Author: jameswharris

Ancestry.com Isn’t What I Expected

by James Wallace Harris, 1/6/25

I joined Ancestry.com so I could upload old family photos. I thought they should be saved somewhere because all my family photos will be thrown away after I die. Many of my photographs have already been converted into digital files, so I figured it would only require looking up the person and uploading the files for that person.

Because the government knows so much about us, I assumed that kinship relationships for the last three or four generations would already be in the Ancestry.com system. That was a big false assumption.

Ancestry.com claims to have over 60 billion records. I don’t know if that’s 60 billion different pieces of paper or 60 billion references to individuals. The trick using Ancestry.com is to start with a name and then use all its records to verify the identity of each person. It’s not easy. You can’t trust any one record. You need to find several records with connecting information that’s already been previously validated.

My assumption was recent family members would be known and family from the past would be harder to identify. It turned out that parents, siblings, cousins, and grandparents are hard to verify but once I did, Ancestry.com offered a lot of hints about my great-grandparents, and their ancestors. However, the hints need to be verified. Those hints are probably based on distant relatives in the past, working up family trees, and those trees might not be accurate.

I was shocked by how many people have similar names, with similar dates of birth and death, coming from the same part of the country. I could very easily add photos of people who were not the people photographed.

Before I joined Ancestry.com and used it, I thought family trees were already well established, and I could quickly upload all my family photos. That won’t be the case.

Just to cover my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, I’ll need to research and identify 30 people. I only knew four of them. If I go back to another generation, that would add 32 more people. This completely ignores aunts, uncles, and cousins from each generation. Adding them to my family three would mean researching another hundred people, maybe two hundred.

Another assumption I had before working with Ancestry.com was the belief that building a family tree would help me get to know my ancestors. It hasn’t worked out that way. Finding names and dates to add to my tree reveals nothing about those people.

Genealogy is interesting and even educational. It’s revealing in unexpected ways. It shows that blood is not thicker than water. Kinship is meaningless. Actual interactions with each other are everything.

I’m not sure if saving my photographs will be of any real value. I’ll save them anyway, but I’m uncertain if anyone will care. Now I understand why so many people I’ve talked to about this project said they had zero interest in genealogy. They instinctively knew that people they never met were just meaningless names and dates on a chart

However, learning genealogy offers other rewards. It teaches research skills. It reveals how society knows and remembers people. Pursuing genealogy shows the limits of identity and identification. Unless a person is worthy of a biography, history only knows us by our names, marriages, addresses, birthdates, and death dates. And don’t those details say absolutely nothing about true selves?

Maybe I’m wrong. As I dig into the past, maybe I’ll find revelations I never expected.

By the way, genealogy should benefit greatly from AI.

JWH

Pop Culture vs. Social Media

by James Wallace Harris, 1/1/25

I began pondering the differences between generations that grew up with pop culture versus generations that grew up with social media when playing Trivia Pursuit. I then noticed the same differences while watching Jeopardy. Pop culture is about what most people know, while social media is about knowing the details of subcultures.

I’m often surprised by how much young contestants on Jeopardy know about the 1960s and older pop culture, but old and young players are very selective in their knowledge of 21st-century trivia. For years, I thought people my age just couldn’t keep up with popular music after 1990 because of changing mental conditions. But now I wonder if it’s because popular music shattered into countless genres appealing to various subcultures. In other words, there became too many art forms to remember their trivia.

I was born in 1951 and my personality was shaped by the pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Pop culture was primarily television, AM radio, movies, books, newspapers, magazines, and comics. People watched the same three television networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC. They often saw the same hit films and listened to the same Top 40 songs. They usually read a single daily paper. Some people read books, usually, paperbacks bought off twirling racks which sold in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The most common magazines seen in people’s homes were National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Life, and Time.

The by-product of that limited array of pop culture was people within a generation shared a common awareness of what each other liked. You might not watch Leave It to Beaver or Perry Mason, but you knew what those shows were about.

People growing up since the Internet, especially since the explosion of social media, didn’t have popular culture, they had social media that focused on subcultures. Social media might be all about sharing, but people’s shared interests have broken down into thousands of special interests. People on the internet crave contact with others who share their interests, but no one group, not even Swifties, makes up a popular culture.

There are songs on Spotify with billions of plays that are completely unknown to the average American. The Academy Awards now nominate ten pictures for the Best Picture category, but most Americans have seldom seen them before they were announced. Hundreds of scripted TV shows are produced yearly yet it’s quite easy for all your friends and family to have a different favorite. My wife and I struggle to find shows we’re willing to watch together.

Mass media has broken down into specialized media devoted to subcultures.

Pop culture was a product of mass media. It inspired group identity through common knowledge. I’m not sure it exists anymore.

Social media is a byproduct of individuals trying to find others sharing similar interests. It isolates people into smaller groups. It promotes individual interests that limit people’s ability to overlap with other people’s interests. It makes people specialize. You become obsessed with one subculture.

I wonder if the MAGA movement is unconsciously countering that trend. They think they want to return to the past, but what they want is to be part of a large group. Their delusion is believing that if everyone looked alike and thought alike, it would create a happier society. I’m not sure that’s the case. The 1950s were not Happy Days, and the 1960s wasn’t The Age of Aquarius.

I’m not sure that happiness comes from the size of the group you join. Some happiness does come from interacting with others and sharing a common interest. I also think people might be happier knowing less about subcultures, and more about pop culture. But that’s just a theory.

Could people withdraw some from the internet to become more physically social? I don’t think we can give up on the internet, but do we need to use it as much as we do?

I liked it when my friends watched the same TV shows or movies. I also loved that my friends knew about the same albums, and would play them together, or go to the same concerts. Pop culture was popular culture. Will we ever see that again? And is that a delusion on my part. Am I only remembering a more social time from youth that naturally disappears after we marry?

JWH

What To Do With Family Photos That No One Wants?

by James Wallace Harris, 12/30/24

I have a box of old photos and photo albums that contain pictures of people from six generations. I inherited the family photos from my father’s and mother’s side of the family. My wife and I have no children, and my sister recently informed me that her son and granddaughters have no interest in the past. When I die, I’m sure that box of history will be thrown away.

It seems wrong to destroy such historical artifacts. Online research recommends trying to donate old photos to historical or genealogy organizations. I was horrified by one site’s recommendation: to burn them. But then, wouldn’t that be like cremation? I guess that’s more dignified than letting them rot in the landfill?

Sadly, no one wants to remember these people. I always thought one of the main reasons people believed in heaven was their desire to see family and friends again. Maybe that’s not true. I’m also reminded of the sentiment, that as long as you remember a person, they will not die. I never met many of the folks in my family photos, but I have wondered about them.

I have digitized most of my family photos. Sometimes I even set my computer background to use random pictures from that folder to remind me of all the people who are gone. Every ten minutes I see another moment from the past where people I share DNA pose to be remembered.

I have used scans of these photos for this blog in the past. I wrote “The Burden and Responsibilities of Family Photos,” “My Father Would Have Been 100 Today,” and “My Mother Would Have Been 100 Today.” I had hoped that some of their friends I never knew would have discovered those pages and left a comment, but that didn’t happen.

I joined Ancestry.com which allows uploading photos. It’s a slow process because I have to verify details and family connections, and I try to add as much information as possible to each image. My initial subscription is for three months, so I’ll try to scan, document, organize, and upload all the photos I can within that period. It’s kind of expensive.

Once the work is completed at Ancestry.com I might join other genealogical sites to upload the photos at each.

After that, I’ll box them all up carefully, and leave a note for whoever goes through my stuff to ask my sister’s descendants if they want them one last time.

You’d think there would be a national archive that collected old photos and certain kinds of documents for future historians.

If you don’t have anyone to leave your family photos, what will you do with them?

JWH

What Were the Best Films of 2024?

by James Wallace Harris, 12/28/24

Before the pandemic, I went to the movies at least once a week, sometimes twice. Since then, I haven’t been back to a movie theater, which has made me out of touch with the world of movies. For the last couple of years when the Oscar nominations were announced I would start streaming all the movies from the top categories. I have a 65-inch TV and haven’t missed going to the theater.

The 2025 Oscar nominations for 2024 films won’t be announced until January 17th, but I’ve got a head start on finding the best 2024 films by reading or watching Best of the Year lists, word of mouth, or streaming services promotions. So far I’ve seen:

  • Drive Away Dolls (B+)
  • Civil War (B-)
  • Thelma (A+)
  • Challengers (B)
  • Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (B)
  • Conclave (A-)
  • Juror #2 (B+)
  • Nightbitch (B-)
  • My Old Ass (A+)

However, these films have not gone over well with my wife Susan. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a problem where I have difficulty watching a movie alone. I need Susan or a friend to watch with me, otherwise, I just get restless and switch to watching YouTube videos. That means I have to pick movies that others want to watch.

Susan has been very nice trying several 2024 movies, but I can tell she hasn’t liked any of them except Thelma and My Old Ass. Last night I had an epiphany about what Susan likes to watch. She loves upbeat movies with likable characters, the kind she can watch over and over. Susan rewatches TV shows and movies that are old favorites as she sews.

That has conditioned her to prefer certain kinds of shows and made it hard for her to try new shows. We each have our mental problems with watching TV.

After reading a bunch of Best of the Year lists, I want to see the following movies, but for the most part, I don’t think Susan will like any of them, except maybe The Wild Robot or maybe, Saturday Night. If you know of any 2024 feel-good films, leave a comment. I prefer edgier, unique films. But then, I only will watch them once. I usually don’t like sequels or movie franchises.

  • The Substance
  • Anora
  • Dune Part 2
  • Blitz
  • Close Your Eyes
  • The Brutalist
  • The Order
  • Small Things Like These
  • His Three Daughters
  • Hit Man
  • The Room Next Door
  • About Dry Grasses
  • Emilia Perez
  • Sing Sing
  • A Complete Unknown
  • A Real Pain
  • Babygirl
  • The Wild Robot
  • Saturday Night
  • I’m Still Here
  • The Piano Lesson
  • The Seed of the Sacred Fig
  • All We Imagined As Light
  • September 5
  • Nickel Boys
  • Wicked

And if you’ve seen 2024 films you loved that aren’t on these two lists that I would admire, please recommend them in the comments.

What’s funny is the films I’d rate the highest are the ones I would rewatch. And except for Thelma, I wouldn’t watch any of the 2024 films we’ve seen again.

Because of my attention affliction, I’m becoming out of touch with current pop culture. It’s weird needing company to watch television shows and movies. It makes me love books and music more.

I like talking with people about the books I read, and I have several friends who read the same kind of books I do, so I’m lucky there. But I don’t know anyone who listens to music anymore.

People talk about how social media bonds young people today. Well, when I was growing up, pop culture bonded our generation. However, that has come apart. Like I said, I used to go to the movies once or twice a week. That was because I went with friends who wanted to see the films. Maybe that’s why I can’t watch movies on TV by myself, that I’ve always considered them a social thing. Ditto for TV shows. Growing up, I watched TV with family or friends, and the fun thing about TV was talking about shows with kids at school.

JWH

2024 Best Movies of the Year Lists:

Switched From PC To Mac After Buying a Mac Mini M4

by James Wallace Harris, 12/12/24

I’ve wanted to own a Mac since 1984, but they were always too expensive. When Apple announced the Mac Mini M4 had 16GB of memory as the base memory for $599, I preordered one from Amazon. They had it for $579.

I love Windows. But my Intel NUC has been annoying the crap out of me with its fan noise. I even went into the BIOS and set the processor to its lowest performance level so it should overheat less, but the fan still whined, but not as much. And it got less hot to touch. I don’t know why, but even when I didn’t use it background processes were always running something. I checked for viruses and malware but didn’t find any. I opened the NUC and vacuumed the dust, making sure that wasn’t a problem. I don’t know why, but that fan whine just got to me.

I never hear the Mac Mini M4. Nor does it get warm. I added a 4TB external hard drive to handle my 2TB Dropbox drive and a folder of Plex movies and TV shows. The heavy-duty OWC enclosure with metal fins gets warm sometimes, but it’s quiet.

I love the quietness of the Mac Mini, but I’m worried about the OWC external drive. The light comes on when I’m not using the machine, and it’s sometimes warm when I haven’t used the Mac for hours. I’m worried that something is running in the background that I might not like.

Modern computers run dozens of processes in the background, and this is starting to annoy me. I was hoping the Mac ran fewer. It’s a major reason why I considered switching to Linux. I never know if those processes are essential, corporate spying, or malware activity.

The trick to switching to the Mac was finding software that served the same functions as all my Windows programs. Office 365 runs on both platforms. No problem there. I use Microsoft Edge browser on Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and Mac. Obsidian runs on PC, Mac, and Linux.

I was quite happy with Office 365 on the Mac. It even installs Microsoft Defender, which includes more than just anti-virus tools. However, I’ve taken all the Microsoft programs off the Mac Mini because Activity Monitor shows that Microsoft runs too many processes.

I’m testing to see if I want to standardize on pure Apple apps or pure Open Source programs. I mention this because switching to the Mac is like switching to Linux. You can try to make everything work like it did on Windows, or you can go native.

My first big hurdle was Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021. My copy came with a Mac version but wouldn’t load on the Mac Mini. I thought I’d switch to Gimp because it runs on PC, Mac, and Linux. But I just don’t like Gimp. I solved the problem by using the online app, Photopea. It works great on all three platforms. Photopea works like Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, so no learning curve.

Ripping disks with MKV works even better on the Mac. Plex works fine from the Mac. I took down the Intel NUC I used as a Plex server. Since I have so much space on the Mac Mini’s external drive, and because it is quiet and power-efficient enough to run all the time, I made it my Plex server. Even my favorite CBR reader, YACReader ran on the Mac (as well as Windows and Linux).

The Mac doesn’t work with my Plustek OptiBook flatbed scanner or my favorite program for scanning and mass manipulating images, IrfanView. I just can’t find a driver for the Plustek for either the Mac or Linux and no other program I’ve ever used even comes close to the utility of IrFanView.

Also, I can’t find a screenshot program that functions as well as Windows Snipping Tool, or ShareX.

I own a copy of Abbyy Fine Reader for Windows 15, but they’ve moved to a subscription program. I don’t know if I’m ready to subscribe to the Mac version, especially since I can’t use my scanner. I used to scan old science fiction magazines and fanzines to convert to CBR files and needed the Plustek, IrfanView, Abbyy Fine Reader, and Scan Tailor for the job. That task might have to stay on my Windows machine. But it might just retire from that hobby.

I’m not keen on how Mac OS does many things, but that might be because I’m used to doing it differently on Windows for decades. I’m adapting. I can go days without turning on my Windows machine.

One thing that has made migration easier is I keep all my files on Dropbox. I’ve always been annoyed when using one machine and remembering a file I created is stored locally on another machine. It’s so much easier to keep things on Dropbox and I can access the files from Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iOS, and Android.

There’s a lot I have left to learn about using a Mac, but it doesn’t seem to be too much trouble to do the Mac way of doing things. I am disappointed my PlusTek scanner doesn’t work.

I’ve wanted to switch to Linux for years, but never could because it didn’t have the programs I use to scan magazines or drivers for my scanner. So the Mac and Linux are equal in that.

Now that I’ve been using the Mac Mini M4 for a couple weeks, I love the hardware, but I still don’t like Apple’s operating system. It works, but it’s not what I’ve been using for decades. Using MacOS reveals just how much I love Windows 11. I wish Windows 11 ran on the Mac Mini M4.

I don’t like having an external SSD. The OWC housing and 4TB Crucial SSD work fine, but there’s something else on the desk. That bugs me. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t try switching to a Mac. I’m going to stick with it, at least for several months.

I write this in case you’re seduced by the Mac Mini M4 mania and haven’t bought one yet.

I love the high-tech of the M4 chip. I love having such a powerful machine. However, all I really needed was a new mini PC that was quiet.

JWH