The next thing someone will be making a TV show about it. I don’t, personally, have a problem with digital hoarding, which is to say what anyone else might interpret as ‘hoarding’ has been out of control for so long I’ve ceased to view it as a problem. The only part that bothers me is having my stuff disorganized. If I find something old and irrelevant that I can delete, that’s always a thrill. I’m not hanging on by my toenails just for something to do. Maybe it’s because it’s Spring and the sun is out, for a change, but staying focused ...

For those still floundering in genealogy file overload and general disorganization— The general file challenge breaks down into 3 parts: naming your files, organizing your files and searching your files. And then, if you have any time left over, linking them to your genealogy database. And if you’re really far ahead of the game, doing creative projects with them. Today, I’ll revisit searching files and see what’s new. Copernic is probably the best desktop search software there is. It automatically creates an index of your choice of folders on your hard-drive (and ...

Mark your calendars, Fridays starting March 5th. On NBC. 8PM or 7 Central. That’s 5PM Pacific time. Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick, Spike Lee and Emmitt Smith discover their family history and teach us a thing or two along the way. This is going to be great television to watch. Tell your friends. Send an email. Watch the trailers and share them. Download desktop wallpaper and flyers and distribute them. Invite a few folks over to watch it with you. Find the tools here. ….. …..

The other day a friend phoned and we got sidetracked into talking about internet privacy. Or, rather, lack thereof. I hadn’t thought about it too much except that, by instinct, I don’t like social networking sites. A young friend once asked me to join Facebook and I lasted about a minute. As soon as I signed up, she started telling stories about me to 60 people I’ve never met. I quickly excused myself by deleting my account. I’m just not that sociable. As most webmasters do, I use Statcounter to track visitors to my website. It tells me all kinds of things that I ...

With the rash of Mozilla updates lately, I thought I’d make the updated clipper buttons for EverNote 2.2 more easily accessible. Compatible up to Firefox 3.6 or Flock 2.5 (I think this will install directly into your browser when you click on it.) For Thunderbird 3.0.1 , right-click and Save As, then install through the add-on window. This works on Windows. I can’t speak for other operating systems. Maybe this should be a permanent feature in the sidebar?

The last time I ran TuneUp Utilities it told me I had 179 programs installed on my computer and suggested that I uninstall a few of them because they’re bogging me down. When I bought this computer three years ago, it was like a Ferrari compared to my laptop. But as the months went on it got slower and slower which I thought was due to my brain going faster and faster through practice. So I’m not sure too many programs are to blame and when I looked down the list, there couldn’t have been more than five I thought I could live without. I’d had PortableApps installed ...

If you haven’t rushed into Firefox 3.6 yet, I’d recommend that you hold your horses if you’re using the Zotero add-on. It’s not up to speed yet. I think the Firefox update would disable Zotero for awhile rather than wipe it off the face of the earth. But I’m not keen on taking a chance. If you’re set up to get Firefox updates automatically, or don’t know, go to Tools/Options/Advanced and click on the Update tab. There you have a choice to accept them automatically or be informed to make your own decisions. Zotero is way too big to be gone for long. ...

Just because I’m a country hick and don’t have a cell phone (except for my Tracfone that I’m not allowed to use in Canada) that’s no reason to hold the rest of you back so, as of now, JLog has gone mobile. I think. Could someone with a mobile device please check if JLog can be accessed from your pda, cell-phone or whatever you’ve got in your pocket. Please send a screenshot over to jl@jgen.ws so I can see what it looks like. If it doesn’t look good, I’ll delete this effort. If it does work, well, there you go.

It was a long month at the college. According to my contract, I’ve already worked all my allotted hours for 2010. I’m sure they won’t need another thing until 2011. The other day I had to purchase Excel because that’s what my life has come to. I resisted as long as I could. So that meant I had to purchase Microsoft Office which meant I had to purchase a Microsoft product. It could have been worse; I could have fallen off the roof. Which brings me to talking about OneNote which came along with it. I made a passing acquaintance with OneNote a long time ago when I was ...

It was a long month at the college. According to my contract, I’ve already worked all my allotted hours for 2010. I’m sure they won’t need another thing until 2011. The other day I had to purchase Excel because that’s what my life has come to. I resisted as long as I could. So that meant I had to purchase Microsoft Office which meant I had to purchase a Microsoft product. It could have been worse; I could have fallen off the roof. Which brings me to talking about OneNote which came along with it. This is a bit convoluted so just hang in there. I made a passing ...

XnView has a handy feature called “Find Similar Files”. It actually means files, not just images, although it’s not well-designed for non-image files. First, you add the folders you want to involve in your search, and then select the parameters. Surprisingly, it doesn’t take that long to run. If you want to find exact duplicate pictures, set the ’similarity’ at 100%. If you want the same pictures that you may have in different sizes, set the similarity factor lower. It will bring up a screen with your results. Sometimes it will show more than one ...

I’ve often wondered how other people handle it; the hours it takes to research, record, file, surf around to see what everyone else is doing, write a blog, or several of them, keep up a mad social-networking schedule with six hundred and fifty of your new best friends and make a living using a computer as well. Genealogists’ New Year’s Resolutions are appearing around the net. I didn’t write mine down but I can tell you what they are. Well, what it is. There’s only one. Chop my computer time in half. Miriam Midkiff had enough on her 2009 list to choke a horse ...

This is my New Year’s present to myself, a humongous pile of paper and 4 brand-new two and a half inch binders. A bystander at the cash register agreed that anything larger will break my wrists. When was the last time I had a Christmas that didn’t involve genealogy? I can’t remember. The other day I was looking for an old vaccination certificate so I could get the address of where I lived when I was 11 years old to add to some old photos. When I was returning the box (where I did not find what I was looking for) to the shelf, the bottom fell out of it, and a cascade of ...

I hope everyone survived Christmas in good shape. I usually do because the closest I ever come to eating sugar is steamed carrots. At my age, even a thin slice of fruit-cake could kill me. In case you haven’t noticed, Picasa is an IPTC train-wreck. If you’re serious at all about annotating your photos, use something else. If they ever catch up, good. After I started using Photo Mechanic and the address fields for the first time, I would keep finding the contents of the Location field in the State field after letting Picasa update its index. Picasa doesn’t even show ...

Anyone else over the Moon about Photo Mechanic or is it just me? I’ve gotten more photo work done in the past 2 weeks working at it part-time than I have in the entire two years previous staying up all night. It makes me wonder what I was doing all that time. I decided my time is worth more than 2¢ an hour, and it was time to invest $150 and git ‘er done. If you’re looking to annotate your photos for searching and the edification of future generations, this is it. Photo Mechanic is sublime. Every time I look I find another useful feature. Here’s some of my ...