As part of my continuing efforts to preserve and capture my memories, I’ve been spending some energy adding more capabilities to my website. I already capture photos, recipes, blog posts, status updates, and other more traditional types of content. In addition, I’ve been privately tracking my own location continuously for months now, including the ability to see some current details about my location and status. I also use the excellent OwnYourSwarm service from Aaron Parecki to record check-ins at specific locations on my site.
Last week, I realized that I was missing some data on my website that would add additional context when exploring my memories: my TV and movie watching history, and a record of what podcasts I listen to. As of today, I am now automatically tracking all of this data, and I’m happy to share a bit about how I made it happen.
Movies and TV
Let’s start with how I am tracking what movies and TV shows I watch. As it turns out, there is already a wonderful service out there for tracking this data called Trakt, which is a startup based out of San Diego. Trakt has done the hard part for me, with an extensive and complete database of movies and TV shows for me to pull from, and a host of great apps that use its powerful API to help users put data into their Trakt account. I am personally using the Watcht app for iOS to manually ad TV episodes and movies to my watch history on Trakt, and to show me a calendar of upcoming TV episodes for my favorite shows.
But, being an IndieWeb community member, I want to make sure that my memories don’t get lost in the event that Trakt goes away one day. In addition, I want to be able to see my TV and movie history in the context of the rest of my website’s content. So, I needed to find a way to automatically sync that data to my website.
At first, I thought about using the extremely capable Trakt API to periodically sync to my website, but then I noticed that Trakt Pro members get access to an Atom feed of their watch history. Working with a custom REST API takes a lot of effort, while integrating with a standard feed format is extremely easy. So, I happily paid for a Trakt Pro subscription!
I created a Python script which periodically parses my Trakt feed and then creates entries on my website for each movie and TV episode I watch. It only took me about an hour to put the whole thing together.
Sidebar: Automatic Tracking from Plex
As you may already know, I have a great collection of digital movies and TV shows. I use the outstanding Plex Media Server to enable me to stream and sync content to all my devices. As Eddie, my co-host from Two Dads Talking, recently mused, tracking activity automatically is much more reliable than remembering to manually track activity. Trakt provides a Plex plugin that automatically syncs your Plex history to Trakt, and once I had that installed, a significant chunk of my activity is now automatically synced!
I still have to manually track content watched outside of Plex, like live TV from Hulu, and content consumed on Netflix, but it’s a good start.
Podcasts
I’m not only a podcaster with a microcast and a podcast, I’m also an avid podcast listener. I listen to podcasts on my daily commute, to relax after work, and to kill time on airplanes. Wouldn’t it be great to have that history tracked on my website as well? As I mentioned above, tracking that history automatically is greatly preferable to manually having to log every episode I listen to. With that in mind, I set out to see if I could capture my activity.
I use the wonderful Overcast podcast app for iOS. Overcast is created by Marco Arment, who is also a prolific podcaster. It’s a fantastic and pleasant app to use, and is perhaps my favorite iOS app ever. Overcast has a sync service and web frontend available for users at overcast.fm. Not only can you listen to podcasts in your web browser on overcast.fm, you can also export an extended OPML file that contains all details about your account, including a listing of all podcast episodes you’ve ever listened to. Bingo!
I whipped up a script that logs into my account at Overcast.fm, then downloads a copy of this OPML file, and uses it to sync my history to my website. It works a treat, but I will caution that Marco seems to be rate limiting that OPML export pretty aggressively. For the time being, I’ve limited my sync to once daily, and I’ve also contacted Marco to get his input on how I am using his service. In an ideal world, I’d love to see Marco add a standard RSS, Atom, or JSON Feed for Overcast paid subscribers similar to what Trakt has done for Trakt Pro users. In the meantime, I’ll be conservative about how often I sync and await a reply from Marco.
Why Track Activity?
You may be wondering why I want to track all of this information. Eddie and I briefly touched on the topic in the last episode of Two Dads Talking, but it really comes down to the fact that our memories are precious, and the more context I have when looking back on my life, the richer my appreciation will be for the life I’ve been blessed to live.
During the process of adding these new types of memories to my website, I also have added a monthly “recap” feature which has been one of my all time favorite enhancements. I like them so much, I’ve added links to the last twelve monthly summaries to my home page to surface them. My favorite examples of monthly summaries so far:
- January 2018, which marked my departure from DreamHost, the beginning of a new chapter in my career, and my second viewing of my favorite musical of all time.
- July 2018, which includes travel all over the globe, some progress on my Indiepaper project, and outdoor movies in my front yard with my kids.
- November 2017, which includes a trip to Australia, the acquisition of the best car I’ve ever owned, and my son’s first ever NFL football game.
I’m delighted to continue enriching my database of memories, and really happy with the way my movie, TV, and podcast tracking is shaping up so far.
