Unutterably Silly So what are you doing RIGHT NOW?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by drjd

I'm trying to convert some mobi format ebooks bought from Amazon years back, to epub format through caliber. I'm not an expert of Calibre though, and rarely use conversion.

Calibre is fairly straight forward about that. I get ePub by preference, and it converts readily to Mobi. I've converted the odd Mobi to ePub, and that's worked well enough too.

On the Android tablet which is my principal eBook viewer, I use FBReader for Android. FBReader handles ePub, Mobi, and FB2 native, and PDF, DjVu and CBR/CBZ viia plugins, so I mostly don't have to care what format a book is in. (It does not handle titles with DRM, but I don't get those, and again I don't care.)

Worst case, once it's in ePub, I can bring it up in Sigil, an ePub editor, and fiddle. (Sigil's main use here has been adding working tables of contents to volumes which lacked them.)
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Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Calibre is fairly straight forward about that. I get ePub by preference, and it converts readily to Mobi. I've converted the odd Mobi to ePub, and that's worked well enough too.

On the Android tablet which is my principal eBook viewer, I use FBReader for Android. FBReader handles ePub, Mobi, and FB2 native, and PDF, DjVu and CBR/CBZ viia plugins, so I mostly don't have to care what format a book is in. (It does not handle titles with DRM, but I don't get those, and again I don't care.)

Worst case, once it's in ePub, I can bring it up in Sigil, an ePub editor, and fiddle. (Sigil's main use here has been adding working tables of contents to volumes which lacked them.)
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Dennis

Wait Drjd, Dennis:


What about using Doug's (Diapdealer) plugin? The one that will import a MOBI into Sigil and open it? From thence to ePUB, etc.? Doesn't he have one like that? (I know, I know, I should know more about the available plugins, as we use Sigil and all that, but as you can tell, we have a pretty straight path when it comes to our work, but I know that the Kindleimporter probably works AWESOMELY, knowing Diap. His work is pretty sterling.

Hitch

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

To me, those are not really "whodunits," as you note. They are explorations of human behavior, etc. Somewhat like Columbo, in a weird way. Or other authors, where the enjoyment is in the "how" of how the protagonist traps the badguy, or even those that explore the depths of the kinky psyche. I enjoy those, but I don't perceive those as mysteries in any real sense. To me, deciding the whodunit is the joy of it.

The "how" the protagonist traps the bad guy is a separate sub-genre called police procedurals.

The key there is verisimilitude, and authors of stuff like that take pains to get the procedures right, consulting with police to make sure they have.

My preference is off-beat procedurals set on exotic locations. One series was the Tromp Kramer and Mickey Zondi series, set in South Africa. Lt. Tromp Kramer and Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi are in the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad. They are both police procedurals and ironic commentary on the setup in SA, because the motivations for the crimes tend to be things that would not occur here. In one, a major character appears fully Caucasian, but has a negro ancestor several generations back. If this ever becomes public knowledge, the character will be reclassified from "White" to "Coloured", and life as that character knows it will be over.

Another fun series is William Marshall's Yellowthread Street books, set in the fictitious Hong Bay District of Hong Kong, featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harry Fieffer and his crew. In Sci-Fi, promoters are holding a SciFi comics and film convention in the area, and Fieffer and his crew must cope with costumed loonies in addition to the normal Hong Kong variety. The promoters have inflated a giant Godzilla balloon as a promotional device. It has broken free from its moorings, and is drifting toward mainland Chinese airspace. Everyone is very paranoid about how the mainland government will react to the incursion. Marshall is capable of going from falling off your chair laughing to flat out terror in the space of a page.

Straddling genres, we have Liz william's "Inspector Chen" books. They are set in a near term future where the city of Singapore has franchised and spawned clones. Chen lives in Singapore3. The gods and demons of Chinese mythology are very real in Chen's world. He is his department's Snake Agent - the one responsible for crimes involving the supernatural. His fellow officers stay as far away from him as possible. He has a patron goddess who is displeased with him because he married a female demon he rescued from dire circumstances before the series takes place. And he finds himself with a demon partner - Zhu Urdz, a Senescal in the Ministry of Vice in Hell. Hell has laws, too, and demons whose job it is to enforce them, and Chen finds himself partnered with Urdz on cases that overlap their respective jurisdiction. Great fun throughout.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

What about using Doug's (Diapdealer) plugin? The one that will import a MOBI into Sigil and open it? From thence to ePUB, etc.? Doesn't he have one like that? (I know, I know, I should know more about the available plugins, as we use Sigil and all that, but as you can tell, we have a pretty straight path when it comes to our work, but I know that the Kindleimporter probably works AWESOMELY, knowing Diap. His work is pretty sterling.

I don't have it here, and haven't needed the functionality. The stuff I use Sigil on I normally get as ePub to begin with.

Noted for future reference, however.
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Dennis

[badgoodDeb]

Police Procedurals: Harry Bosch (California), Inspector Rebus (Edinburgh, Scotland), and Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James (London) are also good protagonists. I've been following those series! Although we don't know the "whodunit", that is not really the focus of the book. It's "how to find them".

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The "how" the protagonist traps the bad guy is a separate sub-genre called police procedurals.

(snippage)

Another fun series is William Marshall's Yellowthread Street books, set in the fictitious Hong Bay District of Hong Kong, featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harry Fieffer and his crew.

(snippage)

Straddling genres, we have Liz william's "Inspector Chen" books. They are set in a near term future where the city of Singapore has franchised and spawned clones. Chen lives in Singapore3. The gods and demons of Chinese mythology are very real in Chen's world. He is his department's Snake Agent - the one responsible for crimes involving the supernatural. His fellow officers stay as far away from him as possible. He has a patron goddess who is displeased with him because he married a female demon he rescued from dire circumstances before the series takes place. And he finds himself with a demon partner - Zhu Urdz, a Senescal in the Ministry of Vice in Hell. Hell has laws, too, and demons whose job it is to enforce them, and Chen finds himself partnered with Urdz on cases that overlap their respective jurisdiction. Great fun throughout.
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Dennis

I read the Yellowthread Street books, and you've downright intrigued me, so I've just snatched up an Inspector Chen. Sounds just my cuppa!

Thanks,

Hitch

[drjd]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Calibre is fairly straight forward about that. I get ePub by preference, and it converts readily to Mobi. I've converted the odd Mobi to ePub, and that's worked well enough too.

______
Dennis

I actually don't play much with conversion features. I prefer to keep the books in their original format, but Kobos don't support a dictionary support on mobi formats, hence the need. Although the Calibre has converted my files to epub in fairly nice way, just a little tweaking on chapter headings here and there is needed, which I'll do in due course.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Wait Drjd, Dennis:


What about using Doug's (Diapdealer) plugin? The one that will import a MOBI into Sigil and open it? From thence to ePUB, etc.? Doesn't he have one like that? (I know, I know, I should know more about the available plugins, as we use Sigil and all that, but as you can tell, we have a pretty straight path when it comes to our work, but I know that the Kindleimporter probably works AWESOMELY, knowing Diap. His work is pretty sterling.

Hitch

I've never tried my hands on Sigil or Kindleimporter before. But thanks for the suggestion, I'll try'em soon. In fact I am left with a shy appetite on learning new software nowadays. I need to gather more courage soon.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Police Procedurals: Harry Bosch (California), Inspector Rebus (Edinburgh, Scotland), and Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James (London) are also good protagonists. I've been following those series! Although we don't know the "whodunit", that is not really the focus of the book. It's "how to find them".

I love the Harry Bosch books! I've not tried the Inspector Rebus ones, I'll look out for them.

I'm currently in the lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5. Heading off to Bangalore, India for a couple of weeks for work. Never been to India before, so looking forward to the experience.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by drjd

I actually don't play much with conversion features. I prefer to keep the books in their original format, but Kobos don't support a dictionary support on mobi formats, hence the need. Although the Calibre has converted my files to epub in fairly nice way, just a little tweaking on chapter headings here and there is needed, which I'll do in due course.

I prefer ePub as a storage format. My experience is that it converts readily to other formats, as all the needed metadata to do the conversion is present.

I actually got Calibre in the first place for conversion. I still have a working Palm TX. It has a Mobi viewer (and Palm OS was the first target of MobiPocket - the Mobi format shows vestiges of that, like a 64K record size.) It doesn't have an ePub viewer, as Palm was gone before ePub appeared. But I could convert ePub to Mobi for reading on teh TX, and did so.

I've never tried my hands on Sigil or Kindleimporter before. But thanks for the suggestion, I'll try'em soon. In fact I am left with a shy appetite on learning new software nowadays. I need to gather more courage soon.

Sigil was originally a master's thesis in software engineering for the developer who wrote it. Google hired him, so his time to work on Sigil dropped. But it's open source and other folks have been contributing since.

Sigil has all sorts of stuff I haven't used. As mentioned, my principal use is adding working ToCs to volumes that lack them. That's actually fairly straight forward.
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Dennis

[Rumpelteazer]

Preparing for a nice, quiet Saturday night. I've cut half a Turkish bread in chunks, I've got my favourite aioli, I'm going to make a big mug of tea and then curl up and see if I like Alias Grace on Netflix. If not I'll find something else to watch.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I read the Yellowthread Street books, and you've downright intrigued me, so I've just snatched up an Inspector Chen. Sounds just my cuppa!

Which did you get? The Snake Agent is first in the series, followed by The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, and The Iron Khan. They need to be read in order.
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Dennis

[astrangerhere]

Rehydrating after a 6k row.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Which did you get? The Snake Agent is first in the series, followed by The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, and The Iron Khan. They need to be read in order.
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Dennis

Sweetie! Do you think me daft? I got The Snake Agent, but of course! I shall let you know what I think--I'm still on my ESG binge, and halfway into one now, but I will start TSA as soon as I'm done with the Mason.

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Rehydrating after a 6k row.

Rowers rock! (Even tho, these days, in the AZ desert, my rowing is confined to my Waterrower, I still LOVE it.)

I am at this very moment assessing an insipid manuscript for someone who needs formatting services, having turned down a gentleman who wanted someone to "help" him format his own book. People don't realize that training them would take 3x the time and 4x the money of us just doing it for them. And yes, I get it, they want to know how, save money and have control for their other books, but..{shrug}. It's just far too much disruption to our schedule, which really does run like an assembly line.

Hitch

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Which did you get? The Snake Agent is first in the series, followed by The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, and The Iron Khan. They need to be read in order.
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Dennis

This is a great series -- a really imaginative original premise ... with real character development

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

This is a great series -- a really imaginative original premise ... with real character development

I am truly looking forward to starting it. ;-)

Hitch