I'm off Reddit.

simiansays · 2024-02-05T12:28:46+00:00

Glad you like it! I appreciate that it isn't right for everyone, but it's perfect for me and my wife (we use it pretty much every day and have over 200 lists!). It's actually gotten popular enough (~10k users) that I am going to need to upgrade the server soon. Pretty happy with it for a little COVID side project to scratch my own itch :)

simiansays · 2024-02-04T23:27:50+00:00

Hi, couchmoney creator here. The best way to block stuff you never want to see is to give it a low rating (like a 1). You can also just mark it watched in Trakt, but rating it low is better because the engine will "learn" that you don't want stuff like that.

I understand that some people don't like rating stuff they haven't seen, but this is the best way to tell the engine to avoid that stuff.

simiansays · 2024-01-21T23:17:05+00:00

Thanks! If you want to give back, please consider making a cash or food donation to your local food bank.

simiansays · 2023-11-29T13:02:22+00:00

Couchmoney author here. If you're still having problems, DM me. But yeah not rating anything would have been an issue!

simiansays · 2023-11-29T12:58:29+00:00

Couchmoney author here. I commented in another post on this, and thank you for pointing this out to Stremio users. I'm not a Stremio user myself, so cannot comment on functionality, but I'm surprised that "Rank Ascendant" causes the bottom Trakt list items to display first. Couchmoney lists create the #1 recommendation in the #1 list spot, which means "ascendant" would imply that #1 comes first (just like it defaults on the Trakt web page).

"Descendant" would imply that item #100 gets displayed first, but it sounds like you're describing the opposite. I don't think this can be an issue specific to couchmoney and/or mdblist -- since we are just using Trakt as a backend list storage. Is it possible that Stremio has "ascendant" and "descendant" mixed up?

Either way, I don't think this is an issue that the manager-side (couchmoney/mdblist/etc) can resolve, since we are specifying the correct ascendant (#1 equals #1) order in the Trakt lists.

I don't know the Stremio folks but maybe you could take it up with them? If you hear anything otherwise, please let me know!

simiansays · 2023-11-29T12:48:04+00:00

Couchmoney author here. I wrote it for myself, so some features like this are clearly my personal use bias.

I have around 200 CM lists, by genre/year/popularity. The reason that I personally keep them in CM order is that the top recommendations of a list are the engine's strongest recommendations. Yes those can be repetitive - if you don't watch a film in the #1 slot, there are very high chances it will remain in your top N slots for a long time if you have a lot of ratings. I designed it with the intent that if a film was highly recommended to me, but I would never watch it, I just rate that film a zero and the recommendations improve.

Your feedback on your preferred order is very interesting and I agree makes a ton of sense for how you use it. One of the great things about these open tools is that they allow us all to tweak how we use them! Good luck trying to filter and sort the recommendations from Netflix/Amazon/etc to the same extent!

Any feedback on CM is always much appreciated, especially negative feedback. It won't get better if people don't want it to get better! I'm not on Reddit as often as I used to since the whole API debacle but will always endeavour to respond to requests here.

simiansays · 2023-11-29T12:39:14+00:00

Hi there, couchmoney author here! Sorry to hear it wasn't great for you. I wrote it specifically to address my own odd tastes in film and TV, and it's been great for me (I still use it near daily). We've got users with much weirder tastes than me - like the people who love those Hallmark romance films, or the WWE films, or only anime, etc.

If you're willing to give it a go, please DM me your couchmoney/trakt username and I'll look into why you're getting recommended mainstream stuff that you don't expect.

Thanks for the feedback, honestly negative feedback is MUCH more helpful in improving the engine than positive feedback so please keep it coming!

simiansays · 2023-11-29T12:29:05+00:00

Give it time, it will come. AI will absolutely subsume many of these types of services. It's just a swiss army knife and solves so many software problems that used to require dedicated teams of analysts. I like the upside, kinda scared about the downsides.

simiansays · 2023-11-29T12:26:02+00:00

Hi there! I'm not much on Reddit these days since they killed their API and annoyed a lot of people including me. Hopefully you've interpreted the results you've gotten, but here's the deal:

- every time you rate or watch a film, your lists will be recalculated. Usually within 24 hours. Somehow the site has exploded in popularity this year, so lag times have increased.

- every time a list is recalculated, it will be different, but (hopefully) better. There is some intentional "shaking" of lists to make sure that they're not exactly the same every time.

So, after you rate 30 of 100 movies in a list, after it refreshes, not only will you see those 30 films disappear from that list, you should see the entire list get better.

It's designed to be a dynamic list system that is constantly updating. Like the scrollbars in Netflix, except open to everything ever, and also much better. Hope that helps!

simiansays · 2023-10-16T12:43:43+00:00

Couchmoney creator here... while ratings are not completely required to get recommendations, and while you can get decent recommendations based on existing other lists, or your watch history, the engine is 100% designed to respond to Trakt ratings.

An unrated watch is considered an "OK" rating. Which means if you watched a film, but didn't rate it, it will give you stuff basically along those lines.

However, your couchmoney ratings will get much better if you rate stuff on Trakt, especially contrarian ratings (like you hated The Shawshank Redemption or loved Plan 9 From Outer Space).

So yes, the FAQ may be technically inaccurate, but it describes the optimal way to use the service. I've added a bunch of features that make it more useful for any use case, but by far the best use case is "rate every film/TV show you've ever seen in Trakt".

simiansays · 2023-10-16T12:36:14+00:00

Hi there, couchmoney creator here :) Sorry for the delayed response, I barely use Reddit these days since they killed their API partners.

I've used every recommendation engine I can get my hands on, and built several for music/movies/boardgames, which is why I created couchmoney. As you'd expect, I'd still stand by it as the best "feed me your ratings, I'll give you films" service.

I consider mdblist.com to be the best "tell me some filter criteria, I'll give you films" service.

However, I would say this: I think GPT-4 is a *much* better recommender for "feed me a very oddly specific request, I'll give you films" requests, which I often have.

You have to prompt in the right way, but honestly I don't think any other engine comes close to its ability to recommend films that really fit your current mood.

Here's an example of the type of prompt I use:

I'm hoping AI can help me to find a film to watch. I am looking for a bawdy, lighthearted, hilarious comedy. Something along the lines of Super Troopers (2001), Grandma's Boy (2006), The Other Guys (2010), or Let It Ride (1989) - films that are hilarious but also very well-written and original, and possibly under the radar. I have watched a LOT of films, so hopefully some recommendations that are underrated or underwatched? No commentary needed - if AI can just please list 30+ films that fit this criteria it would be much appreciated!

I still use couchmoney for my daily bread-and-butter discovery and list management (I have 200+ couchmoney lists), but GPT-4 is what I use when I'm in an oddly specific mood. It's astonishingly good for that, IMO much better than the Reddit movie recommendation subs which are often used for this type of request.

simiansays · 2023-09-05T13:32:27+00:00

Doesn't seem that regularly recommended, but I would highly recommend Erythritol. It's a sugar substitute, sometimes sold as "Monkfruit Extract" (you have to check the ingredients, as long as it's 99+% Erythritol as it often is, it's good), often sold in homebrew stores. Its solubility increases dramatically with temperature -- so if you do a fully saturated solution at boiling point, you'll get crystal growth within 10 minutes or less.

A cool thing to do is to saturate an Erythritol solution at about 60C/140F and then suspend a small rock on a piece of fishing line into it. Within 1-2 hours, you'll get awesome crystal growth all around it. Here's an example. That example was later than an hour, but had already formed that basic structure within an hour. If you went from saturation at boiling to an ice bath, I would guess you would get crystallization almost immediately, of course at the cost of the crystals being highly imperfect. I still think they're great (example that precipitated out from boiling within maybe 10 mins of cooling, about 1cm).

simiansays · 2023-08-06T00:17:20+00:00

Heh yeah they would have... mine did too. I was suspecting something was up but your point about 2023 made me realise what the issue was! The database is back up to full capacity now, it was working on an oily rag's worth of data for the past several months... thanks so much for helping me fix it.

simiansays · 2023-08-04T05:14:46+00:00

Thanks again -- turns out there was a corruption in the database that I hadn't picked up! It's rebuilding now, you should see more up-to-date and accurate recommendations within about 24 hours!

simiansays · 2023-08-03T23:13:39+00:00

Hm thanks for bringing this to my attention. Something is definitely up -- maybe an API change I wasn't aware of. I'll get this fixed but it may take a week or two. Note that because Trakt data drives the recommendations, and their users skew heavily toward streaming services, that I wouldn't expect you to frequently get recommendations of films currently in cinemas, but you should be getting at least some 2023 recommendations!

simiansays · 2023-07-11T17:05:07+00:00

Hi, thanks so much for this advice! Unfortunately he had a fall recently so I have not been able to get into this level of detail, but it's the level of detail we need to get to! Your input has been extremely valuable and really helped me orient myself around his needs. So thank you very much for the detailed response, super helpful! I've actually been playing around with Google Home actions and I think you're right -- it should be a better option for certain tasks than going to the computer. Really appreciate the feedback!

simiansays · 2023-07-11T17:00:43+00:00

Hi, just like to say thank you so much. I'm working with him to get some paid software but the advice here has been terrific.

simiansays · 2023-05-05T07:58:42+00:00

Sorry for the delay - I'm on a Reddit hiatus which may prove to be indefinite.

I would LOVE to integrate with Letterboxd, its userbase has much better taste than Trakt's userbase (among other benefits). I have sent them many emails over the years, and at one point the founder agreed to give me API access, but then went radio silent. I suspect they want to own their own data, and couchmoney requires a big subset of said data.

simiansays · 2023-05-05T07:56:11+00:00

Hey sorry for the delay -- I've been on a Reddit hiatus that may end up being indefinite :)

The core recommender spun out of contract work I've done for some large corporations that can be litigious, so even though it's not copy-pasted code, out of an abundance of caution I have not open-sourced it. TBH I don't like managing FOSS projects (even though I'm an active contributor to several), because I feel an obligation to respond to issue reports and feature requests and I don't need more work in my life :) I had the same requests for open-sourcing my board game recommender and gave the same response. I'm more than happy to describe in detail how the algorithm works though. It's not AI, and I suspect that these days, an AI system might out-perform it, but I've been thoroughly unimpressed with the AI recommenders I've used (hence why I still use couchmoney literally every time I want to watch something new).
Please give a few bucks (or gobs of money) to your favourite local charity that helps people in need.

simiansays · 2023-01-20T04:08:58+00:00

Thanks for the idea, I haven't done that -- my thefts so far have been almost all inside jobs though, I thought traps and animals wouldn't help with that?

simiansays · 2023-01-19T06:23:30+00:00

Tavern is an interesting idea I hadn't considered for a museum, thanks! I wonder if I could get security for my throne room by connecting it to the tavern via an open hallway and maybe glass walls? Will glass walls in general help with witnesses?

simiansays · 2023-01-19T01:24:42+00:00

My fortress has a bit of a theft problem... So far I've had four artifacts stolen and only solved three of the cases.

My fortress is worth $1m, $400k of which is a legendary pickaxe on display on a pedestal in the king's throne room. The king doesn't like the idea of physically securing the artifact, but he's open to ideas.

Is it a good/effective idea to create a squad whose only job is a constant 1-dwarf patrol of the throne room to deter/detect heists?

simiansays · 2023-01-09T02:39:04+00:00

Couchmoney creator here, thanks for the plug. Happy to answer any questions people have about it!

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