Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

A place to introduce yourself, and to meet other awesome people.

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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
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Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by daniel_reetz »

Welcome!
jaske78 wrote: As I look at this, I am struck by how much I don't know. Some of the posts are old enough that I wonder if they are outdated. Some of them are so technical that my eyes cross. The fact that many posts are a year or more old also puzzles me. Is it just a slow, low-key board or has interest waned due to technical innovations I am unaware of?

I wish everyone a pleasant summer.
There's definitely outdated information here- particularly about things that naturally get outdated - old camera recommendations, old software recommendations, etc. The forum is in its 5th year, since it is about technology and books you should expect some things to fall out of date.

Since the early days, the pace of discussion has slowed a bit. There was a time when the Google Books project was very hot in the press and it brought a lot of traffic here. The idea of making your own book scanner felt a bit newer; now it's a fairly established thing. Many splinter projects happen but never post their results here. Also, forums were a more-standard format then, they were less eroded by social media. We also get fewer signups but hundreds of times more spammer signups. I know some good people fall through the cracks of our registration system occasionally.

In short, post away. We can always use more book lovers like you and there is indeed a lot to learn. For me, this five-year journey into book scanning technology is just coming to a head... over time this forum has produced an enormous amount of innovative technology and it's the right moment to put it all together. Exciting times, even if I'm not posting here as much, it's not due to lack of activity. In fact, I'm more active on the project than I've ever been.
jaske78
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Joined: 11 May 2014, 14:28
E-book readers owned: Aztak EZ Reader
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: United States

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by jaske78 »

Thank you, Daniel! Your words do indeed give me encouragement. I am a great bibliophile - one of my bookshelves literally collapsed a few weeks ago, so news that things are sort of coming together now and the bugs are being worked out is greatly encouraging. If you have any recommendations of a general guide to read that is reasonably up-to-date, I shall be able to get through without asking stupid questions. I admit that the prospect of wading through all of this is quite daunting, but I hope to do it one stage at a time.
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
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Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by daniel_reetz »

You've inspired me to share one of my favorite quotes about books:
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
— Carl Sagan
S. Kuruganty
Posts: 1
Joined: 13 Jun 2014, 11:20
E-book readers owned: kindledx and kindle paperwhite
Number of books owned: 200
Country: USA Puerto Rico
Location: Puerto Rico USA

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by S. Kuruganty »

Hello! I am Sastry Kuruganty. I am a professor in Electrical Engineering in Puerto Rico. I would like to build a scanner to use it for my e-book project. Just learning about scanning.
Kindest Regards,
sastry
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rapunzel
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Joined: 27 Jun 2014, 15:26
E-book readers owned: Barnes&Noble Nook Simple Touch (rooted)
Number of books owned: 905
Country: United States

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by rapunzel »

Hello fellow bookworms!

I'm a software engineer with an ever-growing science fiction collection. I do destructive scanning because none of my books are valuable and the older ones are literally falling apart anyway. I started scanning because I couldn't find digital editions of most of my books and I wanted to preserve my collection of decades-old mass market paperbacks.
My library: 916 books and 1,350 short stories
Scanned books: 517
gareth
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Joined: 18 Jul 2014, 07:56
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Country: UK

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by gareth »

Hi there,

(repeating some of what I put into the standalone thread I started before I realised I was supposed to append to this one)

I'm Gareth and I'm a member of Edinburgh Hacklab on the east coast of sunny Scotland. My day job is in the semiconductor industry, and by night I like to tinker with audio analogue electronics, the higher voltage the better. I want a bookscanner since I have more books than space.

Cheers
Gareth
elwi
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Joined: 19 Jul 2014, 06:33
E-book readers owned: kindle
Number of books owned: 30
Country: Germany
Location: Heidelberg, Germany

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by elwi »

Hi I am Elwi and live near Heidelberg in Germany,

I started scanning an ebook a week ago for loading it on my kindle so I can read it on vacation.

After some hours of messing around I finally learned I cannot scan this book without destroying it. It is a very precious book (to me) so I started doing some internet research and found this wonderful page which introduced me to world of DIY Book Scanning!
Its really fascinating what you people have started with this community and I can read on and watch videos for hours! I also heared about Hackerspaces for the very first time and really like the idea!

I will start today and will built me my first cardboard scanner when I am back from work. I am so curious if this all works out. I really would like to build such an advanced scanner but I will start small and slow and have to learn really a lot about lightning, photography and the whole software before diving in!

Huge thanks to all people involved here in this great community!.
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
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E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
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Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by daniel_reetz »

Welcome all, please report back with any progress, it's really great to see new people coming onboard...
Doranwen
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Joined: 13 Aug 2014, 04:19
E-book readers owned: Onyx Boox (dead), Astak EZ Reader (dead)
Number of books owned: 2700
Country: USA
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Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by Doranwen »

Hi, I go by Doranwen online, and am from Seattle area, Washington state. I have tried to look up book scanning online for years and the only thing I could find were the thousands-of-dollars machines for big libraries. I came across this forum a couple years ago but was too busy to contemplate joining. My life hasn't gotten less busy, but I have more determination than ever to figure this out, as now I have an e-reader that I'd like to use to read and reread some of the 1900+ books on my shelves, many of which were by small publishers who are either defunct or who have forgotten about these old books and will never release e-versions. Since I own the physical copies, I really want to get them into electronic format (before they fall apart!), but I can't bear to slice my books apart, so really want to get a book scanner working at some point.

My big weakness? I am horribly non-mechanical. Give me a kit with anything more complicated than "screw this plate to that thing" (I have, at least, built my own computer a couple times), and I freak out. I may be enlisting some of my more mechanically-minded cousins to help with this project if I ever get it.
guitarguy
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Country: Germany

Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by guitarguy »

Since this is "The Hello Thread" I would like to say:

"Hello! :-)"

and quickly introduce myself:

My name is Chris, I am studying "engineering mathematics" and I hope to finish my studies soon. My main hobbies are music, especially playing the guitar, reading, movies and photography. (Just the main ones, I have much more hobbies than time to engage in them.)
I stumbled across diybookscanner.org and this forum a few weeks ago and got excited about the idea of building a book scanner.
At first I thought about a simple cradle made out of wood and a cheap platen to digitize a few books. Well, then I found the "3D Surface Laser Scanner"-Thread by Daniel, got really excited and decided I had to join the forum.
It seems to me the project isn't active right now, but there are still some people interested in continuing it?

I hope we will have some interesting discussions......and I really hope my english doesn't sound completely awkward!? (If it does, feel free to tell me, I will be rather thankful than mad :P)

Cheers,
Chris
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