Midwest Computer Genealogists
newsletter
April 2003
The Midwest Computer Genealogy group meets the 3rd Saturday of each
month. Our April 19th meeting will be at Foxwood Springs in
Raymore. Foxwood Springs is about a mile east of highway 71 on
highway 58. Foxwood's web site is http://www.foxwoodsprings.org
Our MCG program on April 19th will be put on by a representative from
MicroCenter will present a program on ways to protect our genealogical
information from viruses and how best to back up our data. There will
also be time to ask questions and receive answers.
FOG
Our next meetings will be May 3rd and June 7th from 09:00 am to 11:00,
(These are the 2nd Saturday of each month) at the Blue Valley Library,
151st and Antioch. The Blue Valley Library address is 9000 W. 151st
St. The meeting room with a capacity of 75 is right inside the door.
Bring friends! Jim writes: "We will continue to discuss the new
program RootsMagic. The newly released RM is, in my opinion, so
riddled with problems as to be dangerous. I recommend waiting until
the promised patch, due in about a month, to see if it makes the
needed improvements. Meanwhile, we will also discuss Family Origins
which most of us still use. " If you have questions you may
e-mail them to Jim Stout at jimstout@earthlink.com . He likes to know
what we need help on.
TMG
The TMG (The Master Genealogist) group meeting is held the 2nd
Saturday of each month starting at 10:00 AM. The meetings are at
the Cedar-Roe Library at 5120 Cedar in Roeland Park KS this is (West
of the shopping center). For questions contact Judy Revare at
913-491-1768 or email to judy@revare.com . You can also check
these web sites for TMG for upcoming news; http://chezjacq.com/tmg
and http://jacq.org/tmg.
REPORT OF MCG ASSEMBLY MARCH 15, 2003
Sixteen Men and 8 women gathered in Bromwell Lounge at
the NBA Foxwood Springs Living Center, Raymore, MO, to attend the
monthly assembly of the Midwest Computer Genealogists. President Don
Bjuland welcomed members, visitors and presided.
A motion was made, seconded, discussed and carried
to add the names of the President and the Vice President of this MCG
to the signature cards on file with the MCG checking account.
This act will enable these MCG officers to sign a check, Individually,
when and if the need arises when the Treasurer is not available.
(Editor'sNote; this has been completed as voted on)
ROWENA SHAFFER thanked LELAND KEITH and
GEORGE WISZNEAUCKAS for their help in setting up the projector for
this and other MCG programs hosted at this NBA Living Center.
Rowena also thanked MARJORIE SLAVENS, DON BJULAND, BILL HAWKINS and
IVAN WAITE, respectively, for their work contributing to the success
of the MCG.
As Program Chair, Rowena announced that staff at
the Micro-Center Computer Store in Overland Park, KS, would provide
the program for our MCG In April. The focus of this program will be
the security of computer generated and Genealogy data.
Rowena then Introduced and thanked the panelists
for today's program. The panelists included: JAMES STOUT,
MARJORIE SLAVENS, JACK REVARE, and TOM WILKERSON, who were assisted
visually by MARJORIE SLAVENS on the keyboard of a laptop computer.
JACK REVARE announced the holders of library cards
from the Mid-Continent Library could easily access the Heritage Quest
data Bank held by the Kentucky Historical Society.
Much of the discussion for the remainder of the
meeting was focused on the use of computer software related to
creating and maintaining computerized genealogical files.
Topics discussed in detail, Included, but was not limited to:
1) Use of Eudora V-5 e-mall service and
the problems of opening images included in the message along with the
text;
2) How to print a screen and the use of
the Clipboard feature of an electronic computer;
3) How to execute a game using a
computer with Windows or XP operating system?
4) How to print a 'TIP' using Excel
software?
5) How to list "step" family
members when using computer genealogy software?
6) How to reconstruct data for several
generations lost by an electronic glitch or by error of computer
operator?
7) How to merge GEDCOM files from one
software program to another?
8) How to determine which genealogy
software package is best one to meet needs?
9) How to remove "real audio"
Icon from lower right corner of screen?
New hardware and software products discussed included:
1) Roots Magic genealogy software,
current version and version now under development;
2) 'Ultimate Family Tree' as compared to
Family Tree Maker and Family Origins software;
3) "Jump Drive" or external
"Flash Drive" as a portable device to transport 128MB of
data from one USB connection to another computer with USB connector;
(this device which contains a 'flash card' can be used with either
Windows, XP, or MAC hardware; (a 128mb flash card can hold data
contained on 88 1.4 mb floppy disks)
4) portable scanning devices which can
be carried by researchers and used as a document scanner, as compared
to the use of a digital camera with a portable laptop computer or
'flash card' reader;
New web sites announced and discussed include:
1) www.topozone.com
- used to locate topography map of area of interest;
3) www.mallwasher.net
- recommended as a shareware ($20.) to bounce and to reduce e-mail
SPAM; mallwasher software also contains 'virus alert';
4) www.bigfoot.com
This program will forward your mail to another server. If you change
ISP's this could forward your mail to your new ISP.
This assembly was adjourned after 11 AM. Ivan Waite,
Reporter
Combination Secretary and President's Comments for the month.
We are now into April for the year of 2003 and it has been a rough
time of the year for me. Got a cold or something over six weeks
ago and it will not leave but stays around and makes you miserable.
Was to Doctor once and called him a couple of more times to make an
appointment but he just called in some prescriptions to the drug store
and the last one seems to be helping some.
Our group year starts July 1st so we need to start thinking about
elections. I hope we will have some new people step forward and
take over some leadership positions so please put on the thinking caps
and stand up to be counted. Programs is an area that's can take
all the help that everyone can give. What do you want from the
group at the meetings, do you need help on any topic?
A few months back I said that Word had froze up my computer and would
not work, well it is back working again thanks to the help of some
kind people. Rowena and Marjorie forwarded a message to me from
Darrell Hampton and his Word was acting the same as mine. He
checked with Gateway and they told him what was wrong. It seems
there is a file normal.dot that is hiding deep inside of Office and
that file is sort of the master template for word and it had become
corrupted. Will all you had to do was delete or as I did at
first changed the file name and what do you know Word would load
again. It had a few problems in its operation plus Excel was not
starting up correctly when you clicked on a Excel file in windows
explorer so I reload Office 2000 as a repair install and everything
clicks along fairly good now. Still have to go back into Word
and correct some style templates so they set up the work, as I like
the page to look. By the way I still like some of the features
in Star Office 6 especially when I copy email files into a word
processors as Star Office to me does a better job of auto-formatting
the pasted file and getting rid of the short lines from the email
message.
In the past I had talked to a computer guru about my problems with
Word and his advice was to reformat the hard drive as Windows ME has a
lot of buds in it and is no good, then buy a copy of Windows 90 Pro
second edition to put back in. Also would have to load all the
old programs and drivers and hope it all would work again. By
the way Windows 98 would have cost me about $175. Sure a lot of
different on advice you can get on computer to fix problems.
I have been reading the FOG announcements on RootsMagic and so I was
surprised the other day when I got the new issue of GC or Genealogical
Computing and it had a 9-page review of the new software. Some
of the featured comments were "The find feature in the explorer
allows searching on nearly any criteria or combination available on an
individual record: One of the best features of RootsMagic is the
superb handling of sources, which are defined once and reused as often
as required: Data conversion from other programs is relatively
painless: In addition to the standard pedigree charts and family group
sheets, the programs offers some interesting reports: There are dozens
of lists available, most with options to tailor the data for various
purposes: Even though this was a pre-release edition, we found very
few glitches in the functionality. Wonder if he was paid to do
it and make them look good or was the pre-release edition a better
program than what was released?
Got a notice that TMG had a new update to TMG version 5 so I
downloaded all 11 Meg plus of it and it took about one hour for me.
It installs itself by itself and it did make a lot of big changes to
TMG. The big one was how much the program slowed down to do a
job such as printing out a report of one form or another. Also a
lot of option screens to go though to set up things the way you would
like to see the work done.
By the way for all you Word users did you know that if you didn't get
the capital letter to come out correctly as you typed away it is
possible to put the cursor in front of the wrong capitalizing and just
hold down the shift key and hit F3 and it will change the capitalizing
of the word. It will cycle from the first letter capitalized to
the whole word in caps or all small case. I find it a lot easier
that deleting then retyping it correctly.
Don
Member comments and helps sent to me
Did you know that the letters I and J were interchangeable four
hundred years ago? So were the letters U and V, as Kip explains. In
fact, W literally means "double U" yet it looks like a
double-V to modern eyes. That is because a U in olden days was written
like a modern day V. Kip also points out how the letter R is often
written upside-down in old handwriting, and a double S often had the
first S written as an F, such as "witnefsed" in place of
"witnessed."
From J. Suman
www.cnn.com has
weather on their page. Check the continent you want such as Europe and
then the country. Gives temperatures in F and C for today and
the forecast for the next five days.
Both From email list
Big merger puts most of eggs in one basket
Genealogy's two commercial powerhouses now have a single corporate
family tree. In a move that rocked the family history world,
MyFamily.com and A&E Television Networks (AETN) announced Tuesday
that MyFamily, owner of online genealogy giant Ancestry.com, has
acquired Genealogy.com, producer of the top-selling Family Tree Maker
software. The deal puts Ancestry.com, RootsWeb.com and Genealogy.com
all under the MyFamily umbrella--and allows MyFamily to overwhelmingly
dominate the Internet genealogy business.
Together, these Web sites receive more than 10 million visitors every
month and boast more than 1 million paid subscriptions. MyFamily will
also receive promotion on AETN as part of the deal. "We're
excited to bring these two strong companies together to better serve
consumers and the genealogy community," says Tom Stockham,
president and CEO of MyFamily. "It's a great strategic fit and
underscores an opportunity to serve the growing market for family
history products."
MyFamily plans to take control of Genealogy.com's management, but will
operate it as a separate division, along with Ancestry and RootsWeb.
All Web sites will continue to operate, but Genealogy.com's Fremont,
Calif., headquarters will move to MyFamily's home in Provo, Utah.
From Family Tree magazine email
ELECTRONIC RECORDS GALORE
Research your family history and discover more about your ancestors
from the comfort of your home. The National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA) recently made 50 million historical records
available online. The new Access to Archival Databases (AAD) System
allows researchers to obtain electronic records with the click of a
mouse. Records cover a variety of topics including the Civil War,
battlefields, historic sites, immigration, necrology, space flight,
naval history and much more. The electronic holdings in the database
contain material from more than 30 archival series. These series
pertain to specific persons, geographic areas, organizations or dates.
NARA helps put the information in context by providing you with code
lists, explanatory notes from NARA archivists, and for some series or
files, related documents.
To search AAD, select a series of electronic records. Choose a
specific data file within a series and enter search criteria to access
relevant records. Once you have records that match your research
interests, print them or save them as an electronic file. You won't
find paper records here, however. The Archival Research Catalog (ARC)
features NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC, area, its
regional archives and presidential libraries. Visit NARA's Web site to
learn more about AAD and ARC. Their web is http://www.archives.gov/aad/
.
From Family Tree magazine email
LIBRARIES
From email list
MAPS
Here is a useful site for genealogists. It is www.topozone.com
. You can download a map for any place in the USA.
From Jack Revare
BLM
Here is the address for the Bureau of Land Management. http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/
It is a good tool and a work in progress. A word of caution for
those who might not have used the BLM web site before only if land was
purchased from the US under the 1862 Homestead Act will a transaction
appear here. If land was purchased from any other party, the
transaction will not appear here even though the land might have been
called a "homestead."
From email list
Reminder if you change your email address let me know as the
newsletter will not be delivered and I will probably remove your name
from the address list. Gets to be fun to run down the new
addresses each month. Just send the new address to dbjuland@att.net
and I can then update my address list.
Contact members of the MCG group are as follows:
Don Bjuland (editor) dbjuland@att.net
Group dues are still $12 a year and the year runs from June 30th to
July 1st of the following year. New member dues are prorated at
a dollar a month for balance of club year remaining.
You may send your dues payment to
William Hawkins
5436 Flint
Shawnee, KS 66203
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