Roger's Ramblings

RootsTech 2012 Live Streaming Schedule

Jan 242012

According to a post by Thomas MacEntee the sessions to be streamed live from RootsTech 2012 have been announced. I’ve consolidated them here into a single easy to view list…

**RootsTech 2012 Streaming Schedule**
Thursday 2 Feb		Friday 3 Feb		Saturday 4 Feb

8:30 -10:00	Keynote – Inventing the Future, as a Community – Jay Verkler	8:30- 9:30	Keynote – Exabyte Social Clouds and other Monstrosities – Josh Coates	8:30 – 9:30	Keynote – Making the most of technology to further the family history industry – Tim Sullivan

		9:45 – 10:45	Publish Your Genealogy Online – Laura Prescott	9:45 – 10:45	Genealogy Podcasts and Blogs 101 – Lisa Louise Cooke

11:00 – 12:00	Do I Trust the Cloud? – D. Joshua Taylor	11:00 – 12:00	Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines – Robert Gardner	11:00 – 12:00	Future of FamilySearch Family Tree – Ron Tanner

1:45 – 2:45	Effective Database Search Tactics – Kory Meyerink	1:45 – 2:45	Genealogists “Go Mobile” – Sandra Crowley	1:45 – 2:45	Privacy in a Collaborative Environment – Noah Tutak

3:00 – 4:00	Twitter – It’s Not Just “What I Had For Breakfast” Anymore – Thomas MacEntee	3:00 – 4:00	Google’s Toolbar and Genealogy – David Barney

4:15 – 5:15	Eleven Layers of Online Searches – Barbara Rennick

I know I’ll be tuning in to listen to a number of these – how about you??

Shutterfly Book about last year’s trip to Scotland

General News, Photo Gallery, Travel No Responses »

Nov 222011

Thanks to TripAdvisor, I got a coupon for a free book from Shutterfly – who could turn that down!!

Here it is here:

Click here to view this photo book larger

Photo books are the perfect gift for any occasion.

and posting this “should” get me $10 off the next one

Northern Lights 24 Oct 2011

Home, Photo Gallery No Responses »

Oct 252011

Alerted by a post on facebook from Todd Dopkowski that there were northern lights devloping over his place, Lisa and I looked outside around 8 pm, but didn’t see much. Foolishly we didn’t then get all the camera gear setup.

By 9pm it was showing, and 30 minutes later it was on. Then the scramble for the tripod, camera etc started. These are the pictures that Lisa took on her Nikon D50.

At the same time, Roger fumbled around with his Canon PowerShot S2 IS trying to find a setting that would work, and managed this poor imitation of Lisa’s pictures..

Roger's Camera's Interpretation

There were some amazing other pictures captured in various places. Here are a few links:

Album of viewer submitted pictures on WoodTV in Grand Rapids (includes one of Lisa’s images from above)

Aurora Gallery on SpaceWeather.com - contains links to some amazing shots taken in the USA, Canada and Norway.

This amazing time lapse taken over 2 hours by Michael Gavin at East Martin, Michigan – about 20 miles south of us:

WOW!!!

The Ancestors’ Geneameme

Genealogy 2 Responses »

Oct 162011

From Jill Ball – Geniaus – and Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun we have this tonight…

The Ancestors’ Geneameme

The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item.

Which of these apply to you?

Can name my 16 great-great-grandparents [Yes - see this 5 generation chart]
Can name over 50 direct ancestors [Yes - 261 - see this ahnentafel listing]
Have photographs or portraits of my 8 great-grandparents [Yes - see this 5 generation chart although I notice there I haven't linked up a picture of Mum's Mum yet]
Have an ancestor who was married more than three times [Not that I know of]
Have an ancestor who was a bigamist [Not that I know of]
Met all four of my grandparents [No - 3 of the 4 - my Mum's Dad died when my Mum was 11 years old]
Met one or more of my great-grandparents [None]
Named a child after an ancestor [No Children]
Bear an ancestor’s given name/s [No - no ancestors that I know about called Roger]
Have an ancestor from Great Britain or Ireland [Yes - apart from parents and grandparents born in New Zealand, one great grandparent born in Australia, all the rest are from England and Scotland, and maybe Ireland]
Have an ancestor from Asia
Have an ancestor from Continental Europe
Have an ancestor from Africa
Have an ancestor who was an agricultural labourer [Yes - many of my ancestors were Agricultural Labourers]
Have an ancestor who had large land holdings [None that I know of]
Have an ancestor who was a holy man – minister, priest, rabbi [Almost - my father was a Lay Preacher who took services at distant churches from time to time.]
Have an ancestor who was a midwife [Not that I know of]
Have an ancestor who was an author [Not that I know of]
Have an ancestor with the surname Smith, Murphy or Jones [No - lucky me]
Have an ancestor with the surname Wong, Kim, Suzuki or Ng
Have an ancestor with a surname beginning with X
Have an ancestor with a forename beginnining with Z
Have an ancestor born on 25th December [Yes - Alexander Oliver and John Bourgoigne]
Have an ancestor born on New Year’s Day
Have blue blood in your family lines [No - all red as far as I know...]
Have a parent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [No - both born in New Zealand]
Have a grandparent who was born in a country different from my country of birth [No - all 4 born in New Zealand]
Can trace a direct family line back to the eighteenth century
Can trace a direct family line back to the seventeenth century or earlier
Have seen copies of the signatures of some of my great-grandparents [No, but have copy of great great grandfather's will - that's better isn't it?]
Have ancestors who signed their marriage certificate with an X
Have a grandparent or earlier ancestor who went to university [Not that I know of]
Have an ancestor who was convicted of a criminal offence [Not that I know of]
Have an ancestor who was a victim of crime [seems quite possible, but I don't know about it]
Have shared an ancestor’s story online or in a magazine (Tell us where) [Some of these stories are my ancestors, others are about relatives.]
Have published a family history online or in print (Details please) [I think this website counts ]
Have visited an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries [Yes - have been to several of the farms in Scotland where my ancestors worked as Labourers, and in a couple of cases seen what was likely the Bothee they lived in. Dovecot Hall was the last residence in Scotland of the Houliston family before the emigrated to New Zealand in 1860.]
Still have an ancestor’s home from the 19th or earlier centuries in the family
Have a family bible from the 19th Century [Yes - have the bible of this couple]
Have a pre-19th century family bible

The Blizzard of 2011

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Feb 022011

From 1-2 February 2011 we had quite a blizzard – not quite an outright record for snowfall – but the official recording at the Grand Rapids airport a few miles from us is 16 inches – second biggest snowfall in a 24 hour period. We did break the records for 1 and 2 February for most snow on each of those days. Some pictures around the front of our house are below.

Road conditions were terrible, and for the first time since at least Nov 1993 Lisa didn’t attempt to go to work even though we have a 4 wheel drive Jimmy. The County road crews got our road cleared by mid-morning.

Fixing your .Mac Homepage Sites

Mac OS X, Software 6 Responses »

Nov 162010

A bit over a month ago, Apple’s MobileMe users were sent this message

The letter from Apple that announced the "death" of our current .Mac HomePage pages

that said in effect “despite what we told you, and what you’re paying $99 a year for, we’re going to stop fully supporting your old .Mac HomePage web sites on 8 November” – in particular images, movies and files that were shared on the site would no longer be displayed.

Catching Up A Bit

General News 2 Responses »

Nov 082010

It’s been a while since I posted here – the last one was a series of images so that they could be seen by WoodTV 8 here in Grand Rapids to use as images on screen for a segment I was going to be part of to publicise the Western Michigan Genealogical Society’s Got Ancestors?! 2010 Are They Who You Think They Are? with Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak.

Don Bryant and I did get to appear on their show eightWest to talk about genealogy and our upcoming Seminar – see this post.

Since then it’s been quite a bit of work getting things ready for the Seminar – arrangements at the Prince Conference Center, arrangements with the speaker Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, handling the registrations as they came in, make name tags, prepare syllabus for printing, organise some great door prizes, and other things I likely can’t remember.

We had a GREAT weekend, with the presentation of Michelle Obama’s Roots on Friday night, and then 4 GREAT sessions with Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak on Saturday.

Halloween has been and gone, so has our annual trip to “The Haunt” with Kyle and Zoe, and we got to finally meet young Derek Smith – son of Jeremy and Jennifer Smith. I’ll try to put some posts and photo galleries up of these events in the hopefully not too distant future.