I can has Cuecat

[julesjones]

So my Cuecat arrived from LibraryThing today, and naturally I have wasted an enormous amount of time this afternoon playing with it. The verdict is that when it works, it's very good, but it does take some practice to get right and even then it doesn't always work. And of course it's only useful for books with barcodes. On the other hand, when it's working well and you have a stack of books, it's a fast way to get them into LibraryThing.

Unfortunately, because I am a filthy porn writer I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face while using the thing. Because it is astonishingly phallic...

***

Changing the subject back to food porn rather than book porn, an excellent way to deal with the bacon fat left from one's pasta sauce from dinner the night before is to use it for making an omelette for lunch. The filling naturally included today's tomato harvest, a 31g specimen of Mamma Mia. Also some chedder, and some shredded pieces of the rather nice herbed turkey breast slices from the Milk Pail. Yum.

Comments

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I got one of those for free from Radio Shack back when they thought that any day now they were going to be useful. That was, like, at least 8 years ago. Of course now that there is a use for it, I don't have it. Unless it's in the Box of Defunct Techie Kit, but I don't think so.

[julesjones]

That seems to be a fairly common experience in connection with LibraryThing. It sounds as if quite a lot of people threw theirs away a couple of years ago.

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

So, I had a look at LibraryThing from the link you provided and I have to say it's very tempting to have something set up to catalogue my books on instead of constantly promising myself I'll sort something out one day. Just wondered how you feel about having this all on-line as opposed to on your own PC? Have you made use of the groups function to meet people, or have you ignored that side of it and kept it private?

[julesjones]

For me the original point was that it was online rather than on my PC -- I wanted a catalogue of my books for insurance purposes, with an offsite backup just in case.

You can make your library private if you want -- and I may set up a small private catalogue to cover that part of my collection I don't want out in public. People have various reasons for doing this, such as not announcing to the world that they have valuable collector's items, or that they have an extensive collection of gay porn. (There are a couple of private users with copies of my books -- the system will show you that a particular book is held in a private collection, even though it doesn't show you the name of the owner.)

I've dipped into the groups, but I only really hang out in one, the discussion group for Folio Society fans.

I haven't much used the "if you like that, you may like this" side of things, but that's only because I have a To Be Read mountain already.

[latetocomics.livejournal.com]

ha! sorry this is funny. I don't think I've got as many books you do, but the Cuecat sounds fun....you know to use on the books *grins*. And I did finally sign up for the librarything one night last week, yes, time quickly flew by and before you know it, I had almost 100 books...course it was easy to copy the books from you, elise, mychael, and finding the author pages.

[julesjones]

I now wish I'd had a Cuecat when I was doing the paperbacks bookcase...

One of the great things about LibraryThing is that it pulls down information from a lot of sources, including a huge list of libraries, so it can save on a lot of typing. And if someone else has already entered the details, you can get it from there. You can hit a small press author's author page and just work your way through.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you read chefcdb, but he was talking t'other day about tomatoes, and I thought of you...

[julesjones]

Don't read him, but having had a quick look I think I'm going to have to try that pistachio-breadcrumbed beefsteak tomato when my beefsteaks ripen (one of the Black From Tulsa fruit is finally starting to colour up this morning). Should point alg at that, as she'd probably like a vegetarian version, pistachio freak that she is.

Can't *imagine* why someone burbling about tomatoes would bring me to mind. :-)