Matthew's Journal

Thanks to tamsinj, I have acquired a bar-code scanner. A Welch Allyn Scanteam 3400, to be precise. It's powered by a USB lead, and outputs down a serial line. I knocked up a short python script (214 lines, including UI, error checking de-duplication, etc.) to extract the ISBN from the barcode, then look that up on amazon (cribbing from toothycat's perl somewhat!) and hackily screen-scrape the answer, and store the result in a file (with the option for the user to override or correct entries).

It works quite nicely, and I can do about 3 books/minute (including dealing with those that have no bar-code, or whose ISBN amazon doesn't know about, or have no ISBN, and carrying them all up and down stairs). I spent a while doing a couple of shelves' worth (59 books) to iron out the bugs in the UI, and I'm quite pleased with the result.

ETA: I did another couple of shelves, and now have 116 catalogued