Geoffs Search Engine for ww2

[Rich Payne]

Geoff, Your engine is a wonderful resource and I think it's great that the forum is able to hear things form the horse's mouth (or the stupid engine's boss if you prefer).

How many hours did you have to put in to get it off the ground and why hadn't the CWGC done something similar ?

[spidge]

Originally Posted by geoff501

Steve,

I've done some work on the unit text index. There were double spaces in the unit text of 555 records, which have now been removed. With over 450,000 records in the system, you were unlucky to find one in such a short search. Thanks for the feedback.
I now get 4 results on this search.

Geoff

edit: I've only done the UK units so far.

I had a similar problem when I extracted the 10,835 RAAF deaths however mine had an extra space at the beginning of the name.

When I finally added a posting at death section and sorted the names, about 90 were not captured alphabetically.

All fixed now and sorted by every heading (name , rank, age etc.)

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by Rich Payne

Geoff, Your engine is a wonderful resource and I think it's great that the forum is able to hear things form the horse's mouth (or the stupid engine's boss if you prefer).

How many hours did you have to put in to get it off the ground and why hadn't the CWGC done something similar ?

Rich,

Is that stupid (engine's boss) or (stupid engine's) boss ?
Parenthesis is very important to us logical computer nuts.

How long it took? The project started exactly 2 years ago, more of a personal database thing. The web version only took a few days to get running but obviously there was a lot of background work already done. I was quite amazed when the web server version actually worked! I had never done anything like that before. I've already stated that the software running on line is about 5% of the total project so far.

Why have CWGC not done this? The search page they have serves its purpose well for relatives looking up their family members. It is not a research tool and we researchers are probably a minority group. Also people can get into a right mess using search engines and I think that is why there are no unit searches available there - it would cause too many customer service problems from joe public, I would think.

You did not ask why I did it? (i) A challenge. (ii) Because I probably could. (iii) These people deserve our attention. (iv) Good fun. (v) Its an anorak thing. (vi) These things should be free.

geoff

[spidge]

You did not ask why I did it? (i) A challenge. (ii) Because I probably could. (iii) These people deserve our attention. (iv) Good fun. (v) Its an anorak thing. (vi) These things should be free.
geoff[/

(vi) more importantly.

If someone wanted to make a donation to assist with the running of the site okay however demanding a donation is a disgrace.

The feeling I got when I supplied an 80 year old woman in Sydney with a photo of her brothers grave, which she had never seen, was reward enough.

[Ron Goldstein]

Geoff

I'm still experimenting with your super facility and wondered whether you might consider including the following in your HELP file.

"To find a particular squadron (either RAF or RAC) one needs to enter SQDN and not SQDRN"

Cheers

Ron

ps
Earlier in this thread I said "Go to the top of the class" to which you replied "Thanks Ron, my maths teachers never ever said that!"
I am reminded that once, when as a particularly mischievous child aged about six, my then teacher, a Miss Phillips by name, announced to the whole class "They will hang you one day Goldstein !"
Now, at the age of 84, I think I can safely say I appear to have escaped her prediction !

[GPRegt]

Geoff

Well done! A superb resource. Put my Uncle's Army Number in and up popped his record. I asked the CWGC about the reasons for not havinbg a more detailed search facility and the answer was along the lines of it was something being considered for the future.

BTW, anyone used this? I've found it very useful for bits of research.

Steve W.

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by Ron Goldstein

might consider including the following in your HELP file.

"To find a particular squadron (either RAF or RAC) one needs to enter SQDN and not SQDRN"

Thanks for the tip Ron, I've updated the helpfile.

I think I can safely say I appear to have escaped her prediction !

And I hope you continue to do so!

Cheers,

Geoff

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by GPRegt

Geoff

Well done! A superb resource. Put my Uncle's Army Number in and up popped his record. I asked the CWGC about the reasons for not havinbg a more detailed search facility and the answer was along the lines of it was something being considered for the future.

Might be a funding issue for them. I guess it will happen when they are able to do it.

BTW, anyone used this? I've found it very useful for bits of research.

I've used the WW1 part but it only covers a few cemeteries. They don't seem to have a complete on line database. Seems very odd to me.

[geoff501]

Originally Posted by spidge

If someone wanted to make a donation to assist with the running of the site okay however demanding a donation is a disgrace.

And I was just going to ask you for a contribution, since my website is full and I need to upgrade it to continue. - Only kidding, I get an extra gig for a tenner, so no problem. But if anyone wants to follow the donation link on the search engine, please do....

The feeling I got when I supplied an 80 year old woman in Sydney with a photo of her brothers grave, which she had never seen, was reward enough.

Makes all your effort worthwhile doesn't it.

geoff

[geoff501]

You may have noticed that the search engine is not running. The mods I did in December used over 98% of memory, so a memory upgrade was done over the weekend. Something went wrong here and the site is now not running. The gnomes in my software factory are running slow this week, but it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Geoff