Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

More Research on the Family Tree
Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon at The Toronto Reference Library, going through their extensive genealogical material. Had the most success going through the data for Lancashire from the extensively detailed 1881 U.K. Census, and am pretty sure I found a connection to a set of the Okill family I am related to. Here are the specifics:

Sarah Okill
Dwelling: 25 Orford Street
Census Place: Wavertree, Lancashire, England
Source: FHL Film 1341890
PRP Ref: RG11
Piece: 3717
Folio: 68
Page: 44

Name		Marr	Age	Sex	Birthplace	Birth Year (+/-1yr)
Sarah Okill	W	62	F	Liverpool	 1819
Alice Okill	U	38	F	Wavertree	 1843
Annie Okill	U	30	F	Wavertree	 1851
Eliz. Okill	U	26	F	Wavertree	 1855

The info I have from the Okill family bible matches to within a year 3 of the 4 Okills named here -- as close a match as I am likely to find. The only surprise: who is "Eliz. Okill"? I did an initial lookup on Robertses in Lancashire, and came back with several thousand entries. Next time I'll go back with more definite name info (I couldn't remember the name of my paternal Great Grandfather -- Francis Henry Roberts, as it turns out) and try again. Ditto for my other ancestors who must've been around at the time.

I also went through lots of microfiche, looking at the records for parish of Childwall ranging from the 1750s to the 1820s. There's only one reference to an Okill (a doubtful one) and a bunch of Robertses, all of which I dutifully copied down, though I somehow doubt they are related to me. There are plenty of Parishes in Liverpool, and while some of my later ancestors (i.e. late 19th century) are supposedly interred there, that's not necessarily a guarantee that their parents and grandparents grew up in the area too. Was fascinated by many of the entries, with professions like "salt boiler", "cart proprietor", "footman" turning up, along with the meticulous notation of illegitimate children, which often sadly seemed to be followed shortly thereafter by their respective death notices. Anyways, I've got the info in case in turns out to be handy someday, if not to me, perhaps to some other Roberts descendant looking up info on their past.

Spent the evening collating the information I gathered, and did some online searching for further relevant info. Found the church where my paternal Great-Grand Parents were married in the 1840s, and sent them an email asking them about their parish records. All fascinating stuff.

Another List of Things to Do
Erika left with Vanessa and Annie to visit a mutual friend up at Deloro, which has given me another chance to set myself down to get some work done over the weekend. She's only away for the day, so my list (which I came up with on Friday) is over-ambitious given the amount of solo time I've got, but it's all stuff I want to (and need to) do. So, here it is:

List for weekend:

• Get bagels from market
• Research family history at Toronto Reference Library (ditto Frantics)
• Write articles for The Computer Paper (Web Weaving, Flash Forward plus "10 Web Sites" articles)
• Create revised CSS code examples for book
• Cull (and rip) CD collection
• Send package of baby photos to Mom
• Do outline for possible MAME book (if publisher likes the idea)
• Build raccoon-defeating brickwork wall for garbage cans
• If there's anything worth seeing, go to a movie
• Download more MAME ROMs
• Reconnect the home computer network

Progress Report on the MAME Arcade Cabinet
On building the MAME arcade unit, things are proceeding very well -- much faster than I would have predicted. Thursday morning Peter L. brought in to work his working prototype for the joystick control plus 8 working arcade buttons. He decided upon a Thrustmaster (I kid you not) joystick control as the interface that he ended up soldering his arcade-quality joystick and buttons to. Turns out that unlike the Gravis gamepad, the Thrustmaster has a dozen independent buttons, whereas the Gravis unit we were looking at had a couple of buttons (such as the fire button) which do the same things. Since more buttons = more flexibility, it just made sense to go with the Thrustmaster on this basis alone. There’s an additional bonus: the Thrustmaster uses the USB port (without the need for any drivers under Win32), so you can connect multiple controls without any fuss. Am definitely going to go this way myself, primarily because it is cheap (each Thrustmaster is only about $20) and because it is so simple.

Michael is going for the keyboard mapper, which is a separate piece of hardware that you plug into one of your available computer card slots, and then link it up to the arcade controls. A more expensive ($75 U.S.), though perhaps more flexible approach, since you can map as many keyboard keys as you need.

I also pitched the idea of doing a book on this subject to my publisher on Friday. Will see if there’s any interest there.