A friend recommends a show. "You have to watch it." A month later I finally get a spare hour, and I waste it remembering the show name and figuring out which of twenty streaming services has it. A YouTube essay talks me into a film or a game I've never heard of, and I think, "I should write this down". That's the last I ever think of it. There's a 0% chance I act on it the rare night I get my little dude down early. So the other night I spent a couple of hours making something that does that for me. I pasted in the whole list of what I want to get through. It put everything in one place, and filled in the entries by crawling the relevant databases: the credits, the runtime, and a link I can click, that takes me to where every entry actually lives. When that hour shows up, the only thing I can count on having is my phone, and a browser on it. Anything else is more than that moment will allow. So it's a webpage. I can sort by how long I have, or by how easily I can get it playing right away. When someone recommends an album or a movie or a game, I paste it in and it fetches the info and a link. I can mark the ones I've watched. For the first time since becoming a dad, it feels like I can slowly paddle my way back into the cultural conversation.   submitted by   /u/aliartguy [link]   [comments]