Ken's Cyber Cave: QMDJ and other Chinese metaphysics software-- FREE?

Saturday, August 4, 2007

QMDJ and other Chinese metaphysics software-- FREE?

A student asks me if he should buy a Chinese QMDJ
software from Hong Kong.

I've tested over 20 QMDJ programs, mostly in Chinese.

The one published by Juxian Guan is not up to par yet.
All it gives you is just the hour pans plus some
basic descriptions-- not recommended for the price or
functions.

There are a few good ones published in mainland China,
but you need to have at least college level Chinese
knowledge to read the Chinese in the program.

There is one in English sold as part of a diary type
program, but its calculations are incorrect.

There is another English version QMDJ program.
Observing from the screen shots, it seems to be a
glorified electronic version of the 1080 tables.

Most English versions of Chinese metaphysics software,
are nothing more than electronic versions of the
charts of the subject that you can find online
software to do it for free.

These programs or javascripts just do the mechanical
calculations for you.  Ultimately, human brain power
is still a requirement.

It is easy to check if the programmer knows his/her
stuff--- by checking how many years of QMDJ chart
calculation the program can handle. If it is around 10
years or so, it means s/he may have problem figuring
out a major problem in QMDJ--- how to handle the QMDJ
10k cal.  So all s/he can do is retype existing QMDJ
10k Cal manually into the program.  It is a lot of
typing, so s/he has to limit the number of years.

Here is a link to get charts of all sorts, from QMDJ,
ZWDS, flying star, Liu-ren, Yi-Jing to Plum Flower:

http://www.zhycw.com/artical/bbs/bz/index.asp

For QMDJ charts:

http://www.zhycw.com/artical/bbs/bz/qimen.asp

With this free online software, you can locate your
birth hour chart in terms of QMDJ-- it will give you a
lot of insight and help analyzing 4P.  It supports
charts from 1883-2031.

You need to set your browser to read simplified
Chinese before using this website.

If you have problem reading the Chinese, download my
IQMDJ file from the CA archive.


The ideal QMDJ program should have these features:

--Key in a date range (say from August 1 to 15) and
specify an auspicious profile (say my client wants the
closet "Maiden waiting at the gate hour")-- the
program should give you when you will find the hour
within the range, so you don't need to go through tons
of charts to find the hour.

--Can do divination with explanation

--Can give you explanation of each palace in terms of
positive and negative aspects

--Can give you the function specific info of each
palace by moving the cursor over the palace

--Has more than 10+ years of data, preferably also
historical data like from 1900- 2030, so that you can
use it to do 4P from the perspective of QMDJ

--Can handle hour, day, month and year pans.

--Can rank the pans of a designated period (like a
month) in terms of specific tasks (e.g. litigation,
gambling, grand-opening, travel... etc.), so you can
pick out the best chart in a flash.

-- can advise you how to walk the chart based on your
starting point

-- can show you the indicators or imageries to be seen
when applying QMDJ

--can handle different schools of QMDJ calculation,
not just the classic school

--can handle different methods of integrating the
extra 5-6 days outside the 24 solar terms

So far, no such program exist in Chinese or English.
I've been using a homemade one to do the above
functions.  But it is not for sale.  I don't want to
be in software-support business.  I write out these
specifications so that smart programmers can write one
out for the public.


Ken Lai