Here and there in National Family History Month

Aware that it's National Family History Month and that I am actually in Australia I threw myself into #familyhistory activities last week. Surprisingly I am not giving any talks this month so I've had a bit of time to play. Mr GeniAus does wonder what I am doing in my geneacave all day!

Piling system

From time to time I tear myself away from the more palatable geneactivities to do a little bit of tidying, scanning and think about filing. I'm very good at digital filing but a failure at physical filing. I have reorganised my cupboards but my piling system is still evident.

I continued to microblog via my GeniAus Facebook page and The Hornsby Shire FHG page. I contributed to many conversations on Facebook which I fine myself using more and more since the demise of Google+.
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Although I haven't written on this blog I have been blogging here  https://curryaus.wordpress.com/2019/08/07/avoiding-the-keyboard/ and here  https://hornsbysfhg.wordpress.com/2019/08/08/geneagala-day/ and  here https://ballau.blogspot.com/2019/08/inspection.html.

Monday was spent experimenting with data gathering and importing into my CurryAus project see blog post above).

On Tuesday I took myself to the monthly meeting of the Newcastle Family History Society, it's only the second time I have been to one of their meetings since joining. I'll try to do better. Sitting among the small audience of members who all knew each other I once again realised how lonely it can be as the newbie in a Group. It was disappointing to see such a small attendance at a meeting of a group with such a large membership. I wasn't sure that I would enjoy the talk by Marie Hughes who talked about her family and their business, Hughes Pottery which operated in the Merewether area for over 100 years. As a newcomer to the Newcastle Region I found the talk fascinating the story of the family business was interwoven with the family's genealogy. 

Hughes Pottery at Newcastle Family History Society

Two webinars were on my program for Wednesday. Firstly I watched Fiona Brooker's webinar on New Zealand  at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. I left this early to tune into the Newspapers webinar from the National Library of Australia which you can now view on their website or Youtube. I'm sorry that I didn't stick with Fiona's webinar as there was more for me to learn there than at the newspapers session which was a basic presentation aimed at new users and beginners.

On Thursday I made a rash decision to register for The Society of Australian Genealogists' Wikitree Challenge that was scheduled for the next day, Friday. This event organised by Veronica Williams and Danielle Lautrec aimed to improve Australian content, share our research, and promote the Society's collections all in one day. 

I failed on promoting the Society's resources but managed to share second place in the Challenge. I went way beyond the finishing time of 3pm so that I could complete my personal goals. My 16 Great-grandparents and many of their descendants now have sourced entries on the Wikitree. You can visit me here on Wikitree. 

My mother always taught me that if had a commitment one shouldn't back out if something else came along so on Saturday I missed the dedication of a new plaque on my descendant Elizabeth Phipps' grave at Richmond. Thanks to cousin Lynn Griffiths who organised the event to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Elizabeth's death.

Meanwhile I spent the day at Hornsby Library chairing the annual Geneagala day we at Hornsby Shire Family History Group host in conjunction with the library with special guest Emily Hanna from NSW State Archives and Records. It was a splendid day. You can see some photos and a report here in a Facebook post.

Genies at Gemeagala Day at Hornsby

While August has been a quiet month for talks presented by me September is busy so I have fired up Powerpoint and worked on my webinar and in person presentations. I spend way too much time preparing for these gigs; I am a serial reviser.

I spent quite a deal of time on my DNA Matches. I have used DNA Painter to map both my and Mr GeniAus' chromosomes. In the hope of finding new cousins to map I have repeatedly visited  Family Tree DNA, Gedmatch and MyHeritage but haven't had much joy. My greatest disappointment at the moment is the lack of matches to paint. If you only have your DNA at Ancestry and want to make more connections PLEASE upload to each of these sites. I have been able to keep up with new strong matches at Ancestry as they seem to be trickling in.

Mr GeniAus is smiling because I won a free pass for him  to attend #RootstechLondon. To win the prize I had to submit an interesting word that I had come across in my family history research. My winning word was Progonoplexia (I have a bad case - how about you?)

What did your week look like?

The Snowy Day

In Ezra Jack Keats picture book "The Snowy Day"  that I read many times to my children, the main character, Peter, goes outside to enjoy the delights of new fallen snow.

Today I find myself preparing for the Rootstech Conference in Salt Lake City where the snow has been falling steadily all day. When I announced on Facebook that I was going to stay in my hotel room all day one of my genimates commented "The hotel? When you could go to the Family History Library?"

Well I'm not Peter so I have stayed indoors and passed on the opportunities to play in the snow. Hopefully the weather will improve and I can visit the library tomorrow or next week. Thankfully I don't have many items on my lookup list this year.

From the hotel window

So what have I been playing at?

I have set up my calendar for the next week. I have dinners arranged for Saturday- Tuesday with various groups of genimates. I am interviewing some of the keynote speakers at Rootstech so I have done a bit of homework on them so that I don't appear like a complete ignoramus. So far I am interviewing the CEO of Familysearch, the CEO of Ancestry.com, Keynotes Scott Hamilton and Henry Louis Gates, some bods from Findmyast and Living DNA and CeCe Moore.   I'm also hoping to catch author Nathan Dylan Godwin and  DNA Painter hero Jonny Perl. 

I have written a couple of welcome posts for new members of the GeneabloggersTRIBE, filled out a survey (you can do it too) for the Rootstech people and responded to many social media messages.

I searched Amazon for the Whitelines notebook that my clever Genimate Shelley wrote about in her recent post and ordered one to try out at the conference.

Now I am going to indulge in some me research time and take a look at my hints on Ancestry.com. I don't accept these on face value. If they are from user submitted trees I don't pay much attention to them but if they relate to documents I look at them carefully, evaluate them and if they are a match that adds value to my tree I add the details to my own Family Historian database as well as my Ancestry tree. 

Perhaps I'll have some startling discoveries to share in the coming days.

I am pleased to have had a Snowy Day that has allowed me to indulge my geneaself. 

That's ice outside my wondow

On Rations

I have been hit by a first world problem. I have to ration my data.

As many of you know we are living between two houses at the moment. At our old house I have a ginormous data allowance and can spend my days playing in cyberspace without having to worry about how much data I consume. My problem is when I am at the old house I need to devote my time to clearing out a life's worth of stuff and getting the place tarted up for sale so geneactivities take a back seat. I have emptied my study ready for its transformation into a home theatre/media room and have moved most of my technology, files and my desk and office chair to their new home.

Up at the new Lake House where I have set up my new geneacave I use my smartphone as a hotspot for internet access. Although I have 40gig of data per month on the phone I find that I can devour several gig  a day when using it as a hotspot for the laptop (a data hungry beast). I can keep up with social media, email, blog reading via Inoreader and checking new DNA matches  on my smartphone where these activities appear to use little data.

Data Rationing here at The Lake House

I can blog on the phone using an external wireless keyboard but I don't enjoy doing it that way so I don't blog (it has to be fun not a chore - right?). I can't update my websites on the phone and I find it very difficult to research promising DNA matches as I need to have several windows open to do this efficiently. Similarly when writing my sometimes weekly GeniAus Gems posts I need to have several apps and windows open at once, I missed posting last week because doing this via smartphone would have been an exercise in frustration.

In the next month or so I will transfer our landline, internet service and Foxtel service to the new home. I could throw more money at my data provider but am loathe to do this so in the interim I will be quiet in the blogisphere. 

Now, while my asthma is forcing me to rest, I am off to do some work on my FHG website, try to place some new DNA matches in my traditional tree, respond to some messages from potential DNA matches and follow Shelley's instructions for Visualising Ancestry DNA matches (until that does my head in!).