http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=1054649

Are you a regular monk? If yes, you might be interested in how the quality of your posts changes in time. At least I was curious about it, so I created a script to get the data from the appropriate XML ticker and display it as a graph in gnuplot. It shows the average XP per node for each month.
#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use WWW::Mechanize; use XML::LibXML; use constant { PM_URL => 'http://www.perlmonks.org/bare/?node_id=', # Node ids: LOGIN => 109, XP => 32704, }; print "User? "; chomp(my $user = <>); print "Pass? "; chomp(my $pass = <>); my $mech = 'WWW::Mechanize'->new; $mech->get(PM_URL . LOGIN); $mech->submit_form( form_number => 1, fields => { user => $user, passwd => $pass, }, ); my %out; my $limit = 500; my $offset = 0; while (1) { $mech->get(PM_URL . XP . ";limit=$limit;offset=$offset"); my $xml = 'XML::LibXML'->load_xml(string => $mech->content); my @nodes = $xml->findnodes('/USERNODES/NODE'); last unless @nodes; for my $node (@nodes) { my ($date, $xp) = map $node->getAttribute($_), qw(createtime r +eputation); substr $date, 7, length($date), q{}; # Group by month. $out{$date}{count}++; $out{$date}{sum} += $xp; } $offset += $limit; } open my $OUT, '>', 'xp.out' or die $!; for my $date (sort keys %out) { print {$OUT} "$date\t", $out{$date}{sum} / $out{$date}{count}, "\n +"; } close $OUT or die $!; =for gnuplot set xdata time set timefmt '%Y-%m' set xtics format '%Y-%m' plot 'xp.out' using 1:2:(2e6) with boxes fs solid =cut

Please, do not run the script too often, as it might lag our already panting servers :-)

The script produces a file xp.out (I use a fixed name, so I can just copy&paste the POD section to gnuplot). If you do not happen to have gnuplot installed, you can use the following Perl programme (using Tk) to view the graph. Its input file defaults to xp.out, but you can specify any other file name on the command line.

#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use 5.010; # // use Tk; use constant MESSAGE => 'Point a mouse over a bar to see the details'; my $width = 25; my $height = 200; my $space = 10; my $input = shift // 'xp.out'; open my $IN, '<', $input or die $!; my @rectangles; my ($oldest, $max, $min) = (0, 0, 0); while (my $line = <$IN>) { my ($date, $xp) = split ' ', $line; my ($year, $month) = split /-/, $date; my $x = $year * 12 + $month; $oldest ||= $x; $max = $xp if $xp > $max; $min = $xp if $xp < $min; push @rectangles, [ $x - $oldest, $xp, $date ]; } my $step = $height / $max; my $mw = 'MainWindow'->new(-title => 'Average XP per month'); my $info = MESSAGE; $mw->Label(-textvariable => \$info, -foreground => 'black', -background => 'white', -relief => 'ridge', )->pack(-pady => 5); my $canvas = $mw->Canvas(-background => 'white', -width => $width * (1 + $rectangles[-1][ +0]), -height => $height + 2 * $space + $step * + abs $min, )->pack(-padx => 10, -pady => 10); for my $rect (@rectangles) { $canvas->createRectangle( $rect->[0] * $width, $space + $step * ($max - $rect->[1] +), ++$rect->[0] * $width, $space + $height, -fill => (qw/blue cyan green yellow orange red/) [($rect->[1] + abs $min) / ($max + abs $min) * + 5], -outline => 'black', -tag => "bar$rect->[0]", ); $canvas->bind("bar$rect->[0]", '<Any-Enter>' => sub { $info = "$rect->[2]: $rect->[ +1]" }); } $canvas->bind('all', '<Any-Leave>' => sub { $info = MESSAGE }); $mw->Button(-text => 'Quit', -command => sub { exit }, )->pack; MainLoop();

Related: Re: Zen and the art of ignoring XP.

Updated: Fixed the second script (line 41).

لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ