
Build a better Bookshelf - huydotnet
https://huytd.github.io/build-a-better-bookshelf.html
======
pimlottc
I was actually hoping this was about actually building your own DIY bookshelf
(for actual physical books)...

~~~
killaken2000
Ha! Me too. I was expecting some kind of analysis of the perfect shelf
material and optimum depth and height of each shelf based on the number of
books by genre and their dimensions.

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Maxion
Ha! I am making some shelves for myself and spent the weekend measuring the
dimensions and weight of all of my books to later divide into different bins
based on height, depth and weight (density).

~~~
Freak_NL
I ended up with four different shelve heights based on my measurements
(paperbacks, hardcovers, misc., and art-books), and used the classical
technique of bird's beak shelving supports to make all shelves configurable.

Finished bookcase:

[https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/885499829052485632](https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/885499829052485632)

The four common shelve-heights I chose are 4, 5, 6, or 7 bird's beak 'units'
spaced apart vertically.

You can see the configurable parts here:

[https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/876126132734656514](https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/876126132734656514)

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cricalix
Do you have a photo of the end of a shelf? I can't tell if you've got beaks at
the back and front of the shelving, or if you're doing some kind of
cantilevered setup.

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Freak_NL
I think you may be able to tell from the first photo here:

[https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/881243775288389632](https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/881243775288389632)

And the second photo here:

[https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/876126132734656514](https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/876126132734656514)

So beaks at the front and back, with trapezoidal blocks that fit in between.
The shelves rest on those blocks.

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hirundo
Great idea. Someone please build a public database of tables of contents and
indexes, keyed by ISBN, so we can skip the scanning and OCR steps. And dear
publishers: when this database emerges please add to it as you publish new
works.

Thanks.

~~~
jen729w
Eat Your Books [0] is amazing for this, but is limited to the cookery world.

You tell it what books you own. It knows what’s in them _but does not show you
the contents_. You search for whatever you have in the fridge. It tells you to
go to book x, page y, and there’s the recipe.

Oh, and it includes magazines.

[0]: [https://www.eatyourbooks.com/](https://www.eatyourbooks.com/)

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yesenadam
Hmm and to add more than 5 cookbooks you have to pay.. :-(

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reitanqild
As long as the pricing is right I appreciate that alternative.

We complain a lot here (and to a certain degree, righly so) here on HN about
annoying ads and creepy tracking so I will try to e positive when someone
actually honestly makes a great product and asks for money instead of trying
to extract it from profiling me and selling the profile.

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ensignavenger
Are you sure that their not doing both?

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reitanqild
Definitely not, see an article I submitted the other day for proof: )

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17940617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17940617)

 _But_ : if something don't have an obvious way to monetize I fear one of
three:

\- I'm not the user but the product

\- They're too idealistic and will disappear

\- They're looking to sell out to a bigger actor, -and then my data will be
abused

With an open source self hosted solution I can be somewhat safe.

With a paid product there is a bigger chance they will be smart enough not to
to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs by selling out their paying
customers.

Example where this worked: Basecamp

Example where this failed: WhatsApp

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kev009
Does anyone have any experience with book scanning in general? I've been
eyeballing a unit from "CZUR" but am a bit skeptical of the product in
general. I would prefer to buy something more generic/high end HW wise like a
V-shaped scanner where you bring your own DSLRs but can't find out if there is
a serious open source software platform for them.

~~~
computator
What a shame that people have to use homebrew methods to duplicate the effort
that someone (Google) has already done with vastly greater resources.

Google Books, a.k.a., Google Book Search, has already scanned and OCR'ed about
20% of all books in existence -- i.e., 25 million of an estimated 130 million
books. So, "somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million
books and nobody is allowed to read them."[1]

I understand the legal issues, authors not getting compensated, etc., but it's
still a shame that it actually exists but it's inaccessible (except for
snippets).

[1] [https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-10-what-happened-to-
goo...](https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-10-what-happened-to-google-s-
effort-to-scan-millions-of-university-library-books)

~~~
hannasanarion
Well, at least Google has all the books indexed, even if we can't see them, so
that you know what to go to your local library and look for even though you
can't see it there on the internet.

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freetonik
Offtopic: huydotnet, would you consider adding RSS to your blog? I'd like to
subscribe, but couldn't find a link anywhere, including the source code of the
page.

It seems like you're generating pages from Org mode. I've recently discovered
ox-hugo, maybe it'll be of interest to you too. I wrote about my setup here
[https://rakhim.org/2018/09/moved-from-jekyll-to-hugo-and-
ox-...](https://rakhim.org/2018/09/moved-from-jekyll-to-hugo-and-ox-hugo/)

~~~
huydotnet
Nice, I'm trying to figure out a way to generate RSS from my org notes.
Reading your post now :D Thank you so much :+1:

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bklaasen
CamScanner[1] on Android does a very nice job of this kind of work. I'm not
associated with the product, just a longtime satisfied user.

[1] [https://www.camscanner.com/](https://www.camscanner.com/)

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yumraj
Hmmm, should I use a document scanner application, made by a company in China,
after the recent discovery of numerous applications on iOS and OSX sending
data to China.....

Sure, why not....

/sarcasm

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notadog
I find it cool that this blog post was originally sketched by hand:
[https://huytd.github.io/img/handwritten-build-a-better-
books...](https://huytd.github.io/img/handwritten-build-a-better-
bookshelf.jpg)

~~~
huydotnet
Thanks :D if you go to the homepage, there are some other sketches as well

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adamnemecek
I’ve found books.google.com be alright for this as well.

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metaphor
The author specifically noted:

 _And the search result is limited to just my books, not the whole internet,
that 's the point of scanning instead of Googling._

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hannasanarion
And the above commenter specifically noted

 _I’ve found books.google.com be alright for this as well._

Google Books doesn't index the internet. It indexes books. Including using
OCR.

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metaphor
Consider for a moment the critical difference between _my books on my
bookshelves_ and _Google-indexed books in the ether_.

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diymaker
You can only search books you own by adding it your library in Google Books.
This should limit it to returning results only from books you have.

~~~
metaphor
The problem with Google Books is search capability within "your library"
really has no way to constrain itself to tables of contents and/or indices;
even advanced search falls flat on its face by this measure and generally
sucks hind tit by every other. I'm just imagining running a search query for
"recursion" only to have Hofstadter and Wolfram comprise 90%+ of the return.

Even if full search capability is what you _really_ want, you're limited to
ebooks for which digital rights are established via Google Play purchase. For
everything else that isn't acknowledged public domain, you'll get a tease
preview without even a hint of completeness...if you get anything at all.
Invested in a Kindle digital library? I'm liable to suspect Google gave users
vested in Amazon DRM a gratuitous GTFO-not-in-my-backyard finger.

Then there's the issue of specific revisions, e.g. it doesn't matter that
Google Books shows skant preview of 4e Sedra/Smith when 5e is on my bookshelf
--which, oh by the way, doesn't have preview.

Then there's the issue of copyright lockdown, e.g. only one of Carroll Smith's
popular _...to Win_ series has any preview; the others are on lockdown. Same
with Milliken on vehicle dynamics, Katz on aerodynamics, and many other titles
published by SAE.

(Observe how the thematic high mark we've been striving for is a mere
preview.)

Which brings up the issue of availability, e.g. good lucking trying to find
the Institute of Navigation's canonical GPS red books in a Google Books query,
or specific translations of the Bhagavad Gita, or other rare publications that
an archivist would generally not hesitate to shoot you dead if caught
attempting to adulterate in a scanner.

Surely I'm not the only person on HN who maintains a tangible library that's
1000+ large and growing. Like the author, I care about what's in _my_ library,
not what Google Books superficially pretends to offer as a front to getting me
to purchase books in the digital (when available) that I've already paid
handsomely for. Amazon and eBay combined see roughly 70% of my bookshelves.
Even if Google Books did a fair job by some objective measure, I neither need
nor desire their service.

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stevehawk
Are there multiple versions of the current OneNote? I can't OCR anything in my
version for Windows 10. I'm stuck like this guy -
[https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onenote-mso_win10-msoversion_other/onenote-ocr-not-
working/e239c9ea-e1b3-46c3-a976-45a418231dbc)

~~~
Dagonfly
AFAIK, OCR is only available in OneNote 2016 (i.e. through a licence or Office
365), but not in the OneNote UWP app, which you get for free in the Windows
Store.

Edit: Though, if you imported the Image/Print in OneNote 2016 you can search
the OCR result in OneNote UWP and access it using Right-Click -> Picture ->
Alt Text

~~~
huydotnet
I think the free version also has it, I'm using OneNote with my personal
account, and I never pay for it.

~~~
stevehawk
Any chance you can tell me the steps you've used in the past to get OCR out of
it? I just took like 30 photos of a book to test this idea out and can't OCR
it.

~~~
huydotnet
I scanned them by Office Lens, seems like OneNote itself does not have OCR.

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2to15characters
This reminds me of Bret Victor’s Bookcase which displays the sections
“highlighted” by projecting them on a wall and navigating to that page on an
iPad.

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antoineMoPa
The fact that we have to scan any technical book published after 1980 is a
distortion of capitalism. The obvious most efficient solution for everyone
would be to have the darn fully searchable digital version of the book + the
source code.

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brian_cloutier
It's plausible that the fact we have so many amazing technical books is also a
"distortion of capitalism". The obvious most efficient course of action is to
not write a book.

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sdenton4
But books predate capitalism as well... Dating back to times when writing or
copying them was even less efficient...

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sdenton4
(should have included this link...) [http://catandgirl.com/one-panel-
every-250-years-since-30000-...](http://catandgirl.com/one-panel-
every-250-years-since-30000-bc/)

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cryptozeus
Great idea !

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ChristianGeek
I’d rather scan the whole book and replace my library with an iPad. In fact,
I’ve already done that. With over 1,000 books on my iPad it’s the only reason
I’m still married.

