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The Polish Bride 11 Feb 2013 10:50 AM (12 years ago)

I watched The Polish Bride based on a Netflix suggestion and I found it oddly compelling. It's a Dutch film (English subtitles) and very different from most other films I've seen. There's very little dialogue, a surprise for a character-focused drama, and the soundtrack is understated. The lack of dialogue is certainly a statement by the director, but it's also a natural outcome of the basic plot: the two main characters do not speak the same language until the woman learns Dutch. With so little dialogue, we viewers are left to figure out what is happening, to interpret the clues, and in some cases, to decide for ourselves what happened and why.

At the pivotal point in the action, the couple did not react the way I expected, enough to make me wonder if the film had a fatal flaw. Maybe so, but people often react in surprising ways in real life.

There is an Australian version named Unfinished Sky featuring the same lead actress from The Polish Bride. Unfinished Sky won multiple 2008 Australian Film Institute awards. I haven't seen it yet.

If you are looking for a film that is out of the ordinary, give this one a try.

Conscious or Unconscious? 15 Jan 2013 12:33 PM (12 years ago)

I woke up suddenly at about 4AM a few nights ago. In the transition from asleep to awake, I had the notion that something had woken me, but I wasn't sure what. When woken suddenly, there's a greater chance than usual that I will remember what I was dreaming about, and that was the case this time. In the part of the dream I remember, I was about 17 years old and standing in a corridor near the hospital kitchen where I had a part-time job. There were a few different people in the dream, including co-workers that were my friends at the time, and our manager. The dream versions of those people were realistic, and matched my memory of how they looked at the time. For some reason, the corridor was not accurate. It seemed to be a mixture of two different corridors, it seemed soft and uncertain at the edges of my vision, and that was intriguing. Why were the people accurate, but not the corridor? Even in the dream I was vaguely aware that the corridor wasn't real. That's a recurring, and sometimes comforting, aspect of my dreams: I can often tell that I am in a dream because some aspect of the dream is unrealistic. When something scary or unexpected is happening, my dream-self is aware that it's just a dream and there's no reason to get truly scared or upset.

As I lay awake pondering the corridor question, I began to wonder about the roles of the conscious and subconscious in the dreaming process. I am mostly uninformed about this subject and so I have little to offer to anyone else. If I recall correctly, the subconscious mind controls the content of the dream, but how does the conscious mind remember the dream later? Perhaps the conscious mind is totally uninvolved when we are actively dreaming, but under certain circumstances the conscious mind becomes aware of the echoes of the dream in short-term memory. For me, the most common circumstance where I remember a dream is when I am awoken during the dream. I rarely, if ever, have any memory of my dreams unless that happens. So, it seems reasonable that short-term memory is shared between the conscious and unconscious. I don't know if that is really how it works, but it prompted another question: what role does the subconscious have in waking me up in response to an external stimulus? I was unable to determine why I had awoken, but it was abrupt, and given that's not normal for me, I think there was some unusual noise or perhaps my wife rolled over or bumped into me or something like that. Was I unable to recall the stimulus because I was asleep and my conscious mind was unaware of it? Sounds reasonable, I guess, but what role does the subconscious play in reacting to that sort of stimulus? Why wasn't the memory of that stimulus available to my conscious mind via short-term memory after I awoke?

I can see it now: my subconscious mind reacts to the stimulus by elbowing the conscious mind in the ribs and saying, you better wake up, but I am not going to tell you why, and don't even look in short-term memory because it's not there! Hah!

That particular night was rare in that after I fell back to sleep I had another dream that I remembered when I woke up. The timing must have been right that I was in the middle of the second dream when my alarm went off. The second dream was quite different from the first. Where the first was mostly realistic except for a corridor that couldn't be real, the second was filled with odd sights and behaviors. It had one thing in common with the first: I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming and not really aloft in a flying car, not pushing trees over with my bare hands, etc.

I wish I remembered more of my dreams. Despite waking up in the middle of the night, then laying awake for a bit thinking about the interrupted dream, I felt very refreshed when I finally woke up for good. I have promised myself a few times that I will do some research to determine how to dream more and remember them better, but somehow that task never rises to the top of the heap of things I have to do or want to do.

How Comcast Is Ruining My Stomach Wall 7 Aug 2012 1:33 PM (12 years ago)

Comcast has the broadband rights in my hometown. They are a monopoly, and that is a Very Bad Thing. The problems take many forms, such as Comcast forcing me to rent devices from them for $10 USD each per month when I could purchase the equivalent technology for far less. That's just one of the recurring annoyances of being a Comcast customer; there are others. At the other end of the spectrum of evil is the ominous threat that Comcast may one day charge me an exorbitant fee to access Netflix or some other bandwidth-consuming video service as a means of twisting my arm to use the Comcast "On Demand" service instead.

Neither of those concerns are what's eating my stomach wall today, however.

We have Comcast's "Triple Play" package which includes cable TV, Internet, and telephone service. In early June, all three services started failing periodically. First it was about once a day, then it was more often. I called for service and was told that crews were working in the area and that was the probable cause. I was skeptical, but I didn't push for a service call.

Regarding my skepticism: How often do crews do work in the same area every day for a few weeks, including weekends, and accelerate the number of outages per day as they do so?

About a week later, the intermittent outages were still happening, and more frequently. I called again and this time they scheduled a service call. I don't recall when I called to make the appointment, but I think there was a few days between the call and the service visit. Not bad, in the big picture, but aggravating. If I had pushed for a service visit on the earlier call, perhaps the problem would have been solved already. Instead, I endured another week of intermittent problems, and I had to wait a few more days for the fix. In retrospect, I wish that had been true.

The technician arrived at around 3PM on Friday, June 22nd. He went straight to the cellar where the underground cable enters the house. He measured the signal strength and said there was a problem. He went out to a box near the street and did some tests there. He returned and said that there was adequate signal at the street, but not enough after it passed through the underground cable. He said the existing RG-6 cable was the issue. For the given distance, the cable should have been RG-11. The technician had no good answer for why the cable had worked fine for twenty-three years prior to the current problem surfacing. He said that the cable may have minor physical damage and that finally caused an issue.

I didn't believe him. I am not an expert, but as part of my job I manage the technology infrastructure of retail locations that use underground conduit for various signal cables, including RG-6, RG-11, CAT6, etc. I saw the underground conduit installed when the house was being built, and it was installed properly. The only thing in the conduit was the RG-6 cable, and there were no tight bends in it. The cable may have been damaged when it was installed, and it may have aged through freeze-thaw cycles, etc., over twenty-three years, but it didn't seem likely that would cause the intermittent outages. But, hey, he's the technician and he says the cable is the issue.

OK, where do we go from here?

He can't fix it. Comcast has subcontractors that install underground cable. He'll arrange for that process to start, and then they'll arrange for a Dig Safe survey and the other necessary steps.

I stopped him right there. There's no need to call Dig Safe or dig in the yard at all. Comcast should use the old cable to pull a new cable through the conduit. He says that won't work. Well, he qualifies himself, it might work, but if the existing conduit is damaged or they can't pull a cable through it for some reason, they'll want to be ready to dig a new channel for the replacement cable.

The lunatics are running the asylum.

There's no evidence—yet—the conduit is damaged. Pulling a new cable through is easy, and cheap, and it's best for both Comcast and me to pull a replacement cable through and see if that solves the problem. There are cheap ways to make a pretty good guess about whether a conduit is damaged: you pull on one end of the cable, and if the other end moves, it's likely the conduit is OK and you can pull a new cable through. Sorry, no can do, the only thing he can request is a new cable and that means Dig Safe and other steps and it will take a few weeks. He leaves and promises that someone from a separate contractor hired by Comcast will contact me. It will take a minimum of three weeks to get it resolved. That's awful, but again, in retrospect, I wish that had been true.

The contractor calls me relatively soon after that. He says they will use the existing conduit if they can. They will do the site visit to assess the situation within two weeks, and then schedule the actual replacement. I don't understand why they won't send a crew to (A) see if pulling a new cable will work and (B) do the survey for digging a channel for a new cable if pulling a cable won't work. That's one visit instead of two, less cost for Comcast, and a faster resolution for me. It must make too much sense, because that's not the way they do it.

Two weeks later, orange paint and little flags show a path from the electrical box near the street across my lawn to the house. Evidently, Dig Safe has paid a visit. I call the underground cable contractor and leave a message: when can you schedule the cable replacement now that Dig Safe has done their thing?

A few days go by and the contractor doesn't reply, so I call again. I leave a message.

I get a call back the next day, which was Tuesday or Wednesday last week, more than a month since the original trouble call to Comcast. The underground contractor says that he is waiting for Comcast to authorize the work.

AARGH!

I'm guessing here, but the screwed up Comcast process has resulted in way more effort—and cost—than necessary to replace the cable, and spending decisions have to get approved by someone, and that someone doesn't give a crap that having all three services go down in the final heat of the Men's 100 Meter Dash is a Very Bad Thing. What's especially annoying is that Comcast has a quadrillion commercials during the Olympic coverage bragging about their service.

I got a letter from Lorna Edwards of Comcast on July 13th telling me to call her if there's an issue the underground cable contractor can't resolve. I leave a message for her that explains the basics. She doesn't call me back. I call her again, explain the basics, and she doesn't call me back.

I call the main Comcast customer support number to try and get around the unresponsive Ms. Edwards. The resulting call is worse than the old Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" routine, and that's only after waiting forty-seven minutes to talk to Abbott. First, I spent two minutes navigating their touchtone menus. Then I waited forty-five minutes to talk to a live person. Next, I have to repeat to him my home telephone number because his system doesn't pop that information on his screen when the call is routed to him. I ask, why does the system ask me to enter it if a human is going to ask me to repeat it later? He says it may be because I used a cell phone to call, not the main telephone number associated with the account. I explain that the main telephone associated with the account is part of the problem: I can't use it because when the Comcast service fails—which it does routinely—calls get dropped.

On to the meat of the matter, and frustration sets in immediately: he has no record of there being any outstanding service required at my location.

WHAT?

I explain to him the process so far. This takes time; the problem doesn't seem to fit into any support model of his. He tries to repeat things back to me, but screws it up. This happens multiple times. Here's an example.

"OK, so what you are telling me is that a technician fixed the problem back in June, but now it's back?"

I didn't say anything even remotely like that. I correct him; the problem was never fixed, the technician couldn't fix it, etc. He argues that his system says the June trouble ticket is "Resolved". I tell him his system is wrong.

This goes on for twenty minutes. I only argue with him because he says that he wants to send another technician to the house, a repeat of the June experience. I try again to explain to him that I am calling so that someone at Comcast will authorize the underground cable contractor to do the work. He won't budge. After a total of about ninety minutes I get so frustrated I hang up. I need to end the call because I was getting so angry that I was afraid for my health. As seen in the Urban Dictionary, "[Stress is] the confusion caused when ones mind overrides the body’s natural desire to choke the living shit out of some asshole that desperately needs it." To be fair, I don't think the Comcast agent was an asshole. Will all due respect to our politically-correct times, I think he was stupid, and his stupidity was magnified by inadequate support tools.

Time check: that conversation was on Saturday, August 4th. The original call to Comcast was placed in early June. At this point in the story, I'd been trying to get Comcast to fix the problem for two months.

On Sunday, August 5th, I call the main Comcast support number. After the usual lengthy wait, I get connected to a agent. I immediately ask to talk to a supervisor. The agent explains that the supervisor's time is valuable—evidently, mine isn't—and so he'll gather some facts and then transfer me. As I expected, his system has no record that there is a problem at my location. I'm ready for that, and I tell him that his system has a record of the June 22nd service call, and that the record is wrong. After a few minutes, he transfers me to a supervisor named Sarah. She asks me to explain the situation to her, so as I suspected, the explanation I gave the agent was a complete waste of time. I went round and round with her trying to get her to accept that someone at Comcast has to authorize the underground cable contractor to do the work.

She also refuses to consider giving me a credit for the constant outages since June because there is no record in their system of problems on the line during that time. I point out that there is a record of a trouble call on June 22nd, a letter from Comcast on July 13th, and multiple calls from me from mid July to the (then) present time. She says her system doesn't show it, and the most she could ever authorize would be based on my call that day. I say I will bring the matter to small claims court. She says, well, that's your prerogative.

We return to the outage and how to resolve it. She tells me repeatedly that the only thing she can do is have one of the regular technicians visit the site. Given the outcome of the previous visit on June 22nd, that didn't make sense to me. I assume that the technicians follow a protocol, and one step in that protocol is to measure the signal strength at the street and then as it enters the building, and if that is not within an acceptable range, the cable between those two points has to be repaired or replaced. In retrospect, I should have accepted it.

I finally got the supervisor to accept that something else had to be done, but before she could tell me what would happen, the line went dead. I was on my cell phone—the Comcast telephone line is unreliable, remember—and it's possible that it was just a dropped call. On the other hand, it's possible she hung up on me. There was no other indication of a bad cellular signal. Anyway, I had spent 71 minutes on the phone and there was no clear outcome of what was going to happen. I had to call back.

AARGH!

I called back, fearing the worst: a long wait, another battle with a agent to get him or her to connect me with a supervisor, no reasonable expectation that I could get reconnected to Sarah so I'd have to explain the whole situation to another supervisor and argue with them about what should be done. Luckily, the wait was short. I got connected to Mary C., and I had the first pleasant experience of the whole ordeal. I did a brief explanation of the situation and asked to speak to a supervisor. She said that she could help me, and then echoed back what I had told her perfectly and told me what she could do to help. She agreed there was a big problem and she would make sure I got a refund based on the original trouble call. She promised to chase down the people within Comcast to determine how to authorize and prioritize the underground cable install.

I was ecstatic, but also in shock. Mary C. was the first person at Comcast who sounded like she truly sympathized with the situation. That would not have been enough, by itself, but coupled with her willingness to assume responsibility for pushing the issue inside Comcast, I felt there was finally hope that the issue would get resolved. She told me she would contact people via email that day, then she would call me back (unbelievable!) on Tuesday to give me a status report.

On Monday morning at 8AM, I got a call from the underground cable company. They asked me if they could come by that morning to replace the cable. (Whatever Mary did, it worked.) It wasn't really convenient for me that they come at that time, but there was no way I was going to refuse. They came and they did exactly what I expected: they spent about forty-five minutes to assess the situation and then they used the old RG-6 cable to pull a new RG-11 cable through the conduit.

I inspected the old RG-6 cable and I could find no damage. There were no kinks, no cuts or abrasions in the cable, no evidence of water damage, no bite marks from some critter or damage by insects. The cable looked new, which is what I expected given it was brand new in 1990 and it has been protected in the conduit, three feet underground, for twenty-three years. Is it possible the cable was bad? Yes. Is it likely? No.

After making the necessary connections, the crew asks me to confirm that everything is working. It is. I explain that the problem is intermittent so I can't be sure it's fixed, but they seem to have installed the new cable properly. They were gone by about 11AM.

At 12:20PM, the line went down and we lost all three services for about 30 minutes, a repeat of the problem we've been having since early June. The underground cable was not the problem.

The problem is not solved. I would like to call Mary C., and I know how to do that now (she told me), but Monday is her day off. I could wait for her to call me on Tuesday, but she was supposed to update me about the underground cable replacement, and due to her efforts, that is now complete. It seems to me that I should call Comcast support so they can have a technician come out and figure out what the real problem is. I have to repeat the story to yet another Comcast rep, and the guy is really annoying because he keeps giving me monotone responses that are supposed to make me feel better but just make it worse. His approach is totally unsympathetic and phony. He agrees that I need a technician to visit, and asks me if they can come Wednesday. I ask what time. He says they don't provide a time estimate for "pole work", i.e., work that is between the street and the house. I explain for the second time that the underground cable has been replaced and the problem isn't solved. The technician will need to get in our house to diagnose the problem, at least to measure the signal strength and probably more. He explains that given the way he has described the problem in the system, he can't get me an appointment with a scheduled time.

Perhaps you've seen the Comcast commercials where they promise to give two-hour windows for service calls, guarantee that they will be on time, etc. If you are still reading this epic customer service failure story, ask yourself how likely it is the guarantee means anything relevant to customers.

I ask to speak to a supervisor. It's outrageous that I should have to be home all day Wednesday after all the time an effort I have put into getting them to fix the problem. I start to plead my case to the supervisor, she stops me and immediately agrees to change the support call to an appointment with a predefined time. I ask her why I had to bang my head and kick my feet to get an appointment, and she has no good answer. The call is winding down when she drops in a nice little bombshell: I have to call back later in the day to confirm that the appointment is not canceled.

WHAT?

She explains that there is a service outage in the area and when that service outage is repaired, an automatic process will cancel all service appointments for the area. I explain that my service is working (it had come back by the time I got through to her) and that whatever the outage was, it didn't affect the problem at my house. That doesn't matter; the system is automatic and there's no way to defeat it.

My cell phone indicates that I have been on the phone with her and the other agent for more than an hour. I ask her how she would feel if she had invested an hour to get a service appointment and was told that she had to call back to make sure the appointment wasn't canceled. She doesn't answer and repeats the company line: this is how it works, there's nothing she can do about it, she has been instructed to advise me that it is in my best interests to call back later to determine if the appointment has been canceled. I ask to speak to her supervisor. She says she can request that a manager call me, but the manager will not be able to help. She explains that checking a service appointment is easy; you can do it without waiting for an agent. The system will detect that there is a service call outstanding and present an option to check on it. It's ridiculous that I have to baby sit the appointment to make sure it's not canceled, but at least the call to check it should be relatively short. Unless it's canceled, of course. She does not know the exact steps to check an appointment using the touchtone keypad, but she's been told it's easy. The call ends after 71 minutes.

A few hours later, I call back to see if the appointment has been canceled. There is no prompt to check on the appointment. Any rationale human would conclude that the appointment was canceled. I wait to talk to an agent to get the appointment rescheduled. After about 8 minutes—a short time by normal Comcast standards—I talk to an agent. He says the appointment has not been canceled. He cannot explain why there was no option to check the appointment in the automated telephone menus, but he think it may be because I called from a cell phone that is not associated with the account. I explain that I was prompted to enter the telephone number associated with the account early in the process.

Remember, this is a "triple-play" account: I have telephone, cable TV, and Internet via the Comcast service. How on earth could they make it a requirement that a customer call from the telephone they provide when the reason for the call may include that the said telephone line isn't working? I have no idea if that is really the requirement. For the purposes of this story, it doesn't matter.

The appointment is still in force, but I'd wasted another eleven minutes to confirm it.

OK, we've caught up to the present. Today is when Mary C. promised to call me with an update. I got home from a morning meeting and Mary C. from Comcast has called three times. (She's great!) I asked her to call my cell phone, but she called our home telephone instead. So far, that's the only mistake on her part. I couldn't call her back directly—a (deliberate?) limitation of the Comcast system—but I could call support and ask them to send her a message so she would call me back. I called support, there was only a short wait, and after seven minutes, the message was on the way to Mary C. She called back in thirteen minutes; she was on a call with another customer. She got an update from me and said she would keep the issue in her active folder and would check back again after the service visit tomorrow. I thank her. Nothing major accomplished, but I feel more confident that whatever is required between now and the final solution, it will go more smoothly with Mary's help. She represents ownership of the issue on the part of Comcast.

So, as things stand, the problem is not fixed. Hopefully, the technician who visits tomorrow will find the actual problem.

From what I can tell, Comcast needs a lot more people like Mary, and not solely because it's been incredibly easier for me to interact with her compared to everyone else.

On the first call I made on Sunday, August 5th, I spent about 30 minutes waiting to talk to an agent, then I spent a total of 41 minutes talking to two different people. They didn't help me. On the second call, I got lucky and got Mary, and the call was 19 minutes of which about 14 minutes were actually spent talking to her. If she spent 16 minutes sending email messages and doing other post-call steps to get the right resources at Comcast working on the problem, her total time investment would equal the 30 minutes I wasted with the two ineffective agents on the first call that day. I suspect she spent less than 16 minutes. It's a win-win: more agents like Mary would mean customers would spend less time on the phone and they'd feel confident that Comcast owned the problem and would solve it. Comcast would save money because agents would spend less time helping customers, even if you include time spent after the call.

Unfortunately, Comcast doesn't seem to have many people like Mary, and its support systems make the problem far worse. The acid eating its way through my stomach wall since early June is evidence.

UPDATE: Thursday, August 9th, 2012

UPDATE: Saturday, November 10th, 2012

Finding Freiburgers 18 Apr 2011 9:49 AM (14 years ago)

While reviewing my Freiburger ancestors recently, I was forced to confront a research problem that stymied me in the past: I was unable to find 1880 US Federal Census entries for three Freiburger families who lived in Boston in 1880. I was very confident that the three families were in Boston because of other evidence including vital records and city directories, and I found census entries for all the people involved in 1870 and 1900, but I could not find them in 1880 and of course, the 1890 census entries are not available. Everytime I visited one of those records in my TMG project, the 30-year gap between census entries was staring me in the face.

I use online genealogy sources a lot because what little time I have for genealogy research is late at night when libraries and other archives are not open. I've been using Ancestry.com for at least 11 years and I am a very satisfied user. In 2000, the site was not as fast or reliable as it is now, the user interface has improved since then, and there's a lot more data available, especially digital images of original documents.

Ancestry.com is noticeably better than the two other sites I use most frequently:

• FamilySearch, the online service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that provides access to some of the records gathered by the Family History Library
• American Ancestors, the web site for the New England Historic Genealogical Society

This post is mostly about the techniques I used to find the Freiburger families on Ancestry.com, but along the way I'll make some comparisons between Ancestry.com, FamilySearch and American Ancestors. I have loose plans to write an article that compares those three sites, but who knows if I'll ever get to it!

Finding Freiburgers can be difficult because there are many spelling variations. Some people spell it with an "ie" rather than an "ei", still others spell it with a "y", the "burger" part is sometimes spelled "berger", and transcription errors add to the fun. To increase my chances of finding Freiburgers, I use wildcards when those are allowed. On Ancestry.com, I typically search for "fr??b?rger" and "fryb?rger", and I try other patterns if those fail. Those patterns, and others I tried, didn't help me locate the missing 1880 census entries.

Late in 2010, after multiple attempts to find the 1880 census entries using wildcard searches, I browsed the images for the enumeration districts where I thought the missing families would be. I had addresses from city directories and I was reasonably confident I would find the census entries. My confidence was misplaced, and I didn't find any of the families. Even though I have now located them via more imaginative index searches, I am not sure why manually searching the enumeration districts didn't work.

The key element of finding the three families was to abandon the notion that a surname is an essential component of every online search on a list of names. Intellectually, I know that a surname is not required, but as a practical matter I sometimes operate on autopilot and enter a surname term, and then try variations of the term if the initial search fails. When I remember to think outside the name boxes, I've located many hard to find records using other search keys.

To use the technique effectively, you must choose something relatively unique about the person or family that is present in the database index and will help to reduce the size of the result set returned by the query. Using a single non-surname term may produce a result set that is too large to be useful, but each additional term will reduce the number of results.

Here's how I used the technique to find the Freiburgers in the 1880 census.

I'll start at the moment of inspiration. I assumed that the enumerator misheard or misspelled the surname, or perhaps the Ancestry index used a poor transcription, or both. I decided that I might never guess the correct surname search term to use, and around the same time, I noticed that the 1870 Census entries for the Freiburgers all specified a birthplace of Baden. I already knew the family was from Baden, but what occurred to me at that moment was that Baden was not a large country and there probably weren't that many immigrants to Boston from Baden. By itself, a search of people enumerated in Boston who were born in Baden would yield thousands of entries, but combined with some other limiting term, the birthplace might produce a small enough result set to be useful. I decided to use birth year as the other limiting term.

Anna Marie (Kappler) Freiburger immigrated to Boston from Baden in 1867 and she was enumerated with her husband Johann and their children in the 1870 census. Johann died in 1878, but Anna Marie and her children were still living in Boston in 1880. From other evidence, I had an estimate of 1820 as her birth year, so I opened Ancestry's search page for the 1880 census and entered the following search terms:

• Birth Year: 1820 +/- 2 (Exact only)
• Birth Location: Baden (Restrict to exact)
• Lived In: Suffolk County, Massachusetts, USA (Restrict to exact)

When I include a name in the search terms, I typically turn off the "Restrict to exact" properties of the other terms to guard against mistakes in the index or mistakes in my assumptions or prior research. When omitting the name, however, I turn on "Restrict to exact" because otherwise there will be too many entries in the result set.

I was glad to see that only 52 people matched the terms, and even happier to discover "Anna Friedburger" as the 15th entry. One click later, I was able to confirm that "Anna Friedburger" was really Anna (AKA Mary) Freiburger, the widow of Johann, and the adult children I expected to find living with her were all enumerated in the same household. Success at last!

I was a bit disappointed to find that I had only myself to blame for being unable to find her using surname search terms. The transcription was accurate, and while the enumerator spelled her surname with a "d", that was not uncommon. I knew the name was sometimes spelled that way, but I had neglected to account for that in the search terms I used in previous searches.

I did a search using the surname Friedburger in hopes that surname was also used for Anna Maria's adult children who were not living with her. No luck with that, but reusing the same technique I used to find Anna Maria worked two more times, once for each of her adult sons who were not living with her.

Anna Maria's son Jacob Freiburger was found via the same terms as above except for an estimated birth year of 1855. I was less certain of his birth year so I expanded the +/- factor to 5 years. He was the 49th entry of 50, enumerated as "John Flyburg". Again, the Ancestry index transcription was correct, but the enumerator got it wrong.

I changed the birth year to 1846 +/- 1 to find Anna Maria's son George Freiburger. He was enumerated as "George Fayburger". In this case, there was a transcription error. The text on the digital image is quite faint, but I believe the enumerator wrote "Fryburger".

The technique described above will work on other sites as well as Ancestry. It typically works best when you can limit the search to a specific database within a site. For example, I found a death register entry for Bridget (Houghton) Freiburger in the "Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841–1910" database on American Ancestors using the same technique. Bridget's surname was transcribed incorrectly as "Freihurger"; I found her via a search for first name Bridget, death events only, year 1880, in the city of Boston.

The technique is a little more difficult to use when the genealogy web site does not have database-specific search pages. On FamilySearch, for example, you can filter the result set by category (where categories equate to databases or collections on Ancestry.com), but I have not found database-specific search pages. The search terms are the same for all searches, and that restricts the options you have for reducing the size of the result set. When searching for a census entry, for example, you can't limit the search to a specific census year, and you can only specify a single location. So, for example, you can't specify both a birth place and a "lived in" location as you can when using Ancestry.com's search page for the 1880 US Federal Census.

More Than We Need to Know 21 Nov 2006 3:59 PM (18 years ago)

I had a few minutes to kill so I read a few pages of the Parade magazine that comes with many Sunday papers. It starts with Walter Scott's Personality Parade, a feature where readers write-in and ask questions about celebrities. Have you seen it? It makes me embarrassed to be a member of the human race. Questions are invariably posed in a smarmy manner using phrases like "gal pal", and the answers are just as bad, or worse. Ugh.

I don't understand the popularity of Personality Parade, People magazine, the Entertainment Tonight TV show, and the hundreds of other celebrity-obsessed offerings from the entertainment media. Who cares who is dating who? Who cares that Tom Cruise married some actress?

Worse yet, you can't turn around without bumping into some advice from a celebrity. Who cares about the political views of Barbara Streisand? Does having some singing and acting talent qualify her as a political analyst? Who would ever seek or take advice from movie stars, athletes, or other famous people? Their lives are so different from the average person that their advice is worse than useless. They deserve credit for success in their chosen field, but in love, politics, or just about any other subject, they have no credentials and their unusual circumstances corrupt their point of view.

I don't blame the stars for the constant coverage, for giving advice, or for airing their political views. I don't blame the media, either. The fault lies with the buying public. People buy the magazines, and they watch the shows, and the more they do that, the more will be offered.

The troubling thing is, because the cult of personality dominates the media, less attention is given to more important, more interesting, and more relevant subjects.

Live Local 16 Sep 2006 7:43 AM (18 years ago)

I've been using Live Local from Microsoft lately and I thought I'd write about a couple features that may be of interest to genealogists. In general, Live Local is similar to Google Maps. You can use it for viewing road maps, satellite photographs, and road maps superimposed on satellite photographs. Unlike Google Maps, Live Local provides a "bird's eye" view for selected locations. Bird's eye view uses photographs taken at an angle to show the facades of buildings and landmarks. They reveal a lot more detail than satellite photos.

Live Local also includes the ability to add "pushpins" to mark specific points of interest. Google Maps provides a similar capability, but as far as I can tell it is only available through Google Maps programming interface or applications built using that interface. With Live Local, it's a basic feature of the tool and is available to all users.

After you navigate to a particular location, you can save a permalink (permanent link) to the page. The zoom level, pushpins, etc., are all saved, so the link will recreate the current view. Use permalinks as bookmarks for yourself, or share them with other people.

There are a couple ways to save permalinks. I use the View permalink command in the Share menu near the top of the main window. You have to be careful to select all the text; if a view has lots of pushpins, the URL will be quite long.

Here are some example links.

• Old Burial Field, Lancaster, Massachusetts - bird's eye view.
• Old Burial Field, Lancaster, Massachusetts - aerial view
• Old Burial Field, Lancaster, Massachusetts - road view
• Old North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts - bird's eye view
• 3 Savile Road, Westminster, London - aerial view
• Abbey Road Pedestrian Crossing - aerial view

Live Local permalinks may be of interest to Second Site users. You can add permalinks in event memos, or if you use the Place Index feature, you can add them as comments in place records. Here's an example of how to code a simple permalink:

[HID:][SS:]<a href="http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2
&cp=42.448317~-71.674458&style=r&lvl=15&scene=599294
&sp=Point.r2788v90tdw3_Old%20Burial%20Field%2c%20Lancaster%2c%20
Massachusetts_Old%20Settlers%20Burial%20Field%20is%20not%20visible%20from%20
Main%20Street.%20Walk%20through%20the%20woods%20behind%20the%20
newer%20cemetery%2c%20cross%20the%20tracks%2c%20and%20down%20a%20
slight%20hill%20to%20find%20the%20entrance.__~Point.r278y490t9xj_
Cemetery%20visible%20from%20street">Old Burial Field, Lancaster,
Massachusetts</a> - road view[:SS][:HID]

Note that I added carriage returns so that the URL would wrap to multiple lines. In an actual link, there should be no carriage returns, linefeeds, etc.

Finding places using the bird's eye view feature can be difficult sometimes, especially if you don't have an accurate address or if the location doesn't have a precise address. You can use latitude/longitude, but the Live Local user interface doesn't have latitude/longitude input fields. You have to use some other method of creating a Live Local URL.

Once you are in the right general location, you can drag the bird's eye image around, but you can't drag indefinitely. When you reach the edge, you have to click on a control which loads an adjacent area. Sometimes, the place you want to find is at the edge of an area, but loading the adjacent area doesn't show what you want because of vagaries of how the photographs relate to each other. If that happens, try using the direction control which loads an image of the same area but taken from another direction. The default direction is looking north, but quite often the best view of a landmark will be from another direction.

Bird's eye view is not 100% reliable. It may be due to the load on the Live Local servers, or who knows what, but sometimes Live Local says that bird's eye view is not available for a particular location even when I was looking at it moments before.

Don't let those little problems deter you. The bird's eye view and the pushpins make Live Local a great addition to your mapping toolkit.

TMG Utility and the PMC 31 Jul 2006 5:47 PM (18 years ago)

As many of you know, my TMG Utility program is offered as donorware: if you use the program and like it, I ask you to donate to the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC). The PMC is a great charity. Every year, thousands of bicycle enthusiasts ride 180 miles on the first weekend in August to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, the fundraising arm of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In October, when the fundraising has all been done, the PMC presents a big check to the Jimmy Fund. In 2005, the total was $23 million!

My wife and I have both ridden seven times already, and our daughter Casey is a two year veteran. It’s a great family activity; we train together, fund raise together, and all for a great cause. Our PMC activities remind us of our friends and loved ones who have passed away from cancer, notably Shelly Ford, Ann and Mario Labadini, Sally DeCroteau, Marie Cloherty, and Ed Parent.

There are many, many great things about the PMC, and we'd like to keep doing it forever, but this year will be our last. Each year it gets a little harder to reach the fundraising minimum and we need a break from that pressure. With three people riding this year, and a $2500 minimum for the route we ride, that’s $7500 we have to raise. Given that the three of us share the same relatives, friends, and neighbors, and we have been asking that group to support our ride for many years... well, that’s a lot to ask of people year after year.

I'd like to send a special thank you to TMG Utility users who have donated in the past. All of you embraced the idea of offering TMG Utility as shareware supported by donations, and you helped bridge the gap between the fundraising minimum and what we raised from friends and family.

If you are a TMG Utility user, and if you feel that TMG Utility has saved you time and effort, please make a donation this year. It’s a donation to a great charity, it will be a big help to me and my family, and it’s your last chance.

The ride is this weekend, August 5th and 6th. The deadline for fundraising is October 13th.

You can donate online via my eGifts page. Please note that even though the eGifts page is for my PMC account, we pool our funds and so a donation to me is a donation to Maureen and Casey, too.

TMG Utility users: don't worry!

TMG Utility will not be donorware anymore, and that's a shame, but I will continue to support it and add features to it and it will remain the essential utility for TMG users. I suspect I'll change it to freeware or shareware, but I'll decide that after we get through this year’s PMC fundraising effort.

UPDATE on Wednesday, August 2, 2006

I'm overwhelmed. In 2 days, more than 50 people have donated. That's incredible. I don't really know what to say except that Maureen, Casey and I are very thankful to all of you. The TMG user community is a caring, generous bunch. Your generosity prompted me to upload a letter written by the mother of the young cancer patient who is the Pedal Partner for my PMC team. I think Sarah's mother Michelle explains why the PMC is so important far better than I can.

The Other Side of the Coin 30 Mar 2006 8:26 AM (19 years ago)

My Death by Design post elicited some comments. That's good. After reading the comments, and re-reading some of my other posts, I decided I was being more negative, in general, than I'd like. So, here's a link to a site named CSS Beauty that presents a gallery of well-designed sites. I liked the sites a lot more than the sites from the Death by Design post.

The gallery page of the site is here: CSS Beauty Gallery

The brief description of what the site is about is here: About CSS Beauty

Death by Design 8 Mar 2006 4:35 PM (19 years ago)

Let's start with a disclaimer, which is typically a bad idea. I do not have much artistic talent, at least in the area of graphics or visual media. I am often amazed by people who do, and a few of those people are my friends.

Check out the Netdiver Best of the Year 2005 awards for web site design. It's a great example of why you don't want designers making too many decisions about web site design. The sites on the list are graphically rich, and there are some innovative elements, but more importantly, they are hard to use, hard to understand, slow to load, and dogged by other difficulties.

In general, the sites scream out, "Look what I made the web do!", rather than trying to get across a more useful message. Maybe I am too much of a left-brain thinker, but those sites don't work for me at all.

If I was looking for a designer, I'd want the sites I visit to describe the services they provide. Most of the sites on the list do don't do that well, if at all.

I'd want the site to include a portfolio. Most of the sites do that, but the portfolios only show the work. They do not describe what the client was hoping to achieve, whether those goals were met, etc.

Take a look, and decide for yourself.

Site Design Update 26 Feb 2006 11:53 AM (19 years ago)

I updated the design of my web site recently. The update was long overdue. In mid-January 2006 I created this blog on Blogger.com, and I chose a Theme they provide named Sand Dollar. I really liked the look of that Theme, and so I decided to use that as the basis for my whole site.

Now that the update is done—for now—I decided some of you might be interested in what I did, and why.

I changed the look of the pages, and I changed the structure. More importantly, though, I separated the presentation details from the content. Many people call that process "separating style and content," and while that sounds fairly accurate to me, some experts disagree. I'll leave that discussion for another day, or maybe never! Anyway, my stylesheet(s) now control almost everything about the way the pages look. The HTML elements in the content describe what the content is, and not how it looks.

This approach, and the explicit structure of the pages, allows me to use styles to better advantage, and the HTML content is simpler than it was before.

Page Layout

I chose a relatively simple page layout because I wanted my pages to work on Internet Explorer 5 and 6. Those browsers have a lot of CSS-related bugs and a complex layout would mean dancing around those bugs one way or another. Many page authors use CSS hacks to get around the IE bugs, but I wanted to avoid that if possible. I don't have the time or the equipment to test my pages on a wide variety of browsers and platforms, and keeping the page layout simple reduces the amount of testing necessary.

All the pages use the same basic HTML shell. The shell includes containers for the page header, the main content, and a sidebar, roughly as shown below:

Using those containers, and CSS selectors, I can control the style of HTML elements within a particular section. For example, lists in the sidebar are styled differently than lists that appear in the main content.

The site structure, and the associated CSS stylesheet, should make my site more convenient for visitors. For example, if you print a page, the sidebar is omitted, and the main content will expand to fill the printable area of the paper.

Simpler HTML

If you look at the page source, you won't see a lot of HTML clutter, such as <BR>, <FONT> and <SPAN> elements everywhere. (I'm talking about pages over on my site, not here in this blog. The blog HTML is mostly controlled by Blogger.com.) On most pages, the main content has a section heading or two using <Hn> elements, and paragraphs using <P> elements, and that's about it. Other pages use ordered and unordered lists (<OL>, <UL>).

One enabler for writing simpler HTML was my decision to just give up trying to make pages look good in old browsers. In old browsers, like Netscape 4, you'll see the content but it will be as plain as vanilla ice cream. Most new browsers have a "disable styles" command, and you can use it to see what I mean. (In Firefox, you can use the View > Page Style > No Style command to disable styles.) The pages are still legible, but all formatting is omitted. I don't want to prevent users of old browsers from using my site, but I am not going to bother to try and make the site look the same for them as it does for people using a newer browser. I'd rather encourage visitors to upgrade their browsers!

HTML 4.01 Strict

As I updated the pages, I did a fair amount of HTML cleanup. I chose to use the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype, so that means my pages don't use <B> elements, <I> elements, or any other elements or parameters that are valid in HTML 4.01 Transitional but not valid in HTML 4.01 Strict. I chose HTML 4.01 Strict because I think it's better to separate presentation from content. In addition, using the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype helps ensure consistent results across browsers. The pages won't be formatted exactly the same on all browsers or platforms, but they will look very, very similar.

All the pages that use the new style have been validated with the W3C Markup Validation Service. I use the excellent Web Developer extension for Firefox to make that process quick and easy. While viewing a page in Firefox, I can key Ctrl-Shift-A to validate the current page.

I used to think that eliminating the <B> and <I> elements in HTML 4.01 Strict forced an unnecessarily severe separation of presentation and content, but I gradually changed my mind about that. During the past year or so I have been converting or eliminating those elements (and other deprecated elements) in my HTML pages and I discovered that the process encouraged me to make better decisions about what level of emphasis was appropriate for a particular section of text. In some cases, I cleaned up HTML that was just lazy on my part. For example, I had some section headings that were implemented like this:

<P><B>Heading Text Here</B></P>

If the text truly is a section heading, then it should use one of the <Hn> elements:

<H2>Heading Text Here</H2>

Let the Brower Do Its Job

I removed "go to top" links and links that open new pages as I edited the HTML. I think people should use the controls their browsers provide rather than have web pages include links or other widgets that duplicate the browser functions. For example, if you want to go to the top of the page, from anywhere on the page, most browsers have a key combination you can use. In Firefox, you can press the Home key or Ctrl-Home keys on your keyboard. (One moves the focus as it scrolls to the top of the page, and the other doesn't. I forget which because where the focus is doesn't usually matter to me and I don't go to top that often.) Similarly, if you want to open a link in a new tab, or in a new window, you can right-click and select a command to do that from the context menu.

My mouse has a scroll wheel that is also a button, and in Firefox, clicking a link with that middle button opens a link in a new tab. Very convenient.

Anyway, I am now leaving browser functions to the browser.

Controlling Line Widths

The only tricky thing about my new site layout is the width of the main content. If you have a high-resolution monitor and your browser window is maximized, you should see that lines of text in the main content section wrap to a new line even though there is more space available on the righ-hand side of the window. That is deliberate. Long lines of text are hard to read, and so I set a maximum width that keeps the line width reasonable. It's relatively easy to force the text to wrap at a particular width, but it's a little harder to make it wrap at a particular spot or before if the window is smaller than the maximum width.

Actually, it is easy in good browsers, because CSS2 includes min-width and max-width properties to constrain the width of boxes to a range:

min-width: 20em;
max-width: 35em;

In the example above, the widths are specifed in em units. An em is a typographical measure that is defined relative to the current typeface. It is usually equivalent to the width of the letter M in that typeface, and that is the origin of the name. 35em is recommended as the maximum line length by various experts.

Internet Explorer does not support the min-width and max-width properties, and that's where things get difficult. I could have left it at that; site visitors using good browsers would see text wrapped at a reasonable width, and Internet Explorer users would see text that wrapped at the right edge of the window. I chose not to do that because my old site design used nested tables to constrain the width of paragraphs and I didn't want to take a step backwards.

After a lot of searching and some experimentation, I found a compromise. I implemented a simple version of a technique first described by Svend Tofte in his article max-width in Internet Explorer. Basically, Internet Explorer supports (non-standard) expressions in CSS properties, and it is possible to implement a reasonable substitute for the max-width property like this:

min-width: 20em;
max-width: 35em;
/* IE5/6 version of max-width */
width:expression(document.body.clientWidth>700?"500px":"auto");

The expression tests the width of the body element. If the width of the body element is greater than 700, the width is constrained to "500px" (500 pixels). If the width is less than or equal to 700, the width is set to "auto", which means that text will wrap at the right edge of the window. It's not exactly what I want, because I'd prefer to wrap the text based on the size of the current font, not on the size of the window, but it's the best I could do in IE.

Sven described a more elaborate version of the technique that converts pixels to EMs but I decided to use a simpler version.

Compliant browsers ignore the width property because it is not valid CSS syntax, and so they use the min-width and max-width properties to determine the width.

Global White Space Reset

I used one other technique which is worth mentioning. It's called Global White Space Reset and it was originally described by Andrew Krespanis. Essentially, a simple CSS rule is used to set the margin and padding properties to 0 for all elements:

* {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

The rule above cancels padding and margins for all HTML elements, which means that you subsequently have to define margin and padding properties for every HTML element you use that needs non-zero values. While that sounds like a lot of work, it's actually easier than accepting the default values that vary by browser because writing CSS that selectively resets margins and padding requires knowing how every browser, and every browser version, on every platform, sets margins and padding values. If that sounds impossible, that's only because it is. The technique has some pitfalls, so read Andrew's description for more details and some examples before you use it on your site.

Content Management

I should also mention that I build my home page, and the sub-sites for Second Site and TMG Utility, using a homegrown content management system that mixes content files with page templates to produce finished pages. If I change a page template, or one or more of the content files, I can regenerate the site very quickly. I have about 400 pages on my site, and it would be very painful to change the site design without a content management tool. If you have a small site, you probably don't need one. Some people use commercial content management tools, or HTML editors that have some content management features. I haven't found one I like. They all have some fatal flaw, like bad HTML output, or quirky WYSIWYG editors, or worse, and so I use my own program.

Over and Out

I hope you found this article useful. If you are considering an update of your site, some of what I did will apply to your project. In particular, separating presentation details from content, keeping the HTML simple, and making better use of styles are goals every web publisher should consider during a site overhaul.

IE7 Wants a PC All It's Own 18 Feb 2006 9:10 AM (19 years ago)

A user reported that a page produced by Second Site didn't look right in a beta version of IE7. Given that the page looked right in Firefox and in IE6, and given that IE7 is supposed to be more compliant with standards, one would think the page would look right in IE7.

The first thing to mention is that IE7 is still in beta, and so an IE7 bug may be responsible for the problem. On the other hand, pages produced by Second Site use pretty vanilla HTML and CSS, and it seems likely that an IE7 bug that affected Second Site would affect a lot of sites and there would be a general hue and cry about it. There isn't, so that means Second Site might be doing something wrong.

The second thing to mention is that some changes in IE7 are going to break existing sites that used work-arounds to make IE6 render pages properly. There's lots of discussion of this on the web, including an article CSS Hacks and IE7 on Position Is Everything, a very useful site that discusses CSS bugs in modern browsers and other CSS-related topics.

It turns out that Second Site avoids using those CSS tricks and so the problem isn't one of those.

At this point, I don't know what the problem is, and that brings us to the reason for this blog entry. I am going to have to install a version of IE7 and see the problem firsthand to solve it.That should be easy, but it isn't...

Microsoft says that IE7 can not coexist on the same PC with IE6.

Here's my reaction to that bit of news.

1. It wasn't a surprise. The same was true of previous versions of IE. It's been a PITA for a while.
2. I need a working copy of IE6 on the PC I use to develop Second Site. Whenever I make any change to Second Site, I test the change using Firefox 1.5 and IE6. Those two browsers are used by the lion's share of the browsing audience and I need both of them on my main development PC.
3. I don't want to risk the stability of any other PCs I use for other tasks by installing IE7.
4. My development PC currently has the following non-Microsoft browsers installed and operating properly:
   • Firefox 1.5.0.1
   • Firefox 1.0.7
   • Mozilla 1.7.7
   • Opera 8.5
   • Opera 7.54
   • Netscape 8.1
   • Netscape 7.2
   • Netscape 7.1
   • Netscape 6.2
   • Netscape Communicator 4.76

   Why is it that all those other browsers can peacefully coexist, but IE6 and IE7 won't? It's a rhetorical question. I don't really want to know the answer; I want Microsoft to fix the problem.

I can't find the blog link now, but some developers have argued that other developers ought to stop whining about this problem and buy a PC to use for IE7 testing. I don't know about you, but I don't have money burning a hole in my pocket that I am just dying to spend for a PC dedicated to IE7, and I don't have an extra PC lying around. When Bill Gates sends me a check for $1000, that's when I'll consider buying a PC for IE7 testing.

Meanwhile, I found some unofficial instructions for installing IE7 without uninstalling IE6. If I install IE7 at all, I'll probably do it that way.

Sorry about this rant going on so long, but there's one last thing. The web is a democracy, and you get a vote. In fact, you get several. You vote by the sites you visit, the ads you click, and the tools you use. If you are using Internet Explorer, you are essentially voting for Microsoft to keep operating the way they have been for a few years now. That's a bad use of your voting power. I urge you to download and use Firefox. Vote for the challenger, so that the incumbent will know you demand a better browser.

XML 3 Feb 2006 6:56 PM (19 years ago)

I mentioned XML in a recent message sent to the Second Site News mailing list, and that generated some questions from subscribers, including "What is it?" and "Why would I use it?" It is beyond the scope of a blog entry to explain XML in great detail, but I can provide you with a brief description and some reasons why XML might become more important to you in the future.

XML stands for "eXtensible Markup Language". XML is a text processing standard, a set of rules and other criteria that define how applications store and process data stored in text files. XML is very useful for exchanging data between applications because the standard is fairly simple, and very precise, and that reduces the cost of implementing the importing and exporting components of a program.

XML is eXtensible because users can define the data elements they need for their application. Data can be exchanged between applications when multiple developers agree on a set of data elements.

Here's an example of some text data, and the same data in XML. I've chosen some data elements that represent the typical fields in a standard U.S. address.

<name>John Doe</name>
<address>
    <street-address>15 Main Street<street-address>
    <city>Anytown</city>
    <state>MA</state>
    <zipcode>99999</zipcode>
</address>

If you know HTML, you may notice that HTML looks similar to XML. In fact, there is a version of HTML that is XML. It's called XHTML. HTML and XML are similar because they are both based on an older text standard.

There are many uses for text documents, and XML is now the format of choice for many of those uses. For example, many applications write user preferences to XML files.

XML is a popular standard, and so there are many tools available for developers and for end-users. One tool is XSLT, a tool for converting XML documents to some other format. Second Site uses XSLT to convert TMG data to web pages. Second Site converts the TMG data to XML, and then passes the XML to an XSLT stylesheet, which converts the data to HTML. By leveraging XML and XSLT, I saved time and effort implementing Second Site, and the users benefit, too. The transformation facility in Second Site is more powerful and flexible than it would have been if I had to develop it all myself, and users can learn about XML and XSLT on the web and in books. Anything they learn about XML or XSLT from customizing Second Site will transfer to similar projects with other tools that use XML and XSLT.

You don't have to know anything about XML in order to benefit from it. Software developers understand the value of using XML to exchange data, among other things, and so they are building XML capabilities into their applications. As time goes on, you'll see more and more applications using XML.

XML is not ideal for all text applications. One downside to XML is that it is verbose. There are 43 characters in the text-only version of the address data above. There are 147 in the XML version if you don't count the indentation and line breaks. (They aren't necessary in XML; I added them to make the structure clearer.) The overhead varies dramatically based on how much structure the data requires.

There has been a lot of talk in genealogical circles about XML replacing GEDCOM. As of February, 2005, there is little or no support for XML in any of the widely-used applications. That's unfortunate, as GEDCOM needs to be replaced.

I am adding an XML Export feature to TMG Utility so that users can export a subset of their TMG project data to XML. I am including some stylesheets so that data can be converted to web pages. The XSLT Stylesheets I provide will also serve as examples for people who want to write their own... more on that later.

In the initial release, the XML Export facility will support these data items:

• DNA Log
• Exhibit Log
• Master Source List

If you have ever wanted to create a custom report for one of the data items above, but you were unable to get the results you want using one of TMG's built-in reports, then you might want to consider using TMG Utility's XML Export feature. XSLT Stylesheets are not for the technically naive, but they are easier than writing a database application to produce a report. If you can't write an XSLT Stylesheet to produce the report you want, maybe a cousin, friend, or power-user can.

Get Sage! 29 Jan 2006 7:20 AM (19 years ago)

Some of the e-mail messages I received in response to my Get Firefox! article asked one of these two questions:

1. How do I install extensions?
2. How do I subscribe to your news feed (and others)?

Sage is an extension for Firefox that makes it easy and convenient to subscribe to news feeds. I'll describe how to install it and that will answer both questions.

This is a long article, but don't let that discourage you. The process is pretty simple, especially when someone walks you through each of the steps. It takes a lot of words to describe even simple steps.

Installation Basics

Please read this section and the Install Sage section before you attempt an installation. Some of the steps are not necessary in every case and if you read all the directions first you'll know how to skip one of the more tedious steps.

These are the basic steps to install any extension:

1. Open Firefox.
2. Find the download link for the extension.
3. Click the link to download and install.
4. Restart (close and re-open) Firefox.
5. Configure the extension. (Optional)
6. Use the extension.

In my experience, finding the extension is half the battle. There are a lot of extensions available, and many of them do similar things. For example, I use IE View to open pages in Internet Explorer from Firefox. There's a similar extension named IE Tab which does the same thing in a different way. Some people prefer the IE Tab approach. Having options is a good thing, so what's the problem?

If there are a few extensions that all do basically the same thing, how do you choose? There's no easy answer, but here's what I do. I read the description carefully. Does the extension actually do what I want? Is the description well-written? If not, I move on. If the feature I want is not the primary function of a particular extension, and it comes with a lot of other features, I typically opt for one of the other choices.

I always review the user comments and ratings. Well-implemented extensions will have few, if any, low ratings.

Install Sage

There is nothing unusual about installing Sage. It does require a little configuration after you install it; you have to subscribe to one or more news feeds.

In this case, we already have a link to the download page for the extension so we can skip that pesky "find the extension" step.

1. Right-click on the download page link. Choose "Open Link in New Tab".
   Opening a new tab keeps this article handy in the original tab.
2. Click on the new tab (it's near the top of the window). The name will start with "Mozilla Update :: Extensions".
   Clicking on the tab will make that tab's content visible.
3. Scroll down to the Install Now link that is in a rounded-corner rectangle next to a graphic of an arrow pointing into a box, and click it.
   Clicking the link will start the automatic installation process. The Software Installation dialog will open.
4. Review the information in the Software Installation dialog window. Click the [Install Now] button to install the extension.
   The Extensions window will open. The new extension will appear in the list, and a progress bar will show the download progress.
5. When the installation is complete, the progress bar will disappear.
   For Sage, and most extensions, a status message beneath the name of the extension will tell you that "Sage will be installed when Firefox is restarted." The software is copied to your PC, but the install process isn't complete until you restart Firefox.
6. Close all Firefox windows and then reopen Firefox.

The previous instructions have been pretty general except for the link to the Sage download page. The remaining instructions are specific to Sage.

7. Click the Sage command in the Tools menu.
   A sidebar will open. A sidebar is a user interface panel on the left-hand side of your browser window.
8. At the top of the sidebar there are two icons and an Options pull-down menu.
9. The left-most icon, two arrows pointing at each other in a circular fashion, is a refresh button that checks all your subscribed news feeds for new content.
10. The magnifying glass icon is a Discover Feeds button that helps you find news feeds on the web pages you visit.
    We'll use that button after we explain the other user interface elements in the Sage sidebar.
11. The Options menu contains a set of commands that can be used to customize Sage.
    Explaining those commands is beyond the scope of this article. You'll have to learn those options on your own. For the time being, you don't need to change any options.
12. The top-half of the side-bar has a list of news feeds.
    Each news feed is a collection of articles published by a single source. If the news feed is shown in bold text, there are unread articles in that collection.
13. The bottom-half of the side-bar has a list of articles from the currently-selected feed in the news feed list.
    Bold entries are unread.
14. At the top of the articles list are four icons.
    Move your cursor over the icons to reveal a tooltip. The tooltip explains the function of the icons.
15. Sage includes a few pre-subscribed news feeds. Click on the "BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition" feed or one of the others.
    The browser window changes to show content from the articles in the news feed. In many cases, only a brief summary is shown. In others, the entire content is included. You can browse to the web page for the article by clicking the title of the article.

At this point, Sage is installed and working and you should be familiar with the basic operation of the extension. Now let's add a news feed.

News feeds are a simple concept that can be surprisingly difficult to grasp. Essentially, a news feed is a list of articles from a particular publisher. Many news organizations publish news feeds. In addition, web logs (usually called blogs) are often published via news feeds.

The computer file that contains the news feed must conform to one of the accepted news feed formats. Collectively, those formats are often called "RSS". Describing those formats is beyond the scope of this article. In general, you don't have to worry about that. Sage, and most other news readers understand all the common formats. The only thing you need to know is, when you see the letters RSS, the site you are visiting publishes one or more news feeds.

Most sites use a distinctive icon to indicate that a news feed is available. When you see one of those icons, you can click the magnifying glass icon in the Sage sidebar to list the available news feeds.

Let's try that now. My blog has a news feed. Click the Sage magnifying glass icon. When the DIscover Feeds window opens, select "Rack and ePinion" and then click the [Add Feed] button. You've just subscribed to a news feed.

You should see "Rack and ePinion" in the news feed list. It will work the same as the news feeds that came with Sage.

Done!

That's it. You've installed a Firefox extension, and you can now subscribe to a few of the thousands of news feeds available via the Internet.

Here's a short list to get you started.

I hope you found this useful. News feeds are an efficient way to monitor some of the stream of information that pours out of the web.

Blaming the (CSS) Victim 28 Jan 2006 11:53 AM (19 years ago)

Articles, blogs, and forum posts by CSS proponents are full of complaints about (A) browser suppliers, especially Microsoft, and (B) web developers who haven't dropped the TABLE-based layout method in favor of a pure CSS solution. Most of the browser supplier complaints are related to CSS layout problems and so the two topics are closely related.

I think the complainers are barking up the wrong tree.

I agree with some of the complaints, but there is a better target for their—and my—dissatisfaction. I spent some time thinking about this recently and two questions came to mind that lead me to a different villain.

1. Why are there so many bugs?

The number and severity of the issues varies widely, but all browsers have bugs that negatively affect pure CSS layouts. Browsers are complex applications and so it's understandable that there are bugs. Many old browsers are in need of a mercy killing or a significant update, and that explains a lot of the bugs that lead to hair-loss for CSS coders. But even new and recently updated browsers have significant layout-related bugs or issues. The cross-browser problems related to layout-related features in CSS1 and CSS2 lead me to conclude that those features are disproportionally hard to implement properly compared to the other browser features and capabilities.

I think I know why it's hard, but let's cover the other question first.

2. Why are TABLE-based layouts so common?

Why have so many web developers and publishers chosen to stick with the TABLE-based approach? The TABLE-based approach has some significant problems and limitations, and it fails to deliver the separation of layout and content that everyone acknowledges is an important implementation goal. But if you use the "View Source" command on these sites—some of the more popular on the web—you'll see TABLE-based layouts and/or heavy table use: Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Excite, eBay, and the list goes on.

In addition to the big staff and budget that accompanies publishing one of the world's most popular sites, it's hard to change direction on those big ships and so it may be momentum that prevents them from changing to a pure CSS layout. Still, it stands to reason that if pure CSS layouts are such a good thing, more of those sites would use them.

Despite having about ten years of web development experience, I've been struggling for a few weeks to implement a relatively simple layout. I've read article after article, and I've spent long hours experimenting and testing, but I have been unable to achieve the elusive goal of getting acceptable results across multiple browsers. I rejected some solutions because they didn't produce predictable results as content varied from page to page. I rejected other solutions because they were too complex. In the end, the TABLE-based solution is a better choice for me.

Given my own experience, and the evidence provided by my View Source command, my conclusion is that TABLE-based layouts are common because pure CSS layouts are too hard to implement. In a lessor of two evils situation, most web developers have concluded that the problems of TABLE-based solutions are less daunting that the problems of pure CSS layouts.

To be fair, many sites are implemented using pure CSS layouts. Some of them are impressive and the layout structures are not overly complex. Zen Garden is a great example. The ability to change from Organica Creativa to 45 RPM is awesome.

Who's the Villain?

I think CSS is the villain. It's the reason why browsers are buggy and it's the reason why web developers choose TABLE-based solution over pure CSS.

Let's look at the issue from the point of view of the designer.

The layout features in CSS2 are fine for certain structures. For example, it's easy to float text around an image. Most developers trip over the issue of a floated element extending beyond the bottom of the containing element, but there is a reason for that behavior. It's unfortunate that it isn't easier to make the containing element expand to enclose the entire floated element.

The problem is overall page structure. Most sites subdivide page content into areas such as headers, footers, left and right sidebars, etc. Implementing those structures in CSS2 is unnecessarily difficult. The overall structure of the page is not explicitly defined: it's implicit in the way specific sub-elements are defined. The page designer has to set properties for half a dozen or more rules. The page structure is lost among those rules, and often further obscured by non-structural attribute values. As presently defined, the HTML is also sub-optimal as the designer has to nest div elements until the eyes glaze over. To my eye, the content-meaningless div statements are just as bad as using table, tr, and td elements.

The table, tr, and td elements have a big advantage over the div elements. The structure is more explicit, and the browsers do a better job of rendering the result.

Similarly, the dreaded frameset structures in HTML are much better at representing the overall structure of a page than the CSS2 method. There are lots of good reasons to avoid using frames—they introduce more problems than they solve—but in terms of representing overall page structure they are simpler and more effective.

Not surprisingly, the CSS2 shortcoming described above makes life difficult for browser implementers as well as page designers. The browser isn't told explicitly what the designer wants. It has been given a set of rules that dictate how it should respond to CSS attribute values, and some rules and guidance about how elements interact, but those only address near-relationships. Unfortunately, unrolling the near relationships into the broader definition of the page layout is a very fuzzy process.

If anyone reads this, and that's not assured, I am likely to get flamed for dissing CSS. That's fine. Read on.

What Does the Future Hold?

I am not the only one who thinks something is not right. They probably have a whole set of different opinions and motivations, but the CSS3 standards team is addressing this issue. See the CSS3 Advanced Layout Module. In my opinion, it validates my broad point that CSS is the villain. Whether or not it validates my conclusion isn't important—as long as they fix it.

I have read the 2005-12-15 version of the working draft and I had a mixed reaction. It's great that solutions are being discussed, but the declarative nature of the CSS language appears to be an obstacle to a clear, simple solution.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Of course, once a CSS3 solution is defined, it will take a long time for browsers to implement the new standard. And it will take even longer for people to stop using CSS2 browsers. <sigh>

Get Firefox! 28 Jan 2006 8:32 AM (19 years ago)

There are two new additions to my home page, a feed for my blog and a Firefox button. The two are related, but you'll have to read on to discover why.

Firefox

Firefox has been my default browser since early 2005. The more I use it, the happier I am with it. The other day I realized how much I've customized it, and how much those customizations improve my browsing experience.

Internet Explorer

Meanwhile, Internet Explorer 6, the browser used by approximately 80% of web users, gets older and older. (See some browser usage statistics at Browser News.) IE7 is on the way, but as my Dad used to say, "So's Christmas." Even when it does arrive (Summer 2006?), it will be a case of too little, too late. IE7 is not going to fix all the IE6 compliance issues, it won't be available for all Microsoft operating systems, and it doesn't represent a major step forward in any meaningful way.

I think it's worth mentioning here that I am not a Microsoft basher. I try to be more pro-things than I am anti-other-things. It's possible, and actually relatively easy, to be pro-Firefox without being anti-Microsoft. In the late '90s Microsoft did something truly remarkable by recovering from their early strategic blunders in the Internet arena. They caught up to Netscape and by 1999 Internet Explorer was the better browser and became the market leader.

Competition

Since then, however, Microsoft has succumbed to the problems of being a market leader. They stopped innovating, and worse than that, they've stopped fixing bugs, basic security vulnerabilities still exist, and some of the security-related changes in Windows XP SP2 interfere with everyday use. I am sure there are lots of reasons for all that, but the root cause is a lack of competition.

The good news is, there are now several browsers that are technically superior to Internet Explorer and they have gained enough momentum that they can be used by everyone, not just the technical elite. In fact, for the good of the Intenet, it's important for people to use the other browsers. It's the only way to send a wake-up call to the powers-that-be at Microsoft. They can choose to answer the call, or not. If they answer, fine. Getting Internet Explorer back on the right track will provide a better product for Microsoft users, and will force the competitors to stay on their toes. If Microsoft doesn't react, those competitors can fight it out. The winner, in the end, will be browser users.

Why a Blog?

I feel strongly about this issue, and I wanted a place to express my opinion, so I created this blog. The main audience will probably be users of my genealogy tools, but I decided to keep the opinion-based content that is not strictly related to those tools separate from the home pages for Second Site or TMG Utility.

Why Firefox?

As I said before, my favorite browser, and the one I recommend, is Firefox. There are other good browsers, and in particular, Opera is a good alternative. I recommend Firefox because I think it has the best compliance with web standards. I use it for that reason, but also because it has the most customizable interface¹. Specifically, some Firefox browser extensions have become a part of my browsing life and I depend on them. My browsing habits won't match yours, but there will be some overlap.

Extensions

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. You can browse the directory of Firefox extensions to see what's available. Here are some of the extensions I use.

1. Most Firefox extensions can be used with Mozilla.