• Tierney Christmas 1959
  • Contemplative Farmer
  • Irish-Ferry-Crossing
  • Coney Island Tierney Family 1920
  • Long Island National Cemetery
  • SS George Washington - Marie Simanek
  • Pumpkin Picking
  • Sister Mary Attracta
  • Mary Egan on Chair
  • Tall-Leg Tierneys
  • Uncle Joseph Simanek on Motorcycle Predmir, Czechoslovakia
  • Lily-at-Window

  • May10

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    Ancestry Finder Data File Import

    Posted in: DNA, Technology

    Update: I have made some changes to the Import tool – you can download the latest version at the original link listed below. See more info at the bottom of the post.

    After creating and writing up my last post on the process to automate the download of 23andme Ancestry Finder data files for your matches, I could not resist working on a way to combine all of those data files into one.

    I figured Microsoft Excel was the best common denominator to use for this process – there are any number of tools I could use to combine the files and work with them at the command line, but that would limit the number of people who could use it.

    So, here’s the quick scoop: My Excel spreadsheet is designed for use with the .CSV data files you have already downloaded from 23andme’s Ancestry Finder. (Again, see my Ancestry Finder Download Tool post for more info on that process.)

    • It will import ALL .CSV data files in a selected folder
    • It will add a column with the name of the 23andme user the data file came from. (It uses the data file name for that, so don’t rename them after you download them!)

    Then it will make you a sandwich. A nice juicy data sandwich.

    Each data row will have the source person AND matching person’s name in it – otherwise you would have a list of a few hundred thousand matches without knowing whom they belonged to!

    Read More

  • May9

    5 Comments

    Ancestry Finder Download Tool

    Posted in: DNA, Resources, Technology

    Ancestry Finder Drop DownIf you are a 23andme customer, you may have noticed that they updated their Ancestry Finder (AF) tool to make it possible to see the matches of the people with whom you share genomes. You can also download this data in comma-separated-variable (.csv) format.

    That. is. great. stuff.

    I’m sure that people will soon come up with interesting new ways to triangulate their genetic matches and learn more about their ancestry. But, there is one problem: If you are sharing your results with a few hundred people and want to get all of their AF data files, it takes a drop-down selection, wait a few seconds for AF to reload, then a button click and a Save File As click FOR EACH PERSON IN YOUR LIST.

    Holy carpal tunnel.

    I suppose 23andme might make it possible within their system to get them all at once which will make this all moot. But, I thought there must be a better way to get all of these data files and I found a slightly clunky, yet completely workable method.

    There may be more elegant ways to do this, but for now I created an Excel spreadsheet that will help you get you all the data with only a bit copying and pasting – along with some help from a Firefox add-on.

    Read More

  • May8

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    Coast and Country Podcast

    Posted in: Media, Podcast, Travel

    I haven’t posted any podcasts links lately so thought I would post information on one of my favorites – The BBC’s Coast and Country Podcast has that great radio feel, where the discussion and description of the hosts and guests as they hike and visit sites make you feel as if you are along. (A wonderful thing on a daily commute.)

    While this podcast does not have a genealogy focus, it does offer some historical discussion and people with a family history in the UK will certainly appreciate the locations they visit.

    I enjoyed the 15 March 2012 episode with in particular. The last program of host Clare Balding’s series of ‘Inspirational Walks’ was a walk around the village of Stisted with the former poet laureate Sir Andew Motion. His musings on location, family, and inspiration were both interesting and somehow calming.

    As of this writing you can find that episode in the BBC iPlayer here. If it falls off the iPlayer, you should be able to find it using the main podcast link below. Enjoy!

    BBC Coast and Country Logo

    Coast and Country

    Countryside magazine featuring people, walks and wildlife from rural Britain. Clare Balding’s ‘Ramblings’ and ‘Open Country’ with Matt Baker and Helen Mark join forces to bring you a weekly tour of the best of the British countryside. In ‘Ramblings’ Clare joins her guests on a country walk that’s been significant in their lives. ‘Open Country’ travels to a different corner of the British Isles every week, seeking out the wildlife, the landscapes and the controversies that excite the passions of local people.

  • May7

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    Book Review: The Saturdays

    Posted in: Books

    The Saturdays (The Melendy Quartet)The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    (While not a genealogy topic per se, it is a story of family and of a time in history and may appeal to genealogy folks.)

    Elizabeth Enright’s Melendy Quartet of books are ostensibly children’s books, but they are much more than that.

    I read The Saturdays with my son when he was about 6 years old and we enjoyed it very much. This last year I read it again with my 5 year old daughter and it has only gotten better on the second pass.

    The story is of four children from the ages of 6 to 13 in 1930s New York City who have decided to pool their weekly allowance. Each week one then takes the pool to use the money to go on a day out wherever they wished – a concert, a museum and others.

    I believe my kids loved the book a great deal because of the vicarious freedom they experience through the characters. But I believe the the book is much more than the value of that story line for both them and adults – Enright’s writing is beautiful at times and downright funny at others. It also captures the period very well.

    There are a few moments in the books that may seem odd to children, now so far out of context of their original time period. (Rush cheerily calling Oliver “fatso” for example, or their wandering the city on their own.) But they are very minor in comparison to today’s daily fare and a small discussion about them can only help kids with their perspective.

    Enright paints a wonderful picture of a time of innocence in the children’s lives and all of the characters have a wonderful warmth and reality about them.

    Once we read this book my daughter couldn’t wait to keep reading – and I have to say that in her more pensive moments, Enright’s writing can even make you a little teary. I heartily recommend all four books in this series to both children and adults.

    View all my reviews

  • May4

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    More.Detail.Is.It.Better.Or.What?

    Posted in: Photo, Technology

    File Naming Convention - Files List

    Click image to see larger version

    Lately I began to wonder if other researchers are as naming-convention-specific as I have become when it comes to saving records. Are they? Are you?

    I do my best to keep a standard convention for the various files types, but usually I try to keep the info within it flowing from the most general to most specific within it.

    For example, this is all one filename for a 1901 Irish Census document:
    File Naming Convention - detail

    The idea is: FileType.Year.Country.County.Town.Subtown.Address.SURNAME Names.NOTES.jpg

    While it looks a bit of overkill, it comes in especially useful with images – I use Google Picasa to work with my image sets locally. I have more than 4,700 images in my document folders alone – and that doesn’t include the few thousand family photos I have scanned so far, nor my newer and natively digital photos.

    In a perfect world, I would have used tags to categorize all of the images so I could search for things that way. But, that didn’t happen back in the early days of my research. However, the good news is that as you search within Picasa, it uses various things to find what you want.

    That includes the file names, folder names in addition to tags. So, my crazy-long file-naming conventions not only make them easier to parse when looking through folders, but help me break them into sets when searching in Picasa. Two birds with one pixel. or something.

    As a bit of trivia, did you know there’s also another neat search feature in Picasa?
    It can search for colors!

    Picasa search - White legsI’m not talking about file or folder names here- I’m talking about color within the image itself. So, type ‘BLUE’ in the Picasa search box and get all of them sky photos. Type ‘GREEN’ and get grass photos.

    Funnily enough, in my photo sets, if you type ‘WHITE’… the first result is a photo of my legs.

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