Genealogy

What started out as an innocent school project for my daughter has turned into a full time project for me! What was a simple family tree has now turned into a genealogical expedition of epic proportions... well okay maybe not... But I have discovered some interesting facts:

• my grandmother on my father's side came from Scotland
• my great Grandfather on my father's side was a candy maker in Germany
• my great grandparents on my mother's side came from England

My cousin (once removed) in Los Angeles (who I met over the internet) was a great help for getting me started with information about my mother's side of the family. My aunt in Saskatchewan has been great for my Dad's side of the family. I've never felt terribly close to either side of my family but a few phone calls and e-mails is changing my perception. What a friendly, helpful bunch of people!

Finally my software of choice has been a little Java application called GenealogyJ or GenJ for short. Having never touched a commercial tool that does this stuff I'm pretty impressed with GenJ. There's a nice little graphical viewer and lots of reports. The best part is that it stores all it's data in a UTF-8 encoded text file (in the standard Gedcom format) that's easily read in any text editor. That's pretty important to me so that my information will always be accessible even if GenJ should go the way of the Dodo.

For those of you who've been into this stuff for years and have some pointers, send me an e-mail or post a comment...

Chasing simplicity in programming

A new article on c|net discusses the new phenom "Ruby on Rails". Quotes from the article:

Like Java did a decade ago, Ruby on Rails is getting developers excited by making them more productive

The vision of Ruby on Rails, or RoR, is to combine the speed and ease-of-use of scripting language PHP with the "clean," structured approach of Java

Java Enterprise Edition software is a "complex monstrosity" that's hard to learn

Research company Burton Group recommends that corporate customers consider Ruby on Rails for new Web development projects

We took a pretty radical stand: Stored procedures and all things that make your database clever are evil