MacDonald Research Continues

Received another wonderful email from Pete MacDonald today with an attached email containing two pages of genealogy information regarding our MacDonald family tree from his Aunt Anne. This was a GREAT load of information that I spent a good part of the morning entering into my data. While going through the MacDonald Research Folder I have I also found a descendant GEDCOM file sent to me from a researcher named Tiny in PEI that i never finished entering into my data. Once again I began to enter his information into my research in FTM but finally called it a day in the beginning of the afternoon needing to move on to some other chores. What a great day though for adding so much information all at once to our MacDonald side of the family. I emailed Pete back to thank him and made notes on his email of questions to things written that were unclear to me. At the end of this week I will move off the MacDonald branch and either start new research on the Nickerson or Ferris branch of my family. I will continue entering Tiny's data into FTM tomorrow and start the entry into GRAMPS at the end of the week. It is a great feeling to be so involved in researching family again. I need to make plans to begin a biography of one of the MacDonalds for the Website and finally contact Jean S to make plans for a future MacDonald Clan Reunion in the future. To return to the GoodIrishStock Website please click here

MacDonald

MacDonald / Nickerson Work Continues

Thanks to Pete for writing me to let me know he found my post regarding the MacDonald Tree I am researching. Pete's grandfather is the brother to my maternal grandmother from PEI. I hope we can continue to correspond and help each other fill in the blanks to some missing parts of our tree. Furthermore it was so nice to find another family member who has recently taken an interest in genealogy. Today was spent on that same MacDonald line backing up my GRAMPS ( and website ) data by entering it into my Desktop computer that runs Family Tree Maker. I began with The sibling of Donald A MacDonald and tried to bring that line as close to the present as my data permits. That will allow first for my next update on the website to be improved but also allow me the ability to discuss with my MacDonald branch family members exactly what I know and don't know in order to make my research correct. I hope today to end my research with a list of questions regarding my MacDonald family to track down the answers to. Happy Hunting All !!!!

MacDonald - Nickerson Week

AFter speaking on the phone with my cousin Lorraine I filled in a lot of the blanks in the family tree of my mother's sister's present day family starting with my aunt and her husband and descending to her great grandchildren. I still have some dates to fill in including quite a few marriage and a couple of birth dates. Also places remain a mystery. Hopefully today I will resolve these final questions with a trip up north to visit Lorraine and Barbara. I will bring my data with me and Jeanne and I will drive north to New Hampshire to visit and make the Nickerson/MacDonald tree grow fuller in my research. Later tonight after 6pm it's out to eat with our boys Jack and Joseph (and the lovely Grace) who are taking us out to dinner. I entered all the found data into FTM yesterday and will input it into GRAMPS this evening. I will conclude my week of Nickerson/MacDonald work this week and next week go back to work on the Ferris side. A visit to my Aunt Mary ( my father's sister and the last remaining Ferris child of Thomas Ferris will be nice. I plan on filling in a lot of the descendants of my father's brother Walter who move to Delaware and settled. There are a lot of Ferris's down there to add to my tree! It feels so good to be "hunting" and working on my tree again. Working on genealogy is a very "grounding" feeling. I hope to finish off the week with updating posts on the web to inquire on research for the following week's work.

Seeing as I have a lot more time on my hands lately I have been working to bring my GRAMPS genealogy software data in line with my FTM genealogy software data. I fixed the bug in FTM that wouldn't recognize that I am on the internet thus allowing me to click on the "leaf" hints that Ancestry give. Presently working on MacDonald / Nickerson .

OK enough for today. I must pick up Jeanne and my head is full of integers, floats, assignments, variables and objects and of course proper pointing so that it all happens without error. Somehow this will all make sense on a larger level when I attempt to make it work with genealogy data, graphics and web design. Right?.... Oh come on.. don't look at me like that.. Nod with more conviction. I'll get it ... eventually .. That's all for today.

Ruby

So today to complete my long range goal of revising my GoodirishStock website which I currently write in HTML and CSS and of course PYTHON in gramps data. I would like to make this entirely my own code and thus have today begun to learn RUBY. I will report here my progress as I begin to learn the language of RUBY. I installed it first in Windows on my desk top which I still keep XP on. Later I will install it on my laptop which runs Linux KUbuntu.
My first hours today were spent installing RUBY and learning the very basics of it. Intergers and floats for numbers ....strings with letters... ok . so I have a very long way to go before I can move my site over using this language but one must start someplace. For now I will keep updating the site using what i currently have with an new version coming in Spring , all the while continuing to learn RUBY. It feels good to be learning something new ! So onward into 2010 I go.

Happy Hunting !

New Year's Resolution

Well it's a new year and with it comes a new committment to try and post more in here.. I finally have my laptop up and running again ( which held all the codes to updating my site) so I should be able to do a lot more genealogy again. I'll start over the next couple of months to update and redesign the site in total so that I may have a new version out in spring. Also I am beginning today to input data for the descendants of the MacDonald-Nickerson side of my family. Also I recently heard from Kim ( thanks so much for contacting me ) who is from the Porteus side of the Ferris Family. So off we go into a new year with new events to record and new data to process and more roots to research. Happy hunting to all and Happy New Year !