hello. my name is john. » tech

The image below was created using wordle.net.

Each of the Ellingsworth given names is sized according to its frequency in the 1860 United States census; there were 218 Ellingsworths enumerated in 1860.

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In this paper, I will suggest that the application of data mining to large data sets and repositories of genealogical information, along with the potential benefits of data mining to both researchers and organizations that support genealogical research efforts will enhance the ability of historians and genealogical researchers to conduct more efficient and effective research.

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Many of us who use Thumbs+ have found that the default 2GB limit of Microsoft Access to be a concern, if not an outright problem. There are several solutions to this - you can buy SQL Server 2000, which can be cost prohibitive, or install MySQL, which some users find more intimidating than others. A third option is available, now that Microsoft has made SQL Server 2005 Express (SSE) a free download.

To aid those interested in using SSE with Thumbs+, I have made the following brief tutorial available. I would appreciate any input into correcting errors, or of any bugs anyone finds in using SSE with Thumbs+.
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I needed a quick function in PHP that would generate HTML tables from database information. The issue was that the column names would not be known in advance for some of the more generic queries so I found the solution using the PEAR DB tableinfo() function. This function does exactly what I needed - it "gets info about columns in a table or a query result". Perfect. So I created a function that takes a valid query for your database and formats the results into a nice HTML table, which I find useful for reporting pages (easily imported into Excel or Calc).

Here is the code:
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I have used the overlib javascript library for many different text based popups on different applications. It is extremely useful for applications where a detailed help message would be valuable to the client. For some time I have wondered about using it with images - instead of having to click a link or thumbnail and then browsing back, why not just use a rollover? (more...)