cqcumbers

A few months ago I decided to try and find a copy of every complete English translation of the Odyssey ever made, which turned out to be more of an adventure than I expected. Existing lists often include books that don't exist or aren't actually translations, many older ones are only available in certain libraries and lack readable scans, and even some newer translations are rare and out of print. This took about 4 months, and involved library visits, database subscriptions, document requests, and lots of book purchases.

The site lets you read 20 passages from each translation (79 in all, from Chapman 1615 to Mendelsohn 2025). You can filter by various edition-specific features, and read short profiles of each translator. There are also hundreds of collected reviews, many from Victorian periodicals. It's still somewhat a work in progress (I'd like to add more partial translations) but I think it's already a more complete and reliable resource than what was available online before.

I'd love to know if you discover something interesting in the side-by-side comparisons, or if one of the older translations catches your eye (I'm considering making proper ebooks for one or two of the more unique public-domain translations, but it's a lot of proofreading if you care at all about quality).

I can’t personally speak to every recommendation, but rudetection has a a pretty comprehensive syllabus of so-called “deductive fiction”, which you might find interesting: https://rudetection.wordpress.com/2023/05/24/a-syllabus-of-d...

The Invisible Event has reviewed a good collection of books by French author Paul Halter: https://theinvisibleevent.com/2022/10/01/the-demon-of-dartmo...

And Ho-Ling Wong, translator of some Shin Honkaku classics like The Decagon House Murders and The Moai Island Puzzle has a long-running blog reviewing predominantly Japanese mystery fiction: https://ho-lingnojikenbo.blogspot.com

As for me personally, the best non-English mystery novels I’ve read this year are probably Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo, The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei, and Dogra Magra by Yumeno Kyusaku.

There's a brief description of the event in C.V. Wedgwood's book I found rather amusing. It's supposedly taken from Vilem Slavata's memoirs, though I'm curious how much is embellished.

"A hundred hands dragged them towards the high window, flung back the casement and hoisted them upwards. Martinitz went first. 'Jesu Maria! Help!' he screamed and crashed over the sill. Slavata fought longer, calling on the Blessed Virgin and clawing at the window frame under a rain of blows until someone knocked him senseless and the bleeding hands relaxed... One of the rebels leant over the ledge, jeering: 'We will see if your Mary can help you!' A second later, between exasperation and amazement, 'By God, his Mary has helped,' he exclaimed, for Martinitz was already stirring."

Not really a sorter, but https://brickit.app/ was mentioned on HN a while back, and does AI-based lego identification. I haven’t tried it, but it says it can show you where the pieces you need for a specific set are in a photo, so theoretically it should be able to show you everything that belongs in a particular bin as well.

I did find that suspicious, but that repo has no closed issues either. I wonder if they’re being cleaned up by github in a way that bypasses the issue closed event, because I don’t think there’s a way to do that normally.

First $100 and $1000: In high school I created a website that automatically generated 3D renders of custom mechanical keyboard keycap set designs. There was already a market for professional renders, which people used when organizing group buys, so I thought an automated tool that cost 10x less and with turnaround in hours instead days could be useful. I earned a few thousand dollars over a year or two, but the market has gotten more and more custom, and group buys have gotten more and more professional, so a tool with limited options and generic looking results is now not very good for standing out. Actually I’m not sure it ever made much sense as a paid service, but the existence of paid sort-of competitors made it much easier to ask for money.