After yesterdays working one season ahead, I went full whack today with working two seasons ahead on Christmas cards. Yikes, Christmas is a long way off but the reason for this is that a call went out on Splitcoaststampers for volunteers to make Christmas cards for Canadian soliders to send to their loved ones. It's not like they can just head out to the nearest Walmart or Hallmark store :)

I'm trying to keep the designs simple so that they can be mass produced. These are my first two designs. I've decided that organdy ribbon is not really appropriate for these matcho guys so I'm gonna have to get my hands on some white grosgrain instead (I feel another SU order coming on...)

I'm not normally prepared for seasons in advance, but today I thought I'd create some fall cards. I don't usually send fall cards (I have enough of a problem just keeping up with Birthdays) but I thought I might start a new tradition (or at least use these for seasonal thank-yous or birthdays).

Design and color scheme CASEd from SU 2005-6 IB&C p.63. SU Creamy Caramel, Really Rust, Bravo Burgundy, Very Vanilla CS. Linen Thread, Black Eyelet. Close to Cocoa Ink. Sarah Beise Leaf Stamp and SU Everyday Flexible Phrases.

Hope you like them! Now I can really appreciate the Summer :)

I took a stroll around the golf course (well part of it) last night and saw this guy/gal foraging in some pine needles just off the cart path. I had my 55-200 lens on, so I was able to get pretty close in without disturbing him/her. I'm not sure what type of bird this is though. I'll edit the post if I figure it out.

Well I knew it. As soon as I bought a camera the Panasonic DMC-L1 DSLR would be released, well kind of, it's actually pre-release. Any while it is a great camera, a price tag of $1999 US is a bit rich for my pocket (and that just includes a basic kit lens 14-50 range - albeit Leica). No, I'll pass this time. Read about it here.

I emailed Geoff Rasmussen yesterday in response to an email he sent me a while ago thanking me for referring to Legacy on this web site. I had to explain to him that I had actually moved to TMG6 in January because of the long wait on the real endnotes/footnotes (oops!).

Anyhow, Geoff mentioned that real endnotes/footnotes were to be included as part of Legacy 7. Well I couldn't let that drop could I? So I asked him whether Legacy 7 will be released later this year. The answer is "We hope to, but we never know...".

I hope so too, Geoff.

I've been having a couple of issues with TMG6. As you might remember, I upgraded to TMG in January as I really wanted to start my family history book and needed real footnotes/endnotes (which Legacy 6 doesn't have).

Well after a long import process (there are some bugs with the way TMG imports Legacy files re sources and citations) I finally got my report. I hadn't had much opportunity to use TMG since and finally felt prompted to use it the last couple of days as I had discovered a link to a well documented line of McMurachys. I wanted to merge a McMurachy gedcom with my own file. I came across the following issues/annoyances:

1. The merge function is terrible. By default the automatic merge looks for soundex similarities which causes way to many matches. I changed this to surname exact spelling and first name soundex.
Funnily enough though, even with the default setting, it didn't pick up the most obvious matches (those with the exact same name but with a space Mc Murachy vs. McMurachy, or those names in capitals?).

2. When you check a pair as non-duplicates, the check mark does not show (to confirm you checked it) even though a confirmation message appears. In fact, there is no way to tell that you have even selected the pair as non-duplicated unless you exit the Merge function and run it again. Even then, when you select "don't show non-duplicates" the pair is still included in the count of duplicate pairs.

When I checked with the technical support for TMG I was told that there was nothing wrong with this functionality (it was intentional). Gotta be the most stupid thing I've even seen and I work in the software industry! I'd never let my software developers get away with something so dumb :)

I have been looking for a great spot in the house for taking natural light photo portraits of the kids and I think I have found it. The problem in a modern home is that there are electrical outlets everywhere, as well as other paraphanalia (sp?) on the walls.

Anyway, I found a spot in my dining room, right next to the big picture window where the background is plain and not distracting. There isn't even any baseboard moulding here as it is on the fireplace peninsula. See what you think!