July 2013 - Hows it going?

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mardler
Site Admin
Posts: 306
Joined: October 4th, 2009, 6:28 pm

July 2013 - Hows it going?

Post by mardler »

Hello folks. This month's newsletter is a LOT shorter and more internally focused than usual. It's also earlier, because tomorrow I start a spell of four weeks during which I will be sailing for 23 days or so. Wish me luck!

Early in the month, Family Tree Maker, the software program we use to manage our data crashed on me several times. I didn't realize that it wasn't working properly for several days until I came to do our weekly upload to the main site. I had to work back through six days of daily backups until I found one that did work. That left me having to recreate the prior six days of work. Not a good start, but thank goodness we take at least daily backup copies of our work.

After correspondence with the very helpful folks over at Ancestry.com, I was told that we are bumping up against the upper limits of what is possible within Microsoft's .NET framework that they use to program FTM. So we need to change software.

Eighteen months ago when I made my presentation at the Who Do You Think You Are" show in London, I'd anticipated that that would happen sooner or later. I suppose we were fortunate to have had that extra time, but now we are learning a new program. I've had plenty of advice from other members of the Guild of One-Name Studies and have made a tentative selection of Family Historian.

After 4 or 5 days, it's going well, but much of our present file has to be re-jigged. It turns out that with the increasing popularity of family history, software is getting increasingly complex and departing further and further from the GEDCOM 5.5 standard. Family Tree Maker departs from that standard by quite a way which has meant that we have to recast much of our data. That's taking a while.

So, the result is that we have added only 400 records this month. On the bright side, we have met with two correspondents recently and have been given a lot of information to absorb. We are running behind at present for obvious reasons. So please do bear with us and if your material does not appear within a month or so, feel free to remind us. I may be tempting fate as I say this, but all your emails are currently safe!

All the best for the high summer or, if you're down under, stay warm
Paul
phowes7@yahoo.com
Posts: 12
Joined: December 16th, 2009, 11:37 pm

Re: July 2013 - Hows it going?

Post by phowes7@yahoo.com »

Hi Paul,

Again thanks for all you hard work. I still forward it to my daughter and hope she is getting my twin granddaughters involved.

I love the Hows it going? My brother and I as kids had a friend that was very tiny and her last name was Minney. My older brother used to tease her and always say to her upon greeting, "How's Minnie Mouse?". (Taking Minnie Mouse from the Walt Disney character of Mickey Mouse's girlfriend Minnie) And she would come right back at him by saying, "How's Howes Howes?" Still laugh about it to this day.

Happy and safe sailing.
Paul Arthur Howes from Boston, USA
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