use Perl

I finally got around to documenting and making available my Amazon wishlist tool. If you maintain a wishlist and want to periodically see if any items on it are available for cheap you can put this in your cron:

0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/wishlist --token=MYTOKENID --wishlist=MYWISHLISTID --email=cheapskate@example.com

Which means at the top of every hour wishlist will go and look at my wishlist and email me if any items on it are available for cheap: cheap being less than 50% of the coverprice and/or less than $5. Cheapness is configurable. It uses Amazon's Web Services, so you'll need to get a token (free). I imagine that there's some CPAN module that does this, but there wasn't at the time when I wrote this about a year ago (I don't think).

If you use it you'll get lots of hits from used bookstores around the country. But I don't mind used when the quality is good, and I've been really happy with the quality measures on Amazon.

import BaseHTTPServer

class HelloWorldServer( BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler ):
    def do_GET( self ):
        self.send_response( 200 )
        self.send_header( "Content-type", "text/html" )
        self.end_headers()
        self.wfile.write( "hello world" )

server = BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer( ( '', 8080 ), HelloWorldServer )

while 1:
    try: server.handle_request()
    except: break

Creates a non-forking HTTP server which responds to requests with "Hello World". I could get used to that. Right tool for the right job and all.

xISBN is a neat service from OCLC in libraryland. Feed it an ISBN and get back a list of ISBNs that are "related". Relatedness in this case means associated editions or printings.

So, the latest camel has an ISBN of 0596000278. This link:

http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/0596000278

Will return this list:

0596000278 1565921496 0937175641 1565929748 1565924622

Which are the following:

• 1565921496
• 0937175641
• 1565929748 : no longer at Amazon :(
• 1565924622