March 26, 2025
As my engineering team grew at work and became more globally distributed, I started running a fortnightly team meeting that brought everyone together. These meetings weren’t just about company updates or cascading information from leadership (though there was plenty of that). They also became a space to celebrate wins (both professional and personal), give shoutouts, and most importantly, connect as people.
One of my favorite segments was called “What is everybody consuming?” It was a simple idea: open the floor and invite folks to share what they were watching, reading, listening to, or otherwise enjoying in the moment. Movies, TV shows, music, books, podcasts, art - everything was fair game. And every time, it sparked fantastic dialogue. I learned so much about my team through that segment… what moved them, what made them laugh, what kept them up at night. It was a small thing that brought us closer.
Somewhere along the way, I thought: Maybe there’s others outside of work that are wondering what I’ve been consuming lately, too.
That’s what led me to build a Now page.
The concept of a Now page was originally introduced by Derek Sivers, and it’s a beautifully simple idea: a single page on your personal site that answers the question “What are you focused on right now?” It’s more dynamic than an About page, and more evergreen than a social feed. It’s a digital snapshot of what’s currently capturing your attention.
But there was one problem: I’m lazy.
I knew if I had to manually update my Now page every week or month, I’d probably forget, then feel guilty, then avoid it altogether. So I asked myself… what if I could automate most of it, if not all of it?
That kicked off a fun little side project to make my Now page data-driven. The goal was to have it quietly update itself periodically in background, pulling in information from the places I already engage with media - no extra work required.
Here’s how I made it happen:
Books: I use Hardcover, a fantastic service for tracking your reading life. Using their API, I can fetch what I’m currently reading, along with the progress I’ve made. The API is clean and well-documented, and I love supporting an indie, book-loving alternative to Goodreads.
Music: Spotify’s API gave me access to my most frequently played tracks and artists over the past few weeks. I pull the results from the Top Tracks endpoint, and surface them as a snapshot of what’s been on repeat lately.
TV & Movies: I host most of my media on a self-hosted Plex server, and luckily, Plex provides a local API to access viewing history. With a little digging (and some reverse engineering), I was able to pull recently watched content and surface it automatically. If I watched it, it shows up - simple as that.
The result is a living, breathing Now page that reflects what I’m actually consuming across books, music, and movies/shows in near real time. No guilt. No manual updates. Just vibes.
I really like how it turned out. And more importantly, I love the spirit behind it… sharing a little slice of life in a way that’s honest, human, and maybe even inspiring to someone else.
So if we’re friends (or even if we’re not), and you ever find yourself wondering what I’ve been into lately, check out my Now page. Better yet, make your own. I promise, it’s worth it.
— Onyx