar of Safari on my left side monitor. The actual output from the app is the size of all of my screens (I've chopped it down). Unfortunately it simply doesn't show any data on the extra areas. Hope they update it and fix that as I'd love to get all my monitors on one scan. Not sure how I got the little flower at the top.. But that is close to my heat / fan widgets in the menu bar. Perhaps I was subconsciously drawing a fan! I saw someone else's on Twitter with the dots from stationary mouse periods and they look pretty, so I might try that tomorrow. 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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Brad's is fascinating and scratt's terrifying, but I'd also like to see others! The app sucks more CPU than I'd like, but it's clean and easy to install and remove, so go ahead and give it a try.
Here's mine after a couple of hours of web browsing just now (13-inch MacBook Pro using the trackpad, Safari browser): Couple of comments:
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@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Few things: -I have Twitter set up on the left side, so that's where my mouse is a lot, while scrolling through tweets. - Both top corners are used for Expose. - I don't know why, but I use the mouse to go down to the dock a lot, even though it'd be quick to just use Tab - Pretty sure all of the activity on the bottom right is from something the GF was doing in iPhoto or on Flickr tonight. No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now. |
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Veteran Member
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I am getting concerned that my mouse lines are very scratchy and erratic when compared to everyone else's.. which seem to have a lot of nice loops and curves to them.
Perhaps I need help. Edit : Or perhaps it's just the rodent in me! 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Huzzah! The world remains in balance!
Hmm. On what kind of hardware? I didn't notice it add any appreciable load on either my old MBP or my Mac mini. Quote:
You know... you could just turn recent items off. System Prefs: Appearance: Number of recent items: None. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Veteran Member
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Here's one from the main screen of my wife's MacBook... 5 hours of usage!
Girls make prettier IOGraphs I think... Blobs on the left of the screen are her calculator usage. Two horizontal lines at the top of the screen are URL copy pasting, and tabs. She thought she made all the circular lines too, until I explained that to her. Bless. And mine from Friday... Big dot = I left it baking while we finished off "Boardwalk Empire" and then watched "The Collector"; which is a sick little puppy of a movie! 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt Last edited by scratt : 2011-01-14 at 11:59. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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So here's mine:
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Veteran Member
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Are you channelling the spaghetti monster?
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Sure does look like it doesn't it! I'm not sure why I have such a large dot in the middle either. Most of what you see is from Minecraft. Without a warp I'm having to do a lot of running.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. Last edited by turtle : 2011-01-16 at 00:28. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Minecraft keeps the cursor dead-center while you're playing. That probably explains it.
Also, I realized before I left work last night (but forgot to grab and post the image) that I had left the same session of IOGraph running all week. I'll try to remember posting it on Monday. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
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I had done this a few months ago, but I guess I deleted the image. I'll have to do this again. On a day where I don't play MineCraft that is.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
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It's a non-issue, so I'm just griping, really. Quote:
Quick question, Brad, if it's not too nosey: what mouse do you use with your dual-display Mac mini setup, and do you use OS X's default cursor acceleration or override it somehow? |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Chicago
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Here's mine. It's been running for the last five days or so, since this thread first began.
I use the upper-right corner as a Dashboard hot corner, and the lower-left is a screensaver toggle. Certain dock icons (Safari, Mail, Adium, Twitter and iTunes) get used a lot more than others, and I tend to compulsively empty my trash. There are dense clusters of lines around tabs and the bookmarks menu. And here's the same lines with my desktop (and a browser window) in the background, to give it some context. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Interesting pattern. What are your typical activities on that machine? Just browsing/email/chat, or anything else a major contributor? The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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Oh, and I keep forgetting to shut mine down. Here's the Mac mini with a few more days' usage!
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Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Chicago
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Last week, that was about the extent of my usage. I was on winter break still, so wasn't using any of the productivity software I use when I'm doing homework. I also would normally use iPhoto more, but didn't happen to do any notable photography in that time. I'll have to run it again in a month or two, when I'm in the thick of this semester, to see how much my patterns change.
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Veteran Member
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That's a cool idea! Superimposing your actual desktop behind.
I'll do that with my next one. Although, until they update it do handle multiple monitors properly my results are not really that representative of my day to day use. 'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take' Extreme Sports Cafe | ESC's blog | scratt's blog | @thescratt |
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