UPSB v3
The Vault / PS Tools
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Date: Wed, Feb 10 2010 03:42:46
So, as some of you might have noticed, I did a quick update for Pentrix's temporary page (the site has been hacked and I'm working on rebuilding it from the ground up...in the mean time, I just have a landing page).
In this update, you'll notice a Tricks Statistics tool which I made a while ago, but never made it public. I know the interface is not very intuitive, but the tool works. Basically, you type 1 or 0 to represent the success/failure attempts at a trick. As you type, your statistics get updated and shown on the page. I use it to figure out how consistent I am at a trick/combo (eg: my Bakfall success rate is at 46% on a run of 50 tries, which tells me I need to work on it more).
What I would be interested in is...what other tools would people be interested in? There's already a stopwatch/timer one that I need to refine, and I'm currently thinking about a similar statistics tool for Continuous tricks. It would work a bit like this:
start typing '1' for every successful Bust (or whatever trick you're trying) you do. When you drop, you type '0' or another letter. Instead of calculating the percentage, the tool would count the consecutive 1's and give you stats like: longest record, average run (average number of repetitions before dropping), etc.
This would essentially be a tool to allow you to just hit a key on every repetition, instead of having to count (which can be distracting and get you anxious as you get closer to a personal record)
Are there any other quick tools you think would be useful for a pen spinner? -
Date: Wed, Feb 10 2010 05:09:04
ahah nice, really good tool!
i suppose one day I'll release my combo generator in public so ppl can use that to make random combos to practice...
one thing I was kinda thinking about is a "speed+consistency trainer"
you feed it a list of tricks you want to practice
then the program has a timer and displays a random trick. You must complete that trick before the timer runs out. as soon as you fail, you should stop.
the more you keep going, the faster the timer goes so you have to get faster and faster and fail less.
BTW
url for WC10 is worldpenspinning.com not worldps.com -
Date: Wed, Feb 10 2010 08:48:56
fixed url, thanks for catching that.
random combo generator sounds interesting. The concept seems a bit similar to the PS Card game I have been working on...I don't remember, but I don't think you tried it at the Socal gathering when you came over. The idea is similar to the random combo generator, but using playing cards to generate Spin Types/Concepts (like Fingerless, Aerial, two handed, Top Spin, etc.) that would be required to be used in a combo. Then the possibilities of using different number of cards with a certain number of players become endless. I think I had come up with a couple games, but never got it finalized.
Anyways, the speed+consistency trainer (may I suggest the name "Timed Consistency Trainer"? ) sounds like a really good idea. I don't think it would be that hard to code it in JavaScript either. Probably the trickiest part would be to figure out how much faster the timer would become each round. -
Date: Wed, Feb 10 2010 13:16:23
thats simple, leave it up to the user
default values
start at maybe 5 seconds
decrease by 0.5 second
minimum time maybe 0.5 sec -
Date: Fri, Feb 12 2010 22:44:04
So, I'm trying to clean up that statistics tool and make it more modular, so it can be included in different parts of the site.
This is just a preview. What do you guys think? I hope it's more intuitive. -
Date: Sat, Feb 13 2010 00:04:34
What I liked about your old system was the fact that your session is "serialized" as a string of failures and success.
IMO, tracking the improvement within one session is too short a period to see any real improvement: progress should be tracked over days and weeks.
So what I liked about the string is that you can save it. Then the next day, simple paste it back and continue where you left off. That way you keep track of your progress over several sessions. -
Date: Sat, Feb 13 2010 01:45:07
good catch Zombo...the string of text it still there, it is just hidden from view and represented by the ticks and X's. It wouldn't be hard to show them if the user wishes to save that text.
I have plans to incorporate the tool into a bigger 'system', so that it would be possible to track a user's progress over a longer period of time, and link that data to a particular trick/combo. I'm also dropping the little chart from this small tool and letting the bigger system handle that, since it really doesn't do me much good having a graph chart over such a short session.
While not a bad idea, pasting an existing string and continuing is probably not ideal. Eventually you'll end up with strings that are thousands of characters long. Once that happens, each time you hit a new key, it will take a long to loop through each character and calculate the new stats (unless I can figure out a way to get the stats without looping through the entire data set). Also, you wouldn't have a separation between sessions, so you might wonder why you have suddenly lost consistency (maybe you stopped practicing for a few days). -
Date: Sat, Feb 13 2010 01:55:52
not practical
but noting each session could simply be writing text in between like
bust-training-2/12-zxzxzxzxzxxxxzxxxzxxxx-2/13-xxxzxxzxzxxz
where zx are success failure -
Date: Sat, Feb 13 2010 04:05:17
you probably mean the bigger system is not practical because it would be a lot more work and what not. But I have my reasons to go that route. Just don't want to disclose it yet.
Also, in case this isn't clear, this is simply an interface over the tool. The functionality should remain pretty much the same. You would be able to edit the data at will (still figuring out how to make this the most intuitive).
While strings are very powerful, they are not the most intuitive, so I'm trying to hide that from the average user. -
Date: Sat, Feb 13 2010 04:21:21
no what i meant was i have a solution which is not practical and its
"but noting each session could simply be writing text in between like
bust-training-2/12-zxzxzxzxzxxxxzxxxzxxxx-2/13-xxxzxxzxzxxz
where zx are success failure"