In tennis lessons years ago, the instructor kept stressing "follow through" which meant that the stroke was not finished once I hit the ball, but only when my momentum was used to set up the return. I learned the same thing when learning to shoot a firearm—steady, aim, fire, follow through.  It has taken years to figure out that follow through is important in research, for the same reason.  In order to get around my stubborn streak, I began the research log for a new project by identifying and prioritizing the most useful databases, then creating a citation for each database before digging into the searches. Getting the "dirty work" out of the way first made it easier to gather the other details, such as date consulted, search terms used, FANs identified, and analysis of any useful records found—even when there were no or negative results. Momentum is powerful! Follow through results in more effective research and saves a great deal of time. A FamilyHistoryFanatic...

The Wright Brothers test fly their aircraft on Fort Myer's parade field 2025: What's Ahead? This year in genealogy research has been momentous . Just as the Wright brothers' first flight revolutionized travel, 2024's genealogical advances are transforming how we explore our family histories. The Wright Brothers' Legacy On 17 December 1903, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, made their first successful sustained flight. Some of the developments we've seen this year will change the amount of information available to us much like that event changed history, transportation, war, travel, and the way we humans viewed the world. In addition, we are getting tools to help us access, analyze and use that information to tell the stories of our families so they will not be lost. Before that fateful flight, we humans did not experience the entire world as being within our reach. Most of the world had rail, but to cross the oceans, one traveled to a port city and got o...

The Family History AI Show The Family History AI Show recently discussed " the year's top AI breakthroughs for genealogists, " analyzing what we genealogists can do now at year's end which we could not on January one. Steve and Mark presented their list:  #5. Chatbots Learn How to Reason (OpenAI’s o1-preview)   Because it is still in "preview," this does not have widespread use yet, but both hosts agreed that it will be great for multi-step big projects.  #4. Content Creation Within Chatbots (Artifacts, Canvas)  Work entirely inside the chatbot, not hopping over to Word, Excel, Photoshop, or other tools for parts of your project. Changes, additions and corrections can happen real-time, not over in another tab, enabling a sense of flow and ease. #3. Collaborative Research Spaces (NotebookLM, Claude Projects, Perplexity Spaces) Chat with and query your own written work, documents for use in your ongoing project, research plans, and collaborate with workmates ...

Dark Matter Structure Courtesy  https://newatlas.com/dark-matter-filaments-found/23281/ Physics Scientists estimate that there is five times the amount of "dark matter" in the universe than regular matter. Matter is everything that we can see, measure, or experience outside of thought, imagination and spiritual experience. But dark matter can so far only be simulated, although it must exist because of the powerful gravitational force it exerts within our cosmos. The latest NOVA on PBS, " Decoding the Universe: Cosmos " is about the discoveries in astrophysics in the past 50 years. An image of the theoretical structure of this dark matter struck me so strongly I had to pause the program and begin writing to you and thinking about why that image stopped me. The scientists are working with dark matter, and dark energy, about which they still know little, and yet it surrounds us, unseen . Re-watching this NOVA, I'm struck over and over by the parallels between our r...

Generated with Bing ImageCreator (AI), March 13, 2024 Where is YOUR Needle, Your Missing Record? Genealogical Proof Standard When we use the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard) as our guide, we all know that "exhaustive research" can be both tedious and exhausting. Is life long enough to search page by page through all the counties where all the members of a family might have lived, paid taxes, bought, leased or sold property, made a will or died intestate? It is possible that the new Full Text Search at FamilySearch will  eventually  allow us to do just that. It has been estimated that 75% or more of the records at FamilySearch were browsable but not searchable; the only indexes those found in the records themselves. Those records are certainly attainable by using those indexes and browsing to the record of interest, but the process is tedious, often frustrating, and slow. And once found, the record must be read and transcribed to be useful. This new Full Text Search tackles a...