Family history

Once in a while I wonder about my ancestors and distant cousins. Sometimes I decide to research them. My curiosity bit me again the other day, so I decided Googling both the Croatian and English versions of my family name. I had already gotten some information together in GRAMPS, so it was just a matter of adding people to it. Before I knew it, I was finding a lot of family members through obituary records and the like.

I decided to create a Kalilić/Kalilich Family Genealogy page to document my efforts and encourage other members of the family to contribute. As it happens, I've gotten back in touch with my cousin Michael, who discovered me on the Internet a few years ago. It turns out that he's been talking to one of our other cousins in the old country, and he's going over to visit in a few months. How about that?

All the information on the web page I've been able to find on the Internet for free. I'm actually pretty surprised at how easy it is to find indexes (or indices) of obituaries and death certificates. Immigration records are even online for free at ellisisland.org; those records have been very useful in determining which members of the family came to America when and how. I guess it's especially easy for me to search for things since the name I'm looking for is so rare (and probably even peculiar to my own family). Anyway, I've ordered copies of a couple of death certificates, including one for someone I've never heard of.

I've only just begun to figure out how the American branch of the family relates to the European branch. The immigration records shed some light on common ancestors, but there's not enough information yet. I'm eager to ask my European cousins that I know of how they think everything might fit together. I wonder if they know about the member of the family who died in the Jasenovac concentration camp during World War II. I guess the intrigue of genealogy is that it often raises more questions than it answers.

Here are some programming jokes. One of my favorites:

See also: Computer Stupidities: Programming.

Here's a video of Picasso's Guernica in 3-D (Flash, sound).

If I had to implement a CAPTCHA on my site (which I currently don't), I would choose reCAPTCHA. The creators of reCAPTCHA figured that all the time that people all over the world spend solving CAPTCHAs should be put toward something useful. So whenever you fill out a reCAPTCHA, you're helping to digitize old books by typing in words that computers can't recognize. (You receive two words; one that the computer knows and one that it doesn't. If you correctly enter the one that the computer knows, it will assume that you've entered the other one right as well.) So, bit by bit, you're helping spread human knowledge. And when the reCAPTCHA is cracked, spambots will coolly and efficiently help spread human knowledge.