Contribution: Simple script to visualize monthly expenses

[deuxbot]

Hello all, I was tired of manually calculating my monthly expenses with excel sheets, so I made a simple python script to do it automatically from my collection CSV file.

The script reads the collection CSV file and plots a graph with information about the monthly expenses such as expenditure per month, mean monthly expenditure  and total expenditure of the collection. I thought that maybe some of you find this useful as well. Note: the script only works if you have specified the purchase date and price of every item. Now it just ignores items with missing purchase date or price (and warns about those).

Here is a picture:


The code and instructions are here: https://github.com/deuxbot/vgc-monthly-expenses.

PD: I was not sure where to post this, as it really doesn't fit well on any forum section.

[aliensstudios]

Awesome! I well definitely be using this! I can't tell you how many times monthly credit card bills show up and I realize how much money I spent on games. I've been trying to cut back for sure and being able to see the expenditures in real time is exactly what I need, so I appreciate this.

[oleks]

There are issues with tinter on macOS, so I installed activetcl instead. The script fails. Error message:

https://i.imgur.com/ao9fQjW.png

[deuxbot]

It is fixed now. The script had trouble because of decimals using the comma as separator instead of a dot. I do not have macOS so I could not try it on that. 

[oleks]

Still get an error related to this conversion. Sorry I post here and not in github issues. Probably I should create a dummy github account and post to hobby projects there so my colleagues don't read my vg collecting adventures .

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 82, in <module>
    main()
  File "main.py", line 78, in main
    dates, costs = get_axis(rows)
  File "main.py", line 29, in get_axis
    price = float(row[8].replace(",","."))
ValueError: could not convert string to float:

[tripredacus]

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

[deuxbot]

Still get an error related to this conversion. Sorry I post here and not in github issues. Probably I should create a dummy github account and post to hobby projects there so my colleagues don't read my vg collecting adventures .

That's weird, I modified the script, so now if it fails reading the price it will prompt which row is the one causing trouble and it will be ignored. This will provide some hints about what the error is, maybe there are some characters in the price field. Don't worry about open an issue in Github 

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

I used it because the script is for VGCollect... This is a very small, open source project. Could you please elaborate why should I remove "vgcollect" from the repository?

[tripredacus]

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

I used it because the script is for VGCollect... This is a very small, open source project. Could you please elaborate why should I remove "vgcollect" from the repository?

It is for mutual protection. Basically it is because you did not ask and/or receive permission to use the site name from the owners, the project was not created by direction or sanction from vgcollect owners, etc. And such permission can only come from those on this site who own the branding itself, an admin like myself or other user cannot grant this ability. Also think of it this way, say that someone uses that to do harm in some way. Having our name on something that is not ours gives us a lot of trouble.

So the use of the name "VGCollect" in the titles should be something else, perhaps VGC. In your readme and any help pages there should be a disclaimer that the project is not affiliated with VGCollect in any way and then you would need to state your claim to it. I am not saying that you can't use the word VGCollect anywhere in the script or on the github pages, just that it should not be in the title.

If you wish to use it in the title, you need permission from the site owner to use our branding.

Anyways, it looks like a cool thing you wrote, glad to see people making things like this.

[fazerco]

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

I used it because the script is for VGCollect... This is a very small, open source project. Could you please elaborate why should I remove "vgcollect" from the repository?

It is for mutual protection. Basically it is because you did not ask and/or receive permission to use the site name from the owners, the project was not created by direction or sanction from vgcollect owners, etc. And such permission can only come from those on this site who own the branding itself, an admin like myself or other user cannot grant this ability. Also think of it this way, say that someone uses that to do harm in some way. Having our name on something that is not ours gives us a lot of trouble.

So the use of the name "VGCollect" in the titles should be something else, perhaps VGC. In your readme and any help pages there should be a disclaimer that the project is not affiliated with VGCollect in any way and then you would need to state your claim to it. I am not saying that you can't use the word VGCollect anywhere in the script or on the github pages, just that it should not be in the title.

If you wish to use it in the title, you need permission from the site owner to use our branding.

Anyways, it looks like a cool thing you wrote, glad to see people making things like this.

Im just wondering if you ask permission for all the scans you use? I doubt u have all those games.

[tripredacus]

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

I used it because the script is for VGCollect... This is a very small, open source project. Could you please elaborate why should I remove "vgcollect" from the repository?

It is for mutual protection. Basically it is because you did not ask and/or receive permission to use the site name from the owners, the project was not created by direction or sanction from vgcollect owners, etc. And such permission can only come from those on this site who own the branding itself, an admin like myself or other user cannot grant this ability. Also think of it this way, say that someone uses that to do harm in some way. Having our name on something that is not ours gives us a lot of trouble.

So the use of the name "VGCollect" in the titles should be something else, perhaps VGC. In your readme and any help pages there should be a disclaimer that the project is not affiliated with VGCollect in any way and then you would need to state your claim to it. I am not saying that you can't use the word VGCollect anywhere in the script or on the github pages, just that it should not be in the title.

If you wish to use it in the title, you need permission from the site owner to use our branding.

Anyways, it looks like a cool thing you wrote, glad to see people making things like this.

Im just wondering if you ask permission for all the scans you use? I doubt u have all those games.

I don't see how it is related. There are no watermarks on any of the images I put into the database and the site itself makes no claims over any of the images either.

I am just talking to this guy because I have seen people in his situation before. I'm not in a position of authority on the usage of the VGCollect branding, as I said before only the site owners can make those decisions.

[fazerco]

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

I used it because the script is for VGCollect... This is a very small, open source project. Could you please elaborate why should I remove "vgcollect" from the repository?

It is for mutual protection. Basically it is because you did not ask and/or receive permission to use the site name from the owners, the project was not created by direction or sanction from vgcollect owners, etc. And such permission can only come from those on this site who own the branding itself, an admin like myself or other user cannot grant this ability. Also think of it this way, say that someone uses that to do harm in some way. Having our name on something that is not ours gives us a lot of trouble.

So the use of the name "VGCollect" in the titles should be something else, perhaps VGC. In your readme and any help pages there should be a disclaimer that the project is not affiliated with VGCollect in any way and then you would need to state your claim to it. I am not saying that you can't use the word VGCollect anywhere in the script or on the github pages, just that it should not be in the title.

If you wish to use it in the title, you need permission from the site owner to use our branding.

Anyways, it looks like a cool thing you wrote, glad to see people making things like this.

Im just wondering if you ask permission for all the scans you use? I doubt u have all those games.

I don't see how it is related. There are no watermarks on any of the images I put into the database and the site itself makes no claims over any of the images either.

I am just talking to this guy because I have seen people in his situation before. I'm not in a position of authority on the usage of the VGCollect branding, as I said before only the site owners can make those decisions.

The words administrator might throw some people of, or think that you are VG.

I recommend that you do not use the word "vgcollect" in the name of your project.

And you cant see everything that people/sites put in a picture, so some site could claim VG used something of theirs. I heard today of the facebook pixel.......

[tripredacus]

Do you think there is confusion regarding the forum ranks? I have thought about how all the forum mods, and those access to the database pages, as well as the actual admins and those who have access to things behind the scenes (the real hands on stuff) all just say "Administrator" on the forum. If it is a big deal, perhaps we can make a new thread in this section and see what the feedback is like.

Most websites that create a database, as in a historical list of products released about a certain subject will fall into the same category that the Mediawiki based sites do, for example. They typically operate under fair use. The majority of the images that I put are ones covered under fair use by other websites. The ones made from Ebay are weird because by their terms, they own non-exclusive rights to the images and it can be up to debate. For ebay listings, images are claimed by Ebay and Ebay only takes action against fraudulent use on their own system. If the image source also has no rules about usage, what does it mean? I'm no copyright lawyer...

BUT I think we would have no problem to remove an image on our site if a company or another person (who has not been a member of the site) requests it to be removed and/or replaced. But I think that someone would have a difficult time proving this since our images are so small, and also would have to prove why the usage doesn't fall under fair use. It's a "we'll see what happens when it happens" thing I guess. One company that could complain (that I've brought up somewhere before) is Limited Run Games, since a lot of those entries are just using their watermarked photos.

The Facebook Pixel is not anything new. Websites have been using 1x1 tracking images since the 90s. This has nothing to do with image files at all. If you are referring to embedding an image with some other sort of data, I'm not sure I can think of any valid way that information would be retained. When an image is uploaded here, the image that shows up on the page is edited and re-saved to JPG, and the original file is discarded. PNG gets changed to JPG, so even a vector PNG would be flattened and any hidden things would be erased. And EXIF data does not process either... I'd rather not see what happens if you try to upload an image archive (I won't say more) but I think either you'd end up with a broken image or an all black image, and the archive would be missing.

[deuxbot]

It is for mutual protection. Basically it is because you did not ask and/or receive permission to use the site name from the owners, the project was not created by direction or sanction from vgcollect owners, etc. And such permission can only come from those on this site who own the branding itself, an admin like myself or other user cannot grant this ability. Also think of it this way, say that someone uses that to do harm in some way. Having our name on something that is not ours gives us a lot of trouble.

So the use of the name "VGCollect" in the titles should be something else, perhaps VGC. In your readme and any help pages there should be a disclaimer that the project is not affiliated with VGCollect in any way and then you would need to state your claim to it. I am not saying that you can't use the word VGCollect anywhere in the script or on the github pages, just that it should not be in the title.

If you wish to use it in the title, you need permission from the site owner to use our branding.

Anyways, it looks like a cool thing you wrote, glad to see people making things like this.

Now I get the point, but I don't grasp how the script can cause harm in any way, it just reads a file without interacting with the website. Nonetheless, I followed your recommention to change the name to "vgc" and add a disclamer.

[tripredacus]

but I don't grasp how the script can cause harm in any way, it just reads a file without interacting with the website.

It was just an example. Think about a user who tried to use it, or modifies it and/or releases it, but it maybe deletes a file by accident, or it is used wrong that causes a crash, or a lockup or who knows what else. Or perhaps it just doesn't work for someone for some reason. Think of all the things you yourself have experienced with other programs. Then there are multiple outcomes like so:
1. Someone may have a problem with it as described above and blame VGCollect for it.
2. Someone may have a problem using it and come to us seeking help to fix it.

But since we had nothing to do with it, it could cause a problem.

[fazerco]

Do you think there is confusion regarding the forum ranks?

As stated by many others, you cant reply to a rejected change, because you dont know who rejected it. So you try the forum, and only 1 mod answers, thats you. So no confusion here  .