Help Me Out Wednesday: 4 January 2012

As I mentioned in the previous post on my 2012 genealogy and blogging goals, I would like to devote a number of posts to “giving and receiving” from the genealogy blogging community. “Giving” would be sharing helpful sources, websites, tools, etc. that I have found (Friday’s theme), and “receiving” would be drawing on the expertise of readers and fellow genealogy bloggers (Wednesday’s theme).

(This is somewhat in the spirit of what promises to be a 2012 trend among genealogy bloggers - the “buddy system.” I have been tempted in the past to participate, and in light of my failure to reach my goals from previous years, this would probably be very beneficial to my research. However, I do not wish to make promises that I cannot keep, and I am afraid that a big increase in work responsibilities may be the wrench in the works that that would make me a very poor partner who could not keep up her end of the deal.)

The question I would like to pose for today is:

Does anyone out there have experience in successfully syncing a large Reunion family file to the Reunion App on an iPad?

I received an iPad for Christmas and have installed the Reunion App on it. The instructions for syncing my Reunion files to the iPad are simple (go to Tools and click on “Sync”) and indicate that it is to be done via wi-fi, not through a USB connector. However, while the syncing process did appear to be underway, it never really got anywhere, that is, the little bar thingy never got any farther than about 25% complete.

Could the problem be that one of my family files is too big? If so, should I divide it up before trying to sync?

Advice appreciated!

Fun Stuff You Can Do with Weebly

Well, okay, you can almost certainly do this with other web hosting companies, too. But it’s really easy on Weebly, and that’s why I’m doing it.

I’ve been playing around with using Weebly to create a family tree/genealogy toolbox website - Greta’s Genealogy - about my ancestors and my husband’s ancestors. I am not using my genealogy program to do this, but am creating it page by page, link by link. This way, not only do I not have to wait until I can update my program to the latest version and learn how to use it to create web cards, I can tailor the pages the way I want to.

While it probably would have been enough just to put up the family lines, hanging out in the genealogy blogging community has had its effect: I knew I should somehow deal with the issue of sources.

But how? A number of genealogy programs that can be used to build a family tree website incorporate ways to include footnotes, where you can click on the footnote number and it will take you to the source citation.

I wanted something like that. I figured I would set up a source page, insert the footnote numbers on the family pages, and link them to the source page. But I decided I would like to add something more.

When I was creating family tree pages, I noticed that there are four different kinds of links that can be made:

1. Links to another website,
2. Links to another page on my website,
3. Links to a file on my website, and
4. Links to an e-mail address.

Number 3 was the one that interested me. You can, of course, insert images on the pages, but I don’t want to include too many images that will clutter up the pages; most of the images I will be using directly on the pages will probably be photographs.

So here’s how the links work:

Family page with footnotes (they are the small red things in this picture) (or you can link to this page here):

Clicking on the footnote number takes you to the source page (or you can link to the source page here):

The footnote is in turn linked to the image of the source (or you can see the source here):

So far I have just done one footnote, to see whether this works the way I want it to (it does). I can’t say that I’ll be adding every single footnote right away; I’m still doing a lot of experimentation, and I really do want to get the names out there as soon as possible. And that is working, too - I got my first Google Alert from the site the other day. As a matter of fact, it’s the first Google Alert I’ve received since I set up several earlier this year, so now I know that Google Alerts is working, too.

I am actually using my Reunion program for some of the items at Greta’s Genealogy. Right now I am using descendant reports for the pages of the siblings of my direct ancestors, and later I would like to have some cool charts to use, such as those Linda McCauley of Documenting the Details has put up on her family tree website, McCauley, Lanier, Hankins, Hopkins & Taylor Families. And she is not the only blogger I plan to steal ideas from emulate: Valerie Craft of the Begin with Craft blog has some neat features on her site, Begin with Craft - in particular I like the Google Maps there.

Sheesh, what a geek I am.

And that is my disclaimer: Weebly did not pay me anything to write this. They didn't have to; I just wanted to geek out. And to think - I probably wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if I hadn't started hanging out with the genealogy blogging crowd.

What Happened to All the Blogs I Was Following in Google Reader?

I follow a lot of blogs. Each day Google Reader usually brings me anywhere from 120-180 unread posts.

Yesterday and today that number dropped to the 60s.

Did I infect everyone with my cleaning frenzy so that you are all taking time off from blogging to clean house and organize your offices?

I didn't think so.

Not that I'm paranoid or anything. Well, yes, I am paranoid. And I hate change - there, I said it.

I hate Google Reader's new look and the nightmare that it has become to navigate. Those scroll bars? Much clunkier than the old arrows, and it seems almost impossible to navigate up and down my subscription list.

As I read my 63 unread items today, I checked to make sure that it wasn't just Blogger-platform blogs that are included. Wordpress and private sites are there. So which blogs aren't there? I can't figure it out.

Where is my tinfoil hat?

I miss my blogs!

Any suggestions on other readers?

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.