Back to my Roots
Lately, I’ve started picking at my genealogy again—hence the oh-so-clever title of this post. It all began with updating the software I use, which was several versions behind. The creator, Darrin Lythgoe, has clearly been much busier than I have, continuing to pack new features into the TNG software.
Next, I dove into all the “places” I’ve recorded, working on standardizing the naming conventions (see the GEDCOM 5.6 PLACE_NAME definition if you have an uncontrollable urge to know what convention I settled on). I also updated most entries to include GPS coordinates where possible. This part is still a work in progress. At the moment, there are 886 places defined—so yeah, it’s going to take a while.
Most recently, I’ve been tackling the thumbnails. Back in 2003, I thought 50×50 pixels was just fine. In 2025? Not so much. They’ve now nearly doubled to a luxurious 96×96 pixels, which means in many cases you can actually tell what you’re looking at. Sadly, I’m missing the original source images for quite a few, so some thumbnails are still stuck in the early 2000s. If you have any old pictures of folks in my Roots section, feel free to send them my way!
Lastly, the “organization” of my research files are… let’s just say, aspirational. Which may explain why I can’t track down some of those original images in the first place. While this won’t show up on the site right away, maybe—if I come up with a better system—it’ll lead to some indirect improvements here.