Monthly meeting 12/21 and Many Tips

Here it is December already.  Mark your calendar for our monthly Genies meeting on 12/21 at 1:00 Pacific time.

Our study group is planning for our next meeting in January.  I’m using an email group for that so let me know if you would like to be included.

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Tips are coming in from Genies.

Judy S. sent “DNA Technology on Britain's Cheddar Man”

Hi Judith--just watched this document on the Comcast-Infinity Science Channel (272 or 696):

 https://www.sciencechannel.com

Secrets of the Lost: Skeleton of Cannibal Cave (Season 4/Episode 3)

 Very interesting to watch cutting edge DNA technology used by experts investigating the latest evidence to shed new light on prehistoric secrets of the Cheddar Man, 10,000 year old skeleton's genetic heritage.  It shows Tuesday, Dec. 15 at 4 pm.

 Other genies' might be interested as well.

 Judy😊

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 Rick B sent along Going Digital, two handouts from a Genealogy Volunteer at his library.  This is very current information and very professionally done.  You can’t imagine the detail until you take a look. 

 Going Digital Part 1  What does going digital mean? What is the cloud?  Filing and File Naming Systems.  Metadata and media files.  As soon as you feel like it’s over your head, go to the next topic.  On page 4 the writer introduces “What is DGS: Desktop Genealogy Software” and names my top 3.  It’s 29 pages long.

Going Digital Part 2  Pages 4-9 are comparisons of five DGS: Desktop Genealogy Software packages.  Four have free trial with the exception Family Tree Maker which has none.  Other topics are Backing Up, Sharing Genealogy, and Tools: Hardware and Software.  It’s 47 pages long.

 Thank you, Rick!  Enjoy, everybody.

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Some of my favorite bloggers continue to be the Family Locket duo.  They send a newsletter every Monday, including their podcast, blogposts for the week, and other news.  If you need some productivity tips, here are excerpts from Diana:

Having a set process to follow as I tackle these projects keeps me focused and organized. I am really loving using OneTab to save the tabs I have open for each project. For example, my DNA project has my Lucid Chart, my Airtable DNA research log, DNA testing companies, DNA Painter all saved so when I have a few minutes to work, I can quickly open those tabs and don’t waste time opening everything up again. If you haven’t yet tried OneTab, check out my article.

Reduce Browser Clutter with OneTab and Increase Productivity

 Do you need more productivity tips? Here are two more ways to take advantage of some simple tools to help.

Productivity Counts: Making the Best Use of Your Family History Time

Boost Your Genealogy Productivity with Google Keep

 

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Claudia Breeland is a professional genealogist from Gig Harbor.  We know her from her presentations at the Whatcom Genealogical Society.  She has a monthly newsletter with book reviews, article links, and what she’s doing.  Here’s an amazing story quoted from her newsletter.

What I'm Reading

 
These days, the I-Did-the-DNA-Test-and-Got-a-Surprise books are almost a dime a dozen.  So I'm always on the lookout for something different. The author of A Broken Tree, is one of nine children of Linda and Mark Anderson. After he heard some suspicious family stories, he decided to do a DNA test, and persuaded some of his siblings to do likewise. Over the next few years, they realized with growing dismay that none of them were the children of Mark Anderson and that the nine children had six fathers between them. At the end of the book is a great chapter of questions and answers, and the author comments, "This is family history in the most fascinating sense of the word."  This book will stay with me for a long time.

 Also, a new interview with Paul Fronczak, who was kidnapped as a baby.  Remember that Paul is the child the FBI returned to the family whose child was kidnapped.  He wrote his story in The Foundling.  It’s at the library.

 

My Tip:  Using website links

Some of you have talked with me about trouble clicking on website links.  I always try to make mine active so you can just click and it goes to the website.  But even I have trouble sometimes.  Instructions below are for Windows 10.

 First, just click on the link and see if it opens the website. 

 In that doesn’t work, then try holding down ctrl and Left click at the same time.

 If the link is not colored and underlined, highlight the link (hold the left mouse button down and drag across the whole link).

 Then right mouse click. It might look like this:

 

Click on the "Go to" line. Look up at the top and it will have opened a new tab.  Click on the new tab to go to the website you want. 

 The right click may say “Open in new tab” or “Open Hyperlink”.  This does the same thing.

 If that none of that works, highlight, right click, in the dropdown menu left click on "Copy". Open a new tab on the top bar of your window (click on the plus sign at the right of the open tabs).   Then right click in the search bar and “Paste".  

 If you find an error or have an easier way, let me know.  Please.