Synesthesia

This site is an interesting adjunct to my previous note on geneaology - the surname profiler from UCL lets you compare the geographical distribution of a given surname in the UK between 1881 and 1998.

I did a quick test using my surname (Elve - or as it was commonly spelled in 1881, Elvey). The 1881 result looks familiar from the 1881 census research I have been doing as part of finding my ancestors:

The 1998 map is less useful - even though the spelling I use (Elve) is reasonably well-established, there is no mention of it in the database. So for 1998 I again searched on the “Elvey” spelling.

Nevertheless an interesting site.
[surname profiler found via A day in the life of a middle manager]

Technorati Tags: Elve, Genealogy

This place has been looking rather dormant - and I realised that I was sinking into a negative loop - the longer I didn’t write here, the harder it seemed to start. So consider this a metaphorical “get in there and do something”…

It’s not that I’ve not been busy - but a lot of that has been the sort of things I don’t write here (details of work stuff, and family life etc.) - and the things of which I might write have seemed so absorbing at the time that writing has not been on the agenda.

One thing that has been taking up a bit of time is a programming project to provide a web remote control to ITunes - [bliki]WebTunes[/bliki]. Unfortunately not much further than a proof of concept (spare time programming with something as complex as .Net is far from efficient!), but I might post some code if anyone is interested.

The other thing that has led to a few late nights is “looking for dead people” as someone described it - a resurgent interest in some family history research. I’ve fairly reliably traced my paternal line (Elve) back to the early 1800’s, and one of my mother’s ancestors ( Micklewright) back to about 1820. There are significantly more sources online than when I last looked at this about five years ago, but again I’m coming to the point where I can see a need to track down some primary sources - and that was where I lost steam before!

A few online resources that I have found useful in different ways: ancestry.com, Genes Reunited and FamilySearch.org.

I shall stop now whilst I’m ahead.

Technorati Tags: Elve, Genealogy, iTunes, Micklewright, Programming, WebTunes