My mom’s taking a genealogy class so we spent quite a bit of time this weekend looking through her class notes, different web sites and reviewing the information she’d already gathered about her family.
I’d taken a genealogy class in library school and had done quite a bit of research as well but mostly on my dad’s side. I’d even entered it in some program I’d bought but when my PC died, I somehow managed to lose the original database file (no big loss – most of the info was stuff I had elsewhere – more just a pain in the butt to re-enter it all.)
So we spent time this weekend re-building the stuff I had before on my dad’s side of the family and entering the stuff my mom had entered on her side of the family into an online genealogy site called MyHeritage which allows you to enter up to 250 individual records for free before you have to start paying for the service.
If you’re not logged in, I think you can only see the deceased people in our family tree – not sure what happens if you’re logged in but not as an administrator – I suspect you can see a bit more but not everything.
There are a couple advantages to doing your genealogy online in a cloud-based site like this – besides being able to log-in and work on this from anywhere, I can invite others (eg. my mom or other relatives) to become administrators and help with building the history. Also, the site has a feature to try to find where people you enter are also part of someone else’s family tree – perhaps your great-great-grandpa is also part of someone else’s family tree and that can open up all sorts of connections and possibilites.
No luck with that feature yet but as we go back further in our timeline, hopefully we’ll find some of those wider connections.
And in terms of Thanksgiving, you really come to appreciate your own life of relative luxury when you contemplate the life that some of your ancestors had – working seven days a week on a farm, no access to schooling, etc.
Many bemoan the coverage of politics that treats it more like sports than something with real-world purpose and implications. The good folks at Slate magazine have gone one step further, creating a very cool web page that shows the current Republican nomination battle as an actual horse race!
They should open source this code and let other political races use it – having the “news ticker” at the bottom really does help you understand the ebb & flow of campaigns.
He made people try their hardest, and that’s the most important quality a leader can ever have.
I really like how this definition of leadership is more about the impact the leader has on other people rather than some internal quality that the leader excels at (although these two factors – internal quality that impacts external staff – are obviously very closely connected.)
Jobs’ death also had me wondering if there is anyone who could be said to have revolutionized the world of libraries, even on our much smaller, more local scale? I mean, Steve Jobs is being compared to the titans of history – Einstein, Edison, Ford, etc. – so the most obvious historical figure in libraries would have to be Dewey.
But in terms of contemporary librarians? I can’t find a list of all previous winners but probably some of the people who won Library Journal’s “Librarian of the Year” award would be potential contenders as would many who are on (what I think of as) the more techie, youth-oriented (and therefore more Jobsian?) “Movers & Shakers” list.
I looked over the Movers & Shakers list and although there are lots of people who’ve done lots of cool things, no one jumped out at me as someone who’s totally changed the nature of libraries in a seismic fashion like Jobs.
I don’t know – maybe it’s not fair to try to draw parallels between a private technology company which was briefly the most valuable in the world earlier this year against, as I said before, the hyper-local, taxpayer-funded institution that is the public library? Or maybe Jobs is a once-in-a-lifetime figure and the library world just hasn’t had that person emerge yet?
Just heard the news and, as with Jack Layton’s passing, the death of the co-founder of Apple was probably not a complete surprise but still pretty shocking.
In fact, when I said how sad I was, Shea said “As sad as when Jack Layton died?” and I replied “More.” I went on to explain that although Jack had a huge impact on Canada and its political history, Steve Jobs revolutionized not just one or two but arguably four industries in his lifetime.
Here’s what I’ve just posted on Facebook and in the relevant MetaFilter thread which had 500 comments within an hour:
Most people would be lucky to revolutionize one industry; Steve Jobs radically changed four: computers (Apple), animation (Pixar), music (iTunes/iPod) and mobile (iPhone).
There is a story that during a Presidential summit on technology, a bunch of big name CEOs were sitting around the table. The CEO of Oracle said “Mr. President – there’s only one CEO at this table who can’t be replaced. And that’s Steve Jobs.”
I guess we’ll see…
Although I’ve used Apple products off and on since the earliest days of my life as a computer user, I was a relative latecomer to the Cult of Mac as an owner. I’m not a total convert either (Shea has a PC as do my folks, her folks and her brother – all on my advice as it’s hard to convince people to buy a $1000+ laptop when you get a cheap Acer for a third of that – even with all the advantages that Macs have.)
Anyhow, coming after the announcement of the iPhone 4GS yesterday, it’s comforting to know that Steve Jobs would’ve at least been able to see that final launch and know that the company would continue to move forward.
Shea almost canceled our wedding when this song was playing non-stop on Mexican MTV in the lead-up to our big day. I’m not sure who was able to finally convince her that Robbie Williams might just be unobtainable and she’d have to settle for me but I’m glad they did! 😉
Earlier today, Shea, Pace and I went to the grand opening of the joint campaign office for three of the NDP candidates in next month’s provincial election – Jaime Garcia, Warren McCall and Trent Wotherspoon. Jaime’s the new guy on the block, replacing retiring MLA Kim Trew, so he arguably has the toughest battle ahead of him in an election which many are predicting will be a rout by the governing Saskatchewan Party.
One of the things I said was that the NDP is (and always has been) the party with the best ideas. This is demonstrated by the NDP’s recent policy document, “A Rooted and Growing Vision’ and is also exemplified by ideas like the one captured in this new campaign commercial.
Simply put, creating a sovereign wealth fund like the one in Norway (I can’t find it now but recently read somewhere that this Norwegian fund has a hugely disproportionate influence on helping the European economy survive the global recession of 2008) is an awesome idea. I *love* that the NDP are proposing a similar fund for Saskatchewan and can’t wait to see what other ideas they will put forward in the weeks to come.
