Genealogy, et Cetera

GenCircles kaput!

2007-05-14T19:06:00.000-04:00

GenCircles, which I used to host my Annex files, has been unstable for over a year and now seems to be finally comatose, not having processed any new files in over a month. I have resolved, finally, to find a new host. This will probably be WorldConnect, as it meets all my requirements. Now, if I can only figure out how to automate my updates to it as I had with GenCircles...

New usability items

2007-02-01T07:45:00.000-05:00

Nav Buttons
The three buttons shown at right are placed on many pages. They appear in a fixed position in the middle of the right margin, as if attached to the scroll bar. The top button takes you to the top of the page, and the bottom button takes you to the bottom of the page. The middle button takes you to a table of contents for the page (or something similar). You will notice that these buttons are placed on a lower stratum than the rest of the page, so that, for example, the "WEEK230" shown here will scroll over the buttons.
New/changed marker

Hovering the mouse cursor over the red bullet will display a tooltip showing the date the item was changed.
ODT Easter eggs
The generation numbers of each individual (to the left) are now on-page links to that individual's parent.
Referring to the image at right, clicking on any of the "7"s will bring "6 BALDWIN, Samuel" to the top of the page. Clicking on any of the "6"s will bring "5 BALDWIN, John" to the top of the page, and so on.
This feature can be used to put together a pedigree for any individual on the page,

ODT additions

2006-11-20T08:22:00.000-05:00

Added to the ODT page (Seaman family, above) an inventory of the surnames on the page, with frequency of each and highlighting of frequent fliers.

Milestone + another (minor) facelift

2006-11-14T00:26:00.002-05:00

Just turned over 1,000,000 hits this evening! (That is since 1998.)
On the ODT pages, e.g. here, links to other families are exdented to lie outside the right margin. This makes them more visible. Their former position is marked by a red right-pointing arrow. When printed, they will resume their former positions.

Note: MSIE cannot render the red arrow.

Note: Facelift will be applied on a subfamily basis and will propagate by attrition.

Facelift for Outline Descent Trees

2006-11-07T22:41:00.000-05:00

As shown in the example, above, I have collected various links into a formal Table of Contents in a sort of cartouche. The new format will be propagated by attrition.

Breakthrough: Elzora Morehouse

2006-11-07T21:51:00.000-05:00

It is said that Elzora "ran off" with a married man and her husband, Charles, subsequently obtained a divorce.

Dressed all in black, Elzora quietly went from room to room in the middle of that night, kissing each of her children goodbye. She came at last to Elsie's room and embraced her tearfully. She then climbed out the bedroom window and ran across the lawn to the carriage that had been waiting for her, the driver hidden in shadow.

Elsie never saw her mother again, except that she thinks she saw her once years later at the Danbury Fair.

It is said that Elzora died in 1900 in NY and was buried in Granby, CT, which is in the north-central part of the state, north of Hartford.

Elzora had been a double enigma for years. No one in the family knew anything about her origins -- except for her name -- nor did anyone really know what became of her. Until this month, when I located her in Orcutt's "History of New Milford", hiding under the name Algora. This was confirmed in Marie Bonafonte's WorldConnect database ("Morehouse, Rowley, Bonafonte and Allied Families"), uploaded only a few months ago.

Now she is only a univalent enigma: What did become of her?

Elzora was my great great grandmother.

Inventory of cognate names (new)

2006-05-30T00:21:00.000-04:00

This is an index and inventory of all recognized cognate forms of our surnames. The entries are in the form of synonym:base, or for base names, base. The base names are the names of our ODT collections. The links on the base name take you back to the ODT index group of surnames with that initial letter.

The file is pretty big and does take a bit for loading and rendering.

This blog added as an RSS feed

2006-04-01T03:54:00.000-05:00

I have added this blog as an RSS feed from all Genealogy and Celebrity pages. In the FireFox browser, this will present as a special token in the right end of the address field when browsing these pages. Clicking the token will present an invitation to make a bookmark for the feed. The URL: http://dav4is.blogspot.com/atom.xml (This change will be propagated to all pages as they are recompiled in due course.)

Alternate presentation for pedigrees

2006-03-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

An alternate presentation format for my pedigrees has been added by using links to my compllete ancestry on WorldConnect. Click the title of this blog to see an example. Access to these views is by clicking the "outline" icons in the list of pedigrees at the top of the page.

Note that the WC descendancy view used for this purpose has a display limit of 10 generations. I have petitioned WC support to include continuation shortcut links where the descendancy display has been truncated by this limit. Until this is implemented, you will have to click on an individual name (in generation 10), then select Descendancy from the view choices.

My goal is to eventually provide pedigrees in graphical form, with boxes and arrows.

Milestones last year

2006-02-26T08:05:00.000-05:00

Before year-end, we had reached a total population exceeding 100,000 individuals, and had accumulated more than 750,000 hits (visits).

Improved subfamily groupings

2006-02-26T07:43:00.000-05:00

Where subfamilies have a common ancestor, these will be grouped together and separated from other groups by thin dashed lines.

Source citation improvements in the Annex

2006-02-26T07:28:00.000-05:00

GenCircles (the "Annex") does such a wretched job of posting my carefully assembled source citations that I have added a link back to the corresponding citation on the associated Genealogy, et Cetera sources page. These will be placed in the Call Number field, and can be recognized by the format "@Snnnn@". (Refer to the link in the title of this Blog.)

Another facelift

2005-07-23T21:42:00.000-04:00

As you can see, I've made some more changes. Where available, ancestry information will be included in this initial list. This example, from the ADAMS ODT, shows that the first subfamily:

Has 35 individuals
With dates ranging from 1735 to 1918.
Is focused on Abigail Smith
Who is married to John Adams
John is in the 5^th generation
His pedigree is John⁴, Joseph³, Joseph², Henry¹
Henry was the immigrant (superscript "1")

Additional generations (beyond the immigrant) will be numbered "a", "b", etc. Note: like-named individuals (e.g. the two Henry¹ above) are not necessarily the same person.

Facelift

2005-06-18T08:31:00.000-04:00

As you can see, some changes have been made:

Names are rendered in boldface.
More extensive use is made of the acronym feature, whereby abbreviations and acronyms are identified by dotted underline (difficult to distinguish in the example, but see below). If you hover your mouse cursor over one of these, you will be rewarded with display of a "tooltip" explaining the meaning.
Spouse information lines are rendered in brown text.

These new features will be added to pages as they are created or changed, and IAC will be visible only with browsers that support CSS.

My surgery, while not uneventful...

2005-04-14T06:48:00.000-04:00

My surgery, while not uneventful, was successful (15 Mar), and I'm now in a rest home for recuperation and therapy. The surgery was a quadruple bypass with no valve involvement.

Well, I'm in hospital...

2005-03-11T18:24:00.000-05:00

I will be undergoing coronary bypass surgery probably next week. Wish me luck!

My misuse of CSS necessitates recompile

2005-02-25T12:42:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that HTML Class= attributes are case sensitive. Correcting this required recompile and upload of all pages. Genealogy, et Cetera is complete; Celebrities, et Cetera will be done today. My bad!

Another milestone: 400th surname added: CORBETT

2005-02-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

CORBETT is also ancestral, bringing that count to 220.

Traffic milestone

2005-01-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

The traffic counter at the bottom of all pages has recently ticked over a major milestone of 500,000 visits!

New format for abbreviations and acronyms

2004-12-06T19:19:00.000-05:00

I have started using a new presentation format for abbreviations and acronyms. These will have a subtle but distinctive appearance, and reward mouse hovering with a popup definition. For example:

... General Ulysses S. Grant, later 18° POTUS, accepted Lee's surrender...

The dotted underline will, unfortunately, only be seen with CSS browsers but the popup should work on most. These changes will be made as pages come up for review or are otherwise changed. It may be quite a while before the change hits all pages on the site.

Celebs: Minor style change (cross references)

2004-10-01T13:21:00.000-04:00

I have introduced a change in the way that cross references are displayed.

OLD: Mary I Tudor^qv

NEW: ^¤Mary I Tudor

Salient characteristics of the change:

The superscript symbol is changed from the string "qv" to the general currency sign "¤".
The placement is changed from after to before.
The superscript text is black without decoration (underscore).

Not all browsers see the xref indicator in the same way -- before this change as well as after.

Milestone: 1500th Celeb

2004-09-27T22:44:00.000-04:00

I just added our 1500th celebrity relation, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Navy Secretary. -R.

Improvements to Celebrities, et Cetera

2004-09-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

I'm in the midst of making some cosmetic improvements to the indices of the Celebrities branch of my site:

I finally figured out a table format that seems to work for most browsers. This will make for a neater appearance.
The images are moved to the right edge of the content area, where they don't compete with the text. Unfortunately, this requires CSS, so browsers without that capability -- e.g. OffByOne -- will see the images inside the text area, and only the text for the associated individual will flow around the image.
Better graphics for the key (in the left margin), larger and more uniform in size.
The cross-references will become links to the individual's main entry in the index. (Presently, these go to the individual's page.)
For lengthy indices, I will provide a secondary index navigation vector, e.g. on the A... page, to the names beginning with Ac, Ad, Ae, Al, Am, An, Ap, Ar, As, At, Av.
For individuals lacking their own page, I will be able to include a short text description directly on the index page.

These changes will be completed in the next few days. Presently, only the main indices are changes (A..., B..., etc.). -R.

Links from the Annex back to the ODT

2004-07-17T20:16:00.000-04:00

I have just completed the software changes that will change all future uploads to the Annex. Specifically, the reference number of each individual will be a link to than individual's place in the appropriate Outline Descent Tree.

There are some flaws. Not all individuals in an Annex file are represented in an ODT. The most common example is parents of spouses, displayed in an ODT as Father: and Mother:, but not on their own. In these cases, the link will take you to the top of the ODT.

-R.

Ancestry.com wants me to upgrade to Family & Local Histories

2004-07-15T10:06:00.000-04:00

Why I resist upgrading: (despite $40 discount from $80)

These are images, not text. And their image viewer really sucks.
- It only works with MSIE
- You have to enable it every time you use the facility
- It won't navigate from one find to the next.
- Etc.
It overlaps another of their resources (GenLib) to which I already have a subscription. (e.g. The Quaker Ogdens in America is in both. This overlap is not mentioned, leading one to believe that this represents a wholly new collection.
Dishonest statement of publication dates in their index of the contents and when showing hits on searches. E.g. Hawley's Annals of Brookfield is stated as having a publication date of 1987, when it was actually published in 1929. It may have been reprinted in 1987, but it is still the 1929 work with no additions or corrections. To state it as a 1987 work is designed to make it appear as a modern work, when it is not.

This sort of sharp merchandising is typical of the Ancestry/FTM/MyFamily conglomerate. -R.