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The New York Times also had the same topic this week.
TECHNOLOGY / CIRCUITS
| December 6, 2005
The Circuits Holiday Buying Guide
Our annual special issue devoted to electronic gifts for work, play and everything in between.
Do you love NY? Get the insider’s guide to where to stay, what to do and where to eat. Go to www.nytimes.com/travel for your NYC Guide now. Click here.
The Elusive Power Squid -- It may look strange, but its squid-like design makes it much easier to use all the power outlets when you have several brick power adapters. $15 at ThinkGeek."
I Need Less Power, Scotty! Sometimes less is more. AC Cost Control ($30) is helpful for finding devices that pull power even when 'off.' I then use timed outlets, programmable switches (of course!), and other tricks to turn equipment on only when needed. Smarthome is a good source for such items." We've also seen the Kill A Watt ($40) device and the Watts Up Pro AC Power Meter ($150) advertised for this task, but we don't have any first-hand knowledge for comparison.
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Last month during my presentation to the SIG, I emphasized
"BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP" for saving your genealogical and
other data.
I have recently found a good on-line discussion on backing up the
data and programs on your PC. It is four pages and the last page
has some links to free and to commercial backup software.
It is on the PCMechanic website and can be found at:
http://www.pcmech.com/show/internal/855/1/
Disclaimer: I have not used any of the backup programs listed so
cannot personally recommend or comment on them.
I use a DOS based free program to clone my C:\ drive to a
partition/folder on a separate hard drive. It will also perform
incremental backups only copying changed files once you have
made the first complete cloning. However, unless you are
comfortable with DOS, you may find this too complex. (Note: I also
backup my various data folders separately to a different hard drive
and to CDs)
The DOS program is called "XXCopy" and you can find it at:
http://www.xxcopy.com
Instructions on cloning a drive can be found at:
http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy10.htm
If anyone is interested in more help on using this program, please
e-mail me.
Season's Greetings,
Charlie
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
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Way to go Gord!
The program you discovered has some very practical uses.
(URL: http://www.photofiltre.com/.)
I've been playing with the photo filtering program and the 1911 census
images for a few minutes.
Found that using Filter -> Artistic -> Ink Outlines improved the image
considerably.
Other combinations may do even more.
If anyone has a technique that works, please let me know.
Regards;
Gary
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
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Added three sub-districts to my collection of guessed names in the 1911
census for Calgary south of the Bow River. The Midnapore area starts with
Lacombe Home and Father Lacombe is listed on page 2.
SW of Midnapore is in the Macleod District. My Excel files are searchable by
guessed names and sometimes house numbers for Calgary. Just looked up the
1911 address on 17th Avenue for a friend's family in the 1974 Calgary
Directory. Their home was replaced by a service station and probably a more
recent building since 1974.
Used AFHS template with farm locations added (if readable.) It is
interesting to select a Calgary district in the online road map and then
look in the Western Lands Database to see who farmed there years earlier.
The census takers missed a few people in June 1911, perhaps away for a
vacation or on the move between homes. Calgary grew from around 4000
population in 1901 to over 40,000 population in 1911 according to Harry
Sanders' Historic Walks of Calgary pg 15. -- Elizabeth
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
Not all systems support booting from USB devices, usually it will only
be very new ones.
The BIOS support determines if you can boot from USB, and often the
name of feature is
not very clear.
You may find it labeled something like "alternate floppy" or some such
unrelated name.
Make sure that device is at the top of the boot order.
All of this depends on your BIOS so it's not possible to give specific
instructions.
You may find more information in a
"Google for
bootable USB".
By the way... also take a look at the section called "Delete Undeletable Files And Folders #1#2#3#4#5"
on "www.bootdisk.com"
. Someone at the Computer SIG asked about solving this
problem. There are also many other solutions to common problems that
are presented on this site. All-in-all this site is marvellous!
Let me know of any questions. This may be somewhat confusing at first.
At the computer SIG meeting yesterday it was mentioned that a good Christmas gift would be an upgrade from dial-up to a DSL or cable connection, or an upgrade from a "lite" to a regular or enhanced broadband connection. A discussion about connection speeds followed. I mentioned that Telus used to have a link to a site for testing your connection speed, to see if you were getting the bandwidth you were paying for. I could not find that listing on the current Telus pages, but here is one that provides similar tests:
http://www2.dslreports.com/stest
Also a website that I gave at our November meeting has speed tests, among many others. See:
At
the computer SIG meeting yesterday it was mentioned that a good
Christmas gift would be an upgrade from dial-up to a DSL or cable
connection, or an upgrade from a "lite" to a regular or enhanced
broadband connection. A discussion about connection speeds followed. I
mentioned that Telus used to have a link to a site for testing your
connection speed, to see if you were getting the bandwidth you were
paying for. I could not find that listing on the current Telus pages,
but here is one that provides similar tests:
At the computer SIG meeting yesterday it was mentioned that a good Christmas gift would be an upgrade from dial-up to a DSL or cable connection, or an upgrade from a "lite" to a regular or enhanced broadband connection. A discussion about connection speeds followed. I mentioned that Telus used to have a link to a site for testing your connection speed, to see if you were getting the bandwidth you were paying for. I could not find that listing on the current Telus pages, but here is one that provides similar tests:
Explanation
The measurement determines the average speed with which you can surf
the internet. Sit back and think about it some. You will probably be
able to download big files from local servers a lot faster, but for
surfing purposes your average speed is 12779 bytes per second (Bps), or
102 kilobits per second (kbps). The two numbers are the same but are
expressed in a different base (125 bytes are 1 kilobit). Higher numbers
are better.
1. The speedbar
The speedbar shows your speed at a glance. The numbers above the
speedbar are in kilobits per second, and the numbers below the speedbar
are in bytes per second. There are 4 versions of the speedbar, the
system automatically selects the speedbar on which your speed will fit
the best.
2. Your speed in numbers
Your speed is also presented in numbers, both in bytes per second and
kilobits per second. They are the same but expressed in a different
base (125 bytes is 1 kilobit).
3. Your last 25 measurements
This graph shows the last 25 measurements you've done for the country
you selected when starting the measurement. The rightmost line in the
graph is your current measurement, the leftmost line is the oldest
measurement. The graph will contain just a single measurement if you
have used YourSpeed for the first time, have never performed a
measurement for this
particular country before, have cleared your cookies, or are using a
new or different browser.
The scale at the left of the graph is bytes per second, the scale at
the right of the graph is bits per second. Both scales are logarithmic
and will automatically adjust to fit your measurements. The values in
the graph are stored in cookies on your computer. The graph will remain
empty if your browser does not support cookies, you have turned off
cookies, or you are behind a firewall that does not pass cookies.
4. The worldwide speed of the internet
This graph compares your speed to the speed of other people. Vertical
scale on the left is in bytes per second, vertical scale on the right
is in bits per second, horizontal scale is the last 8 days by hour. The
vertical scale is logarithmic and will automatically adjust to fit the
graph. Times and dates are for Amsterdam, The Netherlands (GMT +01:00).
You can find many more graphs at: Statistics
All the measurements
From anywhere in the world to the set of worldwide websites The
horizontal white line indicates your speed. Only your last measurement
is shown, not your last 25 measurements.
Reunion Users group, a siglet of the Computer Users Sig meets in the AFHS library the third Thursday of every month, and will meet at 7pm on 15 Dec. Please email or phone Mary Arthur with any questions or suggestions for topics. ar109@... - 245 4252
I will not be available to chair tomorrow nights meeting due to family commitments. I have talk to some of you and they are not able to attend either. I suggest we cancel the meeting as it is to close to Christmas and we have a meeting in January to decide if we are going to continue or not. I am unable to chair this group as I have too many meetings now.
Please give it some thought as to whether you are able to chair or help chair this group.
Anyway have a Very Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year.
I shall be out of town for the Atlantic SIG meeting on Dec 14th.
Alan Peers is going to chair this meeting and a decision will be required to be made to see if the SIG will continue. We need someone to be Chair of the SIG.
Regards
Gordon Lane Chairman Alberta Family Histories Society 712-16th Ave NW, Calgary, AB, T2W 0J8
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Just in case any of you were wondering if I solved this problem, Bev Rees
came up with the first answer for me. My computer is set to not auto run.
Since changing this means changing a value in the registry, I'm not about to
do that right now. Jon at Passage Express Forum suggested that inserting the
CD then going to Start, Run, and typing D:\RunMe.bat will open the CD. It
did. So, for relatives, I had written a note on How To Use This CD and
included a note on how to open the CD, if it didn't start right away.
Hopefully, their computers are set to autorun.
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/200 - Release Date: 14/12/2005
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
I am going to do this before I forget again. I noticed when I was down on Thursday that all of January it full. But would love to work a couple of times in February, during the week would be best for me. If Donna or who ever might be doing up the list would just me in when you need me, I will be there. Please let me know now so that I can arrange it with work.
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Queen's Park Section G added to the cemetery database
Merry Christmas
Gordon Lane
Chairman
Alberta Family Histories Society
712-16th Ave NW,
Calgary, AB, T2W 0J8
chairman@...
www.afhs.ab.ca
(403)214-1447
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
'ANCESTORS IN THE ATTIC' is a new series being produced by
History Television
Whether you're a historical researcher or a family
historian HISTORY TELEVISION would like to hear about the astonishing
stories with a
Canadian connection that you've already unearthed. Have you made an
unexpected or startling discovery? They'd like to hear about it.
If your story or family history research is selected, it could
appear on 'Ancestors in the Attic'.
Are there family mysteries you'd like to solve? Tell them what you
know about the person in your family whose story most intrigues you. It
can be a distant ancestor, a grandparent, parent, uncle or aunt. Does
the mystery involve an heirloom or do you have an artifact that tells a
tale you can't decipher? Send them a picture and tell them how it
relates
to your story.
Do you have a family legend you've always wanted to confirm? A
great, great grandfather who might have been a European aristocrat, an
ancestor related to a famous politician or world-renowned musician.
Perhaps you've hit a brick wall in your research or just have
a question you'd like answered. Or perhaps you have a relative
associated with a famous, infamous or just plain interesting event in
Canadian history.
In 500 words or less, tell us your story. If it's chosen a
professional genealogists will help you unearth the answers
you've been searching for.
There is more information available on the TV program's web site at
Does anyone know if the US has a similar web site to what we have here in Canada for listing people who served in World War 1? (other "conflicts" would be nice too for later).
I found the NARA (national archives) web site but it does not have any on-line listing of personnel so it makes searching a bit more of a challenge. I recall I found a web site that listed people who served in the US Civil War too.
Cheers
Peter
***************************** Peter Adams Calgary, Ab
Ancestry.com has a U.S. World War I draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 database on their website with scanned pages of the actual forms. They also have U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1928-1946. I know you have to pay to use the site, but you can look at it for free at the LDS library.
I found one of my Ontario ancestors who had moved to Illinois and signed up with the U.S. army in W.W.I.
Does anyone know if the US has a similar web site to what we have here in Canada for listing people who served in World War 1? (other "conflicts" would be nice too for later).
I found the NARA (national archives) web site but it does not have any on-line listing of personnel so it makes searching a bit more of a challenge. I recall I found a web site that listed people who served in the US Civil War too.
Cheers
Peter
***************************** Peter Adams Calgary, Ab
Does anyone have a copy of "ADAMS-EVARTS. A Hist. of the Adams & Evarts Families., By J. M. Adams, 81pp., PHOTOCOPY; FLEX. VINYL COVERS, 1894" I found a copy for sale, but before I purchase I wanted to know a bit more about the book.
Regards
Peter
***************************** Peter Adams Calgary, Ab
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Regards
Gordon Lane
Chairman
Alberta Family Histories Society
712-16th Ave NW,
Calgary, AB, T2W 0J8
chairman@...
www.afhs.ab.ca
(403)214-1447
-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm at ACDB-Canada [mailto:malcolm@...]
Sent: Saturday, December 31, 2005 4:01 PM
To: chairman@...
Subject: Archive CD Books Canada - 50% OFF JANUARY SALE!
For a limited time we are offering almost all our Canadian books on CD at
50% off their regular price. You can see all the reductions in our on-line
catalogue, just click on the "January SALE" logo on our Web Site's front
page http://www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca/.
Just like all the other January sales this madness will not last long so
"grab while the grabbing is good!"
At these prices we cannot combine these reductions with other offers or
discounts.
Our Shopping Cart may overcharge you on multiple CD orders but rest assured
we will rebate any overcharges for Packing and Postage. We try to provide
Packing and Postage at our cost so we have to try and account for Post
Office rates. In general we charge:
First item**: $2.00 - Ontario, $4.00 - Rest of Canada, $5.00 - USA and
World.
Additional items: $1.00 each.
(** Until the middle of January when Post Office charges go up again.)
http://www.afhs.ab.cahttp://www.family-roots.ca
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