2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 13 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 22 posts. There were 6 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 617kb.

The busiest day of the year was April 14th with 44 views. The most popular post that day was Using TMG with DropBox across multiple computers.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were wedding.ebonito.com, facebook.com, caroleriley.id.au, unlockthepast.com.au, and mail.yahoo.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for tmg version 8, tmg sydney blog, dropbox tmg, the master genealogist 8, and tmg dropbox.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Using TMG with DropBox across multiple computers January 2010
6 comments

2

Non-person People June 2010

3

Australian Electoral Roll tag types September 2010
1 comment

4

Import from RootsMagic September 2010
1 comment

5

Transportation tag type September 2010

Australian Electoral Roll tag types

Another discussion on the mailing list a couple of months ago was about electoral rolls. Here are some examples:

Carole Riley‘s electoral roll tag is one-size-fits-all with the details of the division/district/etc in the memo field:

[P] <was|and [PO] were> listed on the <[M1]> electoral roll <with  occupation [M2]> <[D]> <[L]>

Kay Sturgeon‘s electoral roll tag:

[:CR:][:CR:][P] <was|and [PO] were>registered<[D]> [M1] Electoral Roll <[L]> ; [M2]

Joseph Cooten Tucker was registered in 1903 Division of Wide Bay, Subdivision Drummer’s Creek Electoral Roll in Cambria Flat, QLD, Australia; occupation miner.

As a married man:

Joseph Cooten Tucker and Eva Lillian Tucker were registered in 1913 Division of Lilley, Subdivision Enoggera Electoral Roll in Alice Street, Newmarket, QLD, Australia; occupations Railway Employee and Home Duties.

The added extra I have done is to create a reminder memo under the Other tab as under which shows me exactly how I should be entering the information up to keep it consistent and showing the source numbers for each state which have different repositories.  I just copy paste Division and Subdivision sometimes it changes to Ward or District.

[:CR:][:CR:][P] <was|and [PO] were>registered<[D]> [M1] Electoral Roll <[L]> ; [M2]
Division of   , Subdivision of   || occupation/s
ACT   177
NSW 120
QLD  167
VIC    85
WA   122

Jonathan Auld gave two examples with separate male and female sentence structures:

NSW(1901-54)

[P] is listed on the electoral roll of [D] in the State of [STATE], District
of [COUNTY] and Subdistrict of [CITY]. His address was [DETAIL].< His
occupation is listed as [M].>

[P] is listed on the electoral roll of [D] in the State of [STATE], District
of [COUNTY] and Subdistrict of [CITY]. Her address was [DETAIL].< Her
occupation is listed as [M].>

NSW(1842-64)

[P] is listed on the electoral roll of [D] in the State of [STATE], District
of [COUNTY] and Ward of [CITY].< His address was [DETAIL].>< His occupation
is listed as [M].>

[P] is listed on the electoral roll of [D] in the State of [STATE], District
of [COUNTY] and Subdistrict of [CITY].< Her address was [DETAIL].>< Her
occupation is listed as [M].>

Apart from the default Principal and Witness roles, I also have a
VIC(1856-1936) and WA(1903-54) as the VIC & WA rolls are the ones I have
been using most frequently.

Transportation tag type

We had a discussion about tag types for convict transportation on the mailing list a couple of months ago. Here’s what we came up with.

Carole Riley created a rather optimistic tag called Transportation, “optimistic because although I think I have a convict or two I can’t yet prove who they were so I haven’t actually used it. I imagined that when I came to use it I would have varying details about the crime and the sentence, and perhaps the trial, so I wanted to keep it simple and flexible. Obviously if I managed to find records of the trial and/or the surgeon-superintendent’s account of the voyage I would need separate tags to make more of a story out of it.”

[P] <was|and [PO] were> transported to < [L]> <arriving on [D]> <[M]>

Kerry Farmer‘s Transportation tag (also optimistic – having Convict2) is:

[RF:Convict] <and [R:Convict2]> arrived <at [L]> <aboard the [M1]> <[D]> <[M2]>

Linda Bishop‘s transportation tag is

[:CR:][:TAB:][R:transported] was [RG:transported2] to Australia, <on [DD],> <from [L],> <on the ship [M],> <[M2],> <[WO]>

James Ewens was transported to Australia, on Sun. 19 Jul 1818, from Portsmouth, Hampshire,, on the ship “General Stuart” to NSW Australia, with Daniel Rapley, Henry Jupp, James Jupp, James Nye senr, James Nye jnr, William Brown. Leaving behind his wife and children, Hannah Nye, John Ewens, Lucy Ewens and Thomas Ewens.

“I made a non-person called transported2 to link all the people that were transported ( I have 11 so far). I also made a tags for members of the family left behind

[:CR:][:TAB:][RS:wifeofcon] <[WM]> [P] was transported to Australia, <on the ship [M],> <on [D],> <from [L]> <[WM2]>

Her husband James Ewens was transported to Australia, on the ship “General Stuart” to NSW Australia, on 19 Jul 1818, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, also transported was her father James Nye and her brother James Nye jnr.

Kay Sturgeon reworked hers to read:

[:CR:][:CR:][P] <|and [PO]> was transported <on [D]> <from [L]> <aboard the ship [M1]> landing <[M2]> <[M3]>.

Thomas Coombs was transported on 18 Jul 1810 from England aboard the ship “Indian” landing Sydney on 16 Dec 1810 mastered by Captain Andrew Barclay. The surgeon was a Mr. Maine.

Import from RootsMagic

I’m no expert on alternative family tree programs but I thought RootsMagic was a reasonably popular one. Today I’ve tried to import a gedcom file sent to me by a client from RootsMagic into TMG, and I can’t.

TMG can’t handle UFT-8 gedcom files.

So I used Family Tree Maker instead.

I bought FTM 2005 Starter Edition for a few bucks to see what had changed since the version I used before I saw the light and bought TMG. It gave me 712 warnings for 8701 people, but that’s OK. I only want to look at it, not change it.

So now I have to learn to get around FTM all over again.

Hawkesbury Family History Fair – review

Jill at Geniaus has written an excellent review of the Fair that is worth looking at:

http://geniaus.blogspot.com/2010/08/hawkesbury-family-history-fair-speakers.html

She attended Bruce’s morning demonstration and came to introduce herself to Linda and I at the TMG desk. Great to put a face to the name after all this time!

Using DropBox with TMG – Conclusion

I’ve written previously about my experiments with DropBox as a way to keep my TMG project in sync. Today I have abandoned the experiment.

It isn’t because it doesn’t work – it works very well. As long as you are disciplined it works very well. You have to:

• Close TMG on one machine before opening it on another
• Give DropBox a chance to upload changes before turning off the machine
• Give Dropbox a chance to download changes on the other machine before opening TMG

All of this didn’t cause me any problems after an initial period of adjustment. What caused problems for me was having projects in more than one place.

I’d originally copied my project to the DropBox folder rather than moving it. Initially I wanted it as a backup, and then I just forgot it was there.

All the other projects I work with remained where they were. I have multiple client projects going at any one time, and they all stayed in the default TMG folder. I didn’t want them on both computers. So my default folder for opening a project remained the same.

I had been working on a couple of client projects and then I added quite a few new people from a chart a relative had sent me some time ago. When I went back to my project they were gone. I wasn’t sure which project I had used, the DropBox one or the default one? Neither machine had the new people in either folder, and my heart sank. I’d felt guilty taking the time to enter them in the first place; I really didn’t have time to do it all over again.

I was saved by a backup. I had continued to allow TMG to save my backups to the same place when I closed it down. The second-to-last one of these had my new people in it.

I could probably work out how this disaster happened in the first place and put another procedure in place to avoid it, but the truth is that the risk of issues like this outweighs the benefits of the almost instant synchronisation between machines that DropBox gives me.

So I’ve given up.

I have another method of synchronisation in place that I use for everything that is NOT on DropBox, and maybe this was the cause of the problem. Perhaps if I only ever worked with the one project I wouldn’t have had a problem, or if I used DropBox for all projects. My free 2GB account may have been overloaded. There is just not enough time in my day to spend it trying to resolve these sorts of problems.

I don’t want to dissuade anyone from trying it, though. Just letting you know my experience.

TMG Sydney has a Facebook page

When it has a few more fans I can give it a more user-friendly URL, but in the meantime it is http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=138659666162627#!/pages/TMG-Sydney/138659666162627

If you have a Facebook account please join in!

Free upgrade: Second Site v3.2.2

Notification from John Cardinal, author of Second Site, a program to turn a TMG project into a website:

 

To: Second Site News subscribers

From: John Cardinal

I am pleased to announce that Second Site Version 3.2.2 is now available.

This version includes a new option to resize embedded image exhibits and a few other adjustments and fixes.

You can read more about the new features in the latest issue of Second Site News:  http://ss.johncardinal.com/ssn045.htm

And as usual, all the changes are summarized in the Change Log:  http://ss.johncardinal.com/changelog.htm

Current Second Site 3 users can download the installer here:  http://ss.johncardinal.com/downloads.htm

This is a free upgrade for registered users of Second Site 3.

 

Non-person People

I was inspired last year by a presentation given last year at our 2nd Annual Conference by Linda about how she uses TMG to keep track of a whole parish, including the churches and other buildings within it.

Last month I gave a presentation to the group meeting at the Society of Australian Genealogists about my experiments in this area. These are the PowerPoint slides from the presentation. I’m sorry they are later than I was hoping, I couldn’t figure out how to put them on a non-self hosted blog, but now I think I’ve done it. Let me know if it doesn’t work.

To download the Powerpoint presentation click on Non-person People

To view the Powerpoint presentation on Slideshare click on Non person people in TMG

View more presentations from caroleriley.

3rd Annual TMG Weekend Conference

The 3rd Annual TMG Weekend Conference was held at the Penrith Valley Inn last weekend 9-11th April 2010. Here is a photo of most of the happy participants, taken after lunch on the Sunday.

Photo courtesy Jenny Joyce

A good time was had by all, and we all learned a lot. Presentations were given by the participants, and covered such subjects as:

• Roles
• Reference numbers
• Filters
• Privacy
• Sources and Repositories
• Book Manager
• Chart Finishing
• List of Events
• Custom Toolbars

There was something for everyone, from beginners to the very advanced. We were all impressed by the complexity and thoroughness of Adam’s roles, and a bit concerned that he has too much time on his hands to think these up. Brian and Linda gave us very different ways of creating meaningful reference numbers. Graham showed us how to set filters to extract data, a topic that I had really not fully got the hang of. I showed various ways of hiding data from reports and other output, and then discussed how to hide people such as illegitimate children and the actual fathers of children. Barb came all the way from Canberra to give us an overview of sources and repositories, and to show us how she touches up charts to make them fit.

Kerry showed us how to use book manager to run a series of reports automatically, as well as how to produce an actual book. Bruce showed us various ways to use the List of Events, and Linda had us all playing with our toolbars. I will always remember learning how to put a button on my toolbar to bring up the Windows characters and putting a £ sign on it so I would know what it was for.

Dinner on the Friday night was at a restaurant and I’m sorry I missed it. Dinner on Saturday night was on the banks of the Nepean River at the Log Cabin on a lovely warm evening with the bats flying overhead.

If you are interested in TMG and want to get more out of it I highly recommend attending next year’s conference.