Sunday, November 15, 2009

Weekly Picks

Weekly Picks for November 8-14

Dick Eastman of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter dispels the Myth of Family Coats of Arms. "Lots of gullible people purchase various trinkets that display the 'family coat of arms' without realizing there is no such thing. Coats of arms? Yes. But 'family?' No. There is no such thing as a family coat of arms." (with a couple of limited exceptions, which he does point out.) Diana Lynn Tibert also writes an article on this topic for the Times & Transcript.

Chris Dunham at The Genealogue discovers that the tombstone for a man's first wife may have been reused for the second. (I think his decision to leave his theory unproven was sound.)

Leland Meitzler at GenealogyBlog reviews TheClicker, a "television" guide to what's available online, some of interest to genealogists. It's not difficult to imagine those of us who don't care about the size of the screen will ultimately gravitate away from the television set to the computer.

Julie Cahill Tarr at GenBlog gives a detailed explanation of how to search the City Directories at Footnote, and how to compensate for some problems with the indexing and search capabilities.

Michael Neill at RootDig reminds us of the Old Man's Draft from World War II. Don't assume you won't find military records for someone just because they were out of the 'usual age range.'

Dear Myrtle details what's available at Footnote's collection of Holocaust records, which are available for free until the end of the year. I've searched for records on some Lichtmann relatives without success. The surname comes up, but I don't recognize the individuals. I have a few more surnames to search for, though.

Jasia at CreativeGene and Donna Pointkouski at What's Past is Prologue both discuss Expressivo, which converts text-to-speech. It can be tested out here. You can choose between a Polish, Romanian, or English voice. (With more languages and voices promised.)

T.K. of Before my Time shares a poem written about a 200 year old pear tree planted at the time of her Plymouth ancestors. (A poem referenced by Henry David Thoreau in his writings.)

NARAtions discusses Motion Picture File Formats.

An 8-minute video about the Midwest Genealogy Center. (hat/tip MoSGA Messenger)



On the local front:

A dutch filmmaker is investigating why Pruitt-Igoe failed.

Jefferson Barracks Cemetery is running out of land.

From the Mayor's Desk is the blog of the mayor of St. Louis City. On Friday he visited Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where an uncle had been a resident priest, and he took some photographs. (Maybe he'll become a geneablogger, later, when he's less busy.)

And while it isn't genealogically related...

GovGab discusses H1N1 and your Pet. While experts say you can't catch H1N1 from your pet, they think your pet can catch it from you. So far a cat and some ferrets have become infected.

Google has announced the capability of locking (by password) Google's SafeSearch. Up until now it was fairly easy for children to change the settings.

#1 in Newsweek's list of 10 "Unknown in '99, indispensable now" - Wikipedia. Any relationship beyond our surnames between the author of the description and myself are unproven. He refers to the site as "The first draft of history" and "an exemplar and test platform for large-scale, global collaboration."

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