Here’s the answer to the previous puzzle-post with the following Latin-looking verse:
O Sibili, Si ergo
Fortibuses in ero
O Nobili, Themis trux
Cevats inem, Causen dux
This is, of course, not real Latin but a little verse that you can sound out in English. If you read it out loud, slowly and carefully, you can hear that the verse is actually:
Oh see Billy, see ‘er go.
Forty buses in a row.
Oh no Billy, them is trucks.
See what’s in ‘em? Cows ‘n ducks.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged Latin, Puzzle | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a little puzzle to start your day with. The poem below looks like an old Latin inscription. But is it? Or does it say something else? Any guesses?
O Sibili, Si ergo
Fortibuses in ero
O Nobili, Themis trux
Cevats inem, Causen dux
Thanks to my Dad, John Sexton, for having showed me this as a kid.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged Latin, Puzzle | 1 Comment »
Not too long ago, I took possession of my immediate family’s collection of old baby books. The idea was that I’ll get everything from the baby books scanned and saved, before returning them to my siblings. That was a number of months ago and I still haven’t taken the time to digitize the books and archive the images.
I did spend a little time recently, however, just paging through my oldest brother’s baby book and absorbing all of the wonderful information that it contained. My brother Mike was born in 1956 and Mom diligently recorded many details about Mike’s birth and first few months. It was fascinating to see the variety of information recorded and to realize what a treasure trove these books are for family historians.
You can certainly still buy baby books today–sporting titles like “Baby’s First Year”, etc. But I get the sense that the heyday of detailed baby books was back in the 1940s and 1950s, with new Moms buying super detailed books and diligently filling in every page. When women started entering the workforce in the 1970s and 1980s, spending lots of time on baby books probably became much less common. It was probably only in the 1990s, with the renewed interest in scrapbooking, that creating a detailed account of your child’s first years probably started becoming common again.
I thought I would share some of the great images and content from my brother’s baby book. Click on any of the smaller images below to see the corresponding full-sized image.
Let’s start with the title page of the baby book:
Title Page
I love the subtitle, which hints that this isn’t some artsy scrapbook, but a true scientific endeavor:
A baby record book including scientific charts which will prove of practical service to the mother and growing child.
Scientific charts?? Also notice mention of the “Chicago Lying-in Hospital”.
Next we have the “endorsements” page.
Endorsements
Some of what’s written here is also amazing. It seems like we weren’t allowed to keep scrapbooks as sentimental creations back in the 1950s, but somehow had to justify books like this as truly useful scientific records, to be used by attending physicians. Mothers would be gathering and keeping this information “for their own use in checking up on their methods and results”. Also note the goal, to keep “a simple, adequate, unsentimental record of the baby’s development”.
Unsentimental? Clearly, this is not your daughter’s lovely artistic scrapbook of the 1990s.
The next two images show the table of contents, which gives us an idea of the layout of the book.
Table of Contents, part 1
Table of Contents, Part 2
Notice the detailed structure–so different from today’s idea of scrapbooking, which emphasizes open-ended creativity and originality.
Here’s one of the pages for recording some of the baby’s early behavior.
Baby's First Ten Days
Of course some of this is sort of entertaining (e.g. Mike being labeled a “stinker” because he cried when he wanted to be held). But it also gives some real insight into the habits and culture surrounding a newborn in 1956. Going far beyond just a photo from the first days, we get a real sense of what life was like for mother and baby.
Here’s a footprint/handprint page.
Identification Marks
It’s nice to have the little card listing details from the birth, in case this information isn’t recorded anywhere else.
Here’s a chart showing weight and height, up through Mike’s 6th year.
Record of Growth
Wow–how many parents these days take the time to record height/weight data every month?
Here’s a page that had a few congratulatory cards pasted into it.
Notes and Letters of Congratulations
Next we have a page listing gifts received.
Gifts
I find this pretty interesting. You get a sense of the relatives and friends who were part of my Mom’s social circle at the time. I’m especially intrigued by the appearance on this list of someone named “Fraulein Frickke”. Clearly, I need to ask my Mom about this person.
Then we have the following page, with photos of the homes where Mike lived for the first few years of his life.
Homes
This sort of information is a real gold mine for the family historian. It’s evidence that you can use in reconstructing information about where the family lived at a particular point in time. The polaroids automatically labeled with the date are especially helpful.
Here is Mike’s “physical and mental development”.
Physical and Mental Development
Again, this stuff is priceless. You really get a mental image of the person as a baby that goes far beyond a simple list of dates and places.
Here’s the “Talking” page.
Talking
And here is a summary of Mike’s 1st birthday celebration.
One Year Old
Again, this is great to use as a secondary source in your research, giving you some evidence about people who were associated with the family at this particular time. Note the comment about Daddy having to go to a ball game..
Here’s is the “Trips” page.
Trips
You can possibly use information like this to figure out the date/place of family photos that you might have in your collection. The page gives us some real specific data about some family trips.
Finally, here’s a “family album” page, with pictures of my Mom and her first husband.
Family Album
Many of these baby books have plenty of space for photos. In the case of my brother, there weren’t that many photos in the book. But these two photos are ones that I don’t think I’ve found elsewhere in the family collection of photos.
Research Tool and Family Treasure
A well-stocked baby book is not only a family treasure, giving us glimpses into the early life of one of our relatives/ancestors. But clearly it can also prove to be a valuable research tool, providing additional data that we don’t find elsewhere.
Posted in Legacy | Tagged 1950s, Baby Book | 2 Comments »
One of the most useful software features that has shown up on most web sites these days is something called “look-ahead” technology.
Here’s the idea. Let’s say you go to the Google web site and you’re looking for a way to hunt down relatives. You begin typing “find my relatives” into the search box. But as you type, Google lists a number of phrases that start with the characters that you’ve already typed–things that Google things you might be typing. So by the time you’ve typed “find my r”, it lists “find my relatives” as one possible thing that you might be searching for.
This is really useful because Google often seems to figure out what you’re going to type, long before you finish typing. Then you can just click on the phrase that you were going to type and proceed with your search.
How does this work? Here’s where “look-ahead” comes into play. Instead of waiting until you finish typing to search its database, Google takes what you’ve already typed and does a quick search in the database. But instead of searching for web sites, which is what happens when you press the “Google Search” button, it searches for things that other users have typed in the past.
The reason that this is useful is that people tend to search for things that other people have already searched for. You are definitely not the first person who has entered “find my relatives” into the Google search bar. So it suggests “find my relatives” as one possible sentence you might be typing.
So this is basically a big time saver for you, since you rarely have to type the entire phrase that you’d thought of into the search bar. Even better, you might see some phrases that are similar to yours that you had not thought of.
But Google doesn’t just list a bunch of things it thinks you might be typing. It lists the most common search phrases that match what you’re typing. What’s more, it orders the list by popularity, with the most common at the top.
This makes reading Google’s list of suggested search phrases very interesting. By typing a word or two, we can get some insight into what people are searching for.
So, What Are People Searching For?
So now the fun begins. Let’s enter a handful of interesting phrases into the Google search bar, to see what the most common searches are that start with that phrase.
find my ..
my family ..
genealogy ..
family photos ..
family tree ..
family history ..
ancestors ..
You get the idea. Google can tell you a lot about what people are searching for and that can be illuminating for certain search phrases.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged Family history, Search Google | Leave a Comment »
Here’s a poem that I wrote for my Dad back in 1993, to commemorate his 60th birthday. We threw a huge birthday party and printed the poem out on cardstock and hung it up at the party. The poem became a huge birthday card and everyone who attended the party got to sign it and leave a little message.
A Poem to Commemorate John Sexton’s 60th Birthday
John Sexton is about to turn sixty years old;
He’s come a long ways, so let the story be told.
This tale begins in St. Paul on a farm–
With a cute little kid, full of kindness and charm.
John lived on Bernard, two kids to a bed,
A house full of boys, run by Sugar and Ted.
They worked on the farm, through rain, snow and sleet
Looking forward all day to a slice of that teat.
Soon John went to Cretin, like many young men,
Where he learned honor and discipline and use of the pen.
Later came the army, when he volunteered to go.
Though about to be drafted—he was required to show.
After his time in Korea, that brief little stint,
John returned home and decided to print.
He went to work for his dad at the shop
And learned to run presses instead of a mop.
John in his twenties knew many young women;
He’d wine them and dine them or just take them swimmin’.
Show them the town, dance cheek to cheek,
John’s goal at this time: “A new girl each week!”
Until the day that he met a nurse named Claudette;
They both knew this was it, the minute they met.
In a very short while they decided to wed,
And a family of four now had to be fed.
John was happy with Claudette, Mike & Joe.
And the house on Summit with a lawn he could mow.
But two boys was too dull, they needed a spark,
So along came Sean, followed by Mark.
They all lived in Eagan, in the house that John built;
And the boys played outside, in the mud, sand and silt.
But with a house full of men, Claudette needed some peace,
So they asked for a girl, and along came Denise.
Having a daughter was so nice when he tried it,
That John wanted some others, and so they decided–
“We need a few more kids—we can’t settle for five”,
So Natalie & Nicole were the next to arrive.
John now, it seemed, was the father of seven.
And life was quite good, though not always heaven.
Since he loved them all deeply, through good times and bad,
He was the best father they could have ever had.
One by one the kids got older, and began to move away–
To start their own lives, and work instead of play,
But very soon the babies started to be born
And the call “grandpa” echoed through the corn.
Now John works in the house up on the hill
And toils at the computer, ‘till he’s had his fill.
He plans new projects, things to build or do
And he and Claudette travel, visiting places new.
What comes next for John? It’s hard to tell;
But the first sixty years have sure been swell.
He’s done so much and traveled so far,
And someday he’ll finish that little green car.
So as you turn sixty John, we would just like to say,
That it’s been an adventure, every step of the way.
And so it should come as no great surprise
That we think that you’re truly the greatest of guys.
–Sean Sexton, 1993
Sadly, John passed away in 2005, after a battle with Melanoma. We still miss him terribly, but are so grateful for the wonderful legacy of family and friends that he left behind.
Posted in Personal | Tagged John Sexton, Poem | 1 Comment »
Here’s another photo from my Grandpa’s collection. (See A Family Photo Jackpot for the story of my gradually scanning/preserving a large collection of old photos).
I’m actually showing two photos—front and back of an old photo postcard, sent from St. Paul, to Bemidji, MN. What’s wonderful about its being a postcard is that the postmark on the card exactly dates the card, if not the photo itself. The date the card was sent was 16 March, 1907.
Here’s the photo side of the card. (For a large version, click here).
And here is the address side of the card. (For a large version, click here).
Note that this is a real photo postcard—one in which the photographic paper on which the photo was developed was itself then sent as the postcard. You can read a little bit about the history of vintage photo postcards at Playle’s Real Photo Postcards. This particular card is printed on “Azo” paper, made by Kodak. In my scan, you can see the word “AZO” just below the stamp. You can also match the pattern below the stamp with the patterns listed on the Playle’s site.
The stamp is a 1902-1903 issue 1 penny stamp with the image of Ben Franklin. Here’s a site with more info.
So who are these kids? The boy on the far right in the back row is my grandfather, Ted Sexton. He was born in April of 1902, so he was nearly 5 years old when this photo was taken. Immediately to his right is his older brother Judd (Gerald), born in 1899. On Judd’s lap is their baby brother George, born 24 Aug, 1906 (so he’d be just under 7 months in this photo). Standing in the white dress to George’s right (our left), is my grandfather’s sister Kit (Kathryn), born 4 Sep, 1904. So she’d be 2-1/2 yrs old in this photo.
So we have the four oldest kids in my grandpa’s family. (There were eventually 12 children). The family lived in Bemidji, MN, where my great-grandfather worked for the lumber mill. (You can see an earlier photo of great-grandpa bill, from his earlier days working in a lumber camp in the woods). Through old family photos, I’m also fairly sure that the family lived at this time in an area of Bemidji known as “Mill Park”. The address on the postcard seems to confirm this, since you can see “Mill Park” written on the lower left.
What I love about the address is how it’s addressed merely to “Mr. W. Sexton”, Bemidji, Minn. And then Mill Park is penciled in, almost as an afterthought. I have a feeling, however, that the postcard would have found it’s way to Bill even had “Mill Park” been left off the card.
The remaining three kids on the card are all first cousins of my grandpa Ted. They are all children of two of my great-grandmother’s sisters. Great grandma Liz (Elizabeth) Carroll was married to Bill Sexton. The boy on the far left in the photo is John Lytle, born 15 Dec, 1902, to Margaret Carroll and George Lytle, in St. Paul. The sticker on the back of the photo lists Annie Carroll’s children as the two girls in the front and incorrectly lists one of them as “Melvin”. Annie Carroll refers to great-grandma’s sister Helen Carroll, who did have a son Melvin, born on 17 Jan, 1905 in St. Paul. Melvin would have been too young to be the boy in the back. So the two girls in the front are likely Helen’s twin girls Lottie and Catherine Hall, born 4/5 Jan, 1903 in St. Paul. (Just over 3 yrs old in this photo).
I don’t know any portion of the story behind this photo. But based on the date, the location, and the kids in the photo, I can make an educated guess. My guess is that my great-grandma traveled from Bemidji down to St. Paul in Spring, once the snow started to melt, to visit two of her sisters. She brought all four of her children, and then the women went to a local photo studio in St. Paul to get the photo of all of the kids taken.
One interesting thing is that the photo contains seven of the eight children that great-grandma Liz and her siblings would have had, as of Spring of 1907. Missing is Melvin Hall, the boy mentioned on the label on the back of the card. It’s quite possible that the boy in the back (on our left) is Melvin, rather than John Lytle. Then we’d have all four of Liz’ children and all three of her sister Annie’s children as well. Only missing would be John, only child of Liz’ sister Margaret.
This photo is definitely a treasure. I love the looks on the kids’ faces and the idea that they’d likely been spending a number of days playing together and getting to know each other.
Here are some higher resolution shots of some of the kids in the photo:
My great-aunt Kit (Kathryn) Sexton, born 4 Sep, 1904. Later married Raymond Sicard and lived in Duluth, MN:
Judd and Ted (my grandfather):
The two girls that I believe to be twins Lottie and Catherine Hall:
One more, a slightly different crop, to show off Kit’s white dress and shoes:
Posted in Photos | Tagged Bemidji, Carroll, Hall, Lytle, Mill Park, Minnesota, Photo Postcard, Sepia, Sexton, St. Paul, Vintage Photo Postcard | 3 Comments »
I wrote in an earlier post about publishing an audio podcast with my daughter Lucy. A couple of people have asked me for the details of how to create and publish an audio podcast, so I thought it worth compiling a step-by-step guide to creating an audio podcast.
What is a Podcast?
Before going through the individual steps, let’s just review what it is that we’re creating.
A podcast is an audio or video recording that you subscribe to and that you receive, automatically downloaded to your PC, whenever the publisher of the podcast publishes new episodes.
If you have an MP3 player, you can also set it up so that podcasts are automatically transferred to your MP3 player when you connect it to your PC.
To subscribe to a podcast, you need some software running on your PC or Mac that can automatically discover and download podcasts–known as “podcatcher” software. The most well-known example is iTunes, from Apple.
The most common scenario for enjoying podcasts looks something like this:
So our ultimate goal is to publish an audio podcast that people can subscribe to and then listen to on their MP3 player.
Context
This post talks about how to create an audio podcast using Windows-based tools (i.e. on a PC). But the concepts are all pretty similar for Mac users. If you are a Mac user, you may want to go read this article. I’m also installing and testing everything on Windows Vista, but things will be very similar on Windows XP.
Step 1 – Buy a Microphone
To create an audio podcast, you really need very little in the way of hardware. Professional podcasters have more expensive equipment. But to start out, you can get by with a fairly low-end microphone.
I recommend going with a combination headphones/microphone headset, because this will ensure that the microphone stays close to your mouth while speaking.
One example: Cyber Acoustics AC851B USB Circumaural Stereo Headset & Boom Mic, available from newegg.com for $29.99.
Step 2 – Download & Install Audio Editing Software
Next, we need to get some software that will allow us to edit our audio recording. This isn’t strictly necessary. You could probably record your podcast in one sitting and then publish the resulting file. But you’ll likely want to do at least a little bit of editing, to make sure that your podcast sounds good, or to cut out unwanted segments.
I recommend a program called Audacity, which you can download for free. Audacity is a simply phenomenal software package and you just can’t beat free.
Use the link above to download Audacity, save the file (audacity-win-1.2.6.exe) to a directory of your choice, and then go run audacity-win-1.2.6.exe to start the installation. Follow all the the instructions to install Audacity.
After you install Audacity, you’ll need to install the “LAME MP3 encoder”. This is an additional piece of software that is required for saving your recording as MP3 files. Detailed instructions on downloading and installing the LAME MP3 encoder can be found on Wikipedia.
Step 3 – Hook Up Your Microphone
Next you’ll want to make a simple test recording–to ensure that your microphone is working properly and that you understand how to use Audacity.
First of all, plug in your microphone/headset. If you went with the one that I recommended above, you just need to find an open USB port. If you have a microphone that has a standard 3.5mm audio plug, you’ll need to find the microphone input plug on your PC or sound card. If you don’t have a mic input, don’t panic. You can just get a microphone USB adapter like this one, plug your microphone into the adapter and the adapter into your USB port.
Under Windows XP or Vista, your microphone should be fully functional after just plugging it in. But if you’re not able to get it working, after following the steps below, you’ll need to contact the manufacturer or check their web page.
Now that the microphone is plugged in, let’s make sure that it can hear us. The next step depends on whether you’re running Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Windows Vista
Bring up the Sound applet–from the Start Menu, open the Control Panel and then find Sound. Click on the Recording tab. You should now see your microphone device listed, looking something like this:
Make sure that the microphone device that you want to use has a green checkmark next to it. If it does not, right-click the desired device and select Set as Default Device. Left-click to select your microphone and then speak naturally into the microphone. You should see the green bars on the right side of the window move up and down as you speak (the louder you speak, the more bars you’ll see).
Once things are working properly, press the OK button to close the Sound window.
Windows XP
Under Windows XP, just proceed to the next step and test your microphone from within Audacity.
Step 4 – Make a Test Recording
Now start up Audacity so that you can make a test recording. At the top of the window, you’ll see some “buttons” for controlling your audio recording. Press the red button to start recording and start speaking naturally.
As you speak into the microphone, you’ll see a visual indication of your recording–the waveform for your voice. (When you’re done recording, just click the yellow (square) button to stop the recording.
If you speak at a natural volume, you’ll see something like the picture above. If you are speaking too quietly, or the microphone “gain” is set too low, you’ll see something like this:
If you are speaking too loudly, or the microphone “gain” is set too high, you’ll see something like this:
In either case–signal too low or signal too high, you’ll want to either speak at a different volume, or change the properties of the microphone to change the default volume. In Windows Vista, you can change the microphone level by going back to the Sound applet that we opened earlier. On the Recording tab, left-click to select your microphone and then click the Properties button. On the Properties dialog, click the Levels tab. You’ll see something like the following:
You can move the slider (the little blue knob) to the right (increase level) if your signal was too quiet/small. Or move it to the left if the signal was too loud/large.
Finally, going back to Audacity, you can play back the recording that you just made by pressing the green arrow button to play it back. You should hear yourself talking and see a little arrow moving through the signal, as it plays back. You’ll also green bars lighting up (labeled “L” and “R”) to show you the speaker levels during playback:
Step 5 – Save Your Test Recording
Next, we’ll want to save this test recording as an .mp3 file. Under the File menu, select Export as MP3. If you can’t select this item, or get an error, you likely need to install the LAME MP3 Encoder, as described in Step 2.
In the Save MP3 File As dialog, locate a directory where you want to save your recordings/podcasts, give it a name (e.g. HelloWorld) and click Save. Next you’ll see a dialog labeled “Edit the ID3 tags for the MP3 file”. For now just click OK.
Exit Audacity.
Using Windows Explorer, locate the file that you just saved and double-click it. It should start playing, most likely in Windows Media Player, and you should hear what you just recorded.
Step 6 – Decide on Your Podcast Content and Length
This seems obvious, but it’s worth saying. Before you actually start recording, you should decide what you’re going to say. You probably don’t need to create a detailed script, but it may be helpful to jot down a short outline that lists the main topics that you want to speak about.
It’s also a good idea to decide on a target length for your podcast. This really depends on your goals and on who your listeners will be. But for starters, 10-15 mins is a nice goal for a first podcast. You’ll also probably want to pick a target length and stick to it, from episode to episode. If and when you have regular listeners, it will be a little irritating if the length of the podcasts changes from episode to episode.
You should also think about the purpose of your podcast. Is your intent to:
If you know what your real purpose is for the podcast, you can then imagine who your audience is and what specific message you want to deliver to them. This will help keep your podcast focused.
Step 7 – One or Two Speakers?
You also need to decide if you will be alone on your podcast, speaking by yourself, or if you will have a guest or co-host. If you do have a second speaker, you’ll need to consider:
Having two speakers means a bit more work in setting up your recording environment. You have several options here:
Most of the approaches are fairly straightforward, but beyond the scope of this post. The first two options are probably the easiest. You simply record each person on their own machine (or handheld recorder). Then, you export one of the recordings into .mp3 format and then import it into the other Audacity session. The only trick remaining is to line the two tracks up, so they are synchronized in time. One handy trick to help in doing this is to clap your hands or make a similar sharp sound at the start of your recording. The hand clap will show up clearly on both recordings and you can then easily line them up.
Step 8 – Record Your Podcast
It’s finally time to record your podcast. Press the big red button in Audacity and start talking. Speak clearly, continue talking, and don’t worry too much about mistakes. The easiest method is to record the show in its entirety, so that you do not need to do any “post production” editing later. But if you make mistakes, don’t worry–just take a brief pause and then try again–you can chop out your mistake in Audacity later.
When you are finished recording, press the stop button in Audacity. Then go to the File menu and select Save Project As. Save your project in the directory of your choice. What you are saving here is not the final audio output, but and Audacity project (.aup file).
Don’t forget to record an “outro” at the end of the recording. This is the point where you say things like: thanks for listening, see you next time, and list any relevant contact information.
Step 9 – Intro Music
If you like, now is the time to select some intro music for your podcast. Many podcasts start each episode with the same theme music. This intro typically last just 10 secs or so and fades out as the show starts.
The hardest part will be finding and selecting your intro music. You need to make sure to either get the express permission of the artist, or use music that is in the public domain, or covered under some open license like “creative commons”. If you want a good site to start with, take a look at ccmixter.
Once you select and download your theme music, just drag it into your Audacity project. Since this is the first track that will play when the podcasts starts, you may want it to appear at the top of the screen in Audacity. This isn’t required–it just makes it easier to make sense of the various tracks if the earliest appear at the top.
To move a track up, click on the phrase “Audio Track”, by the down arrow, and select “Move Track Up”.
The next step is to cause your intro track to fade out to silence over time. You do this in Audacity using the Envelope tool. Click the envelope icon that appears in the upper left of the screen.
Using the envelope tool is a little tricky at first. The basic idea is that you want to mark a series of points along the timeline, and the desired volume at each point. At the end of the track, you’ll use the mouse to select a zero-volume and then slide the mouse to the right to create a slow fadeout to that point. The end result should look something like this:
Step 10 – Position/Edit Your Content
Now it’s time to edit the actual content of your podcast. If you were lucky enough to just record everything in one sitting, you just need to position the main audio track to start at the correct time. If not, you’ll have to do some deeper editing.
Your Audacity session should still have your main recorded content. You’ll want to slide it to the right so that it starts just as the intro music fades out. To start with, select the Time Shift Tool:
Now you just need to grab your main audio track and slide it to the right. It will look something like this after you slide it (note that the dark grey no longer starts at the left edge of the screen).
You’ll also want to chop out, or silence, any junk at the start of your recording–i.e. anything that you don’t want to be part of the final recording. To do this, first select the Selection Tool:
Next, select the stuff you want to zero out, by clicking and dragging the mouse:
Notice that what I selected is now a darker grey. After you selected the region that you want to make silent (delete), find the Silence Selection button on the toolbar:
Click on this button–and the sound data that you selected in the step above will be silenced, showing as a flat line:
More detailed editing is left as an exercise to the reader. One handy thing that you’ll want to learn is that to delete a chunk of of the recording, you first select it and then select Delete from the Edit menu.
Step 11 – Outro Music
No podcast is complete without “outro” music. Very often, this is a reprise of the original intro theme music. Or better yet, a variation on it that wraps up in a nice clean finish. As with the intro music, short is good–try to aim for 15-20 seconds at most.
With the outro music, you’ll want to “fade in” the music, bringing the volume up as the actual speaking part of the podcast ends. Once you do that, you can then slide the outro music around until the part the gets louder starts playing just after the last voice part ends. Here’s a visual example of doing this at the end of a podcast:
The lower track is the music and the upper track is the voice part. Notice that the volume of the music gradually ramps up and then gets considerably louder just after the voice track ends.
Step 12- Export to MP3
Finally, you’ll want to export the entire contents of your Audacity project to a single MP3 file. This is the most common file format for publishing audio podcasts, so the obvious choice.
From the File menu, choose Export as MP3. You’ll see a dialog asking you for basic information about the track–artist name, album name and track name. Typically, you’ll want the album name to be the name of the podcast, the track name to be the name of the episode and the track number to be the episode number.
Step 13 – Publish Your MP3 File on the Web Somewhere
The next requirement is that you publish your audio file somewhere on the web where you can point to it with a URL. (E.g. http://www.seans.com/Podcasts/Lucyshow1/LucyShow-011-090405.mp3 ). Note that this is different from deciding where you’ll host the blog that you’ll need to publish the podcast. You need to host your actual .mp3 audio file somewhere. This means that you’ll typically have to sign up for a web hosting account somewhere.
One good option is a company like DreamHost, who provides unlimited storage for $5.95/mo. But if you just search google for “web hosting”, you’ll see plenty of options.
Note: you do not necessarily need to get your own domain name to host somewhere. Some hosting companies will provide a domain name at no extra charge (seans.com in the example above). But going without a domain name is fine, too. If you choose the latter, you still end up with a URL that points to your .mp3 file, but it might looking something like: http://www.hostingcompany.com/yourname/episode1.mp3
Once you arrange web hosting, you’ll need to upload your .mp3 file and jot down the full URL path to the file. If you’ve done things correctly, you should be able to enter that URL in your browser directly and the file will just start playing.
Step 14 – Create a Blog
Audio podcasts are made possible through the use something called RSS (Real Simple Syndication). The idea is that you publish “posts” and users automatically see your new updates, without having to go directly to your site. In the case of a regular blog, people make use of an “RSS Reader”, subscribe to your blog, and then receive new posts whenever you publish them.
Audio podcasts make use of blogs as follows. You create a regular blog, just as if you were going to publish written posts. Then you post a link to your .mp3 file, using the URL that we mentioned above. But instead of reading your post using an RSS Reader, people subscribe to your podcast using something like iTunes. Then whenever you publish a linke to a new episode (recording), they are automatically informed of the new audio file. And in the case of MP3 players like an iPod, the audio file is automatically downloaded to their player when they connect to their PC/Mac.
This will become more clear as we work through the steps. Let’s start by creating a new blog. There are several places to get a free blog, like WordPress and Blogger.
Let’s say that you want to create a blog with Blogger. Go to the Blogger site and follow the instructions for logging in and creating a new blog. (You’ll need your Google login information). Let’s say that you create something called mycoolpodcast.blogger.com
Step 15 – Create a New Blog Post
Now it’s time to create a new post that points to your podcast episode. Click on the “New Post” button. Give the post a title. Then enter a short description in the main text area. After the description, enter the title of your episode. At this point, you’ll have something that looks like this:
Next, we’re going to select that second line and turn it into a hyperlink, pointing to the URL of your actual .mp3 file. Start by selecting the text with the mouse.
Now click on the button that looks like a chain link on a globe.
And then enter the full URL to where you published your .mp3 file (based on where your web hosting service is located). Here’s one example:
Finally, save your blog post. You’ve just created an audio podcast. To test it, enter the name of your blog in your browser, e.g. http://mycoolpodcast.blogger.com . You’ll see the text that you entered as a description and a highlighted link to the episode. If you click on the link, your episode should start playing.
Step 16 – Subscribe To Your Podcast
Finally, let’s look at how to subscribe to your new audio podcast. I’ll use iTunes as an example. This step will demonstrate the step that anyone can take to subscribe to your podcast.
For starters, you need to be aware of what’s called your “feed”. A feed is just a representation of your blog in a format that podcatcher software (like iTunes) wants to see. The URL for your feed is based on the name of your blog at blogger.com. E.g. If your blog is http://mycoolpodcast.blogger.com , your feed URL will be: http://mycoolpodcast.blogger.com/rss.xml
Now we need to enter this URL into your podcatcher software to subscribe to the podcast. In iTunes, we do this by first left-clicking to select podcasts:
Now select “Subscribe to Podcast” under the Advanced menu:
Now enter the URL to your feed in the window that comes up:
Click on OK and iTunes will add your podcast to the list of podcasts that it subscribes to.
Note that sometimes it can take a few minutes for a new blog post to show up in your feed–so don’t panic if iTunes can’t find the episode right away.
That’s all there is to it! You’ve just created an audio podcast, created your first episode, and shown how you can subscribe to it.
Postscript – Episode #2
So what do you need to do for the next episode? Clearly you don’t need to do all of the steps listed above. Here’s exactly what you do:
That sounds like a lot, but it’s really quite easy.
So there you have it. Once you go through the steps a couple times, you’ll see that creating your own audio podcast is really quite easy. Enjoy!
Posted in Legacy | Tagged Audio podcast, blogger, Create podcast, iTunes | 5 Comments »
Here are two photos from my Grandpa’s collection. Since Grandpa’s photos are almost always of family members, it’s rare to find one with people that I can’t identify. But these two photos are a complete mystery to me.
The photos show a bunch of young people, some of them in baseball uniforms, and one of the photos is labeled “after the game”. So clearly it’s a group of young friends gathering after a baseball game, or maybe celebrating a victory.
Here’s the first photo. (Click on the photo to see a larger version).
And here’s the second photo, showing some of the same people, but with labels that look like surnames. (Again, click on photo for a larger version).
I really love these photos, and maybe more because they are such a mystery to me. As usual with these older photos, I love just staring into the faces of the people in the photo and imagining what it would be like to have been there on that day, talking to everybody, getting to know them.
What’s great is that this isn’t your standard old photo, with everybody in the photo stiffly posed and unsmiling. The young people in the photo look happy, almost flushed with the excitement of the day. Every face tells a different story: pride, determination, “coolness”, or just plain happiness.
I especially like the couple who appear in the center of the first photo:
These two have wonderful faces. We’re looking back in time 80 years or more, but with the energy and excitement in the couple’s faces, we can easily imagine them as young friends of ours.
I also like the doubly-stacked, jauntily tilted straw hats. The silliness hints at the sort of day that everyone was having–just being crazy, goofing around, having fun.
There are other faces that are equally fascinating, like the guy and two girls in the front row:
(I’m half convinced that the girl on the left is my grandmother, but I’ve asked other family members to confirm this).
24 Mar 2009: An Uncle confirmed that this is not my Grandmother–so the mystery continues.
There is something in the faces of these three that also tells a story. We might imagine the young man as romantically interested in the girl at the left, or the girl on the right as also a close friend of both of them. The body language might be telling us a lot. The man has his hand lazily draped over the girl’s shoulder, drawing close to her. The girl on the right, in turn, drapes her arm around the man’s shoulder and holds his elbow with her other hand. The image makes me really curious to know who these three were and to understand their connection with each other.
Here’s another face from the past that I love–wearing what looks like catcher’s gear:
What a great face! The boy appears younger than the other players and clearly seems proud to be a part of the team.
A quick google search turns up a web page depicting what looks like exactly the catcher’s outfit that the boy is wearing:
The second photo also has some wonderful faces to stare into. Note the two girls in the center of the photo, one of them wearing the catcher’s mitt:
If you look at the large version of the photo, you can also make out “Same gang” written on the face of the photo.
I did a little searching on the name “C. W. Fenners”, but didn’t turn anything up. My guess is that this is some local business that sponsored the team. The next step might be to go browse through the St. Paul, MN city directories from the mid-1920s and see if I can’t find a business with that name. The other avenue to pursue might be to do some searching on the listed surnames to see if I could verify whether all of these people lived in a particular part of town.
In the end, maybe these sorts of photos are the most interesting–the ones that tell us a story, but which contain stories that elude us.
Posted in Photos | Tagged 1920s, Antique Catcher's Gear, Baseball, Photo, St. Paul | Leave a Comment »
Searching for your ancestors in online records has become the rage in the genealogical world over the past couple of years. And of all of the data that you can search, census records must be by far the most common place to find information on your ancestors.
It’s not all that tough to find your ancestors in the census records, by doing a quick search at ancestry.com or familysearch.org. And it’s quite a thrill to find the entire family of one of your ancestors, with each member of the family listed, along with their age at the time the census was taken.
What gets interesting is when you try to use census records to provide a bit more information on the birth date of one of your ancestors. If you already know the birth dates for family members that you are finding, the age information in the census record can just help ensure that you’re looking at the right person. But if you don’t yet have a birth date, or have conflicting information, it’s possible to use the person’s age at census time as just another piece of evidence to help you arrive at the correct birth date.
Be careful here. Birth date information deduced by looking at the age at time of census is not a primary source. In fact, it’s probably one of the least reliable pieces of evidence for the purpose of calculating a birth date. Think about the circumstances and the setting at the time the information is gathered. A census taker goes from house to house, asking people verbally to tell them who lives at that house and how old each resident is (among other things). The validity of the answers, especially when it comes to age, depends on so many things—how carefully the census taker records what he/she hears, whether the resident actually knows the age of the person in question, and whether they take the time to remember the age of each person in the house. It’s also probably pretty common for people to have lied about their age.
The quality of the data was also likely dependent on who answered the door. If Grandpa answered and he was eager to get rid of the census taker, he may have rattled off a bunch of names and ages quickly, without worrying whether or not he got them right. On the other hand, if the mother of a family answered the door, odds are pretty good that she’d correctly remember the ages of her kids.
It’s still useful to look at census data and to use it to calculate a range of possible birth dates, based on the ages of the people listed.
So how do we calculate a range of possible birth dates, based on what we find in the census record? It’s as simple as subtracting the listed age from the date on which the census was taken. The date that you get becomes the “latest birth”, or the most recent possible date of birth, given that age.
For example, let’s say that my grandpa was listed as being 18 yrs old in the 1920 census, and the census sheet in question lists the census date as being Jun 1, 1920. In other words, on Jun 1, 1920, the census taker stopped at the house and was told that Ted Sexton was 18 yrs old. This means that the latest that Ted can have been born was Jun 1, 1902. This would be Ted’s birth date if he had just turned 18 on the day that the census taker stopped by. The other way to look at it is that this is the youngest that Ted could be, if the stated age was correct.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ted’s earliest possible birth date is Jun 1, 1901—one year earlier than the latest date mentioned above. If Ted was born late in the day on Jun 1, 1901 and the census taker visited early on Jun 1, 1920, Ted would still be 18 years old—turning 19 later that day. So this is the earliest possible birth date for Ted and the oldest that he could be, if the stated age was correct.
So we end up with the following possible range of birth dates for Ted:
Census Date: 6/1/1920
Stated Age: 18
Birth Date Range: Between 6/1/1901 and 6/1/1902
So Ted was born sometime between 6/1/1901 and 6/1/1902—but only if he was truly 18 years old on 6/1/1920. Remember—although we end up with a precise range of dates, our original census data should still be considered fairly unreliable. So this date range should just be treated as evidence—nothing more.
Now that we have one possible range of birth dates for Ted, we can go find another census record and factor in the information that we find there. Let’s say that we now move to the 1930 census and we find the following information:
Census Date: 10/15/1930
Stated Age: 28
Birth Date Range: Between 10/15/1901 and 10/15/1902
We use the same method as before to calculate a possible range of birth dates, given the stated age.
But now we can take this one step further. If both ages were stated correctly (and that still might be a big “if”), we’ve further reduced the possible range of dates for Ted’s birth. Here’s how it works:
Range #1: Betw 6/1/1901 and 6/1/1902
Range #2: Betw 10/15/1901 and 10/15/1902
Calculated Range: Betw 10/15/1901 and 6/1/1902
We’ve gone from a 12-month range to an 8-month range, narrowing in on Ted’s actual birth date. Note that all we did here was to look at where the two ranges overlapped and calculate the final range as that overlap, or the intersection of the ranges. For example, range #2 said that Ted could not have been born before 10/15/1901. This means that part of range #1 has just been ruled out—he could not have been born between 6/1/1901 and 10/14/1901. In a similar way, the end of range #2 is also chopped off. In the end, dates between 10/15/1901 and 6/1/1902 are the only dates that fall within both stated ranges.
I’ve put together a simple web-based tool to help you do birth date calculations like the ones that we just ran through.
You can find the tool by clicking on the link below (or entering it into your browser):
The Census Birth Date Calculator – www.famthings.com/census/default.aspx
Once you go to this site, you may see a little icon indicating that you need to first install Microsoft Silverlight:
If you see this logo, go ahead and click on it to install Silverlight, which is a browser plugin that is required in order to run the Census Birth Date Calculator. The install should go quickly. When it completes, just refresh the web page and you should see the calculator.
Here’s what the main body of the calculator looks like when you start:
This is pretty self explanatory. To use the calculator, just enter each of your census data records, one at a time, and click the “Add to List” button. Enter the date on which the census was taken in the “Census Date” field and enter the reported age of the person in question in the “Age at Census” field.
If we use the calculator to enter the census data for my grandpa, from above, we see the following after entering the first date:
Notice that the calculator spits out the Earliest/Latest birth range for this piece of census data: 6/1/1901 to 6/1/1902. It also shows a “calculated birth range” below the table that is the same range (for now).
Now let’s add our second piece of census data for Ted. Here’s what we end up with, after adding the new information to the list:
Notice that the calculator now lists out all three ranges of interest—the individual range for each of the two census records, and then the calculated (combined) range. As we showed earlier, the calculated range represents the overlap of the other two ranges. Based on the data that we started with, this is our current best guess as to Ted’s birth date.
As we said, ages reported as part of census data are notoriously unreliable. Sooner or later, we’re going to end up with a collection of dates that lead to inconsistent results. In other words—they can’t possibly all be true, because there is no single birth date that would fit into each of the birth ranges.
Here’s an example. Suppose we find one more piece of census data for Ted. This time, we find him in the 1905 Minnesota state census. The date of the census is 6/12/1905 and Ted’s stated age is 4.
Now we’ve run into problems. Here is what the calculator tells us:
Notice that the Calculated Birth Range at the bottom of the list now tells us that it’s not possible to calculate a range from these three census samples. They cannot all be true at the same time. Notice that the conflict arises between the age-28 and the age-4 entries. They have ranges which don’t overlap, which means—they can’t both be true.
At this point, the calculator provides a little help for you. If you like, you can play around with the data by including/excluding one or more of the pieces of data and seeing how that affects the calculated range. For example, if we had reason to believe that the age-28 entry was incorrect, we could uncheck the Include column for that entry and we’d get:
We have a valid range once again, which just means that the age-18 and age-4 entries do not conflict.
In the end, this calculator isn’t likely to give you a final answer as to the birth date of an ancestor. It might help you narrow down the range of possible birth dates, but only if you believe in the validity of all of the census data that you find.
The other use for the birth date calculator is that it can help you zero in on which census records are suspicious, i.e. possibly inaccurate. If you have five records that are all consistent, and then a sixth that would generate a range of dates that don’t overlap at all, then that sixth date is probably suspect.
So feel free to use this calculator to help you calculate some possible birth date ranges, based on census data. Let me know how it works for you and if you have any suggestions for how I might improve upon it.
Posted in Tools | Tagged Birth Date, Census, Date Calculator, genealogy | 11 Comments »
