Personal
Stories told by Susan about Susan or Susan's family
Greetings from Jamboree
I’m at the Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank. You can follow twitter chatter about the conference at the hashtag #scgs10. This also serves as a demonstration to Jennifer, with whom I am talking here in the lounge where the genealogy bloggers hang out… Jennifer is not a geneablogger; in fact she is unfamiliar with what this whole blogging thing is, exactly. So, when words don’t suffice (or they obfuscate), then a show and tell helps. I hope. Her friend Vikki is also watching; in fact, she’s offering better wording suggestions than I first came up with. So this paragraph is a group effort.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Genealogy
• Personal
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I’m one in a hundred! (MyHeritage.com Top 100 Genealogy Site recognition)
WooHoo! I’m proud to say that Family Oral History Using Digital Tools has been recognized in the MyHeritage.com Top 100 Genealogy Sites.
From the blog post/announcement of this distinction:
We wanted to identify and give recognition to websites which offered high-quality content, were innovative in topic or design, and which were frequently updated with new content. We also put some emphasis on finding hidden gems in the community, and bringing sites to attention which currently have relatively small audiences. As such, there are a number of lesser-known sites included, and a few more prominent sites unmentioned for the same reason.
Here’s the entire list of the 100 sites. To stay sane, I think I’ll be clicking a few a day over the next several (or several-several) days.
Congratulations to all the others, and join me in a happy dance!
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Cool Website
• Genealogy
• Personal
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How can I help you with your resolutions for 2010?
Happy 2010 to you. My biggest resolution is to help you with your New Year’s resolutions, especially if yours take the form of saying “I really ought to talk to my…” Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Grandma or Aunt or Uncle or family friend. And record that conversation. And then process it with your computer. And then archive it somehow.
In 2010, I wish to to devote more time and effort to this site than I did the last year, and here’s a toast to the posts, articles, reviews and videos that will appear here this year. I’m leery of getting too specific and too ambitious. (Been there, done that.) What can I write about that will help you?
On my own work with my own family oral histories, I have recordings of my dad and uncle—both veterans—that I want to finish processing and submit to the Veterans History Project.
I’ve got some family photos that I scanned. Or rather began scanning—there are so many more. I want to put them together in a MemoryMiner photo library to distribute to all the cousins (I’ve talked of this before). Wanted to do that in time for the Dad memorial, but the distribution part didn’t happen.
I’ve gotten in touch with two 2nd... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Do it: Learn How
• Do it: Yourself
• Interviewing
• Personal
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Dad Memorial Scanfest, part 2: How we used the images
My Dad’s memorial was filled with photos, dear reader. Filled with them. The memorial was a little over a week ago. Here’s what went down. Here’s what we did with the photos I scanned (as described in Part 1). (I’ll write one more post about lessons learned on a personal level)
The basic workflow of the images was: Scanning app → Photoshop where I did some basic color correction. When I scan images, I make them as big as possible, huuuuge file sizes. The scanner gave me the option of saving as TIFFs, so I did that. Before I brought them into MemoryMiner, I did a batch process in Photoshop to reduce the image size to half of what it was before, which left enough pixels for anyone who wanted to print out a high-ish resolution photo (longer dimensions average somewhere above 1200 pixels.) I changed foto format to high resolution JPEGs because I’m planning on eventually distributing the photo library, and I want it all to fit on a single DVD (capacity 4.7 GB)
I imported the half-size jpegs into MemoryMiner, and IDd the people in the photos and assigned them dates and locations. We had a large and thorough collection... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
• Photographs
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The Dad Memorial Scanfest Marathon
I’ve been on a tear, scanning family photos, for Dad’s memorial — the printed program, slideshow, and to burn on CD to share among extended family. I wrote most of this post when I was near the end of Marathon session #2, over the Hallowe’en/All Saints weekend a week+ ago. Find the album, pull out the fotos, scan at super high resolution. Open Photoshop to crop and/or copy paste just the individual image into its own image file. All of this has me thinking about the best way to share and manage a huge photo collection. This is one of those “thinking out loud” post, most composed 10 days ago, with some follow-up comments from today.
It’s been a month since Dad died, and the memorial is set for this weekend. This has allowed us some time to breathe, and to give family members time to plan a trip here for Dad’s memorial. It’ll be a Great Gathering. The scanfest(s) are to prepare for it.
Even though Dad’s memorial is a week and a half away, at 2 weeks out I felt the tug of this scanfest project drawing to a close. It could go on forever. Seriously. There are so. many. more. pictures. (And slides. So many slides!)
But there are other things to do. These photos need to be resized from gargantuan full-resolution .tif or .psd file to high-rez jpegs, then brought into MemoryMiner. Where I identify who-where-when for each photo. (Importing and cataloging over 200 pictures is too much to do in a stretch, so I’ve been taking it in batches)
Being a graphic... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
• Photographs
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One month ago: Hootenanny in the Hospital
This post is about a music-filled night exactly one month ago. But it’s about far more than that. I won’t make you read to the end for the most important bit. My Dad died October 4. He had some music during his final days. One sing stands out in my mind; it took place exactly one month ago. I wrote about it the next day and posted it on a private family blog. I guess I’ll begin by giving some backstory, as I wrote it for those who were already following along:
<Background>: Saturday, September 26—My Dad went into the hospital—his sixth hospitalization since May of last year. I had been with him Thursday (24th); it took 3 of us to get him from a wheeling walker w/ a sitting seat to his bed; he was too weak to stand. I left the next day; oldest bro D arrived late Friday night (25th) and Saturday got Dad admitted to the hospital. I spent that Saturday afternoon upgrading my ancient crappy cel phone (vintage 2002! spontaneously disconnect from battery at the worst times, rendering it highly unreliable) to a new one with a text-message plan, which turned out to be A Very Good Move in light of what was to come.
Also On Saturday the 26th, R, my next oldest bro arrived to the Homestead (by plane, from NY, pre-arranged flight) and on Sunday morning he and my Mom met with the doctor, who... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
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