decide-what-to-watch

Decide what to watch using the power of randomness!

The problem

Suppose you have different things to watch while you're resting:

• Series on your favourite streaming platform
• "Watch Later" playlist on YouTube
• Some interesting lectures on YouTube

You're likely to choose the most entertaining option every time. That is not quite reasonable, if you generally want to watch all of mentioned things at least in some proportions (not 100:0:0).

The solution

This script allows you to specify all your chill-content sources:

{
  "alternatives": [
    {
      "link": "https://www.google.com",
      "weight": 50,
      "description": "Your favourite streaming service with films/series"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "weight": 15,
      "description": "Awesome lectures about ... (easy and straightforward)"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "weight": 15,
      "description": "Some other awesome lectures"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "weight": 5,
      "description": "Watch Later playlist with useful videos"
    }
  ]
}

And then allow the script to decide for you what to watch now:

decide

And one of the links that you've provided will open in the browser. Resistance is useless. Just watch.

Details

• The weights you provide are used to determine the probability of opening each link
• Add only the content that you really want to watch (to avoid disobedience)
• Weight sum does not have to be 100 or something else. Use the values you like: weights distribution 20:30:50 is equal to 4:6:10 or 2:3:5
• All links must start with "https://"

An alternative mode

(non-breaking config possibilities)

You can use classes to distribute probabilities automatically between links. When the script is run, firstly the class is selected (all classes have equal probabilities), then the link within this class is selected (all links without a specified weight has weight = 1). All links without a specified class are considered as a part of unclassified class. So the config can look like this:

{
  "alternatives": [
    {
      "link": "https://www.google.com",
      "class": "fun",
      "description": "Your favourite streaming service with films/series"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "description": "Awesome lectures about ... (easy and straightforward)"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "description": "Some other awesome lectures"
    },
    {
      "link": "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...",
      "description": "Watch Later playlist with useful videos"
    }
  ]
}

Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.6+ (note: it's better not to use venv)
• Linux/Windows/Mac

How to install

Run these commands in your terminal:

cd ~/Downloads  # or anywhere else
git clone https://github.com/m-danya/decide-what-to-watch
cd decide-what-to-watch
pip install .
# and then restart the terminal

How to configure

Run decide --config in your terminal. This will open the configuration file in your default text editor. Paste an example config into it (you can find it in the beginning of "The solution" section) and modify it as you want.

Also, you can run decide --show-config-path to get the path to configuration file.

How to run

Run this command in your terminal:

decide

How to enable logging

If you want to store logs, just create the log file with appropriate permissions:

sudo touch /var/log/decide.log
sudo chown $USER:$USER /var/log/decide.log
sudo chmod 0666 /var/log/decide.log

The log messages will look like this:

2022-12-09 23:08:36 - main: decided to watch <DESCRIPTION> --- <LINK>

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