A long time ago people figured out that if you used coins for trading instead of chickens you could build up a complex economy. The coins usually consisted of something precious themselves. Not to long ago society moved towards a more abstract notion of currency and found it was easier to produce dollars out of…
My Wife the Blog Stalker
I stay up very late writing code sometimes. There are weeks when I go to bed at 2 or 3 am. Actually, it isn’t so much go to bed as pass out. My wife is great and supportive. She frequently stays up late with me. When you are up late and your husband is ignoring…
Journal Writing Sucks, Blogging is Cool
The LDS cultural has encouraged personal history and journal writing since its inception. Ever since then the vast majority of the members have ignored this council and the overall level of guilt among the LDS faithful has continued to rise as each successive generation followed the example of the previous. Technology now provides some relief…
A Killer iPhone App
I am not great at meeting people especially at conferences. However, the biggest reason to attend a conference is to meet people. (If you think you are paying $1500 to learn about how Rails routes work then its time to rethink your life.) iPhones may not be ubiquitous yet, but they are popular enough that…
Starting Up
I am not a serious entrepreneur, but I have started up a few companies over the years. One I sold. One we folded and I still run one – ThePlanCollection.com. I ran across this article with startup tips. My favorite tip is ‘outsource to middle America’. I would have to say there are a lot…
Family Search Conference
I am at the FamilySearch conference at BYU today which means that I had to get up at 5:30 this morning which is one my least favorite things in the world. Luckily caffeine is my friend and I managed to stay awake for the drive down. I did discover this morning that my truck’s top…
Family Tree Read
What do we read out of family search? Person Information Search Match Authorities Data – places LDS Ordinance Information Objects available in the new FamilySearch Person Search Data Contributor Information Place Standardization Data Can output XML, JSON, and XML-FastInfoset. Request can be gzipped if client supported. Locate a resource via NFS Id – ‘KWCD-QBC’, Ancestral…
Family Search Write
We’re back from lunch. I had a great chat with Alan Braverman the CTO & founder of Geni. They are doing some cool things by connecting living people with their families and to the larger family graph. They also let you upload photos and other digital assets then assemble that into a timeline. Eventually you…
Ruby fs-api
I am in the Ruby-fs API presentation now. Funding for the library came from USFamilyTree.com. It is REST based. Data model is: Person Person has many Assertions Assertion has one Contributor, Citation(not yet implemented), Note Each person has a lot of data associated with them so you don’t want to be parsing xml data on…
Family Search API
If these posts don’t make sense sorry. They are for my notes. API is based on REST. A lot of data is sensitive so they use SSL to secure data transfer. Prefer XML elements over XML attributes. Everything is UTF-8 encoded. Right now user access is limited to LDS members. That is interesting. I guess…