Family and Friends Newsletter Friday 5 March 2010

Research

Gradually getting back into my research routine after Olympics, GeneaBloggers games, and being away for a few days.

Smith

Had a “duh!” moment during the GeneaBloggers Games. I have been wanting to make a “pushpin map” of Tennessee for my Lizzie Smith project. The map would show the county lines and the pushpins would represent known 1870 residences of the families that are viable candidates to be Lizzie’s family. Since Knox and McMinn counties are of particular interest, I wanted to get an idea of which families are closest to those areas. My original idea was to create or locate a good paper map and use real pushpins. But during the GeneaBloggers Games it occurred to me – duh! – why not use the My Maps feature on Google Maps?

Blogs

Added 6 March: Ack! I see that I left out a post that I definitely intended to highlight: "The Walk Home" at Donna Pointkowski's What's Past Is Prologue. Donna illustrates an important part of capturing memories: it is not just individual events, but also rituals and routines that are important. And her description of the sights, sounds, and smells of that walk is very evocative. I'll have to use that prompt!

Bart at Stardust ‘n’ Roots has a great idea about where to display awards (in his case, he put his GeneaBloggers Games medals there): a virtual Fireplace Mantle, aka a separate page on his blog. Think I’ll steal the idea.

Kathleen Brandt at a3Genealogy talks about citation generators in “Evidence Explained Missing.” Gotta get me one of those.

Jasia at Creative Gene has a fascinating (and oh-so-true) article on genealogy as therapy.

And finally, why am I getting the feed from some blog to do with Audi? It appears to have hijacked the defunct (I think) Graveyard Rabbit of Covered Bridges blog. Sploggers, blog hijacking (there is even a blog devoted to busting those guys that I discovered when I was trying to find out why my Comment Button didn’t work), spam comments – just sick of them all!