Recent Meetings of the Computer Group Chelmsford

Recent meetings of the Computer Group at Chelmsford

June 2008 - In June, 36 members gathered to hear Jeanne Bunting talk on 'Multimedia and Family History'. She explained that multimedia included not only photographs, cine films, and newspaper reports, but also other printed matter and audio and video recordings. The aim was to get all material onto CD or DVD. She went on to describe various methods of transferring the different sorts of material on to disc. It was possible to purchase equipment to do it yourself, but it was not cheap, and she had found that it was often easier to use specialist firms to carry out the work, but this had the disadvantage that you didn't have control over the end result. However, she did show some of the procedures it was possible to carry out for oneself. Among these, was the editing of a soundtrack to eliminate the 'ums and ers' which occur when you are gathering information. An interesting talk which showed what was possible.

May 2008 - The speaker in May was Kevin Cole, whose talk on Family Tree Maker 2008 attracted 35 members. He started by saying that service pack 3 had been released. There were several areas in FTM 2008 where it was better than its predecessors; among these were error checking and the storing of pictures. Pictures were kept in a separate folder rather than being attached to the relevant file. This kept the file size down. One of the features of FTM 2008 was the ability to produce a book and upload it to the web via Ancestry.co.uk. He then described some of the features in FTM 2008. He left those present with plenty to think about.

April 2008 - The 56 members present in April to hear Ian Boreham's talk entitled 'It's a Google World' learnt that Google was not just a search engine. It had started life as a research project in 1996, and google.com was registered in 1997. In 1998, while still operating from a garage, Google Inc became an American public corporation; it now has its headquarters , the Googleplex, in Mountain View, California. In 2007, it was running on 450,000 servers in 25 locations across the world. It had revenues of $US 16.593 billion, with a net income of $US4.203 billion. Its total assets were $US25.335 billion, and it had 16,805 employees.

Its activities now included a range of desktop products and web products. Among the desktop products are Google desktop, Earth, a Gmail notifier, a photo screensaver, a toolbar and a web accelerator. The search products on the web also cover a wide range of subjects; they include book search, finance, music trends and news among others. Another category of subjects on the web is mapping, which apart from providing maps of locations on the earth, has maps of Mars, the moon and the sky. Another section of the web products covers communication and publishing, and includes a wide range of subjects among which are Gmail (Google mail), iGoogle and, since 2006, YouTube.

Some aspects of Google's activities have drawn criticism. It co-operates with the governments of China, France and Germany to filter search results; the geographic details available from its maps pose security risks; and there is an inability to combat click fraud.

But, just to show that Google is not all serious, they have come up with some April Fool's Day jokes. Among these, in 2004, they featured Google Lunar, with jobs on the moon; in 2006, they came up with Google Romance, an online dating service.

Having got all this information out of the way, Ian then demonstrated desktop bits and pieces and some web bits and pieces. All told, a most informative talk.

March 2008 - For the March meeting, 43 members came to hear Eric Probert talk on 'Useful Web Sites'. The 31 sites he mentioned covered a wide range of subjects ranging from 'Milestones of Essex' to one for translating into or from a foreign language, and from an online course on English Handwriting to 'Genealogy Resources on the Internet'. Unfortunately, technical problems with the internet access meant that he could not demonstrate the content of the sites until towards the end of his talk. A list of the sites he mentioned can be found on Eric's website, www.ericdprobert.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/index.htm and who knows, you might find something of interest on one of them.

February 2008 - 29 members turned up for the February meeting, expecting to hear John Turkentine speak on 'Adding data to a website', but family matters meant that he could not be present. His place was taken by Andrew Britter, who gave a talk on 'Various odds and ends'. His talk comprised three parts dealing with speeding up your computer, housekeeping, and saving money. The first point he made on speeding up was to update Windows regularly. Patches are made available weekly, and provide not only protection but are also designed to improve performance. The second point was to make sure that your video and chipset drivers are up to date by visiting the manufacturer's web site frequently - say once a month. Four major ways to improve speed are to defrag regularly, remove unwanted and unused programmes, remove temporary Internet files, and remove unwanted files. In the housekeeping section, he suggested that you should have a routine for the regular tasks involved in the speeding up procedure. He also suggested that a good filing system, which kept documents on similar subjects in the same place, would help to keep you organised. In the final section which dealt with saving money, he suggested various items of freeware which could do various tasks at least well as their commercial counterparts. Among these were 'Scribus' from www.scribus.net for desktop publishing, 'VirtualDub' from www.virtualdub.org for video editing, 'Angel Writer' from www.angelicsoftware.com and 'AbiWord' from www.abisource.com for word processing, and 'OpenOffice' from www.openoffice.org as an office suite. There were free accounting packages, but they tended not to be straightforward to use.

January 2008 - The speaker at the January meeting was the group's secretary, Don Hewer. His subject, Family Tree Maker 2008, attracted an audience of 60 members. He started by saying that he had bought a new computer early in 2005 to replace his 11 year old machine which used DOS6 and Windows 3.1. After getting used to Windows XP, he had started to look round for a family history program for use on the new machine. He could still run Pedigree (a DOS programme) on his new machine, but wanted something more modern. He had tried demo versions of various programmes from the discs on Family Tree Magazine and Practical Family History, but had not been taken with any of them. He knew that Family Tree Maker was a very popular piece of software, so when he heard last year that a new version was coming out, he felt that it was a possibility. He saw Trevor Rix demonstrate the programme last summer and decided to take the plunge and ordered a copy. It arrived at the beginning of October, and after lunch, he installed it. Within two hours he had over 90 names on his family tree - it was that easy to use.

He went on to describe the process of installation, which takes about five minutes. At the end you are asked if you want to register. Registration gives a fortnight's free access to Ancestry.co.uk, but this starts from the date of registration, so that it is better to leave registering until you want to make use of the free period. If you are already a subscriber to Ancestry, your subscription is extended for a fortnight when you register. A more important benefit of registration is that you get updates automatically. He then demonstrated the process of starting a family tree. FTM 2008 accepts GEDCOM files and files from earlier versions of FTM, but he did not have a GEDCOM file or one from an earlier version of FTM, so he demonstrated the direct entry method. He followed this by outlining some of the features of FTM 2008. Some could not be demonstrated because there was no internet access at the meeting, but he demonstrated the basic features for recording data and personal information and drawing trees.

December 2007 - Thirty members braved the cold to attend the December meeting, when Andrew Britter showed us how to set up a website. He started by saying that a website was a place to make a collection of information generally available. One has to be careful about what is included since one does not know who will see it and what the information will be used for. One needed software to compile a website. There were several programmes to do this; they varied in their capabilities - some were quite basic and some were very complex. It was possible to use MS Word and save the result as a '.htm file'. Some ISPs give users free webspace. It was vital for the site to be password protected so that you were in charge of what was included. Andrew then went on to demonstrate the setting up of a site using MS Frontpage, and it appeared quite easy to do. He concluded by saying that you could make it as complicated as you wished, but his advice was to keep it simple.

October 2007 -There were 33 members present to hear Clive Spratt's talk on 'Family Historian 3.1.2'. It had been introduced at the Society of Genealogists' fair in 2002. It's author - Simon Orde - was British, and the programme uses Gedcom files to store data. There are lively user groups. There is a website for the programme at www.family-historian.co.uk The new features in the latest version of the programme included website creation, the facility to move and resize trees, and a new everyone diagram. The all relatives tree had been improved, and there was improved support for file splitting and deleting data. Data can be privatised. The programme runs in any version of Windows later than Windows 98. Clive then illustrated many of the features of the programme with his own tree which includes 1,478 persons in 467 families. Users can see the complete list of people on the tree, and the tree can include all events relating to a person. It can also include pictures. The users' group website is at www.fhug.org.uk and users can obtain help from fellow users there. All told, a very easy programme to use.

September 2007 - Only 22 members were present in September for the AGM. They heard from Andrew Britter that the previous year had been an interesting year, with a wide range of topics being covered in the talks. He hoped that the members had found the subjects interesting and helpful, and asked members for suggestions for future meetings. Attendances had been variable, but the average attendance was roughly the same as in the previous year. He hoped to keep the members interested in the year ahead. Mike Farman presented the accounts, showing that because there had been outside speakers, the cash in hand at the end of the year was less than in the previous year. Andrew Britter, Mike Farman and Don Hewer were re-elected as Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary respectively. Ian Boreham and Trevor Rix were re-elected as committee members and Louisa Tooby, a member who had responded to appeals for new blood on the committee, was elected to the committee.

Following the AGM, Andrew Britter's talk was on whether to upgrade or update one's hardware. Reasons why users wanted to upgrade included wanting to use a later version of a family history programme, getting a better printer or monitor, and one's computer going slow. New monitors were almost all flat screen - some will act as a TV receiver as well, but this could lead to problems if one member of the household wanted to watch television while another wanted to use the computer! If the monitor was changed, it would probably be necessary to change the video card. Making more demands on the machine might mean a new graphics card was needed. If the computer appeared to be running slow, it was probably due to its not having enough RAM for the demands placed on it. Files are kept on the hard disc and moved to the random access memory to be worked on. If there is not enough RAM for the file, the programme will have to keep accessing the hard disc, resulting in a slowing down. The solution is to add more RAM, but because there are several types of RAM, care should be taken to get the right type to fit the computer's motherboard. Viruses can cause machines to run slow; here the solution is having suitable anti-virus software installed. A new printer could be inkjet or laser, take paper up to A3 size, or take continuous stationery. The choice depends on what the user wants to do. Some software needs Windows XP or Vista, and if this the case, it may be necessary to change the operating system. Another way to improve a machine is to increase the hard disc capacity.

Andrew came to the end of his talk by asking whether it was necessary to have a super super fast machine which could cope with a motor racing game when all it was to be used for was to write some letters, keep notes and to run family history programmes. It was possible to upgrade or update anything, but if you didn't need to, his advice was don't. If you are not sure, take advice. Of course, the ultimate choice is to buy a new machine.

July 2007 - Because Andrew Britter had his holiday dates changed, the July meeting took the form of a trouble shooting session. The 25 members present were a very knowledgeable lot, since only one problem was raised, and that came from your scribe! His problem was that when he tried to print some web sites, the right hand side of the page did not appear. He was advised that the solution was to 'print screen', and paste from the clipboard to form a word processor document.

The bulk of the meeting was devoted to presentations by the three wise men who formed the trouble shooting panel. Trevor Rix gave a demonstration of Family Tree Maker 2008. This is not a modification of FTM 2006, but a completely rewritten version. His demonstration showed many of the differences, starting with the data entry. Next came Clive Spratt, who demonstrated 'picasa' - which is a piece of software for organising pictures on the PC. It is available as a free download from Google. Finally, Colin Smith showed how members can now check and, where necessary, modify their research interests in the database of members' interests.

June 2007 - The subject of the June meeting was of a more technical nature than the usual run of things. Andrew Britter's talk on 'Networking Machines' attracted only 27 members, but those present found his talk very interesting. He started by saying that many households had more than one machine. For example a husband and wife could have a machine each. Or children could each have their own machine in addition to one or more belonging to their parents. Setting up a home network enables them to share broadband access, music and games, and access a shared printer. It is possible to buy a printer which is network enabled, but this is not usually necessary for a simple network. A network is two or more machines connected by wires or wireless. He went on to demonstrate setting up a wired network by connecting two machines, and then showed the transfer of a file from one machine to the other, editing it and then transferring the edited file back to the first machine and editing the revised version. The disadvantage of a wired network is that it requires cables which will need to be run around the house. With a wireless network, this disadvantage is avoided, but each machine requires the appropriate equipment. He stressed the need for security with a wireless network to avoid outsiders using your internet connection and hacking into your machines. It is possible to use the mains cables for connecting machines. Both this and wireless networks are portable, so that if one moves house, there are no cables to connect at the new address. His advice was to choose one method and stick with it.

May 2007 - For the May meeting, when the topic was 'Family Tree Maker' with Ian Boreham, 43 members were present. This was a follow-up from the February meeting, when he concentrated on entering data. In this talk, he dealt with how it was possible to obtain various statistical analyses from the data that had been entered. These included among others the number of individuals, the number of marriages and the number of surnames. It was also possible to obtain the average life span of a set of individuals (that is if you have their ages at death). It was possible to list all the known ancestors or descendants of someone. He finished by showing various types of trees and how it was possible to manipulate them to one's liking. All told, with all the facilities in the programme, it is no wonder that it the favourite programme of the members of the group.

April 2007 - An attendance of 46 greeted Jeanne Bunting when she came to give a talk on 'Scanners' in April. She started by explaining what a scanner is, and how it works. There are several types of scanner. The first she mentioned was the flatbed type. In these, the material to be copied rests on a glass plate, and the scanner heads pass underneath it. With these, it is possible to scan flat sheets, books or even small solids. Some have an adaptor to enable you to scan slides. She then mentioned the sheet fed type. These can scan only single sheets of paper and not books. Slide scanners require a different principle for scanning because slides are transparent. They also need to be scanned at a very high resolution because they are small. They are more expensive than the other types.

She went on to say that prints from one's scans will vary with the printer and the paper used. It is necessary to set up the calibration between the capture software, the screen and the printer, or you will get differences between the picture, what you see on the screen and the printed image.

Most scanners come with Optical Character Recognition software, which enables one to scan an image containing text and save it in a form which can be edited in a word processor.

She ended her talk by showing it was possible to edit photographs by removing unwanted items or people.

March 2007 -43 members were present for the March meeting, when Andrew Britter gave a talk entitled 'CDs on Magazines. Are they any use?' He started by looking at some discs from 'Family Tree Magazine' These had a census record for one year for a particular locality, which was fine if you were interested in that locality - otherwise it was not of much interest. Next was an item listed as parish records for a particular county. These were a volume of Phillimore's marriage transcriptions for the county. Again, not much use if you were not interested in the county. Then there were back issues of FTM and Practical Family History. One or two examples of software came next. These were either not the latest version or had limited capacity; in the latter case it was possible to get the full version by paying for it. He then looked at some discs from computer magazines. The software was again often not the latest edition, but could be useful. There were also several useful programmes for doing special tasks, and these could be useful, but they had to be examined to see if you needed them. Some of those that were found seemed as if they might be useful, and they might form the subject for a future meeting.

February 2007 - There was another good attendance in February when 85 members came to hear Ian Boreham talk on 'Family Tree Maker'. He explained that the talk would go through the entering of data from the start and that he would be depending on those present prompting him on what he should do next, and what options there were for entering data. For example people had their own preferences as to how they entered dates, and he showed that the programme could accommodate all the ways that dates could be entered. If dates were entered in the form dd/mm/yyyy, the zeroes could be omitted or included as the user liked. It could cope with double dates (pre 1752), and users could use about, circa or just 'c' when a date was approximate. If a wife's maiden name was not known it could be left blank or entered as her married name followed by née. One could capitalise one's direct ancestors. The last part of the talk was devoted to showing several of the facilities for entering and editing data.

January 2007 - 2007 started on a high note when 100 members met in January to hear Brian Gough talk on 'Ancestry.co.uk'. He started by saying that the main source of interest for family historians was the census information for the years 1841 to 1901 and the birth, marriage and death indexes which could be searched. In addition , the free BMD indexes were also available, so that if one knew a wife's first name from the census, it was usually possible to ascertain her maiden name without having to obtain a birth certificate for one of the children. It was possible to list all of the inhabitants of a village, and this often suggested possible family members of which one was hitherto ignorant. He went on to illustrate the facilities available by examining the information on Jacob Frost born c1821 in Bradfield. The 1851 census transcription found listed him as Taedo or Jacob . Examination of the image showed some poorly formed letters in Jacob's forename and comparison with his son Jacob's entry showed that this was the Jacob we were looking for. Brian then went on to find him and his family in the following censuses. Having found his wife's name, he went to the free BMD to find her surname. Brian pointed out that there were listings of parts of the censuses which had not survived, and these could help to explain why one could not find someone on a particular census. (Incidentally, this explains why your scribe cannot find his great grandfather on the 1841 census in Shrivenham.)

December 2006 - 'Family History with a cold theme' was the title of Andrew Britter's talk in December when 37 members were present. They were surprised when Andrew said that he was going to explore the genealogy of Father Christmas, but he went on to explain that he was going to look at the development of Santa Claus through the years. The custom of giving gifts at special times had been in existence long before the birth of Christ. However, in about 270 A.D., Nicholas, who became Bishop of Myra, was born. He loved children and did good. He died in December 343. Round about 600 A.D., the Saxons introduced Lord Snow, played by an actor who wore a cloak to represent the season and all joined in the feast. About 200 years later the Vikings introduced northern deities. In December, Odin came in a hooded cloak to listen to people, and he had a long white beard. In the middle of the ninth century, the clergy of Cologne Cathedral were giving gifts on 6 December, St Nicholas' Day.

In 1587, a French priest, Pere Noel (which translates as Father Christmas) Boulet was made a Cardinal and was dressed in red, and this is the start of the red robed Father Christmas. In 1626, there was a statue of St Nicholas in New Amsterdam (now New York). In 1810, the poem 'A visit from Saint Nicholas' was written, and in the latter part of the 19th century, Father Christmas appeared in department stores in the USA and Canada, and the first Christmas cards appeared in America. Before the end of the century, he was in English stores. In 1931, Coca-Cola introduced the Santa we know today as part of their advertising, and this has become the traditional Father Christmas of today. 1948 saw the arrival of grottos in department stores.

Andrew concluded by saying that in 2005, Oxford Ancestry had started a scheme to see if all those with the surname Christmas were related. There appeared to be two clusters, in Essex and Sussex. This was of interest to Andrew because his wife had a Christmas in her family tree.

November 2006 - For the November meeting, 66 members had gathered to hear Brian Gough tell us about 'Genes Reunited'. He started by saying that basically it was really a surname interest site where you could decide what you would put on your tree and who can see it. There were over 5 million members and more than 88 million individuals in the database You can register free, and do quite a lot without being a subscriber. You don't have to worry about your tree being open to public view, since the only contact is through the site. You can add to your tree manually or from family history programmes, but you don't have to add what you don't want to. There may be problems with the acceptance of trees in GEDCOM form, but trees on the site can be exported as GEDCOM files, but you can't copy other trees. You can send messages to other members, but only full (i.e. paying) members can initiate contacts. However, non-full members can reply. He had found a second cousin through Genes Reunited; she had submitted a tree where one of the names matched his tree, and he had contacted her and this had enabled him to add more names to his tree.

October 2006 - Thirty five members and one visitor were present at the October meeting to hear Kevin Cole talk on his experience as a member of the Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS), and how computers had helped him in his own one name study. Basically, those doing a one name study researched any occurrence of the surname in which they were interested. There were three registration categories. The first was a new name for which the researcher had not yet collected a substantial amount of data; the second was where a large amount of information had been collected; and the third was a fully constituted one name study. The key requirements were a survey of historical sources of the surname. These included all civil registration references, all IGI and vital record indexes, all census information, all entries for published will indexes, and all other readily available indexes and records. Kevin had joined the guild to help in his research through contact with other researchers. Once the name was registered, one can answer queries from others researching the name. Computers helped him to store data and images, to search the internet for information, and to make contact with other researchers via e-mail more quickly than by post, especially for overseas contacts. He went on to say that family history programmes can be used to present results of one's studies in story or book form, or as family charts. Any good programme can be used. He concluded by showing how he used Excel to store and manipulate his data.

September 2006 - Present at the AGM in September were Andrew Britter (Chairman), Don Hewer (Secretary), committee members Ian Boreham and Mike Farman, together with 22 other members. Andrew reported another successful year with a varied programme. Attendances had varied from month to month, probably reflecting the topic being dealt with, but on the whole were slightly down on the year earlier. He thanked the committee members for their contribution to the running of the Group, especially Chris Searl who had been the Treasurer for some years, and had had to stand down as a result of his moving away from Essex. As a result of Chris’s departure, Mike Farman had volunteered to act as Treasurer, and had taken over from the beginning of June. He also thanked the Secretary for his work in keeping the Group running smoothly. Mike reported that the Group’s funds were in a healthy state due in no small measure to the donations Trevor Rix makes when he sells software and machines to members. The Chairman reminded members to continue to support Trevor so that the Group’s funds would continue in a healthy state. Andrew and Don were re-elected as Chairman and Secretary respectively, and Mike was elected Treasurer. Ian Boreham, John Howell and Trevor Rix were re-elected to the committee. The Chairman once again asked for volunteers to join the Committee. He concluded by thanking the members for their continued support each month and concluded the AGM at 10.45 am.

Following the AGM, the meeting discussed what members wanted from the monthly meetings, but before the discussion, Andrew distributed a questionnaire regarding how members used their machines for family history, so that the committee could have some ideas as to how to steer the programme of meetings. He then went on to say that over the last 15 meetings, 7 dealt with the internet, 3 dealt with help with research and 3 dealt with family history programmes. the other two were on general computing and computer help. He asked if the mix was right. The general feeling was that the mix was about right, but there was a suggestion that there could be more outside speakers. It was pointed out that outside speakers cost money. The discussion on the use of digital cameras was considered to have been a success, and it was suggested that more interactive meetings could be included in the programme. It was pointed out that the vast majority of the members were remote from Chelmsford and could not attend the meetings, and it was suggested that we night set up a discussion on line. Andrew said that the possibility of podcasts was being explored. It was also suggested that problem solving could form an important part of the Group’s activities. Andrew pointed out that since Trevor made a donation to the Group’s funds for very item of software and hardware bought by members, they should support TWR Computing and let Trevor know that they were members when they made a purchase from him. Andrew thanked those who had contributed to the discussion and said that the points that had been made would be considered at the next committee meeting. He again appealed for members to serve on the committee. To end the meeting, it was announced that it was now possible to make a broadband connection from the Lecture Theatre using the mains cables to carry the signal from the Research Room. This will enable speakers to access the internet for demonstrations of what is available from various sites.

July 2006 - It seems that the members of the Chelmsford Computer Group are very knowledgeable when it comes to using their computers both for family history purposes and for general use, since only 24 members and 4 visitors were present in July to discuss problems they had encountered with their machines, and no-one had submitted any problems for consideration in advance of the meeting. It was, therefore, left to Andrew Britter to mention some topics which he thought might be useful, and where problems might be encountered. Among these were the creation of a letterhead, and the inclusion of a logo in it. He went on to demonstrate and discuss some of the more unusual facilities in Word, including the treatment of pictures. Another topic he raised was the organisation of favourite internet addresses.

June 2006 - John Hanson usually attracts a good attendance, but only 25 members and two visitors were present at the June meeting to hear him talk on 'Using the Internet to research abroad'. He mentioned several websites including 1837 Online, Rootsweb, Ancestry, Geneanet, Cyndi's list and Ellis Island, and gave examples of what was available on these sites. He then went on to list what was available for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India. He was interested in the name 'Halstead', and mentioned that using the World Connect part of Rootsweb, he had found 55,000 entries for that name. A full list of the sites he listed can be obtained from donhewer@aol.com, giving 'Hanson's list' as the subject of the e-mail.

May 2006 - Chris Searl's talk in May on 'ancestry.co.uk' attracted 62 members. He started by saying that ancestry.co.uk was a subscription service. The annual subscription was £69.95, but you could pay monthly; if you did so, it cost £9.95 per month. If you did subscribe on one of these schemes, you had to unsubscribe if you wanted to terminate your use. It was possible to pay per view; this cost £4.95 for ten views in 14 days. It is possible to try ancestry.co.uk free for a month by taking up the offer made in various advertisements. Ancestry.co.uk contains several databases including the censuses for 1841 to 1901 and the BMD indexes for 1837 to 1983. It was possible to do a global search of all the databases or limit one's search to, say, the 1871 census. One could do an exact search; in this case, it was better to limit the information provided for the search to avoid missing a match because of a slight mismatch. Ranked searches provided the nearest matches and gave each a star ranking. It is possible to do a bulk download to Excel, and then filter or sort the data. Users should bear in mind that the indexing is variable; enumerators' writing was not always good. A search of the 1871 census showed the possibilities but this proved frustrating because the connection was not broadband, and so was very slow. One point that emerged was that it was possible to put one's interests on the website if you were happy to give your data out.

April 2006 - 40 members were present at the April meeting to hear Teresa Pask talk on 'The Master Genealogist'(TMG). She started by saying that she had been using TMG for more than ten years. The latest version was 6.08, which was a UK version using UK spelling and was tailored to UK sources such as BMD registrations. Her presentation covered the basics including setting up options, entering data, linking families, project explorer/pick lists, finding, searching and sorting, and reporting. She admitted that the programme was not too helpful for someone starting family history. She maintains two extensive websites, one, www.uridge.org for her maiden name and one, www.pask.org.uk for her husband's name. The contents of the websites are maintained in TMG and dynamically generated using the companion software 'Second Site'.

March 2006 -The March meeting was attended by fifty-two people for a discussion on using Digital Cameras; the meeting was ably led by group vice-chairman Ian Boreham. Over twenty people brought digital cameras of all sizes and shapes for others to see and discuss. Most people who used digital cameras did so because of their many advantages. They are convenient and easy to use, cheap to run (no expensive film to purchase and have developed), no waiting for film development to see the results and they can store many more pictures than on film. Another advantage is that the pictures can be seen straight away and poor pictures deleted and taken again.

Cameras can be small and compact, mid-sized or large like the older style SLR cameras, and they can have differing memory capacity and picture resolution. These attributes were discussed at length with contributions from many in the audience. Ian Boreham demonstrated the differences in the resolution obtainable with differing pixel capacities using pictures of, appropriately for a family history group, gravestones in a churchyard. With low pixel resolution, explained as the number of dots per inch over the picture area, the pictures can be enlarged only so much, whilst if a greater enlargement is required then a higher number of dots per inch is necessary. Each pixel or dot is made up from the three primary colours and requires three bytes (each byte of eight bits, in computer terms) to define the dot colour. The sensors in the cameras generally have a resolutions of between 3 and 8 mega pixels, (Mp) with 4 to 5 mega pixels being the most commonly used. A 3Mp camera will give good postcard sized pictures (6 x 4 inches) and can be enlarged to about 7 x 5 inches whilst with 5Mp pictures can be enlarged up to A4 size before the graininess becomes apparent

Permission to use digital cameras in Record Offices seems to very variable, with no set rule, the best advice is to ring and enquire before visiting. Digital cameras can be very useful for recording documents to study at leisure later, and the photographs obtained often enable better transcriptions when examined on a PC where they can be enlarged.

Memory cards come in many formats with the SD card being the most common, but the XD card is fast becoming more widely used. Some cameras use Compact Flash cards which are physically larger and Sony cameras have their own Memory Stick. Memory capacities up to 1 giga byte are becoming cheaper and more available and with the larger capacities more pictures can be stored. The merits of optical zoom over digital zoom were covered, with optical zoom giving the better pictures. Printing pictures requires good quality photographic paper for the best results with each manufacturer claiming better results with its own combination of printer and paper. Online picture printing is becoming more popular and as cheap as shops in the High Street; pictures are uploaded to the site, and the printed pictures returned by post.

Digital pictures can be cropped, enhanced and manipulated using one of the many picture software packages such as Paint Shop Pro, Photopaint or the software supplied by the camera manufacturers. Most cameras are supplied with leads to connect to TVs for viewing pictures and USB leads for connection to computers for downloading and long-term storage. Most computer users put their pictures on CDs besides saving on the computers hard disc, and the facility to transfer pictures from memory cards to CDs is available in most photographic shops for a small fee. It was suggested that downloading ‘Picasa’ from the Google website would be a good way to obtain software to start storing, editing, sharing and backing-up pictures on computer. (Note: ‘Picasa’ needs Windows Xp).

Clive Spratt

February 2006 - The speaker at the February meeting was Brian Gough of Saffron Walden, whose talk entitled "Linking your paper records to your family tree" attracted 62 members. He started by saying that over the years, researchers acquire a mass of paper documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates, census records, wills, etc, and while they know that they have a particular item, they often cannot lay their hands on it at a moment's notice. He went on to describe the system which he had devised to enable him to keep his paper records in order. It was related to Family Tree Maker and Excel, but can be used with other family history programmes and spreadsheets.

Basically, he used a series of folders in which he kept the various types and labelled them accordingly. So documents relating to births went into a folder labelled 'B'; those related to marriages in a folder labelled 'M', and so on. Because there are several censuses, each year could have a separate folder so records from the 1841 census could go in a folder labelled 'C4', those from the 1851 census in a folder labelled 'C5', and so on. Each item in a folder is numbered consecutively, so the first item in older 'B' was 'B1' and so on. If an item was too large or too awkward to put into a folder, a sheet numbered appropriately could be put into the folder, giving details of the item and where it could be found.

In the last part of his talk, Brian said that although his system could be used to relate paper records both to hand produced family trees and to those produced by computer, it had many advantages for computer generated trees, and he went on to show how this system of keeping paper records could be connected to one's tree in a family history programme. He took Family Tree Maker as his example, and started by adding an item 'Data Available' to the list of events. It was then possible to include in this item the reference numbers of the documents relating to this individual, so that if someone was mentioned in item 3 in folder 'B', this would result in an entry 'B3' in the data available, and so on. Fuller details of Brian's method can be obtained from him at bri.gough@ntlworld.com, giving 'ESFH talk file please' as the subject. Certainly Brian's talk was interesting, and gave those present (including your scribe) food for thought.

January 2006 - John Howell's talks on 'Family Tree Maker' are always well attended, and his talk in January was no exception. The largest attendance for some time, 80 members, including several who were present at a Computer Group meeting for the first time, gathered to hear him speak on 'Family Tree Maker 2006'. He started by saying that while there were not a lot of differences between FTM 2005 and 2006, they were quite significant. The first difference he mentioned was that while the spell-checker in the 2005 version used the USA dictionary, the UK 2006 version used the English dictionary. He then went on to demonstrate the setting up of a family page, showing that users could set their own preferences for the entry of items such as dates where we preferred the 'dd/mm/yr' format while in America the preferred format was 'mm/dd/yr'. It was now possible to enter children as one became aware of them and then rearrange them in order of birth. Another improvement was that one could copy and paste from one file to another. The space for notes had been expanded from 256kb to 1 Mb per person, and it was now possible to print directly from notes. A new feature is that backup can be to internet storage on the FTM secure servers with password protected access. It is also possible to back up on a rewriteable CD, but once used for FTM, it cannot be used for anything else. It is possible to create a book containing information on a person or family, and if it becomes necessary to edit the data contained in it, this can be done from anywhere in the program, without having to edit the book separately. John's talk showed why FTM is the most popular family history program in the UK.

Don Hewer

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