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Preserving Sheldon's legacy

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Andre Jute

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Aug 29, 2011, 4:12:53 PM8/29/11
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I'm reading Sheldon on wheelbuilding and finding quite a few
interjections by John Allen. These are of little interest to me, not
quite irrelevant but irritating all the same. Allen simply doesn't
have Sheldon's innate sensibility, the judgement to know when enough
information is enough.

I most sincerely hope there is a place where Sheldon's legacy is
preserved pure and intact, without accretions by others. Does anyone
know if such a thing exists?

Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Bicycles at
http://coolmainpress.com/BICYCLING.html

(PeteCresswell)

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Aug 29, 2011, 8:18:05 PM8/29/11
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Per Andre Jute:

>
>I most sincerely hope there is a place where Sheldon's legacy is
>preserved pure and intact, without accretions by others. Does anyone
>know if such a thing exists?

Don't know the answer, but it would seem technologically
feasible.

Last tool for that I played around with was called "Site
Snagger".
--
PeteCresswell

Simon Lewis

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Aug 29, 2011, 8:34:55 PM8/29/11
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"(PeteCresswell)" <x...@y.Invalid> writes:

There are loads of such tools.

wget (linux/cygwin) being one. httrack being another for Linux and
WinHttrack for Windows.

enjoy

James

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Aug 29, 2011, 8:47:14 PM8/29/11
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I think Andre is asking for a time machine, to get a copy before
Sheldon's work was tampered with by others.

I'd suggest;

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html

--
JS


Simon Lewis

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Aug 29, 2011, 8:51:12 PM8/29/11
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James <james.e...@gmail.com> writes:

And then use those tools to get your own copy.

john B.

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Aug 30, 2011, 8:07:14 AM8/30/11
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On Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:47:14 +1000, James <james.e...@gmail.com>
wrote:

While I never knew Sheldon I had always assumed from reading
sheldonbrown.com that Sheldon himself was the one that originally
included the articles or excerpts from others. No?

Cheers,

John B.

DirtRoadie

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Aug 30, 2011, 9:23:03 AM8/30/11
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On Aug 30, 6:07 am, john B. <johnbsloc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:47:14 +1000, James <james.e.stew...@gmail.com>

Sheldon was alway knowledgeable, articulate and very informative, but
also had little difficulty in acknowledging that were sometimes
diverging points of view on some subjects.

DR

SMS

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Aug 30, 2011, 12:30:39 PM8/30/11
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On 8/30/2011 6:23 AM, DirtRoadie wrote:

> Sheldon was alway knowledgeable, articulate and very informative, but
> also had little difficulty in acknowledging that were sometimes
> diverging points of view on some subjects.

That was Sheldon's gift, he could explain why someone was doing
something that was not the best thing to do (aka doing something really
dumb), without getting the person defensive and upset. I recall his page
on chain cleaning and lubrication, where his advice is still spot-on,
and he gently explains why waxing is a bad idea (without being quite as
direct as some of us might be).

Is there actually a problem with whoever took over maintenance of his
site making changes that are a problem? His legacy appears to be being
preserved. Most of the information there is still relevant, though some
has become a bit outdated. I.e., while the Harris Cyclery section
features many new LED lights for dynamos, Sheldon is concerned with how
to prevent halogen bulb burnout. It would not hurt for someone to add a
section on LED headlights, but there are plenty of other places to find
this information so it's not really necessary.

Personally I was very worried that some problem people would gain
control of his site and change it to suit their own agenda. I thought of
those people when I read his statement on the site regarding the eagle
on his helmet <http://sheldonbrown.com/eagle.html>. I know there are
people that not only despise Bell, but didn't like the fact that an icon
like Sheldon did not buy into their junk science.

Dan O

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Aug 30, 2011, 12:57:53 PM8/30/11
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On Aug 29, 1:12 pm, Andre Jute <fiult...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm reading Sheldon on wheelbuilding and finding quite a few
> interjections by John Allen. These are of little interest to me, not
> quite irrelevant but irritating all the same. Allen simply doesn't
> have Sheldon's innate sensibility, the judgement to know when enough
> information is enough.
>
> I most sincerely hope there is a place where Sheldon's legacy is
> preserved pure and intact, without accretions by others. Does anyone
> know if such a thing exists?
>

I haven't been keeping an eye on it, but as one who appreciates the
realization of the promise of the internet, it would be a shameful
crime against nature for anyone to mess with what Sheldon gave the
world.

sms88

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Aug 30, 2011, 1:49:57 PM8/30/11
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On 8/30/2011 9:30 AM, SMS wrote:

> Is there actually a problem with whoever took over maintenance of his
> site making changes that are a problem?

Actually now I do see those annoying modifications. Who is John Allen
anyway? Clearly he lacks the encyclopedic knowledge of Sheldon.

The unmodified pages are on the Wayback machine.
<http://web.archive.org/web/20100527024513/http://www.sheldonbrown.com/>
and it works pretty well as even the links go to archived pages on the
Wayback machine.

I took the liberty of creating the URL
<http://tinyurl.com/SheldonBrownArchive> that goes to the archived site.

AMuzi

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Aug 30, 2011, 3:40:13 PM8/30/11
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the infamous 'party doll' fracas for example

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Colin B.

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Aug 30, 2011, 4:24:07 PM8/30/11
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sms88 <scharf...@geemail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/2011 9:30 AM, SMS wrote:
>
>> Is there actually a problem with whoever took over maintenance of his
>> site making changes that are a problem?
>
> Actually now I do see those annoying modifications. Who is John Allen
> anyway? Clearly he lacks the encyclopedic knowledge of Sheldon.
>
> The unmodified pages are on the Wayback machine.
> <http://web.archive.org/web/20100527024513/http://www.sheldonbrown.com/>
> and it works pretty well as even the links go to archived pages on the
> Wayback machine.

That page actually has at least one posthumous edit on it near the bottom.
Don't know if there's anything else changed, but the easiest answer is to
go back to the first snapshot after he died:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080302091016/http://www.sheldonbrown.com/

To be fair, the site had some broken links and such that Harriet has fixed.
However, if you want the original, unaltered site, that's where to go.

Cheers,
Colin

Peter Cole

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Aug 30, 2011, 4:35:07 PM8/30/11
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On 8/30/2011 1:49 PM, sms88 wrote:
> On 8/30/2011 9:30 AM, SMS wrote:
>
>> Is there actually a problem with whoever took over maintenance of his
>> site making changes that are a problem?
>
> Actually now I do see those annoying modifications. Who is John Allen
> anyway? Clearly he lacks the encyclopedic knowledge of Sheldon.

He is a Boston area cycling "expert" (his term) and advocate. He is the
author of a fairly well known pamphlet called "Street Smarts". He was a
good friend of Sheldon's and they were planning on a doing series of
videos on bicycle maintenance just before Sheldon died.

John Allen and I gad a few dust-ups, which bothered Sheldon, he couldn't
understand why two of his friends couldn't get along.

Peter Cole

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Aug 30, 2011, 4:38:11 PM8/30/11
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Sheldon was a good deal more opinionated that he ever let on via the
Internet. He was, after all, selling stuff, and some people get worked
up enough about this stuff to boycott -- as the infamous thread you
mentioned so aptly illustrated.

Peter Cole

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Aug 30, 2011, 4:46:27 PM8/30/11
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I don't know if I'd go that far, but it does really piss me off. Sheldon
seemed to like John Allen, but I always found him insufferable.

Andre Jute

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:15:55 PM8/30/11
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That's excellent, Steven. Allen is apparently a reputable bicycle
expert, well thought of by Sheldon. But, for my purposes, Allen
confuses exhaustion with knowledge. -- AJ

DirtRoadie

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:16:17 PM8/30/11
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I wasn't familiar with that, but it appears to be remarkably similar
to and as pointless as many recent threads.
Well described here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.misc/msg/16a9cd4142088075

DR

Andre Jute

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:11:57 PM8/30/11
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Nice work, James. Thanks. Exactly what I wanted. -- Andre Jute

Andre Jute

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:22:53 PM8/30/11
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It isn't quite that bad, Dan. I wondered, until Scharfie said he too
saw that the additions were not quite in the spirit of original,
whether I was being over-sensitive. Some people just write well, and
know when enough information is enough, and some confuse their own
knowledge with necessary information and waste the reader's time as he
reads and discards their surplus information, wading his way through
to the necessary nugget. Sheldon had a gift for giving you just the
right amount of information, and just the the most relevant
information, leaving you slightly hungry for more, to which he then
referred you in someone else's text *elsewhere*, as John has pointed
out. -- Andre Jute

Andre Jute

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:24:10 PM8/30/11
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Aw, that was forgivable as on election day, and I must admit it was a
very funny thread, still worth reading. -- AJ

Dan O

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Aug 30, 2011, 5:24:28 PM8/30/11
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I'm not sayin' Captain Bike was infallible, but what he did for the
world, and the enduring legacy...

AMuzi

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Aug 30, 2011, 6:16:22 PM8/30/11
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My remembrance is that, despite myriad dead horses being
flogged for a good long while, we agreed to disagree just as
Mr Roadie noted.

Jay Beattie

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Aug 31, 2011, 12:32:18 AM8/31/11
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> DR- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

What is disturbing about that that thread is the current absence of
its various authors -- people who posted under their own names (no
offense) and who were sheepish about OT threads.

Sheldon had good advice although he swatted me for my dislike of
French components. He had a much higher tolerance for off beat
threads, tube diameters, etc.

-- Jay Beattie.

SMS

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Aug 31, 2011, 11:07:28 AM8/31/11
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On 8/30/2011 9:32 PM, Jay Beattie wrote:

> Sheldon had good advice although he swatted me for my dislike of
> French components. He had a much higher tolerance for off beat
> threads, tube diameters, etc.

I enjoyed corresponding with him because he shared my passion for
finding creative ways to undo some of the annoying things that the
bicycle manufacturers foisted upon the public.

Dan O

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Aug 31, 2011, 11:56:57 AM8/31/11
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It took a bit of doing, but I finally finagled the rbt version of
party doll thread out of google. Then I navigated to the beginning,
checked the date (year), only started reading, and... Wow!

Indeed, that was a truly pivotal point in recent history. You know
how you're riding along out in the countryside and come to a fork in
the road, and which way you go opens up a plethora of route options,
but the divergance can get you pretty far afield, such that it might
take an awful lot to get back to where you were going... as if you
ever had a clue where you were going in the first place.

Sheepish won't last long here even lurking, I suspect. I like mustard
on my hot dog.

> Sheldon had good advice although he swatted me for my dislike of
> French components. He had a much higher tolerance for off beat
> threads, tube diameters, etc.
>

Yesterday I had a moment when I got to the bottom of one of those old
posts, where google still provides a hyperlink labeled, "reply to
author". I got so verclempt I had to go take something for it.

SMS

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Aug 31, 2011, 12:53:05 PM8/31/11
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On 8/31/2011 8:56 AM, Dan O wrote:

> Yesterday I had a moment when I got to the bottom of one of those old
> posts, where google still provides a hyperlink labeled, "reply to
> author". I got so verclempt I had to go take something for it.

It's verklempt. But there may be wi-fi up there.

Tom Ace

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:58:33 PM8/31/11
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Sheldon Brown didn't believe in an afterlife.

Tom Ace

DirtRoadie

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Aug 31, 2011, 6:04:33 PM8/31/11
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Doesn't mean that he was right nor incapable of changing his mind if
he should learn of credible contrary evidence.
DR

Andre Jute

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Aug 31, 2011, 7:17:16 PM8/31/11
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Like turning up out of the great nothingness before the golden gates,
and there's a guy with a beard rising from the ticket seller's table,
stretching out his hand, and saying, "Just the guy we've been waiting
for! BTW, I'm St Peter but you can call me Hey You if you can fix a
bike. Oy vey, you've never seen so many broken bikes. Angels don't
like walking!"

"\"T°m Sherm@n >

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Sep 1, 2011, 1:52:28 AM9/1/11
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On 8/30/2011 11:32 PM, Jay Beattie wrote:
> On Aug 30, 2:16 pm, DirtRoadie<DirtRoa...@aol.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 30, 1:40 pm, AMuzi<a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>> [...]

>>> the infamous 'party doll' fracas for example
>>
>> I wasn't familiar with that, but it appears to be remarkably similar
>> to and as pointless as many recent threads.
>> Well described here:http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.misc/msg/16a9cd4142088075
>>
>> DR- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> What is disturbing about that that thread is the current absence of
> its various authors -- people who posted under their own names (no
> offense) and who were sheepish about OT threads.

What is wrong with offending people who hide behind pseudonyms?

I do disagree with Mr. Br°wn about off-topic vulgarity - it brings out
people's true colors, so to speak.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
I am a vehicular cyclist.

"\"T°m Sherm@n >

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Sep 1, 2011, 2:24:42 AM9/1/11
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One wonders if the feeling was mutual?

Bill

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Sep 2, 2011, 8:05:32 PM9/2/11
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I think the best way to honor Sheldon's memory would be for everyone
to grow a long, scraggly beard that looks like a dog pissed on it, and
never trim it.
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