...And now The News
News of the McLellan's of Midnapore family tree project.
MOFFATT, MCLELLAN, HARTVIKSEN, HENDERSON
NOTE: the family names above are links! Remember it is a work in progress.
Not much here yet as time will allow, but it's comming around. The dialog below is a journal of findings that through time has evolved into a part time project that has never enough time to dedicate to it, now is this not true with most things?
The family tree project is very slowly comming along, I have passed the 30MB threshold. As the size of the dBase grows storage has become a problem. A complete copy "as is" uncompressed will be available on a DC2000 linear tape archive.
Complete paper copies (all 4 families) are a stack of about 5 reams of paper. Disk copies are an idea and with an estimated 24 disks without the FileMaker Pro application this would be easier to mail. FTP or encoded mail might be a future consideration if I can sway the financial experts around here to obtain internet access that would allow such a transfer at one time. Alternatively a small chunk could be sent daily, but 24 days to transfer a file might be counter productive.
A slight set back has come about with the availability of tape. I have tried to obtain some spare DC2000 tapes and very few can be found. I will come up with an alternative.
Lately I have been lusting over a ZIP drive and this might be the answer to storage problems.
The current phase is to segment each branch of the Tree from the host. I have a master file of names and addresses that each branch can call for facts and figures (this is very large 7MB). From the address host information is placed into each segment of the family branch and then compiled into a form format. The current project is to make each branch a standalone document that will be static. With the static file I suspect it to be no larger than 5 to 8MB. This would be very portable and a reasonable size, agreed!
Fundamentally the file is large because of the amount of information that is perhaps unique to some and not necessarily all members of the family. Space is therefore reserved for each and every member if this information becomes available. Information such as photographs take enormous amounts of space compared to plain text.
One day I will borrow a scanner and complete another step that has been shelved.
One thing I have yet to get a is true handle on and that is every six months or so I find out about some ancestor that I had no record of. I love this kind of information but as it always comes as a surprize, one day very soon I want to try and get to the point where publishing the project will be a reality.
1300 names and growing!
With so many projects to get done during the good summer weather and very little time to spend with family, the tree will be a first priority this fall. Perhaps I can master this HTML stuff and get some of it posted here. That would of course exclude several who cannot view it via this medium although it would mean the project is comming to a screen near you (rather than a shelf here).
971024: It happened! I purchased a zip drive and it is really great. The Mac sees the drive as a normal SCSI device but the disk although DOS formatted will appear normal to the Mac. This may seem OK but I have to figure out how to get a Mac file on the disk so that a DOS box can understand it. DOS boxes are a curse. Even though the DOS box can understand the disk format it will not be able to understand the files. Experimentation will continue. Stay tuned.
980103:
Want to participate in an experiment? I have posted an experimental Family Tree Research Study Questionaire on this site.
Following is a Java language based link. I don't like java all that much because a great percentage of fellow websters can not use it! I mention this because I use Java on the survey and fact finding pages, just only to speed the process and make life simpler. If you get a warning about some error, trust me it's not a mistake but a simple Java script that might not be current to your browser. This was written with Netscape 3 on a Mac in mind. If it bugs you Please let me know and I will give my head a shake, then after I have rested adjustments will occur, deal.
If you see anything that could be of interest to the rest of us, pass it on.
Show your colors,
May The OS Be With You!