At the end of a Sandy Hook Gang
Zoom meeting, we discussed the value of records from family members from the
past, diaries, and letters from a bygone age that pass on insights into
lifestyle and past events. Then we saw that such a record might be valuable to
our children and grandchildren in the future. And that it is up to us to
provide that record.
This is the basis of one of the Mormon (LDS) Church's genealogy
efforts. They recommend that every family construct a scrapbook of
remembrances. Many families (LDS and not) already do this. We have seen
box-after-box, drawer-after-drawer filled with pictures, slides, movies, and
tapes of family members, places, activities, etc. Some of which may be valuable
to someone in the future.
I read an article that used
statistical modeling to predict that 60% of us (any large group of people) will
get COVID-19. For us oldsters, which means 60% with heart problems are likely
to die soon. I have had several strokes and heart scares lately and need to
plan for the inevitable.
I wanted to get our financial
affairs detailed so our kids do not have problems distributing our property,
etc. That project grew and grew to become a monster that takes a lot of my time
in this lockdown period, fun and certainly entertaining.
A diary will not do. I do not do
anything exciting day-by-day, and nobody can read my writing. There would be no
organization of the material. And there would only be one of them.
Collected Letters and Emails would
be too much stuff and trivia to wade through.
An organized scrapbook or essay
book takes too much planning and is arduous work to produce. And usually, there
is only one of them.
A Word or other document on the
computer seems like the modern best choice. It can be multiple files to keep
everything organized. Cut and Paste makes it easy to revise and add things.
Spell check and look things up on other windows to keep things neat. Pictures
and Videos are easily inserted and captioned. Backups, USB sticks, duplicate
files, and the internet ensure the work survives,
I have chosen to organize my
scrapbook as a Website. I want to publish the thing on the web (we have many
family members). Still, it must be produced, edited, and kept entirely on my PC
for privacy and convenience.
I am sorry for the length of this
intro. I encourage you, in old age, to make your own scrapbook.
When the kids were little, I used
FrontPage many years ago for a family website. It was effortless and had
everything I needed to make an excellent site. Then Microsoft bought the
company and destroyed it.
Other systems have come in and can
be used (the latest magic word is "CMS," the earlier one was
"Blog"), but none of these is simple enough or private. I could
install Apache on my PC and get full web capability, but that is too complicated
to keep running.
So, I used PageBreeze, an obsolete
attempt by a now-defunct company, to clone the old FrontPage. One edits in
either HTML or WYSIWYG with a one-button to switch back and forth. It has
minimal extras and confusion but is loaded with annoying bugs. I
probably should have used WordPress on Apache. I may convert later (i.e.,
do away with HTML editing and simplicity).
My scrapbook is published for
the family on a cheap Linux account that
has everything LAMP.
It is SSL password-protected for privacy, as I have not tried to
censor/sanitize the content. The site name is "LWBOOK: The Ultimate Guide
to Living Well" https://lwbook.net
I was using Grammarly as a spelling and
grammar checker with PageBreeze. This became too tedious as the History page
grew. Grammarly announced integration with Word, so I converted. I have been
pleasantly surprised. Word used to be too complicated and full of horrors. I
got Office 365 at $70/year, which is
cheap. It was super simple to install and easy to use — quite a change and more
comfortable than the two free Word software clones.
I gave up HTML editing but gained
immediate spelling and grammar checks. Both WORD and Grammarly check as you
type and, surprisingly, do not always agree. Together, my pages cleaned up
well. See https://melhaas.lwbook.net.
I like Grammarly because it works on Email and other things I type.
Screaming
Frog and FileZillaThe website grew to over 250
files, and it was difficult to keep sane. FileZilla is an essential tool to
keep the site's external version in sync with the PC version. Screaming Frog crawls
the external site and shows broken links, missing files, and other web mishaps.
Since the website is external on
the web, it is subject to Google, Bing, and other search engines. This is
desirable because searching for whatever one wants to see is handy and good for
getting my rants and sermonizing out there. Here are the pages Google currently
indexes: site:melhaas.lwbook.net.
Sensitive information such as our financial account is password protected.
Part of the purpose of publishing
the website is to describe what happened to me while growing up in the hope of
preventing the misery I felt most of my life. A campaign to help prevent violence in our society and
prevent loneliness, depression,
and suicide. This part is presented on a separate NSFW website.
12/5/2024 3:54 PM