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Archive for October, 2005

Sleep Scatterplot

Wednesday, October 26th, 2005

The scatter plot shows a distribution of sleep and awake entries. It’s very good at showing patterns that aren’t evident in the regular day-to-day sleep chart.

  1. The chart shows 30 days of data, which are divided into three color groups. Plots in the most recent 10 days are solid. Plots in the middle 10 days are faded a little bit, and the oldest plots are faded even more. This lets you compare recent patterns to older patterns on the same chart.
  2. Horizontal patterns in your chart indicate consistency in the length of a nap (or awake entry).
  3. Vertical patterns indicate consistency in the schedule of naps (or awake entries). The example below contains a vertical column of plots around 8:00pm. This indicates a very successful, consistent 8:00pm bedtime. It also shows that the child usually sleeps through the night — but not always.
    Scatterplot with vertical trend

  4. ‘Clumped’ patterns indicate consistency in the schedule and length of naps (or awake entries).

Side Note:
This chart is modeled after a sleep analysis story posted on The Trixie Update a while back.

Please note: The middle section titled “Analysis of Patterns and Developing Trends” was done by hand. I don’t have the smarts to write code that can analyze patterns and create a chart like that. Eventually I will hire someone with a math or computer science background and put that person in charge of creating pattern algorithms, but that’s down the road.

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Printing Tips

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Over time I hope to better design the print templates so that the print-out will look good in any browser or OS. Until that happens, it’s a good idea to use your browser’s “Print Preview” option before printing so that you don’t waste paper. Here are some tips to fix other problems you might run into:

Problem: None of the colors in the sleep chart are showing up
Most browsers do not print background colors or images by default. This is done to save you ink. You will need to turn this option on for the colors to show up.

To print background colors
Firefox (Mac)

  1. Choose “Print” from the “File” menu.
  2. In the dialog box that opens, choose “Firefox” from the “Copies & Pages” dropdown menu.
  3. Check the boxes for “Print Background Colors” and “Print Background Images”.

Safari (Mac)

  1. Choose “Print” from the “File” menu.
  2. In the dialog box that opens, choose “Safari” from the “Copies & Pages” dropdown menu.
  3. Check the box for “Print backgrounds”.

Firefox (Win)

  1. Choose “Page Setup” from the “File” menu.
  2. In the dialog box that opens, check the box next to “Print Background (colors and images)”.
  3. Click “Ok”.

Internet Explorer 6 (Win)

  1. Choose “Internet Options” from the “Tools” menu.
  2. Select the “Advanced” tab.
  3. Find the section titled “Printing” and check the box next to “Print background colors and images”.
  4. Click “Ok”.

Problem: The chart on the page is too wide for the paper. It spills off to another page or the chart get broken.
This problem is probably caused by the page margins your browser adds to every page it prints. By default it’s something like half an inch. Also, your browser may (by default) include headers and footers (detailing the time of printing, page title, page address, etc) that take up additional space. These factors can make it tricky to control the exact format for a page that contains images (like the sleep chart).

The General print template prints well in portrait orientation.
The Sleep print template is currently designed for landscape orientation, but you can make it print in portrait by adjusting your margins.

If you are having problems, you may need to decrease the page margins. For example, if you set your margins to zero, you can probably print the Sleep page in portrait mode. Previewing before you print can help with this problem.

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