A quick post for today – and not a directly genealogical one, but a very useful one in my opinion.

Whether genealogy-related or not, I’m sure you all have had a time when you needed to move a whole bunch of files from one place to another. Or, perhaps you wanted to move some files at some regular interval?

Did you want to only move these files if they were newer? Or perhaps put them in a folder automagically named to include the date or other information? Then I have the tool for you!

I have used this nifty little Replicator utility from Karenware.com for many years now, and it is terrific.

Of course, one could write a command line batch file to do some of the functionality of the tool, and then set up a Windows (or Mac) task to run at certain times. But, have you used Windows task scheduler? Harumph. I’ve had to completely delete functioning tasks and recreate them from scratch at odd times after a previously functioning task decided to stop working.

Or one could even drag and drop files and folders by hand between two windows – but what happens when the copy or move fails for some reason? Was it because of disk space, or you hit escape or cancel by mistake? Who knows?

Replicator makes it all much easier and includes a graceful exit for problems with logging that will give you a clue to what happened. And it is free. Click here to visit that site for more information and to download the tool.

Note: For whatever reason, there is a slightly newer version 3.6.9 available over on Cnet, although I am not sure what changes were made from the 3.6.8 version on Karenware.com.

After many years in technology, I am probably what could be termed a “power user” in most facets of computing.
Except Flappy Bird. Never played it, and now I never shall. 🙁

But, if you fellow tweeters are anything like me, you may not be searching The Twitter for best effect. Did you know there are advanced filters available to search for things like images, news, videos, or sandwiches? (Well, maybe not the last one, but then I shouldn’t finish blog posts at lunch time.)

As you can see in the image above, the format is not too difficult to grasp – and even works when searching from tweeter clients, such as Hootsuite.

If you aren’t keen on massaging search strings via keyboard, you can always search directly on the Twitter.com site proper. Once you search for a word, you should see clickable menus on the left hand side of the search results.

The top menu filters by media content types, the next one to filter by “All people” or “People you follow”, and the last to filter by location using “Everywhere” or “Near you”.

If that’s still not enough for you, then you must really, really like The Twitter. Click on Advanced Search on the first menu to find a form where you can get even more granular in your search efforts by limiting to phrases, particular accounts, or by emotion (using common emoticons.)

Back to keyboard filtering, for those of the old school mindset: If you’d like a handy dandy set of search examples, see the table below.

Table Source 

A site well-known to genealogists has this dandy message about cookies that pops up across the top of one’s screen. Over. and over. and over. and over.

I finally took a minute to look into it, and seems someone from their support forum helpfully mentioned to another (un-)interested party that when one’s browser has the “do not track” setting enabled, there is no way to stop the cookie message.

She also suggested that their developers “would love to her feedback regarding this banner.”

I have sent them the following message/request, and am also posting it here in a stand of anti-cookie message on all sites. LET US STAND TOGETHER AND EAT ALL THE COOKIES.

Feedback message:

Over the last few months I’ve found the “cookie warning” at the top of the page comes back over and over and is terrifically annoying. I see in the online support forum that someone said it is related to the “do not track” browser setting and that there is no way to stop the message if that setting is enabled.

They also mentioned that the Developers would love to hear feedback, so here’s mine:

1. Do Not Track is enabled because I want it to be.
2. Every site and their grandmother’s site on the Internet uses cookies. It is a staple of the Internet diet.
If someone doesn’t already know this, then the message is only going to confuse them – “Wait WHAT? THEY ARE TRACKING ME” the more uninformed paranoid might say. I doubt any of the uninformed are saying “Oh, They’re tracking me – GREAT I WAS LONELY.”

If some crazy legal thing has occurred that is making such a message necessary, I would have to say there is probably a better way to implement it. I do not have this problem on any other site – when I do see cookie messages, they are always one-off’s, at least until I clear my browser cache. Which of course, ironically, clears out one’s cookies.

So, Dear Developers,
Please make the cookie message go away. Or at least send me some real cookies. Chocolate chip. no nuts.
thx.
.JT.

After several years of intermittent tracking down possibly related Tierney family records, I have not really gotten anywhere with transcription-type records from sites like Roots Ireland.

I have little to go on in Ireland for that part of the tree. While Tierney is not too bad a surname to search for in the scheme of things, they are hide and seek champions. Also, my related McDonald and Murphy lines are really giving me a run for my money.

And, after many attempts at triangulating relevant records on Roots Ireland, the money is running out.

If you don’t have time for the long version of this story, feel free to scroll down to the tool tip section below…

So, I’ve decided to start a different tactic – Instead of fussing with “credits” and the resulting, resounding sounds of  “ARGH!” rolling down my street as I realize I have purchased yet another completely unrelated transcription record, I will be ordering photocopy versions of original records directly from GRO Ireland at €4. a pop.

While there might not be too much of a savings involved in this change, I will at least have original documents to look at and will avoid relying on possibly mis-transcribed records. That will make me feel a bit better at least. So will chocolate chip cookies.

(To make sure I have the hang of the ordering process first I will start by tightening up the old tree by ordering original certificates for my relatively well-known Egan & Farrell lines near Ferbane in Kings County.)

If you would like a quick primer on how to order certificates from GRO Ireland, visit their Apply For Certificates page. Of course, you’ll probably want to use the Civil Registration Indexes (1845-1958) on Familysearch to look for possible records to purchase first.

Tool Tip – Hello Fax!

Now, with all of that background out of the way – to the real purpose of this post: As I filled out the GRO order form, my Oxymoronic Genealogical Impatience™ quickly kicked in when I noticed that you can fax certificate applications into the GRO. Forget that crazy old postal mail thing. That’s 20th century stuff, man. FAXING – THAT’S WHERE IT’S AT.

However, I do not own a fax machine at home any longer, and I can’t really start faxing Ireland from my company systems at lunch. (Well, I could, but you know, I’m the IT Director and that really wouldn’t be a good idea.)

Then I found that hello fax is offering a deal if you sign up with your Google account –

In honor of our launch, get 50 free fax pages / month & unlimited e-signatures

Within 5 minutes of creating the account I had sent off my first few certificate orders to GRO Ireland.

In addition to Google Drive, you can also integrate the service with other commonly used services – not a bad deal for free. The only thing that is not entirely clear is how long the 50 free pages/month will last – we’ll see!