Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

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

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Karyudo
Posts: 35
Joined: 14 Jun 2009, 01:51
E-book readers owned: iPod Touch
Number of books owned: 0
Location: Vancouver, Canada

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

Post by Karyudo »

Hi, all.

I'm Greg, a mechanical engineer from Vancouver, Canada, and I'm a cool-project-aholic.

I've been following Daniel's Instructables post since Day One (or maybe Day Two -- whenever it went up on Boing Boing or Make or whatever RSS feed fed it to me), and have been slowly gathering what I need to get building since.

So far, I've got three A590s, SDM, and a bunch of stuff sketched up on napkins. Before it was mentioned on Instructables, I'd already figured I'd use drawer slides for the book holder VST. I've also been thinking glass platen since the start, too. I've been doing tests and running calcs to nail down exactly what the field of view is for the A590 at each of its zoom levels, at different heights. So, sort of a lot of R without a lot of actual D.

I've recently purchased an iPod Touch, which I use for reading books from text files. So for the moment my aim would be to OCR stuff for that. On the other hand, I've also spent a lot of time on eBay collecting every issue of a magazine I like with the express purpose of scanning all 100+ issues, so I also want nice clear, straight, glare-free PDFs.

Looking forward to reading up on what everyone else is doing, and maybe being able to help out!
rhartill
Posts: 1
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by rhartill »

Greetings and salutations all, I 'm Russell Hartill and I have been scanning books since 1973. Probably makes me the old geezer of the bunch...
I am old enough to remember the first OCR scanner in the early 80s cost $50,000. I cut my teeth on Mac SE and Applescanners using Omnipage, then switched to Win NT and SCSI scanners, now using Vista, osX via a hackintoshed Dell e1705, and several flatbeds. Have been resorting to cutting up books and feeding them into a Xerox Documate, but NO MORE....
I have been googling bookscanners and found the instructables site and you guys are amazing...

In the old days, I would devour every issue of Byte magazine and I once read where Steven Ciarcia was quoted as saying that solder is his favorite programming language...
Not afraid to solder and saw and always interested in saving a buck....
Cabe
Posts: 34
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by Cabe »

That's a great quote Russell, it's a pretty handy language to know :)

Welcome to the boards, most of us don't bite, and those that do charge extra :)
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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 »

I have to say that we have one hell of a group going. Hardware engineering, software engineering, even law and developing nations -- all accounted for. :!:

I think the hard question for a group like this would be: what can't we do?
Cabe
Posts: 34
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by Cabe »

First book scanning....tomorrow cold fusion and world hunger?
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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 »

How about just being really good at scanning books about cold fusion and world hunger? ;)
Cabe
Posts: 34
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by Cabe »

Good point, they would both need their own forum too.
StevePoling
Posts: 290
Joined: 20 Jun 2009, 12:19
E-book readers owned: SONY PRS-505, Kindle DX
Number of books owned: 9999
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
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Re: Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

Post by StevePoling »

World hunger and nuclear fusion? You guys are all right by me.

I'm an engineer who likes to read. I've got a SONY and a Kindle DX. And a basement full of books I'd like to scan. So, I'm watching this project with interest. I've already gotten a lot of great info from you all. Thank you very much.
Cary-Grant
Posts: 1
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by Cary-Grant »

Hi everybody!

My name is actually Luke, but I go by Cary-Grant most of the time online, because he is the epitome of old-school manliness.

I like to live pretty light, without a lot of clutter... if I move, it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to pack! I love to read, and love books and magazines of all kinds, but I don't want to have messy, cluttered looking books all over my apartment. So keeping as much as possible in a digital format makes sense for me. Plus there is a big influx of new e-Readers coming out, so I could have ALL my books at my fingertips all the time. Can't wait!

So I am going to start building my book scanner as soon as I get the money to get the cameras. And then I'll start scanning books and saving money, and by the time Plastic Logic releases it's e-Reader, hopefully I'll be ready to go!

So thanks for all the hard work on this. I'm looking forward to becoming part of the community here, and being any help that I can!
phaedrus54
Posts: 6
Joined: 04 Mar 2014, 00:52

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

Post by phaedrus54 »

I'm Zander.

I've been scanning books since I first acquired a second hand scanner. At some point I learned that photographing was generally superior (excluding the page curving problem and post processing). Now I've found the answers to all of this in your tutorial and forums.

I'm looking forward to making a base and platen this summer so that come fall term I can travel with just my laptop to work and class. I'm taking classes in a post bac/pre-med program right now and the last thing I want to cart around are two full size science books.

I'm very excited to get my textbooks, then the remainder of my paper books scanned in for posterity and space conservation. This plus a good digital E-Ink style reader and I'll be set for a minimalistic but informed lifestyle.

Good to meet you all.
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