105th COG: My Lean, Mean Genealogy Machine

I was going to write a modest little piece on the modest little set of technology that I use for genealogy. Well, I  am still going to do that. But I am writing this with a little less confidence than I had even the day before I sat down to write this.

As you will see from the post below, there was an “incident” with comments on this blog - apparently one of the blogs that appeared on my blogroll has been found by Google to have some sort of virus. And the fact that a link (now deleted) to it appeared on my blog had made my blog suspect as well.

Last week I was informed by my e-mail service that my e-mail had been hacked and that I would have to go through a process to reset my password and restore my access (not too painful, but it did involve providing a piece of information that I would preferred not to have provided).

This was my primary e-mail address, and together with my blog, it is my main form of communication; I am not super-active on Facebook nor do I tweet. That these two events happened within a week of one another was distressing.

My husband and I attempt in various ways to back up all of the computer stuff that is important to us, but these incidents have left me feeling uneasy.

Still, I love my “technology,” especially my new (well, new from Christmas, anyway) MacBook Pro.

My Baby.
(Apologies for the shady picture - I never remember to take pictures

when there is still daylight.)

Computer: And why do I call my MacBook Pro “My Lean, Mean Genealogy Machine”? Mainly because I consider its main purpose to be doing genealogy. Although I still do most of my e-mail correspondence on this machine, I do not intend to do much else here or to save anything other than genealogy-related documents to it. Exceptions would be iTunes (can’t work without music!) and uploading photos taken on trips, since I do plan to take the laptop with me when I travel (or at least on genealogy-related trips).

That means documents related to anything else I have ever used the computer for - school, Scouts, language-related stuff, and other family “business” - remain on/go to my old Mac Mini desktop setup. Most scans and new photos go to the desktop as well. The desktop is already a bit slow (probably needs a “tuneup” or housecleaning), and I want to avoid this on my laptop.

My desktop (Mac Mini) setup

Of course, there are a lot of genealogy-related things remaining on my old desktop. My husband has set up Time Machine on our household network to overcome this problem, so I can now access all of my archived genealogy documents directly or even duplicate them on the laptop through Time Machine.

Browsers and bookmark organization: That still leaves my browser bookmark system in a bit of chaos. On the desktop I have a super-extensive set of old bookmarks of all types - but especially genealogy bookmarks - on Safari, and there are quite a few on Firefox as well, not to mention the new ones I have managed to accumulate on the laptop. Although I have exported/imported bookmarks before, I don’t think I will do that in this case, because many of these bookmarks are old and need to be cleaned up. I loved the old bookmark organization system on Safari, but am not so fond of the Firefox system or the new Safari system. Therefore, as I clean up the various sets of bookmarks, I will probably copy them to the Genealogy Toolboxes on my blog and on the website I have created at Weebly.

Software: I use Reunion as my genealogy database. I am also working on trees on Ancestry and hope to eventually have a website (Weebly or something else) with trees and other information as well. So far I have not added any transcription or note-taking software or any other research “helper” applications.

For photos I have iPhoto on both computers. I am getting a bit alarmed at how many photos we have in digital form on various computers in our family. My husband and I back them up through Time Machine, but I know that our college daughter also has tons of photos on her very vulnerable laptop.

Although we have Microsoft Office on our computers at home, we also have iWork and I am becoming more and more attached to these applications. In particular, I may use Keynote for some modest digital scrapbooking.

Websites: I have subscriptions to Ancestry, Footnote, and Genealogy Bank. State archive websites (South Carolina, Texas, and Illinois, among others) are big favorites with me. I also love many of the local library websites (Greenville) or library-affiliated websites (GenFriends of Plano Libraries) as well as Findagrave and outstanding individual cemetery sites such as the one for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Camera: I have a barebones camera - a Nikon Coolpix LI8 - and it seems to be enough for me. I can take a decent picture of a tombstone and, on the macro setting, a decent picture of a document.

Phone: Nothing genea-helpful here. It’s a Plain Jane type of phone probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Other hardware: There is my beloved wand scanner pictured below and described in “My New Toy” and “More on the New Toy.” To this I will most likely add a Flip-Pal Scanner; the current plan is to get one next Christmas, but I may give in and get one at the upcoming NGS Conference because I would be able to use it to scan pictures at my in-laws’ house when we visit later in the summer. Perhaps some day I will get my own flatbed scanner, but right now I am using my husband’s HP 8500 All-in-One Wireless. I noticed when I scanned some documents with fuzzy handwriting for some cousins that the digital copies were clearer than the originals, so I’m thinking this is pretty handy for my use.



Future plans: An iPad would be nice some day; it might be the ideal “take along to the library” item for me when the time comes. Some day I might get a fancier camera and the dedicated scanner that I mentioned. I’m not too keen to update my phone, yet. I see a digital scrapbooking class in my future. Maybe something on website design as well if I do not find a simple (=simple-minded) way for me to set up a family genealogy website.

Slowly, surely, by asking around and reading what my fellow genealogy bloggers have to say on the subject, I am getting a good idea of what kind of technology will work for me. It will never be terribly elaborate with all of the latest gizmos, but I think it will be pretty decent.