randymajors.com

Into healthy eating that tastes good? Check this out:

2013-05-17T17:42:00.000-04:00

1660 New Amsterdam atop 2013 New York

2013-05-06T12:18:00.000-04:00

The excellent historical blog Ephemeral New York has a post today about the 1660 Costello Plan, referred to by the New York Public Library as the "earliest known plan of New Amsterdam and the only one dating from the Dutch period."

To put the original Costello Plan into a present-day context, I've overlaid it on Google Earth and made these screenshots of lower Manhattan (click the images to see larger versions):

North is up in this map. Look how much of present day New York would have been underwater back in 1660! Manhattan's west coast would have been present-day Greenwich Street, and the south and east cost is along present-day Pearl Street.

In this map, North is to the upper-right. A couple of notable things: Aptly named Wall Street was a wall; Broad Street was a canal. Very cool that many streets of today still follow routes from this 1660's plan, including Broadway, Beaver Street, Exchange Place, William Street and Stone Street, just to name a few.

And really zooming in, look at the quaint little dock on the waterfront near the present-day intersection of Moore Street and Pearl Street. Also, see the entrance to the canal that runs along present-day Broad Street.

The website Curbed ran a follow-up post on the Costello Plan containing additional interesting details, including why a Dutch plan has an Italian name.

Boston Marathon Bombing: Map showing the Location and Time-stamp of the Surveillance Video of the Suspects

2013-04-18T20:07:00.000-04:00

See video here

The Boston Marathon Bombing was a cowardly act, and we all want to see justice served to those responsible.

Now that the FBI has released details of the bombing suspects, I decided to create a map that shows the likely location and timing of the of the surveillance video of the suspects, in hopes that somebody who was nearby at the time may have noticed them.

If you have any information at all regarding the men shown in the attached photos and video, you should immediately submit them on https://bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov. As the FBI website states, no piece of information or detail is too small. You can also call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), prompt #3, with information.

Click above for a bigger view, or see the interactive map here. Source for locations of explosions is this New York Times page.

Great 5 1/3 mile NYC UWS run!

2013-04-09T10:26:00.000-04:00

For those in the great city of New York City, specifically the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and into running (ok, I just limited my global audience for this post!), I have an inspirational -- or at least not monotonous -- 5 1/3 mile run for you!

Half of the run is in Central Park and the other half along the Hudson River Greenway. I'm showing 74th Street and 108th Sreet as the two places to cross back and forth between the park- and water-side legs, but you can adjust your numbered blocks up and down to suit your starting point and still keep the run about 5 miles

And the elevation profile of the route involves some decent hillwork (ok, by Manhattan standards anyway!). A 333 feet elevation gain all in little-ol' Manhattan! Oh yeah!

Enjoy!

I'll take my Cabernet in a sippy cup please ;)

2013-04-08T14:32:00.001-04:00

Bumpier Flights Ahead on Warming Planet, Study Suggests | North Atlantic Corridor Turbulence | LiveScience:

'via Blog this'

New York City: the safest major city in America. Mystery Of New York's Falling Crime Rate Remains Unsolved

2013-02-13T18:15:00.001-05:00

..."In 1990, there were 2,245 murders in the city. Last year the number was 414, the lowest since police began keeping reliable records."

"In one remarkable day, Nov. 26, 2012, there was not a single murder, stabbing or shooting reported in the nation's largest city, possibly the only time that happened since New York was a small Dutch colony."...

Mystery Of New York's Falling Crime Rate Remains Unsolved | LiveScience:

'via Blog this'

A GPS in your DNA: could this new model help further enhance services such as 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry DNA?

2012-08-28T18:26:00.001-04:00

A GPS in your DNA is a cool article in ScienceDaily. I wonder, could this new model help further enhance services such as 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and Ancestry DNA?

Kuala Lumpur twin towers: the world's tallest twin towers

2012-08-24T08:49:00.000-04:00

I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last week and had a chance to visit and photograph the Petronas Towers. At 1,483 feet tall, they were the tallest buildings in the world until 2004, and they remain the world's tallest twin buildings ever built.

Photo taken from the front entrance area of the Petronas Towers

Taken from inside the "skybridge" on the 42nd floor. It's a double-decker skybridge, with the 41st floor being for tourists while the 42nd floor is reserved for tenants and their guests. At 558 feet, it is the highest 2-story bridge in the world. Per wikipedia, the bridge is not attached to the main structures, but is instead designed to slide in and out of the towers to prevent it from breaking, as the towers sway several feet in towards and away from each other during high winds!

The towers at night-time, taken from the rooftop bar at the Trader's Hotel. A bit of trivia: Some may recognize these towers from the 1999 film Entrapment starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Helpful Warning? Or too much information? :)

2012-08-24T08:27:00.000-04:00

This struck me as kind of funny. By the way, it's at the St. Regis Hotel in Singapore, where I was last week.

Slovenia and North Korea on top in 2012 Olympic Medal Count

2012-08-02T10:03:00.000-04:00

While the US and China are vying for top honors in the 2012 Olympic Medal Count overall, I had been thinking that country-comparisons on total medal count is a bit unbalanced way to look at it since, well, they're both very populous countries! What if we account for this by weighting the medal count by population...or what about wealth?

Huffington Post did just that here.

As of the morning of August 2nd, it turns out that Slovenia comes out on top in population-weighted medal count:

And North Korea comes out on top in GDP-weighted medal count:

It will be interesting to see how this evolves as the Olympics progress!

“It’s just this sense that you got something to say,” and other things Bob Dylan didn't really say

2012-08-01T07:56:00.000-04:00

The fall of science journalist and author Jason Lehrer was precipitated by his fabrication of one or more quotes by Bob Dylan, among other things. See this New York Times story for details.

Outspoken author, intellectual, and neuroscientist Sam Harris commented on Lehrer's career cliff-dive in this blog post. Says Harris, "I consistently meet smart, well-intentioned, and otherwise ethical people who do not seem to realize how quickly and needlessly lying can destroy their relationships and reputations. This is why I wrote a short ebook on the subject. Since it contains more or less everything I want to say in response to the Lehrer debacle, I’m offering the full text of LYING as a free download for the rest of the week."

Note the link to the FREE download (this week only) of Harris's long essay / short ebook, Lying, here. I read it several months ago and found it to be insightful and compelling. Here are a couple of endorsements of the book from Harris's website:

This essay is quite brilliant. (I was hoping it would be, so I wouldn’t have to lie.) I honestly loved it from beginning to end. LYING is the most thought-provoking read of the year.
Ricky Gervais

In this brief but illuminating work, Sam Harris applies his characteristically calm and sensible logic to a subject that affects us all—the human capacity to lie. And by the book’s end, Harris compels you to lead a better life because the benefits of telling the truth far outweigh the cost of lies—to yourself, to others, and to society.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist, American Museum of Natural History

Moscow

2012-07-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

Here are a couple of photos of Red Square and the Kremlin, day and night, from my Moscow trip a couple of weeks ago. Saint Basil's Cathedral is in the background. It was about 60 degrees warmer than last time I was there -- which is to say it was a perfect 70-something rather than 20 degrees below freezing!

It's a great run to do laps around the perimeter of the Kremlin (it's perimeter is 1.5 miles).

Happy Mother's Day from NYC!

2012-05-13T12:42:00.000-04:00

Happy Mother's Day from New York City!

Heart O X skywriting; photo taken yesterday from my rooftop deck in Manhattan's Upper West Side.

All Our Ideas website takes crowdsourcing of ideas to the next level

2012-02-18T09:57:00.002-05:00

Create a question, Collaborate with others, Discover the best ideas. All Our Ideas is crowdsourcing of ideas taken to the next level: its a website that enables groups to collect and prioritize ideas in a transparent, democratic, and bottom-up way. It’s a suggestion box for the digital age.

A research project led by the Sociology Department at Princeton University, All Our Ideas is a free, open-source, platform that businesses, associations, or other informal groups could put to good use.

Thanks to Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania for pointing out the Beautiful Streets project which is a project inspired by All Our Ideas that is trying to understand people's perception of "what makes a beautiful street, or a pleasant neighborhood? Maybe that’s hard to define, but can you tell a beautiful place from somewhere that’s not so hot?". It's Hot or Not for urban planning.

Pretty sure I'll be putting All Our Ideas to use...I just need to decide on which topic or for what purpose to begin.

England's "Seemingly Glamorous and Unspeakably Grim" 18th Century Underworld

2012-02-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

Emily Brand has a great blog subtitled "Being an Exploration of Crime, Disorder & Lewdness in the Long Eighteenth Century" in England. http://georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com/

Ancient London photos

2012-01-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

I meant to post these photos a few months ago. I had some extra time over the weekend on a September trip to London and decided to explore a few of the more ancient sites of the city, including Temple Church, St Paul's Cathedral, the London Wall, Tower of London, and All Hallows-by-the-Tower.

Ancient London, Sep 2011

What do courthouses, cemeteries, churches, and libraries have in common?

2011-10-27T19:40:00.003-04:00

Well, for the genealogist and historical researcher, they're all great places to look for historical sources and information on ancestors, historical figures, or the local area. And they've recently been incorporated into my Historical U.S. County Boundary Maps tool! Just check the "Show Research Locations" checkbox and then select which categories you want to show, and symbols will appear on the map:

Then, you can click an icon, and an info window will appear:

The name of the place and the Website are both hyperlinks, which will open up a Google Places page for more information on the place:

I've thought about having the cemetery info windows display links directly to that cemetery's findagrave listing (or a similar site). Let me know in comments your ideas on what site(s) I should have the places link to.

By the way, when you choose "courthouses", you'll also see city halls; when you choose "churches", you'll also see synagogues, mosques, hindu temples, and other places of worship.

TIP: The closer you zoom in, the more places you'll see. This is because the map limits the number of places displayed to 20 to help cut down on clutter. So when you're zoomed out too far only 20 places will appear, and many places will simply not appear until you zoom in closer to the area you want to explore.

Check out the Historical U.S. County Boundary Maps tool here.

Heads-up for those using Ancestry.com's App for iPhone and iPad

2011-10-26T20:10:00.002-04:00

UPDATE: Ancestry.com's App version 3.0.1 released 20 Nov 2011 has fixed the problem reported here.

After having some problems with Ancestry.com's App on my iPad 2 a few days ago, I called their support. After their support representative talked to the App developers, she got back to me later that day that she was informed that the App "broke" under Apple's new iOS 5. She said that "the programmers upstairs are working on it and you should be getting an update right on your phone" or iPad. No ETA given.

Quick background: I recently started using Family Tree Maker 2012 with it's new TreeSync that synchronizes FTM2012 with Ancestry Member Trees online, and supposedly works with the App too. The FTM to AMT sync functionality was working fine, so I went on to check out how it would work with the iPad App on my iPad 2, which I had recently upgraded to Apple's iOS 5. It didn't work. The symptoms were that the App said it was downloading 8651 people (the correct count), then it said "Processing 8671" (note the incorrect count). Then, when the tree appeared, only around 300 truly random people appeared in the entire tree and index, not even including myself. I exited, deleted the App, rebooted, reinstalled the App, and tried again. Same exact symptoms and results. That's when I called Ancestry and later that day found out the App broke under iOS 5.

So, if you use Ancestry's App, you may want to hold off upgrading your iPhone or iPad to iOS 5. Or be aware that you may not be able to use the App until Ancestry pushes an update to your iPhone or iPad.

Based on some discussions on Google+, this issue may not be happening to everyone using iOS 5.

Has anybody else ran into this issue with the App?

UPDATE: Ancestry.com's App version 3.0.1 released 20 Nov 2011 has fixed the problem reported here.

Domain Drama

2011-10-19T23:05:00.001-04:00

My website has experienced domain drama the last day or two.

Basically, some people couldn't reach the site unless they used the www prefix (such as http://www.randymajors.com/p/maps.html), which was problematic, as most sites and searches referred to the site without the www prefix.

The site should behave such that it doesn't matter if you use the www or not (as in http://randymajors.com/p/maps.html).

Long story short, the domain host settings appear to be reverted back to the correct settings now, but please leave a comment to this post if you're still experiencing trouble reaching the site. If you're experiencing issues, let me know if the issue was with or without the www prefix.

And to think that www should matter in 2011 !?:)

New and more interactive version of the Historical U.S. County Boundary Maps tool released!

2011-10-07T20:54:00.003-04:00

Check out the new and more interactive version of the Historical US County Boundary Maps tool!

Here's a quick run-down on what's new:

Show me the answer now please! Now, when you type a Place and a Year* and click the Go button, you will be zoomed to that place and an information panel will automatically appear above the map, as highlighted here:

I want the details. The information panel above the map shows the year, county name, full place name, and details about the latest evolution of your county of interest's boundaries as of the year you chose. Source information about the boundary change is also shown in parenthesis at the end of the Details.

QUICK TIP FOR GENEALOGISTS: Most people say that a best practice for recording locations in your family tree is to record the place name as it was at the time of a Fact or Event associated with your ancestor. As a shortcut to typing, you can select the "Full place name" text with your mouse as shown below, and then Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) it into a Fact or Event's location field in your favorite genealogy program or website.

Today, Cortez, Colorado is located in Montezuma County. But in 1880 it was part of La Plata County.

Hmm, what are these other places around here? Now you can zoom and pan around the area and then click the map to see information about places in other counties as of that same year. Late-breaking news: Now, when you drag the map such that it's center falls in another state, you will be asked if you want to see county boundaries for that new state instead. Can't make it much easier...

OK, I want to see more. Literally. Want a bigger map window to work with? Just click the little + sign in the upper right corner of the map pane.

Now I'd like to time-travel. Click the arrow button on the right side of the Year box to scroll forward a decade at a time and see the county boundaries change before your eyes. Alas, you can also click the arrow button on the left side of the Year box to...you get the idea.

*But I know the exact date I want. Based on feedback from Tami Glatz, you can now enter an exact date to see county boundaries in effect as of that date! Dates must be entered in the format M/D/YYYY, or you can still just enter a 4-digit year if you want.

But what about the rest of the world? Sorry, the Historical US County Boundary Maps tool is only available for the United States. However, you can view rough historical country (with an "r") boundaries with the Historical World Boundary Maps tool.

Find the new version of the Historical US County Boundary Maps tool here.

I look forward to your comments below on these enhancements! And don't forget to click the Like, Tweet, or +1 buttons on the left side of the map...they help spread the news about this map tool. Enjoy!

(If anyone has trouble with this new version of the map tool, please read the Quick Tips and Notes underneath the map tool. Also, you can still access the old version here. But if you're having trouble, please leave a comment below so I can try to address it.)

Undocumented tricks for surfacing buried ancestors using the AncestorSearch Google Custom Search tool

2011-09-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

OK, maybe you won't surface any actual ancestors with these tricks, but you very well may surface a number of buried web pages about them! By using these tricks, I've found many additional web pages that were buried deep in the far recesses of the internet that mentioned my ancestors.

First for some brief background. As you can see, AncestorSearch has input boxes for First Name, Last name, as well as Alternate Last Name. This is useful if you want to check alternate spellings for a surname, as in the example below where I'm looking for an association between two people that I believe are in some way related, but I think their surnames could be listed a couple of different ways:

This particular search doesn't find anything across all of Google (see first image below). And if you were just typing these names into Google, you'd have to wade through about 17,100 search results to find that out. Fun. (see second image below).

I know...you could type the following text into Google's search form including placing all the pipes (that's the "|" key) and quotes and spaces in the right places, typing both forward and reverse name order, etc., but isn't that a painful waste of time when it's something the AncestorSearch form does for you?

So, where are the undocumented tricks, you ask. Here they are:

1. GO AHEAD, REVERSE THOSE NAMES. What if you want to try two Alternate First Names instead of Alternate Last Names? Go ahead. Just forget that the boxes say First Name and Last Name and reverse the names, as in the following example where I wanted to see if anything could be found just using either the full first name or just the initials for the first name and middle name:

Sure enough! There is one search result on the internet where somebody has transcribed an 1880 newspaper article. Sweet!:

For comparison, just typing the above names into Google produces about 123,000 results. I got tired of looking through page after page to see where the above search result appeared in the standard Google listing, but it certainly wasn't in the first several pages. Also, I couldn't find these search results on Mocavo either, as it doesn't have nearly as much of the entire internet indexed as Google does (and likely, nobody ever will). AncestorSearch is good at finding this type of buried web page specifically because it starts by taking the widest possible swath of the internet (i.e. all of the internet according to Google), and then filters out the noise with those quotes, pipes, reverse name orders, etc. to produce a much more manageable (and likely more relevant) search result.

2. WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, IGNORE THE OTHER INSTRUCTIONS TOO. Forget that it says "Place" next to that box. Feel free to type in another keyword into the Place box instead. This could be anything, such as an occupation, the surname of a third person you think might be associated with your first two people, or some other keyword associated with your ancestor (e.g. railroad, bank, prison). Also, see that big long box at the bottom of the search form? You can add "exclusion terms" into that. For example, if I know my Majors ancestor above isn't associated with Alexander Majors of Pony Express fame, I can type -Alexander or I could type -"Pony Express" in the long box (that's the "minus" key in front of the words), and pages mentioning the speed-obsessed equestrian are excluded from my search results. Also, if you don't want your own forum postings and such to appear try excluding your own name.

3. GIVE YOUR MOUSE A BREAK. One drawback of the AncestorSearch search form I occassionally hear is that it has multiple input boxes you have to click into and so it's not as simple as Google's one big search box. True. So save yourself a lot of time by using the Tab key to move from one input box to the next, and when you're ready, just hit the Enter key to execute your search from any box. Time yourself doing that versus typing this into Google:

...or versus wading through 123,000 standard Google search results because you didn't use all those quotes and pipes :)

I hope these tricks help you find a few more buried pages out there and lead to a new discovery or two. If you have other AncestorSearch tips and tricks that have worked for you, please share them by leaving a comment below.

Are you sure you're looking in the right county for those records?

2011-08-06T14:54:00.000-04:00

When doing genealogical or historical research, it's helpful (if not essential) to know what counties to search for the timeframe you're interested in. And as we all know, boundaries shift over time. So you may think you know what counties to search, but is there a chance you're missing something?

Take a look at this example. Let's assume you're looking for records for your homesteading ancestors who settled in the region between Albuquerque, Los Alamos, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. This animation shows the boundaries by decade from 1850 to 1950. Those county boundaries were anything but stable. Take for example the community of Los Alamos; it was part of the following counties during that period: Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Bernalillo, and Los Alamos.

And this is not the exception, it's the rule. According to historical geography expert John H. Long, on average, a county's boundaries shifted 4.5 times during its existence. Especially during times of colonization and westward expansion, the boundaries on those frontier counties typically shifted much more than that, new counties were created, and old counties became defunct, and counties swapped parcels of land.

So if you haven't found some records on your ancestors where you expected to, here are 5 quick steps to see if shifting boundaries may be the culprit, and which other counties you might need to look in for the records you seek:

1. Go to the Historical County Boundary Maps interactive tool.

2. Type in a PRESENT-day place in the Place box. For example, type Los Alamos, NM. You can even type a present day address, county, or road name too, such as Canyon Rd, Los Alamos, NM. Remember, even if you know the county name or place name used to be something different, you must type the PRESENT-day address, county, road or place, not the historical name.

3. Tab over to the Year box, type the year you believe your ancestors settled in the area, then click the Go! button or press the Enter key. To be safe, even if you know your ancestors settled the area in the 1880s, you might want to type 1870 in the box.

4. To quickly see if you need to be concerned about shifting boundaries for this location, here's a shortcut: click the arrow key on the right side of the Year box to scroll forward a decade at a time (you can also click the arrow key on the left side of the Year box to scroll backward a decade at a time).

5. For any given year where you see a shift, just click the map at the location you're searching to see a box pop up with the name of the county and a little history on the nature of the most-recent boundary change as of that year.

The above method will quickly help you see which other counties you might need to look in for the records you seek. If you're searching on some online services such as Ancestry.com, now you know which other county names to type into the search box. If you're looking for records that may be held at the local county courthouse, archives, or genealogical society, now you know which counties you need call on to see if they know which repository holds the records for the timeframe in question.

Also, the same approach outlined above works on the Historical World Boundary Maps interactive tool to see country boundary changes over time.

Finally, here's a bonus for those who read this entire post!
If you want to make your map larger, I have added a small + button in the upper right corner of the map window that enlarges the map.

Happy mapping!

If at first you don't succeed... try AncestorSearch

2011-07-29T09:36:00.000-04:00

The latest newsletter from UK webssite LostCousins.com contained the following story. It's such a great example of a success story using my AncestorSearch tool that I just have to share it. It's an important reminder that exactly how you format your Google search really does make a huge difference in the results you get; AncestorSearch helps format your Google search to achieve more focused and successful genealogical search results. See here and here for more background info, and give it a try -- even for those ancestors you've searched for hundreds of times before to no avail.

Here's the story:

If at first you don't succeed...

I was absolutely delighted to receive the following email from Edward in Australia:

My grandfather Ernest Edward Ruffell (1903-1949) came to Australia in 1924, after he had had a falling out with his father. Family legend says that his father paid for his ticket to Australia on the proviso that he never came home. Whatever the truth in this story, after my grandfather arrived he changed his surname, and went on to marry and have a family of his own. He sadly died young of tuberculosis.

When the family in England tried to reconnect with him in the early 1950s they found it almost impossible, and by the time they had, he had already passed away. They were very briefly in contact with his children in Australia, then fell out of contact again.

In one of your recent newsletters you recommended a genealogical search engine. So I went to it and entered my great grandfather Charles Alfred's name, as I had a hundred times before in other places. I was amazed to find a reference to a newspaper request for info on Charles Alfred and his wife. It had an address and phone number.

So I decided to ring the number, and was thrilled that the person who answered on the other end was my grandfather's niece (daughter of his sister). She was also thrilled and told me that the family back in England had been thinking about their Aussie relatives for years.

Anyway this has led to a wonderful reconnection with the family, with lots of photos and stories (including two more of my grandfather... previously we only had one of him).

I want to send you a heartfelt thanks for recommending the search engine, and hence for helping to reconnect a family that has been apart for over 80 years!

Every day I receive emails from researchers who claim to have "tried everything" and "looked everywhere", but it's the ones like Edward who persevere (and keep an open mind about where the next clue will come from) who get the success they rightly deserve.

The above story is from LostCousins.com founder Peter Calver's latest newsletter.

Historical World Boundary Maps back to 2000 BC!

2011-07-20T05:55:00.001-04:00

This is an update to my original post here.

The Historical World Boundary Maps tool has been updated to include boundaries from 2000 BC to 2008 AD.
Just type in a PRESENT-day city and country, and a HISTORICAL year, and click Go! The boundaries will appear, and you can then click the map to see what the name of the country, empire, or kingdom was at that location for the year you typed.

Note: The information for all years prior to 1946 includes very generalized boundaries, very rough timeframes for the boundaries, and includes some errors and omissions. As such, the information for that timeframe should be used as a very rough guide only.

First U.S. Counties...now The World!

2011-07-16T18:42:00.004-04:00

Please see an update to this post here.

It's great to see that so many people are getting good use from the Historical U.S. County Boundary Maps interactive tool on this blog. (There's a write-up on the tool here.)

A number of people have requested historical World country boundary maps as well, so I've built another interactive map tool for that: Historical World Boundary Maps

UPDATE: The Historical World Boundary Maps tool has been updated to include boundaries from 2000 BC to 2008 AD.

Just type in a PRESENT-day city and country, and a HISTORICAL year, and click Go! The boundaries will appear, and you can then click the map to see what the name of the country, empire, or kingdom was at that location for the year you typed.

Note: The information for all years prior to 1946 includes very generalized boundaries, very rough timeframes for the boundaries, and includes some errors and omissions. As such, the information for that timeframe should be used as a very rough guide only.

Have fun with it!

Please see an update to this post here.