Towards a paper-less newspaper

[lene1949]

I no longer buy newspapers... I read them on the net...

Unfortunately these don't do much good for the birds, so I have to ask people for their papers, when they've finished with them - and they don't mind, because then they don't have to dispose of them..

[Moejoe]

Haven't read a newspaper (I bought myself) or a magazine in years. Just don't see any point to them at all.

[Mike L]

Thanks to all those who replied to my original post.

I'm now half way through my first week of relying on an electronic version of the paper. I set up a Calibre recipe to download the sections I'm interested in, and to convert the result to Mobi format, which I read in the MobiPocket PC application.

So far, it's worked well. The download and conversion takes about five minutes, and I run it while I'm making breakfast. It's good that the paper is always available; I no longer have to wait until the paper boy arrives at 7.30.

One of the things I like best is that the house is no longer cluttered with discarded newsprint waiting to be taken to the recycle bin.

I use my normal laptop for reading the paper -- the same one I use for work. But it occurs to me that with the money I'm saving on not buying a printed paper, I can easily afford a laptop just for this purpose.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Mike L

Thanks to all those who replied to my original post.

I'm now half way through my first week of relying on an electronic version of the paper. I set up a Calibre recipe to download the sections I'm interested in, and to convert the result to Mobi format, which I read in the MobiPocket PC application.

So far, it's worked well. The download and conversion takes about five minutes, and I run it while I'm making breakfast. It's good that the paper is always available; I no longer have to wait until the paper boy arrives at 7.30.

One of the things I like best is that the house is no longer cluttered with discarded newsprint waiting to be taken to the recycle bin.

I use my normal laptop for reading the paper -- the same one I use for work. But it occurs to me that with the money I'm saving on not buying a printed paper, I can easily afford a laptop just for this purpose.

Was this your first experience creating a calibre recipe? If so did you find it easy enough to do? I might want to try something like that myself.

Get a custom paper out of it that way. eh?

[Mike L]

Kenny,

Yes, it was my first experience of working with Calibre recipes. I was encouraged by Daffy4U in another thread (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65367). He directed me to http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/news.html, which gave me a start.

But I have to say that, so far, it's been more trial-and-error than deep understanding. I assembled the actual feeds easily enough, but I had some difficulty in getting rid of all the extraneous junk at the start and end of each article - although I got there in the end.

Maybe I need to learn Python.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Mike L

Kenny,

Yes, it was my first experience of working with Calibre recipes. I was encouraged by Daffy4U in another thread (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65367). He directed me to http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/news.html, which gave me a start.

But I have to say that, so far, it's been more trial-and-error than deep understanding. I assembled the actual feeds easily enough, but I had some difficulty in getting rid of all the extraneous junk at the start and end of each article - although I got there in the end.

Maybe I need to learn Python.

Thanks Mike. Very encouraging. I don't know python either, but have used so many programming languages in my 30+ years programming that I'm sure it wouldn't be too bad. I may give it a try with my local newspaper for starters and see what happens.

Thanks again.
(and I'll check out the links)