

Show HN: Create a papercraft book from any ISBN – experiment with React and Node - AlexMuir
http://origamihub.com

======
giggles_giggles
This strikes me as though it should be an art piece underlining the tragedy of
what the Kindle and all DRM-encumbered digital media has taken from us.

When a friend or visitor walks up to a real bookshelf in your home and takes
interest in one of your books, they can thumb through it and even borrow it
for themselves.

With these, it is a farce, a disappointment, an insult. A real bookshelf says
"I read these and you can too!" A bookshelf of papercraft books says "I
licensed these for myself and due to DRM and copyright all I can share is the
jacket."

Bookshelves full of papercraft books mock the beauty of bookshelves full of
real books.

~~~
aroch
You can share some kindle books:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320)

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downandout
Couldn't a digital representation meant for a PC/TV work equally well? You
could have your software create a graphical representation of the books on a
bookshelf, and enable the user to make it into a screensaver, or something
they could put on a TV. Seems like it would be at least an interesting
addition to your service. Obviously not everyone can dedicate a TV to
displaying their collection of books, but the results can be neat for those
who can...
[http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5263049453_a91bf99e3e.jp...](http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5263049453_a91bf99e3e.jpg)
(video columns in the lobby of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas)

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AlexMuir
I half considered approaching Amazon with this for an April Fools gimmick but
I thought I'd just get lost in some bureaucracy there.

Always nice to get some eyeballs! I didn't expect any interest in this really
- as it's ultimately completely pointless!

I built it because I'm on a mission to polish up my Javascript[0] and get to
grips with React and Node. And I have to say, it's been a pleasure. I'm
astounded that the server for this (70 concurrent users) was just install node
and hit _screen -r / node server_.

[0] [http://alexmuir.com/catchup-mode](http://alexmuir.com/catchup-mode)

~~~
dominotw
>now I'm setting off on an investigation of Grunt, Gulp, Live Reload and
Yeoman.

Don't. Just learn webpack and call it a day.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
I still haven't found a beginner's (someone used to working with Gulp / Grunt)
intro to Webpack :(

Any recommendations?

~~~
dominotw
I am not sure. I just followed their docs[1] which are really good, IMO.

1\. [http://webpack.github.io/docs/](http://webpack.github.io/docs/)

------
hrktb
Nice idea.

The social aspect of showing a visitor one's bookshelf is definitely getting
lost. Even when actively wanting to share reading thoughts or recommandation
with someone, it can be awkward to hand over a kindle or iPad with every
single book downloaded when some of them touch very private subjects or
controversial matters.

As an aside, there is less and less things worth printing out. Papercraft
seems to be the best use of a printer nowadays.

~~~
AlexMuir
This is true. I downloaded The Game onto my kindle to see what people were
talking about and then lent it to my girlfriend which created some questions.

It's a silly project (almost arty in its pointlessness). I can't remember why
I thought of it, but I liked the simplicity of pulling combining easily
available item dimensions and cover images.

------
ChuckMcM
Found this to be pretty fun, and it reminds me of the "Faux" technology props
they use in furniture stores or staged houses to make it appear "lived in"
without risking high tech stuff. My favorite was a fake "macbook" like laptop
with a printed Windows XP screen as its display. Sadly it seems the company
that made it, Proptronics, may be out of business [1]

On a related note, the Google book scanning project cut up a lot of books by
cutting the spine off. In Building 45 there used to be some fake bookcases
with the spines glued on to look like all those books were on the shelf. Kind
of made me sad, sort of like a book crypt.

[1]
[http://www.theacme.com/?name=PROPTRONICS&product=1030206311](http://www.theacme.com/?name=PROPTRONICS&product=1030206311)

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pmtarantino
I don't own a Kindle so I don't know if this is possible, but it would be fun
if you can give your Kindle username (does that exist?) or any kind of API Key
and it generates all your books on a ZIP file with PDF files so you can print
your entire virtual book collection :)

~~~
AlexMuir
Great idea. Looks like scraping a Kindle library[0] is achievable. I might do
something more with it next weekend.

[0] [https://github.com/speric/kindle-
highlights](https://github.com/speric/kindle-highlights)

------
agilecoder
Searching by name seems to work fine, but none of the ISBN's I entered
returned any results.

For example I tried: 978-0201485677 9780201485677 0201485672 No Results were
displayed, but typing in the title Refactoring worked just fine. This was in
Chrome and Firefox on my laptop.

~~~
AlexMuir
Thanks. Fixed! (uuuugh XML)

------
harrisonhjones
What about a double sided version where the inside contains something of
value? Perhaps a called out spot for a flash drive containing the book, or a
QR code to the book/amazon page/etc, or perhaps a little "guest log" so people
could open it up and rate the book? Would be an interesting experiment/art
thing

In fact, if you did what the others down below suggested (the Amazon Kindle
scraper) then the inside could automatically contain when you purchased the
book which would be kind of cool

------
Jemaclus
I love this idea. I love it so much. I've been lamenting the notion that my
friends can browse my "real" library on my bookshelf, but nobody can browse my
e-book library. I've read hundreds of books on my Kindle, and there's no real
way for people visiting my place to casually browse and say "This looks
interesting; is it any good?"

I love it.

------
cordite
The CSS for the vertical text on the binding does not seem to work in Safari.

Example screenshot with chrome on the bottom:
[http://puu.sh/gLdy2.png](http://puu.sh/gLdy2.png)

~~~
selfsimilar
Safari is the last holdout for prefixing the CSS3 transform properties.
[http://caniuse.com/#search=transform](http://caniuse.com/#search=transform)

------
walterbell
You could integrate with services like [http://www.fedex.com/us/office/cloud-
printing.html](http://www.fedex.com/us/office/cloud-printing.html).

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zyxley
No side jacket?

It'd be interesting to see a project like this that uses just the side jackets
with the titles to create a "bookshelf poster" that can be laid out wallpaper
style.

~~~
AlexMuir
I like that idea. Sadly no-one seems to have a database of images of the
spines of books. All I'm doing at the moment is pulling the color at (x:5,y:5)
from the cover image and using that for the spine. It's not exact but good
enough. I think pick either white or black text depending on the color
saturation. It's OK in this situation but for generating a poster it'd need to
be a lot more refined.

~~~
joelennon
BitLit is a company that allows you to upload a "shelfie" of your books and
they will recognise the books from their spines. So don't give up hope on that
image database, it must exist. Nice work, looks like an interesting project.

[http://www.bitlit.com/how-it-works/](http://www.bitlit.com/how-it-works/)

------
okal
Doesn't load in Kenya. Had to go through
[http://teleport.to](http://teleport.to)

~~~
AlexMuir
I LOVE Kenya so it's nothing personal!! My mum grew up in Mombasa and Nairobi.
The site is hosted on Digital Ocean in NY - I've just enabled Cloudflare so
hopefully that might sort things out. Sorry, but thanks for letting me know.

~~~
okal
No worries :-)

------
Istof
Or you could host all your books on your home web server with an ad on your
empty bookshelf or above your TV?

------
joncp
The Encyclopedia Britannica is fun: 9781593392925

~~~
ars
If by fun you mean doesn't work properly.

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jcoffland
Does not work well on an Android phone.

~~~
AlexMuir
True, sorry - It should have a popup message for phones saying it probably
doesn't work. I've made zero effort to get it working on phones since you
can't print from them anyway. It's just a bit of playfun really!

~~~
Zombieball
I frequently print from my iPhone and iPad :)

That being said I definitely saw the pop-up in Safari on iOS 8.2. I appreciate
the warning, would've got frustrated without it.

~~~
AlexMuir
Yeah, it's very annoying when stuff doesn't work on a phone. I'll be honest -
I didn't actually expect anyone to print a book. I don't even own a printer so
I haven't tested it!

------
thatcat
Is this project open source? I didn't see it in github

