The digital bookshelf

Mon, 14 May 2018 09:45:00 +0000

Two years ago I’ve started to read books on my mobile device. I have skipped the whole e-reader thing and went straight from hard covers to e-books. Many doubt that you can read a book comfortably on the smart phone, but I can tell with certainty that it works well. It is only a matter of changing your habits. However, there is one thing I miss. A hard cover in a bookshelf also represents an association with your memories of the book. Whenever I see a book cover I remember the story. This does not work with virtual book covers. Memories of books I’ve read on my e-book reader fade as they move beyond the display on my phone. To solve this issue I’ve come up with a simple solution. I want to create a bookshelf poster and pin it to my bedroom wall. With this idea in mind I’ve started creating a list of books I’ve read. Now I would like to present you the tool I’ve built to create beautiful post from this book list.

The book list is a simple markdown file. Here’s an excerpt of my bookshelf file:

bookshelf.md

...

![](https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433930311l/20873740.jpg)  
Title: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind 
Author: Yuval Noah Harari  
ISBN: 0771038518  
Comment: Thought provoking, picturesque, outstanding and simply amazing. If you have not a clue about humanities history and how we built our society, this the book to start with.  
Rating: 10/10  
Finished: 11.04.2018  

...

To create a poster from the list I’ve created tudluk.

Checkout the GitHub project page of tudluk.

Tudluk does the following things:

Read the bookshelf.md file
Download the book covers
Build a bookshelf html page
Run a static http server
Provide the docs to create a screenshot with headless chrome

In result you get a screenshot like this:

I will also add a picture of the final poster once it is pinned to the wall.

Thailand - Chiang Mai and Bangkok

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 03:57:41 +0000

Almost 2 weeks passed since I’ve left home to go to Thailand. It’s unbelievable what happened in this short amount of time, here are my best memories so far.

Living in the village of northern hill tribes
Met funny, amazing and interesting people from all over world
Riding an elephant (whose not prisoned like the most you’ll see there)
Shared stories and learned a lot about thai people
Shooting with a 0.45 pistol and M16 rifle
Rent a scooter in Chiang Mai and fought with the busy traffic (almost crashed one time)
Cuddling with tigers (they were drugged and prisoned, but this is still better than selling them to china via the black market)
Eaten the best meals so far
And much more ;)

On this bamboo we've spent 4 hours.

This elephant lives in the northern jungle.

Just a gaze of the Bangkok city jungle.

Boat ride next to the floating market.

Chinatown in Bangkok a very busy place.

He's thinking about meat.

The doi suthep temple is on top of an hill next to Chiang Mai city. You'll get the most beautiful view from up there.

In this village of the northern hill tribes we spent our first night. A beautiful and peaceful place.

The temples are the best places to do parkour.

Tasted like crisps. Not bad at all.

If you d’like to get a full resolution version of these pictures you can contact at any time ;)

Memories on Janik von Rotz