BenCrowder.net

This changes everything. Tim's comment about a "Flickr for genealogy" has sparked a flurry of thoughts in my head, and here's what I've decided. 1. Web all the way. Meaning, to pull this off, it has to be a child of the Web, not a desktop app that happens to ...

I've been working on the pedigree display code. It's still not entirely clear in my head, which makes it hard to put together. :) At the moment I'm taking the database and exporting the selected individuals/families into an XML tree, which I'll then be able to parse into ...

Got the family links working. One other problem with having so many relationship links is that the code gets a little ugly. Hmm. I'll have to see if there are any alternatives that 1) still give me enough flexibility and 2) are beautiful. Anyway, coding Ruby ...

I've been working on importing the family links from the GEDCOM. Almost there. Once I get that into the database, the pedigree display will be next. I've worked out most of the algorithm, though I haven't yet decided whether it'll be better to use a flat array ...

I spent a little bit of time on Ancestry's OneWorldTree today, checking out one of my lines (Abram W. Houchins and Martha Sneed). Turns out there's a huge amount of information on their ancestors (thousands of names). Now, I don't know that all of it is correct, of ...

I've been working on Beyond for the past five hours or so. Worked on the database schema, realizing I'd forgotten about translations and a few other things (tags). Split the schema into four separate stages, which roughly parallel development on the program. Then I started work on ...

Having thought about it some more, I've decided to go with a loose data model. The advantage is flexibility: people will be able to store whatever they need to, in a way that makes sense to them. As far as interoperability, yes, I think there will be some ...

First off, I've been reading the GENTECH Data Model spec. I read it years ago, when I was working at Ancestry, but time erases a lot of details. :) Anyway, it's interesting food for thought. I don't think I'll end up adopting it (at least not ...

Last night as I was sitting in front of the Manti temple waiting for the Mormon Miracle Pageant to start, I realized I had a perfect opportunity to work on the database design. And so I did. I've got enough of it done that I can start implementing ...

I've been reading the W3C's internationalization (i18n) page, since Beyond will be a global app almost from the get-go. It's really important that it support not only other languages, but also the cultural aspects that come with them -- date and time formats and script direction, for example. As ...