add post about kindle bodge

content.org

@@ -3022,6 +3022,105 @@ future.
 
 #+CAPTION: And this is the result!
 [[attachment:2024-05-11_20-12-52_screenshot.png]]
+*** DONE Kindle Scribe Sync                  :org:roam:emacs:python:python:
+CLOSED: [2024-11-17 Sun 12:13]
+:PROPERTIES:
+:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: kindle-scribe-monitor
+:ID:       e8b12ed0-2a34-4ef3-a89a-716a6c26e191
+:END:
+TL;DR check out https://github.com/vale981/kindle_fetch.
+
+
+I "recently" treated myself to a Kindle Scribe e-ink tablet which is
+somewhat like a ReMarkable[fn:7] but on the cheap. There is no free
+lunch however, and price you pay is a somewhat sub-par software. One
+quite essential missing feature is convenient synchronization with
+other devices.  As I use the tablet mainly for calculations, I rely on
+having the previous pages available at a glance (just as they would be
+if I were using paper). Furthermore, I would like to integrate the
+handwritten notes into my [[https://www.orgroam.com/][org-roam]] note taking system.
+
+One solution would be to jailbreak the kindle, ssh into it and
+automatically download a notebook when it changes. The conversion to
+PDF could then be handled by the [[https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=291290][Calibre KFX input plugin]]. However,
+that ship has sailed for me as the firmware on my Kindle is too new.
+
+This led me to come up with the following [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIFE7h3m40U][bodge]]. Amazon offers a
+service that converts a notebook to PDF and sends it to your email
+upon request and this we can exploit to our heart's content. I wrote a
+[[https://github.com/vale981/kindle_fetch][script]] which monitors your email inbox via IMAP[fn:8] using [[https://github.com/bamthomas/aioimaplib][aioimaplib]]
+and detects incoming emails from Amazon containing download links for
+the exported notebooks. Once such an email is detected, the associated
+PDF is downloaded into a directory on the local file system
+(=~/kindle_dump= on my machine). The name is inferred from the contents
+of the email, although at the moment this doesn't include any hint
+about which folder in the directory structure on the Kindle it came
+from. The email is then conveniently deleted so as to not clutter your
+inbox[fn:9].
+
+Additionally, the latest downloaded PDF is copied into to a file of
+your choice (=~/kindle_dump/.latest= in my case). I then run =zathura
+~/kindle_dump/.latest= which displays that PDF on my large 4K monitor
+and auto refreshes each time a new Kindle email comes in. I also
+configured Zathura to show four pages per row (=set pages-per-row 4=) so
+that I can see eight pages at a glance (see figure below).
+
+#+CAPTION: An example of what my ugly handwriting looks like :),
+[[attachment:screen:d22fec54-83c6-4cc6-a701-c29270868804.png]]
+
+Additionally, the following elisp snippet allows me to attach the
+latest note to an org-roam node with a couple of keystrokes.
+#+begin_src elisp
+  (defun attach-kindle-note (text)
+    "Attaches the latest kindle note to the current org buffer and links to it with TEXT."
+    (interactive "sText: ")
+    (let* ((name (org-id-new "kindle"))
+           (tmp (format "/tmp/%s.pdf" name))
+           (file "/home/hiro/kindle_dump/.latest.pdf")
+           (text (if (string-empty-p text)
+                     (format "handwritten note %s" (current-time-string)) text)))
+      (copy-file file tmp t)
+      (org-attach-attach tmp nil 'mv)
+      (insert (format "[[attachment:%s.pdf][%s]]" name text))))
+#+end_src
+
+The integration into my note-taking system is the most important part
+the whole bodge for me.
+
+Annoyingly, Amazon has already changed the email format twice since I
+initially hacked together this solution. However, each time I come up
+with a more robust way to get the PDF download link and one's free
+time has to be spent in some way or another anyways.
+
+And if you're reading this sentence, you've made it to the end of this
+rather redundant post. Thank you for reading. I hope that at least
+some people find this bodge useful. If there's sufficient interest, I
+might add OAuth2 support.
+
+On the road-map for future (think of years, not months) posts are my
+mu4e/mbsync setup with OAuth support on NixOS, my Xournal++ setup with
+vim-like keybindings and a patch to make the output files more
+compatible with version management and finally, my org-roam braindump.
+
+In other news, my fork of [[https://github.com/vale981/julia-vterm.el][julia-vterm]] is now called
+[[https://github.com/vale981/py-vterm-interaction.el][py-vterm-interaction]] and available on MELPA.
+
+[fn:7]
+Years ago, I sold my ReMarkable in to buy a cheap drum-set and used a
+graphics tablet instead. I have a pretty neat set-up for that, too but
+that's a tale for another time.
+
+[fn:8]
+Unfortunately, OAuth is not supported, so GMail/Outlook won't work out
+of the box.
+
+[fn:9]
+I additionally have a Sieve filter running on my server that
+automatically sorts the Kindle emails into a specific folder, although
+that is not strictly necessary anymore. You might want to setup a
+separate email account for this purpose altogether if you're not
+comfortable with having a (potentially buggy) python script mucking
+around in your emails.
 
 ** Uncategorized                                            :@Uncategorized:
 *** Neuseeland Restauration
@@ -4854,5 +4953,4 @@ chaotisch.
 # eval: (org-hugo-auto-export-mode)
 # org-download-image-dir: "./static/images"
 # org-download-heading-lvl: 3
-# jinx-languages: "de_DE"
 # End: