I like watching movies and playing games, but I also like to keep track of which movies I've watched and which games I've beaten. I also got into the habit of rating each movie I watch. For the longest time, though, I have kept track of these collections informally in my memory or scattered in text files on my computer.
A couple years ago I started trying to keep myself more focused and organized by using a CLI (Command-line interface) TODO list manager called Taskwarrior. Suddenly I realized that I could also use this awesome tool to keep lists for my movies and games!
If you know Taskwarrior, you know that it just needs a configuration
file (normally a .taskrc in your home folder), and a folder to keep its data
files.
In order to keep these lists separate from my main Taskwarrior tasks, I created
a directory (/home/nfraprado/txt/todo) to keep a separate configuration file
(config) and data folder (data).
Inside config, I first defined the data folder:
data.location = /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/data
I then removed color from tagged tasks and made search case insensitive:
color.tagged = none
search.case.sensitive = no
And also created a new UDA, or User Defined Attribute, called Score, so that I could add a score to a movie after I watched it:
uda.score.type = numeric
uda.score.label = Score
Finally, I added the movies and games reports. Each report can have its filter configured to determine which tasks are shown, and its columns, to determine which task attributes are displayed, as well as some other configurations.
For the games, I wanted two reports: one called games.todo, to show which
games I still need to beat, and another called games.done for the games I've
already beaten:
# Games reports
report.games.todo.description = Games to complete
report.games.todo.labels = ID,Title
report.games.todo.columns = id,description
report.games.todo.filter = status:pending limit:page project:games
report.games.done.description = Games completed
report.games.done.labels = Title,Completed on
report.games.done.columns = description,end
report.games.done.filter = status:completed limit:page project:games
report.games.done.sort = end-
For the movies, I also added a todo and a done report, but the done
report also has a score column so that I can see the score that I gave to each
movie. I also added a movies.rank report for the movies that is sorted based
on the score, so I can have a list of my favorite movies đŸ™‚:
# Movies reports
report.movies.todo.description = Movies to watch
report.movies.todo.labels = ID,Tags,Title
report.movies.todo.columns = id,tags,description
report.movies.todo.filter = status:pending limit:page project:movies
report.movies.done.description = Movies seen
report.movies.done.labels = Title,Tags,Score,Watched on
report.movies.done.columns = description,tags,score,end
report.movies.done.filter = status:completed limit:page project:movies
report.movies.done.sort = end-
report.movies.rank.description = Movies ranking
report.movies.rank.labels = Title,Tags,Score
report.movies.rank.columns = description,tags,score
report.movies.rank.filter = status:completed limit:page project:movies
report.movies.rank.sort = score-
With Taskwarrior configured, I just needed some aliases in my .bashrc to
make it convenient to add, complete and see the movies and games.
Inside my .bashrc, I first added a variable pointing to the config location:
TODOCONFIG="$HOME/txt/todo/config"
Then I added aliases to add, list and list done for both games and movies. Also
an alias to mark a game as completed and one to see the movies ranking. For all
these commands, I used rc:$TODOCONFIG to make Taskwarrior use the
configuration file that I previously added. For the add and done aliases I just
use the add and done Taskwarrior commands, respectively. Listing is done
by just calling the previously written reports:
# Games list
alias gamadd='task rc:$TODOCONFIG add project:games'
alias gamlist='task rc:$TODOCONFIG games.todo'
alias gamlistdone='task rc:$TODOCONFIG games.done'
alias gamdone='task rc:$TODOCONFIG done'
# Movies list
alias movadd='task rc:$TODOCONFIG add project:movies'
alias movlist='task rc:$TODOCONFIG movies.todo'
alias movlistdone='task rc:$TODOCONFIG movies.done'
alias movrank='task rc:$TODOCONFIG movies.rank'
Completing a movie can't be done as a simple alias, since I also want to give it a score, so I create a simple bash function that takes the task id and score, applies the given score to the task and marks it as done:
movdone()
{
if [ -z "$1" ] || [ -z "$2" ];then
echo "Usage: movdone id score"
return 1
fi
task rc:$TODOCONFIG modify "$1" score:"$2"
task rc:$TODOCONFIG done "$1"
}
With this setup done, I could finally track my movies and games very easily.
Adding a new movie to watch is as simples as movadd movie_name (spaces can
actually be used in the name).
And after watching a movie, I can easily mark it as completed and rate it with
movdone id rating. The id for the movie can be seen using movlist.
Here are the movies that I plan to watch:
[nfraprado@ArchWay ~]$ movlist Using alternate .taskrc file /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/config ID Title 23 Once Upon a Time In Hollywood 27 Ready player one 28 In The Shadow Of The Moon 2007
The last 5 movies I've watched:
[nfraprado@ArchWay ~]$ movlistdone Using alternate .taskrc file /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/config Title Tags Score Watched on Arrival 8 2020-05-25 The Green Mile 8 2020-05-17 The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind 8 2020-04-25 Jojo Rabbit 6 2020-04-18 Back to the Future 8 2020-04-12
My highest rated movies (since I created this list):
[nfraprado@ArchWay ~]$ movrank Using alternate .taskrc file /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/config Title Tags Score The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 10 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 10 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 10 Whisper of the Heart ghibli 9 Apollo 11 doc 9 Life is beautiful 9 Koe no katachi 9
Some games I plan to beat:
[nfraprado@ArchWay ~]$ gamlist Using alternate .taskrc file /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/config ID Title 6 FTL 7 The Witness 8 Factorio 9 Stardew Valley 10 Half Life
And the last 5 games I've beaten:
[nfraprado@ArchWay ~]$ gamlistdone Using alternate .taskrc file /home/nfraprado/txt/todo/config Title Completed on The Stanley Parable 2020-04-24 Undertale 2020-04-17 Cave Story 2020-03-30 Antichamber 2020-03-22 Papers, Please 2020-03-19