All posts by Banai Lynn Feldstein

Internationalization in PHP (in Windows)

Categories: Web Site Development
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 37 seconds
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I have been working on a web site, written in PHP, that will need a translation. In programming, this is Internationalization, or I18N. I could easily write something that would check for the language variable and provide the alternate translation, but I wanted to do it correctly.

Yeah, I know, silly me, wanting to do something a little more complicated and using Windows for the development machine.

I decided to use gettext, because it seemed easy and it’s what WordPress uses, so I’d be more familiar with it when I get to it on a blog.

After fighting with it for a while and doing everything right but getting no results, I uploaded it to the server to test it out… and it worked perfectly.

The problem is that gettext doesn’t work in Windows. Sure, it seems to work, but setting the localization doesn’t work and there doesn’t seem to be any alternative way to set the localization to make use of the translations… so no way to actually see the translated text while in development in Windows. And I want to see it working.

I spent hours over two days searching the Internet for answers. So many answers… none ever worked.

Until I found this page: http://www.extradrm.com/blog/?p=1035

Thank you nameless person for finally providing a correct answer. And the correct answer is that the setlocale function of PHP does not work in Windows. Period.

But thanks to Danilo Segan, there is an alternate version of gettext that actually works in Windows, and that’s over here (https://launchpad.net/php-gettext/+download).

Now I can move forward with programming the project.

And I’m putting this blog post out here so that maybe the next person who goes searching all over the Internet for a solution will find this post and not waste as much time as me trying every which type of code and finding that none of them works.

A Memory, Because of Leonard Nimoy

Categories: Memory Monday, Random Musings
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 49 seconds
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Leonard Nimoy at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison, found on Wikimedia Commons.
Leonard Nimoy at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention 2011. Photo by Beth Madison, via Wikimedia Commons.

I haven’t blogged on the usual themes in a while, but I didn’t want to save this one for Monday.

With lots of tributes going around the Internet on the day of his death, I just watched a video of Leonard Nimoy in which he explains where the Vulcan hand salute came from. Here is the video.

Growing up, I watched a lot of TV shows that I don’t remember. I remember which shows, but none of the episode content.

One that stands out is Star Trek which I used to watch with my dad. I had to watch the whole series as an adult to remember any of the episodes, but I know I watched them as a kid.

And then came college, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out. Well, it actually started when I was 14, but I didn’t watch it until college. At the time, it was playing on several stations, several times per day. While flipping channels, I saw something just before a commercial break and I had to know what happened next. I was immediately hooked.

I didn’t watch sooner because Dad was loyal to the original show. He insisted that Kirk was the only Captain of the Enterprise. (Psst, hey Dad, what about Pike?)

It turns out, however, that we must have watched the pilot, at the very least. As the series finale approached, I had to rent the pilot to be sure I had seen it, as I knew they were closely related. And I remembered that the station was actually an alien, so I had obviously seen it before.

Back in those days, there were lots of smaller Star Trek conventions. A few ran in South Florida and for a few years, I went to all of them that were within a few hours’ driving distance.

At the time, I had a Star Trek themed bumper sticker. I remember it was green and said “My Other Vehicle is a Federation Starship”. I was driving south to Fort Lauderdale for one of the conventions and I noticed another car on the highway with a Star Trek bumper sticker. I passed the car, the car passed me, back and forth a couple of times.

We both pulled off at the same exit, as I expected, and pulled up next to each other at the traffic light. We looked at each other and I smiled and waved.

The guy in the other car waved with a Vulcan salute.

Whoops. I quickly changed finger position before the light turned green.

And I’m pretty the main actor at that conference was Tim Russ who played Tuvok, the Vulcan on Voyager. (Yes, I liked Voyager too.)

One of my favorite tweets today has a genealogy twist to it.

Leonard Nimoy’s Twitter account is retweeting many messages sent out today, but his final tweet…

Thank you Leonard Nimoy for the memories. Live Long and Prosper.

RootsTech 2015 Review

Categories: Conferences, Genealogy, RootsTech
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes, 2 seconds
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So I guess this is my annual rant about RootsTech.

The Fun

I had a great time last week. I spent a lot of time in the IAJGS booth with the IAJGS folks. Mark was always there, Marlis, Garri, Michael, Barbara, and Emily were around a lot. I finally met Debbie in person. Schelly and Pamela came over many times. And I shudder to think I’m missing someone who I saw a lot of. Of course Daniel was in his own booth, but I saw him quite a bit too. I went out to eat with some of them and many others not listed here, sometimes in large groups, every day. I really enjoy the company of these people, who I usually only see once a year, and RootsTech gives me a second opportunity now to see a bunch of them.

I enjoy saying hello and chatting a bit with some of the other bloggers and Twitterers as I see them. The media center was on the opposite side of the expo hall from my booth, so it was a trek to get over there. I talk to random people who I just happen to be sitting next to sometimes, and obviously the ones who come to the booth.

Some of my local Utah JGS folks came around, some more than others, like Beth, Marelynn, Rochelle, Gary, and Barry.

It was fun.

The Conference

But then there’s the conference. It’s not supposed to be just a social event. It’s supposed to be educational, and as it started but has since left behind, all about genealogy and technology. That’s not genealogy or technology, but genealogy and technology. It’s a big difference. And ironically, RootsTech has forgotten it’s roots.

How Many Sessions?

When signing up, I noticed that RootsTech claimed to include 200+ sessions. The web site listed 128. I was told later that there were more sessions not listed on the web site. Why not? Are they not technologically capable of including all the sessions in the schedule? They included FGS on their site. How would I know that there are more session and how do I review them to choose what I want to do? I went very carefully through the web site listings to look at the skill levels, but the book received at registration nor the app had those levels listed. So I ended up adding a few sessions after registering only to walk out within minutes because of their simplicity level.

I happened to pop into one session, that was a late addition to my schedule, just as the presenter got to the “who this session is for” part. The options were things like, and I paraphrase, non-coders who are curious about the topic, code-dabblers, programmers who want to know how to explain this to non-techies, etc. And back to the exhibit hall I went in under a minute.

Where’s The Non-Beginner Tech?

Again, the Innovator’s Summit segregated the programmers from the genealogists. It’s a separate ticket that costs more in order to go to sessions focused on creating technology. And very few of those even appealed to me this year. Only three of all the sessions were marked as advanced skill level, two at the Innovator’s Summit and one at RootsTech. What kind of programmers did they attract this year if nothing was advanced? And what is there for genealogy tech users who aren’t total beginners at using computers?

The one session I went to on Wednesday had no tech in it at all. It was supposed to be about what was needed in genealogy technology. I recall something similar last year or the previous one too. I admit that I didn’t stay for the whole thing, but while I was there, it was droning about… work flows? I don’t even know. So I still don’t know what other people think needs to be programmed. I guess they won’t be getting it from me.

There are plenty of beginner level tech courses in genealogy in webinars, at society meetings, at other conferences. Why do we need them at RootsTech now? So many sessions had titles that sounded interesting and only got rejected by me for their beginner level tech skill listing.

Where Is The Tech?

And then there were the sessions that had absolutely nothing to do with technology, save for the fact that it is the 21st century and we all use computers to do things. RootsTech included two sessions on Jewish genealogy, both presented by friends of mine. Even those friends admitted there was nothing tech about their lectures. So what were they doing at RootsTech? They should have been at FGS. And there were a plethora of other sessions about genealogy that had nothing to do with tech. French, Irish, and Italian were included, as I recall, among others. The only tech in any of those sessions was when they admitted they were simply teaching how to use a single web site.

Where’s The Streaming?

For the first time in RootsTech history, one of the keynotes was not live streamed. Did they tell us this in advance to give people like me a chance to try to get there early enough to see it in person?

No.

The schedule clearly showed they would live stream from 8:30-10am, but they cut off the feed at 8:50 after the initial speaker. And it wasn’t a technical glitch, it was deliberate.

So what did the Bushes have to do with genealogy and technology? Who knows? Not me. I was livid.

Fifteen minutes after cutting off the stream, the conference Twitter account finally announced the stream would return at 10:30. Nice timing. At least they were on the ball that night, being very clear that the next day’s keynote would be streamed in full, but only after I asked. I guess everyone’s angry tweets wasn’t enough for them to volunteer that information.

Sessions I Stayed For

I did go to a few sessions where I didn’t leave immediately. I listened to one person with OCD tell me how to organize my files and some other things… the way I already do because I have OCD. So that didn’t help me. The RPAC session just informed me that everyone else in the room was on the same page as me. It was interesting, but not educational. Another session posed a question in its description but never answered it. I waited it out and didn’t learn anything except the thought processes that one company used to develop their own product, without sharing the actual solutions.

Non-Innovation In The Challenge

I’m not entirely sure what the Innovator’s Challenge is for anymore. They’ve reversed the original rules, which was to program something new. Now they want something that is ready to launch. So instead of programmers beginning a new project, they have to be finishing it.

So third place was GenMarketplace. How is that innovative? There are several genealogy marketplaces now, including one that’s been around since 2008 that I use regularly. The intro video on their site begins with presenting a listing of what documents are missing from your genealogy, but I could find nothing on their site that analyzes your database to find what’s missing. It’s just a rent-a-genealogist site and it devalues the skill or even just the time needed to do anything by starting the jobs at 10 cents.

Second place was ArgusSearch. Their site gets very technical with the description and skimming the content doesn’t explain it. Are they indexing and searching handwritten records? And that wasn’t the winner?

No, the winner was StoryWorth, a site that emails a question then either receives an email answer or records a phone call. Seriously. This is what FamilySearch thought was the most innovative entry. Recording a phone call. As someone else was tweeting, I don’t think innovation means what they think it means.

Next Year

I’m sure I’ll be in the IAJGS booth again next year. I see no reason why we would stop having the booth. I’m sure I’ll enjoy my time and socializing with the folks who come to town. I doubt I’ll register for RootsTech though. I almost didn’t this year and should not have bothered.

I will probably enter the Innovator’s Challenge with something I started working on last month. It won’t win because it’s not mainstream enough for everyone to use it, but it’s for genealogy and it will be more polished after I’ve worked on it for a year. I may even submit some papers again, but not expect to be accepted, as usual. I’ll probably send in something that’s too techie for them.

Conclusion

I go to IAJGS conferences to socialize, sometimes learn new things, attend SIG and BOF meetings to meet other people in the field and with the same interests, present my own sessions, and to network myself to promote my business. IAJGS stays on topic and everything is related to Jewish genealogy.

So thank you FamilySearch for bringing this conference year after year, which brings some of my non-Utah friends to Utah so I can see them just a little more often. But you’re not giving me any new knowledge about genealogy or technology. There are no meetings of like-minded people, outside of the dinners I attend outside of the schedule. You have so far rejected all of my papers to speak. I promote my society rather than my business. And you definitely don’t stay on topic of technology in genealogy.

RootsTech is just a social gathering for me. And a week when the FHL is too busy to get any work done. If it wasn’t local, I wouldn’t bother at all.

Don’t Believe Everything You See On TV

Categories: Genealogy, Genealogy on TV
Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 40 seconds
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I’m watching Genealogy Roadshow online since I missed it on TV. Every now and then, I try to look up the documents they have found, or the ones they skipped over.

The New Orleans episode followed the story of Charles Montaldo, who the family thought had gone to Alaska.

They showed him in the 1880 census in New Orleans, with wife Bridget and children, and I was able to find the listing easily.

The family believed he went to Alaska, but the researchers were certain he wasn’t in Alaska.

Instead, he went to Sacramento in 1880. Next they found him in Albuquerque in 1882. The next record was the 1910 census, with a different wife, Ida, allegedly married for 20 years, in Reno. They then found an article that he died in 1910.

The thing is, the 1880 census said he was born in Tennessee and his parents were born in Louisiana. The 1910 said he was born in Kentucky, father born in Italy, mother born in Louisiana. Are they sure it’s the same person?*

But what happened to the 1900 census that they skipped over? Searching online, I found only three listings for Charles Montaldo. Two were in Louisiana, one was clearly his son, the other did not match his age.

The third? Nome, Alaska.

Charles.Montaldo.Alaska.0

Charles.Montaldo.Alaska.1

No other details are listed for him beyond his name, but it is the only possibility that presented itself and matches the family’s story. It’s an unusual census page that appears to have just copied a ship list, clearly stating in the address column “Passenger List” for the steamer Aberdeen of Seattle. The column immediately after his name is for “Date of Locating in Alaska”, which says June 1900. The date of enumeration was 12 June 1900.

* Trying to find this census on FamilySearch so I could link to the page (which they don’t seem to have), I came across the 1870 census that says he’s born in Kentucky. So there’s that, to go with the 1910 census find from the show. Did those borders move or was he from near the border?

NaNoWriMo Follow-Up

Categories: Genealogy, NaNoWriMo
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 4 seconds
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Winner-2014-Twitter-ProfileWell, that month went a little differently than I’d planned, but NaNo tends to do that. I am going to call it a smashing success. My final word count is 80885. That means about 40 hours of genealogy organizing. I’m probably a little closer to 50. I certainly didn’t always stop when I hit the hour mark, I sometimes started an hour but didn’t finish so it didn’t count, and I did some other shorter bursts of work that didn’t get counted.

I finished off most of the documents sitting around on my computer, but there are still a few more to go. I am currently churning through emails. I have found some emails that did not get used as sources which I’ve had to add, and I’m being more consistent with the way the others are presented, so I’m going through every single one of them.

Email organizing highlights: I found an email from a cousin asking if we’re related — I had no idea back then but I know now. Others asking about a unique surname, I’m sure they will be related to me when I finish the records for that branch of the family too.

I continued to do some research as I went, finding some records online and scanning others from the FHL. I still have a list of things to scan from film, which of course will lead to doing a little more research. I never got carried away with it this month like I can do, following up on every lead, so that was good.

I did not get to my family newsletters at all. To do those, I need to finish sorting the emails and the Facebook posts, because that’s where the recent news comes from. Since I’m in the middle of one of those, clearly I couldn’t work on this.

I did not do much blogging. I worked on two posts that were already mostly written, but I never came back to finish them up and post them.

I did not do much on my short story writing. For write-ins, I intended to write some fan fic about minions. I wrote two. I wasn’t thinking about it enough to come up with any other story ideas, so I was at a loss for what to do at write-ins. (I wonder if the movie trailer interrupted my train of thought — my stories depended more on an entirely different origin story that was mentioned in a mini movie.) I did some translating once, attended a genealogy webinar during one, but mostly just goofed off.

But even with all the things I did not do, I still did an awful lot. So now, without the support of NaNoWriMo, I need to continue what I’ve been doing and try to get a lot more finished. I won’t need to work in solid hour blocks anymore for my word count, so I may do smaller bits more often. I’m on a roll and I’m feeling really good about how much I’m getting done.

And then soon, hopefully by next year, I can get back to working on projects I haven’t even started. Like my Feldstein one name study. Or the Mularzewicz one name study — in this case, I believe they’re all my relatives. Or going through the Polish Catholic records in search of earlier records about my people. And don’t forget returning to Europe for even more. And getting another project off the ground which has been patiently waiting for my programming attention to get it finished.

I think I’ll get a little more organizing done now before the Last Chance Write-In tonight. Will I add it to my word count? Possibly.

Genealogy for NaNoWriMo

Categories: Genealogy, NaNoWriMo
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 55 seconds
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NaNoWriMo 2014November is about to begin and that means National Novel Writing Month. I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo since 2003. In fact, I discovered the event just before moving to Utah and that was my first year. A few years later, I volunteered to be ML, Municipal Liaison, for Salt Lake City. So I’m not just participating, I’m also in charge of organizing for the area.

I win every year. My OCD requires it. Even when my story idea is a failure, I still somehow write 50,000 words in the month, which is the goal of NaNoWriMo.

A few years ago, I tried to make it a genealogy year. I didn’t have a story idea so I decided to get my genealogy books written. It didn’t go well. Yes, I wrote enough words, but I didn’t get the writing done that I wanted to do.

This year, my genealogy goal is different. I’ve already been working on it for a while, but I want to do more faster. I plan to get all of my genealogy organized. My own research always takes a back seat to client work, but it needs to get done. I have files sitting on my computer of records I found years ago that haven’t been added into my database. I still have records that I printed from microfilm that need to be digitized (I usually rescan from the film rather than scanning the paper). I was cleaning up my old sources and putting them into different formats and writing better source citations, and I never finished.

I’ve also fallen horribly behind with my family newsletters. The last couple of years, I’ve gone back and forth about doing one big issue or individual ones for each year. I’ve decided that I’m going to do individual ones, and I plan to get them done in November. Well, I usually take longer than that on a newsletter, so if I can get two of them done, I’m doing good.

I also have a more goofy idea that will hopefully turn into a few short stories, so I have something to do at the write-ins. I can’t really do the genealogy work at those; maybe a little, but not really.

I will have to measure my words differently since there won’t be quite as much typing in my organizing. Being a rebel for NaNoWriMo sometimes means setting a different goal and a unique word counter. Since I can type 85 wpm, that’s over 5,000 words an hour. I will count an uninterrupted hour of organizing work as 2,000 words. Any interruptions will make it count as 1,000. I think that’s fair.

With this word count, dedicating at least one hour per day should work out. I hope to go well over the 50k words by counting this way. At the same time, I still need to get client work done, show up to a lot of write-ins, take care of my house, and do whatever else comes along in a month.

My true goal is to get through all of the records on my computer. This often means doing more research as I’m going, so that takes up even more time. But then I’ll be ready for the next batch of research. I know there’s plenty more for me to do just from the FHL, but I’ve been putting it off with all of this stuff unfinished.

Anyone else writing for NaNoWriMo? I know a lot of other genealogists talk about it. Anyone else ever tried to do genealogy for the month?

What is FamilySearch searching?

Categories: Genealogy
Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 42 seconds
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According to FamilySearch, nobody was born in England and Wales between 1888 and 1890.

In an effort to broaden my search for Peter Bernstein, born in England about 1889, I removed one detail after another in the hopes of getting some kind of search result. I was finally fed up and removed everything except the birth year range.

Was nobody born in two countries for three years preceding the census?

If the search algorithm doesn’t use those fields, then maybe it should completely ignore them rather than remove all possible results based on the rest of the information.

On the other hand, when I remove the birth years and get some search results, and FamilySearch tells me to visit the partner site, then FindMyPast tells me:

So, is someone in England scanning it right now so it’ll be there if I try again in 30 minutes?

IAJGS 2014

Categories: Genealogy, IAJGS, SLC 2014
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 32 seconds
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IAJGS 2014 is finally over. What a busy time it’s been. As co-chair of the conference, I had a lot of work to do, from overseeing all of my local volunteers in addition to some non-locals, covering for people who didn’t get their job done well, and taking care of a huge job that we didn’t think we’d have to do at all. And most of that took place in the last month.

All in all, the conference went really well. I was impressed by how much some of my local people stepped up. I had already seen some evidence of it, and seen some evidence of problems, but some came through much more than I had expected.

Many people told me how great they thought the conference was going, many thought there were no problems at all. Of course, from behind the scenes, I knew about the problems.

I especially appreciated how many times my co-chair, Hal Bookbinder, and the IAJGS president, Marlis Humphrey, thanked me for all the work I put into it. I’m glad they noticed. That last month before the conference, I got no client work done; too busy with the conference preparations.

I’m not complaining. I was the one who bid on the conference coming to SLC. I volunteered to be co-chair. I put my name on the conference and I had to make sure things were done well. And so I did. I learned a lot about how the IAJGS conference comes about and plenty about where improvements are needed.

I only attended four sessions and I dropped in on a few SIG meetings but never stayed long. Of course, I was in both of my sessions and one that I facilitated. My facilitating job came on Friday. Sadly, the speaker just read her slides, and they had lots of text. She had a great story and it could have been a fantastic presentation, but she skipped past all the genealogy parts of it too quickly, just barely letting us glance at the records she found. I also sat in on Josh Taylor’s session about attracting the younger generation to our societies. It reminded me of things I’ve heard him say before, or I’ve heard elsewhere, or thought of myself, and how much work it will be for me to try to do that without any help from my society members.

I’m really hoping that after all the work they did for this conference, my UJGS members will be willing to step up for our society. So far, they have done little to nothing for the society. But it gets tiring to run a society by yourself, especially after helping to run a whole conference. I hope they aren’t volunteered-out and we can make our society greater than it is. Now that I know they can put in the effort, I really hope they do.

And I look forward to getting back to my normal routine, getting some client work done, blogging more, etc. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Indexing Gone Wrong, 1

Categories: Genealogy, Indexing Gone Wrong
Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 41 seconds
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I have seen some pretty bad indexing work lately. I’ve decided to make my blog a little more active by sharing some really terrible indexing examples. Maybe it will help other people find records they are having trouble finding by showing how badly things get indexed sometimes and giving them alternate ideas to search for their own missing relatives.

Today’s find was from a marriage register. It is indexed by FamilySearch as Rabruowitz. Really? Rabruowitz? I hadn’t even looked at how this name was indexed (I was looking for the groom’s name) and at the first glance I knew it said Rabinowitz.

FamilySearch is indexed by two people and then arbitrated. Is this really the best they could come up with for this name? Rabruowitz? I’ll grant them that the I is not so clear, but come on.

Family Recipe Friday – Matzah Brei

Categories: Family Recipe Friday
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 0 seconds
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Passover is now over, but not before I made my favorite holiday breakfast, Matzah Brei (rhymes with “hi”). Almost every year, I make sure to buy some matzah, sometimes after the holiday, just for this recipe.

Broken and Coated Matzah

I couldn’t find my own recipe written down anywhere, so I looked online to see how many eggs to use. The first four recipes I found made it scrambled. My grandmother did that, but not my mom. I winged it on the egg count and it came out great.

First, break up the matzah into small pieces. Then add the eggs and milk and stir until the matzah is coated or glazed in liquid. Add some sugar and salt. Fry. Flip. All done. I said it was easy.

This year, I used chocolate milk because it’s what I had. I also added cinnamon. Treat this like a pancake, which it is if you make it my way. You can add fruit to the mix, or add fruit as the topping. I like it warm with sugar. As it cools, to room temperature or chilled, it is also great plain.

When flipping, my mom has a designated matzah brei plate that she always used. I find it easier to just flip it in the air, like I learned to do with an omelette years ago.

Frying

My pan is 9.5″ but you can use smaller or bigger. You can also add more matzah for a bigger pan or use less for a smaller. The more full the pan, the neater your edges will probably turn out, as you tuck them into the sides of the pan. Mine were a little messy this year.

Matzah Brei

3 or 4 matzahs
2 eggs
1/2 – 1 cup milk
dash of sugar
pinch of salt
optional cinnamon or other flavorings

  1. Break matzah into small pieces in a bowl.
  2. Add eggs and milk and stir until matzah pieces are coated or glazed in liquid.
  3. Sprinkle in sugar and salt. Add other flavorings if wanted, like cinnamon.
  4. Pour mixture into non-stick frying pan. Use cooking spray to help. Let it cook for a few minutes, until the pancake slides around in the pan freely.
  5. Flip over and cook other side, until it slides freely.
  6. Serve and enjoy, or chill and enjoy later.
Matzah Brei