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Application Review

BioGraph
Review by: Craig Miller – 08/15/11
OS Reviewed on: eComStation 2.1
Audio: Uniaud16 V1.9.25 & Uniaud32 V2.1.2
Video Card Driver: SNAP, version 3 (eCS 2.1 package)

Year: 1997
Version: 1.30
Application Type: Other
Developed by: Uwe Mock
Published by: N/A

Homepage Link: Click Here
Wikipedia Link: N/A

Manual

Download Biograph 1.3 now!
This version is the full version, no registration needed. 270K

(1) Introduction:

From BioGraph:

“BioGraph version 1.3 is the ultimate biorhythm program for OS/2 Warp. It provides you with much more functionality than most competing products: BioGraph knows about the widely unknown intuitional cycle and it can compute biorhythmic pair matching.”

From Wikipedia:

“Biorhythm is an attempt to predict various aspects of a person's life through simple mathematical cycles. Most scientists believe that the idea has no more predictive power than raw chance,[1] and consider the concept an example of pseudoscience.

According to believers in biorhythms, a person's life is affected by rhythmic biological cycles which affect one's ability in various domains, such as mental, physical, and emotional activity. These cycles begin at birth and oscillate in a steady sine wave fashion throughout life; thus, by modeling them mathematically, a person's level of ability in each of these domains can be predicted from day to day.

Most biorhythm models use three cycles: a 23-day "physical" cycle, a 28-day "emotional" cycle, and a 33-day "intellectual" cycle. Although the 28-day cycle is the same length as the average woman's menstrual cycle and was originally described as a "female" cycle, the two are not necessarily in any particular synchronization. Each of these cycles varies between high and low extremes sinusoidally, with days where the cycle crosses the zero line described as "critical days" of greater risk or uncertainty.

From Me:

“While I think this stuff is just crap I'm not a big believer in Biorhythms, horoscopes, ghosts, Unicorns, and other fringe suspicions, it is sometimes fun to see what they pull up for entertainment. I have had BioGraph on my computer for years, and while I won't say I opened it every day, it was something I opened on occasion. When I did my review of WarpNote, I noticed the same author (Uwe Mock) also did BioGraph, which then reminded me of the program.

BioGraph is now free to use so I thought it would be fun to do a review on an application that was not really an application nor a game. To add to the fun, I downloaded a windows equivalent called Free and Easy Biorhythm Calculator 3.02 to see how BioGraph, a 15 year program, compared to a relatively new one.

(2) Installation:

Like Uwe Mock's WarpNote, the install is done via an OS/2 text installer. Clicking on the install.cmd icon, you get a simple screen asking you where to install BioGraph:

As with 90% of all my programs I install, I put Biograph in the C:\Programs\Biograph directory

As you can see though, after the install I had an error, I thought this might be it for the review. I tried several times, in different ways to install BioGrapg but I kept getting the same error.

Looking in the BioGraph director though (C:\programs\Biograph), I found that everything looked as though it installed properly. Clicking on the BioGraph icon started up the program with no issues. I am suspecting that either its my computer (no surprise there) or there is some issue with the installer and it is failing to put the Biograph icon on the desktop.

It's not a huge deal but a user without the drive to dig around would just give up there. So after the install is done, go to where you installed the program and make a shadow of the BioGraph program to your desktop.

(3) Start up:

No real start up, once you make the shadow icon for the BioGraph icon, you click on it and you get a quick welcome screen then you are dropped into the BioGraph Window.

From here, there are several buttons to the top of the window, running your mouse over the buttons will show you their usage via the bar at the bottom of the BioGraph window.

This big thing you want to do is obviously add yourself and anyone you also want to compare to latter as you will see below. For this review I added me and my wife.

There is also an options window, but there is not much there:

So, now that were done, lets get to finding out how messed up we all are!

(4) The Program:

So before we really get into the program we need to learn a little more of what Biorhythms are. Under the BioGraph program, if you look at the manual (in the BioGraph dir), there is not a lot there. But there doesn’t need to be. This is not OpenOffice, it's all self explanatory.

Anyways, here are some key things to remember when you use BioGraph and for explaining what Biorhythms are, it's actually in-depth:

“From the day of birth until death, a human's life is influenced by "biological clocks". There are cycles with short period, like the day/night cycle, and longer period cycles, such as the cycles that are widely known as biorhythms.

When we talk of "biorhythms", this usually refers to the three most important cycles: The physical cycle of 23 days, the emotional cycle of 28 days, and the intellectual cycle of 33 days. Less widely known is the existence of the Intuitive cycle of 38 days.

The four biorhythms take a start on the day of birth and move upwards from a zero line until they reach their highest point, return to the zero line and in the same way cross the negative region below the zero line. This repeats over and over again.

When one of the biorhythms is located in the positive or "active" region, this means positive influence on the corresponding part of the human being. Accordingly, values in the negative or "passive" range mean negative influence. When a biorhythm changes from positive to negative or vice versa, i.e. it "changes phases", this is called a "critical phase". Such a critical phase can cause unreliability and heavy change in the corresponding properties.

The combination of the four biorhythm values is unique each day throughout your life. The second time that all four cycles cross the zero line again comes about 200 years after your birth. If you wanted to live to see the four cycles starting the same way as on the day of your birth, you had to live for more than 2000 years.”

So that's a lot of reading for a program we should take as “entertainment”, so after I filled out my name, and birth date, you can see how mine is laid out:

BioGraph has a Legend that shows you what color line represents what for help that you can keep up at all times of turn off via an icon button:

There are four “rhythms”, below is one last definition (I promise!)

Physical (Primary rhythm)	The 23-day physical cycle tracks the man's strength, endurance, powers and state of health.
Emotional (Primary rhythm)	The 28-day emotional cycle tracks the stability and positive energy of your psyche and outlook on life, as well as your capacity to empathize with and build rapport with other people.
Intellectual (Primary rhythm)	The 33-day cycle is representative of man's intellectual dynamics: verbal, mathematical, symbolic, and creative abilities, as well as your capacity to apply reason and analysis to the world around you.
Intuitive (Additional rhythm)	The 38-day cycle was discovered later and can't be considered as a primary one. However it may be useful to know when you can trust your “sixth sense”. The cycle tracks an unconscious perception and instincts.

So basically you can see that on the 15^th I am coming down from a pretty good week. Soon I should hit rock bottom of despair and nearly want to kill myself in self loathing. Joy!

You can highlight on a day and then click on the interpretation icon which will show you exactly how things will run for your day.

Here is mine for August the 15^th:

I guess BioGraph's have no need for spell check.

Like a horoscope, it's interesting to read, but I personally, never take them seriously. My wife on the other hand, looks at it another way and actually will believe what these things say are real.

I guess I am leading up to the next icon in the BioGraph line, pair matching. This icon allows you to take two different people and see how they will work together. Since I have already setup me and the wife, all I need to do is pick each and then click on “ok”:

I'm not showing my wife's birthday because I do not wish to die.

After you click on the “ok” button, a new window comes up called Pair Matching, I highly recommend looking at this before your significant other looks at it, especially if she/he is sensitive to these sort of things.

Good thing my wife does not read these reviews...

There is a print button also that allows you to print the report though I never had any luck even though it did recognize my printer. This might be my computer since I use CUPS so I do not want to point blame.

Lastly, you do have the choice of five different languages to pick from which I found refreshing. Even though I barely speak and write English only, it's nice BioGraph gives people options, especially in a group like eCS users that come from several different countries that speak many different languages.

Changing languages happen on the fly but once you pick your language I doubt there will be much changing around.

One thing I was interested was how well BioGraph held up after 15 years. Does time really matter in programs such as this? Shouldn't stay the same? I would think so, but I wanted to test it out and compare a more “recent” version of Biorhythms for Windows to BioGraph. It did not take to long to find something out there. I guess it's easy to program this type of application? Not knowing which one was “better” I grabbed the first one I could find: Free and Easy Biorhythm Calculator 3.02 by White Stranger Group looked promising. I have never heard of this company and I might of just put a virus on my WinXP computer but this is the sacrifice I do for you, gentle reader.

So after installing and adding the same info, here are the graphs side by side:

They are almost identical, Free and Easy Biorhythm Calculator does look more polished but it is nice to see that even after all these years, not much has changed.

Here is what they have to say about the day:

So there you have it, in a nut shell, not the most in-depth comparison but honestly there is not much to compare except these two screen shots. If anything, I just wanted to show that if you find these things entertaining, then BioGraph still holds up as an alternative to a Windows or Internet version (there are lots of those).

(5) Final Thoughts:

BioGraph is one of those programs that I can see people firing up the first thing in the morning with their coffee, checking their horoscope, then looking at pictures of kittens, getting no work done until 11am.

BioGraph is a native eCS application thus it is fast and I never had an issue with it while it was running. The Biograph window itself is adjustable and not fixed like some programs of the time have been. The only problems I had were the install and printing, but once you make a shadow of the application it's not a big deal, and I won't waste paper on this stuff anyways.

I personally think BioGraph has stood well with time and works just as any of the new Biorhythm programs out there. It would be nice if it was polished up a little with new icons and some additional “flash” but that's just a personal opinion. Free and Easy Biorhythm Calculator did have some additional bells and whistles but none of them were important enough that it made me wish for them on BioGraph and actually they just seemed to be put there to say there was more in version 3.02

While this sounds like a slam to the program, it's not. Again, if you look at these programs as entertainment, and not something to take literal, then it's fun. I do recommend downloading the application, it's free and a very small app. Besides, if it tells me to play the lottery and gives me the numbers...maybe I will.

(6) Updates after the review:

None as of yet.