Slide Rule Era 39

[WinelandV]

At the risk of being insensitive, is SlideRuleEra still around? I was trying to access

http://www.slideruleera.net

this morning and that site appears to no longer exists. I don't suppose anyone created a copy of all the data that was there?

Please note that is a "v" (as in Violin) not a "y".

 

[coastal43]

I'll be honest, a community google sheets could be used to determine contents of each file. I'd rather have a unorganized wealth of knowledge over potentially losing access to all of it.

 

[KootK]

The documents were accumulated and posted slowly over 17 years with no consideration for the future; there is no real organization of these files on my hard drive. Even the names I gave the files (mostly .pdf) are somewhat random, making it a time consuming task to open each one, see what it concerns, then rename / organize them into a useful filing system.

I'd be happy to relieve you of that burden as well if you'll have it.

Just synch the files to my Dropbox as they are, where they are. I'm willing to sift through them one at a time to organize them.

I imagine a process like this:

1) I use the existing echoes of your website to work out the document list to the best of my ability.

2) I open the documents one at a time if there's no better way and match the files to the list.

3) I create a document list in Word, Excel, or whatever where each document is listed with a hyperlink to it's Dropbox location.

4) I post a Dropbox link to the document list, titled "SRE's Legacy" in my signature here until we find a permanent home for the reincarnation of your website.

Just say yes, to me or someone, and we'll get this done somehow.

Given the Spartan setup of your website, this solution wouldn't even be much of a functional compromise I feel.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

CrabbyT - You have come up with something I should be able to do, not right of way but soon. I'll get started on uploading to Google Drive and post back here when all is ready.

Please understand, that I will be making the files available for download for a short time. I am delighted to provide the files but will leave it up to someone else to organize and host them. I'm out of the web hosting business, never got any better than when I started, but had a lot of fun with it for 17 years.

Whoever takes on this project is in for a really interesting time. I would hear from engineers and others all over the world, with requests to include website items in forthcoming engineering books, submitting documents for possible inclusion on the website (a retired engineer I never met mailed me two large boxes of his old engineering book for free - refused to accept my reimbursement for postage), even a part time (paid) job offer from Professional Publications, Inc. to do behind-the-scenes technical editing of some of their first-line books (I took that offer, resulting in some eyeopening results... for them).

 

[jerseyshore]

This would be amazing. I think I bookmarked your website a week into the job 15 years ago.

Just an invaluable amount of resources, many of which do not exist literally anywhere else.

Don't worry about organization or number of files or size. I think I speak for almost everyone that those things do not matter even in the slightest. We are all oozing with cloud storage space.

Let it all upload in the background, share a link, and the community can take it from there.

 

[CrabbyT]

SlideRule - I'm grateful for all the work you put into your site over the years. It's provided a lot of value to our community, and I don't think there's anyone else out there with a repository like yours. Thank you for considering my suggestion. Been a while since I built a website, but I'd be willing to put something together.

 

[KootK]

@CrabbyT: build it up to a level on par with where SRE has left off and I'll contribute $200CAD to help offset your startup costs.

I know, $200 is nothing from an incentivization perspective. I mean it to be evidence of solidarity.

 

[milkshakelake]

If a website is on the table, I'd be willing to contribute to a fund to help host the website ad-free. I use Wix but it's a bit expensive. I wouldn't really suggest building a website out of html and css these days; it's doable (and fun), but there are easy website builders out there.

 

[skired]

CrabbyT I'd be happy to help both with the website set up and financially. I also recruited a friend who does some web development and he's open to helping.

SlideRuleEra Do you still have the web domain, and would you be open to us resurrecting the site on that domain?

I've downloaded some of the references locally throughout the years, I'm sure many others have some as well. If we get a site started I think we could start repopulating the website until SlideRuleEra has a chance to get the files together

 

[SlideRuleEra]

skired - No, when the web hosting contract expired I closed the website and did not renew anything.

CrabbyT will be able to start over fresh, which I expect is the best way to do this.

 

[CrabbyT]

KootK - I can definitely build a site that's on par with SlideRuleEra's former site, and I will gladly accept your offer to offset the startup costs if you're willing to chip in. I'm a little rusty, but I've registered, built, and managed websites before. I'll start working on it a bit this weekend.

Also, if at any point you want to use this site as a platform for Giving Away Structural Engineering for Free ® (ref:

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=483020

), consider me on board. We can talk about it more later, but I've had ambitions of doing this as well. Maybe that could be a different site if you still want to do that, or maybe we could figure out a way to put them under the same umbrella as this historic docs repository.

skired - that's awesome, thank you and your friend for offering to help. I'll figure out the registration and hosting costs and will let you all know. It would be awesome if we could eventually raise enough through donations to register this site in perpetuity.

On the subject of donations/crowdsourcing this effort, do you guys have any recommendations for how we should facilitate that? I was thinking a GoFundMe could work, or maybe PayPal. Venmo and etc. would be fine IMO. It would be good to use something that converts funding automatically. KootK mentioned $CAD, I generally operate on $USD, but I'm sure there's some platform out there that would facilitate currency exchange.

 

[jerseyshore]

GFM takes a % of all transactions, but usually makes people feel better (i.e. safer) about donating. Some people are skittish about sending money to a venmo or paypal directly unless they know them. So pros and cons of both.

 

[Double-Edged]

SlideRuleEra, you should reach out to that guy over at Engineers Edge to measure interest - they publish a lot and have a bunch of old engineering archived books for free.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

Thanks, Double-Edged.

CrabbyT - I've got some info to go over with you. Please send an email to the address I used on the website, at the bottom of this page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221020140935/http://slideruleera.net/

 

[CrabbyT]

SRE - thanks, just sent you an email.

 

[lexpatrie]

So, uh, does anybody have a book scanner laying around? Asking for a friend....

Incidentally, it looks like the internet archive more or less saved both the web site structure and a lot of the PDFs. So if somebody wanted to scrape the files from there and just let SRE know what wasn't archived (that SBC link doesn't have the source file anymore, I suspect because it's an external link that the ICC got taken down?).

If anybody wants to expand this, I could maybe be persuaded to send some old steel joist catalogs, but I'd want them back after they were digitized. It would be a trip if we somehow assembled all the SJI catalogs, for example, but I don't have anything that's not readily available on the internet in that vein. I have some middle aged Vulcraft catalogs is all. Like 1998. Maybe one earlier one that if I remember right had a reddish cover and was staple bound, perhaps that's an SJI catalog from around 1990.

 

[lexpatrie]

As a side note, Slide Rule Era, you've got an FAQ entry that refers to your (defunc?) web site, might want to just upload the information as an attachment to the FAQ.

 

[KootK]

Also, if at any point you want to use this site as a platform for Giving Away Structural Engineering for Free ® (ref:

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=483020

), consider me on board. We can talk about it more later, but I've had ambitions of doing this as well. Maybe that could be a different site if you still want to do that, or maybe we could figure out a way to put them under the same umbrella as this historic docs repository.

I would love to collaborate on any or all of that stuff with you, truly. I've been scheming up a website offering that I want to put together for a long time now.

In addition to the free engineering thing, there are three or four other things that I want to offer. And one them is access to my physical library of structural engineering resources. Without hyperbole, I feel that I now possess the most comprehensive physical library of historic structural resources on the planet. I doubt there's a firm or university library to rival it.

I thought that I might list my library in a database and then take requests to have pages scanned for folks seeking various things. Kind of like a shady version of the Linda Hall Library. I think that this would pair marvelously with your reincarnation of SRE's baby.

The freebie homeowner stuff has been fun. I learned quickly that I had to refine the scheme a bit though, as follows:

1) Nobody in my city paid any heed to my restricting my services to my neighborhood only. So I dropped that and just tell people that I decide when -- and whether -- to come based on the travel distance.

2) Virtually everyone tried to talk me into doing the complete engineering for permit stuff (for pay) despite my excluding that from my scope. Now, I don't come to visit unless people sign a waver agreeing that, by engaging my freebie service, they acknowledge that there is no circumstance under which I will subsequently do the permit work. Not for any amount of money. Once they engage me, they commit themselves to finding another engineer to see them through the "real" engineering.

Basically, lay people are sucky listeners / readers.

 

[SWComposites]

Managers are worse listeners / readers.

 

[KootK]

When good engineers become managers, I internally demote them back to being lay people.

 

[lexpatrie]

As a side note, you can't upload attachments or images to a FAQ on this web site.