Finding eBooks on Irc

Jeff’s Guide to Finding and downloading eBooks on IRC Note: This guide assumes you are using Windows, if you’re using some other operating system you’ll need to find and set up your own IRC client. It ended up being a bit longer than I expected, it basically goes through every step from downloading and installing mIRC to setting up the program and searching and downloading your ebooks. Once you have your file if you’re looking for some good software for managing an ebook library and converting between formats I would recommend looking into Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) but for now Calibre is outside the scope of this guide Download and install mIRC from http://www.mirc.com/get.html You may also want to install WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/) for opening the compressed zip/rar files you will be downloading if you don’t have a compression tool setup already. Now to the meat of the guide. 1. Open mIRC, click continue if a trial nag-ware screen pops up (you can keep doing this even after the trial ends) then a configuration screen should pop up the first time you run the program. It should look something like this:

Fill in a fake (or real) name and email address, as well as picking something unique as an alias for the nickname and alternative fields. Then DE-select invisible mode (some servers don’t work properly with it).

2. Next go to the servers tab and scroll down until you find Undernet, doubleclick on the folder to show the list of servers and select the US, NY, Newyork one. Press select.

3. Next go hit the + sign beside DCC and then go to Ignore. Change the method to “Disabled” and uncheck the” Turn ignore back on in:” checkbox.

Press OK.

4. Now press the Lightning-bolt like icon in the top left corner of mIRC. It should display “connect” on mouseover. Alternatively if you have the options window up click on the connect tab and then click the connect button.

5. The next screen may ask you to type in something like “/quote pass 23052” before allowing you to connect to the server, if it does do so in the text entry box of the main window and press enter. It you are not prompted then disregard. Once you input that /quote pass phrase you should connect to the server. A “mIRC Favorites” window will pop up, these are simply a list of standard chat channels. You can cancel out of that list. 6. In the main chat screen type in ”/join #bookz” and press enter. This is telling mIRC to join the channel #bookz on the Undernet server we have previously connected to.

Another window will pop up showing the channel as people continuously use it to chat (and in the case of this particular channel, to download ebooks).

7. Now we want to seatch for a book. I’ll use The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stied Larson as an example since its on the top of Amazon.com at the moment. In the input field of #bookz type “@search The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” After a few seconds you a file should be sent to you.

Click ok (and uncheck the always show this message box if you want). Then pick a temporary directory to save the file to so or use the default and click accept. 10. When it finishes click open and open the text file contained within the zipped search results. The reultant text file should look somthign like this:

Look through the file for the particular version of your book you want to download. Usually you can find books in quite a few different formats which different ebook readers may or may not support. In my case the Kobo I use supports epub (which is a common open source format for publishing ebooks) so that’s the one I would want. Copy the line that includes the file you want up until the extension on the end. In my case I would end up copying “!Frina Stieg Larsson - [Millennium 03] - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (epub) (v5.0).rar”

8. Go back to mIRC and close the open download window, then paste the text we have copied into the main inbut box of #bookz. Press enter. You should see a message from the bot in the chat window. Something like “-pera- : I have added Stieg Larsson - [Millennium 03] - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (v5.0) (epub).rar as 39 in my regular queue. This is file 1 of 5 allowed in your queue.The send will be initiated as soon as possible.”

" Occasionally the particular bot you are trying to download from might not be online (it happened to me during the example). If it seems to take a long time for the bot you are tryign to download off of to reply to you or send you your file pick a different one (ie a line starting with a different name) from the search text file you received earlier and follow the same procedure. If that still doesn’t work then we we need to search the currently online bots individally instead of using the search bot. This is fine, but you need to deal with a few more pop ups. To search the online bots individually you would type “@find Name of the Book or Author” instead of “@search ..” then you should see a few bots reply to you with results in the form of a private message (in this case pera and PCplague had resul).

Since I want the epub version once again I will copy the line that says “!pera_ Stieg Larsson - [Millennium 03] - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (v5.0) (epub).rar”. To copy in the text window you simply need to drag over the text as if you were normally selecting it, it will automaticly put anything you have highlighted into your clipboard when you release the mouse (it wont appear to remain highlighted after you drag+release). Paste this line into the text input back in #bookz and press enter. 9. Now that weve found a good bot that has your particular you should have seen a message saying that you are in a bots queue for download. In my case I was in position 39 so it may take a few minutes to get to me. You need to be at your computer to click accept when your turn comes up, unless you have mIRC set up to auto accept files. You can do this through config->DCC->(under On Send requests) Select Auto-get file, you can also set specific download folders per file type in the DCC>Folders tab. I should note that setting up auto get could be a computer security risk if you leave mIRC open for long periods of time so be warned. 10.If you don’t have auto get turned on a file download dialog should appear for you. Pick where you want to download it to and click accept. Once the file finishes you’re done open it up or transfer it do with it what you will.

You’re done, hopefully I didn’t make it seem too complicated by being so detailed. Its really not that hard once you understand the program, I just decided to go through evrey step along the way assuming you weren’t allready familiar with IRC