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Have a very happy Christmas Birthday Thomas! 2021 should be better for you and everyone.

Updated Dec 21, 2020, 11:18 PM

Take pride, Canada!

Updated Dec 15, 2020, 9:49 PM

Definitely one of the more unique holiday decorations I've seen.

Have a happy birthday, Jan. Hoping the world gets better so we can one day get together again at a real in-person genealogy conference.

Have a great birthday, Tim!

[Tracking Just Ancestors at MyHeritage « Louis Kessler's Behold Blog (beholdgenealogy.com)](https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3600)

Have a great birthday, Ian!

Wow! I'm overwhelmed! Many thanks to all my family and friends for all the birthday wishes.

There are very few important famous people born on our day, and you're the only genealogy friend I have that is. Have a happy! https://www.thefamouspeople.com/november-24th.php

Updated Nov 24, 2020, 12:25 PM

I have 180 pending record matches from "Authors of Scholarly Articles" for a cousin. They are all correct.

Rejecting only takes one button click per record. But Accepting takes 4 button clicks per record and takes hours of boring clicking to get through them all.

Is there any way I can accept them all (or reject them all) at once, rather than having to go through them and accept (or reject) each one individually.

We're getting closer to real de novo assembly with accurate PacBio HiFi long reads. Short read aligned WGS is too short to span repeats. And standard long read WGS has such a high error rate that accurate alignment or assembly is not possible. https://www.pacb.com/blog/secrets-to-longevity/

With regards to Jennifer's post, three years ago I tongue-in-cheek created the Pickholtz-Diamond Index of DNA Ashkenazi Jewishness. Maybe I should revise it to be the Pickholtz-Diamond-Mendelsohn Index.
https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2172

p.s. I match Jennifer with 74 cM at FTDNA and my uncle matches her with 65 cM. At MyHeritage, I match 35 cM and my uncle matches 25 cM. We don't match at Ancestry.

Do you have strong opinions one way or another about Ancestry DNA's Timber algorithm?

Read how my opinion of Timber has recently changed.

https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3581

I wrote a blog post about a technique I used to get WATO to help me with an unknown Ancestral Relationship.

I am a new user to this group so I'm not sure if this technique has been brought up before. But I know it worked nicely for me and could be useful to a lot of other people was well.

Leah, Jonny: Might a WATO-Ancestors tool be feasible?

https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3558

I wrote a blog post today about a way you can use the WATO tool to estimate the likelihood of different Ancestral relationships:

This new Forbes article implies sequencing in 10 minutes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/10/21/real-time-dna-sequencing-in-your-apple-watch-or-fitbit-the-tech-is-not-far-away

This elprep open source software written in Go seems to be what the article talks about: https://www.imec-int.com/en/expertise/lifesciences/genomics/dna-sequence-analysis-software

Looking more closely at the software, it doesn't do the sequencing. It starts from the BAM file and does the variant analysis and other extractions 16 times faster than anything else. That's still good, but it's not sequencing.

We all know about and use Lara Diamond 's Ashkenazic Shared DNA Survey results https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/09/ashkenazic-shared-dna-survey-september.html since hers include our endogamy whereas Blaine T. Bettinger 's Shared cM Tool v4 https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 is for the general population.

As a result, Lara' s values are higher, e.g. 2C1R for Lara is 167 cM but Blaine's is only 122 cM.
This indicates the 45 cM extra is possibly due to endogamy.

But my question is this: FTDNA's numbers are generally higher than other companies due to their inclusion of small segments in their total. And Ancestry numbers are generally lower than other companies, especially when under 90 cM due to their Timber algorithm. So has Lara or anyone else ever indicated how much should be added to her average with-endogamy numbers if comparing at FTDNA? And how much to subtract from her average numbers if comparing at Ancestry?

15 seconds on an asteroid. Get the sample and get out. Return it to earth by 2023.

Updated Oct 22, 2020, 8:16 AM

I see Sequencing.com is currently offering a 30x WGS test for $399 (reg $599). You'll get all your data files for no additional fee.
https://sequencing.com/tests/order/genome-sequencing-dna-testing

Has anyone tried this yet? What company are they using for the testing?

I went for a long bike ride today and rode past your old house. Here's a couple of pictures of how it looks now.

Did you know squirrels climb walls?

(I took this 8 years ago and just rediscovered it when going through my old pictures, and I just had to post it)

Just a few seagulls congregating today.

Does anyone remember the bowling alley that used to be in the Northgate Shopping Centre on McPhillips. The Cinema City is where it used to be.

Does anyone have any pictures of the outside and/or inside of the bowling alley?

A populated island on the Assiniboine River.

A nicely painted building on Main Street.

Manitoba has some big mosquitos.

Hopper and Speedy are back.

Have a great B-day Gail. Hopefully the v will be done soon and we'll all be able to get together again.

Jason Hewlett wrote a great set of tips for holding a virtual event. Some of you may remember Jason from RootsTech as he was its master of ceremonies several times.

On my bike ride today, I saw 1000 Canada Geese, 100 Monarch Butterflies, 50 Mallard Ducks, 20 White Pelicans, and 3 Deer, one of which did not run away.

When you think about it, doesn't a deer's head look a lot like a kangaroo?

They still can't build a full chromosome from long reads and automated builders alone. But they're getting closer.

Just two days ago, there was an announcement of the first time a full human chromosome (Telomere-to-Telomere) was sequenced that included the very difficult centromere. They still had to manually resolve several gaps in the sequence, but this is an important step along the way:

[https://phys.org/news/2020-07-scientists-human-chromosome.html](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2Fnews%2F2020-07-scientists-human-chromosome.html%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2rayySuG94_A8wtvpFmI0yxhcEoJr0FY2inwbIIlh8-L7me93cVCqzT74&h=AT34rLx-p-GL7Fh9Xuvn8TAiSVD2fkJHJW_OjEvZLPj4cvs8UxXFjBEdy943VGtnNbWtSB8fnFC4s0HAcioBTkPVDCmWjWWaTtLaphMOpMdemVbiMDpd0cqpGgcpdGypCOBB&__tn__=R]-R&c[0]=AT0igm4fyW0oMCOeVSMczpKwkWmR2hkHCT2Lr4a4iTBq_Xk7WE8I_YdlZzx9yJr1huyIDmt3DbfJVEeHuqlmbY8n8vO_efhzYPMB1DMAOAvRTPTjK94Xxbrczxzd_SnfLikIRYv3XFIOv6DL-PnrYGKpV8O7Cl4IPx9r8Rw8-rtHCzFVTi7-wxS4wUa7a7btwjajTf5yfxrwjA)

Yesterday at my Virtual Genealogical Association webinar, Katherine R. Willson asked attendees for ideas to differentiate the Virtual Genealogical Association from what all the other genealogy webinar and online conference groups are doing.

There just seems to be a plethora of online genealogy talks now, especially since due to the current situation, all the physical conferences are going virtual at least temporarily.

Any ideas what the VGA might be able to do to be able to effectively compete?

Yesterday at my VGA talk, Katherine asked attendees for ideas to differentiate the Virtual Genealogical Association from what all the other genealogy webinar and online conference groups are doing.

Any ideas?

(I'm going to also post this question on the Genealogy Business Alliance Discussion Group)

Look who showed up in my match list at Geneanet.

My bike ride today was a bunny rabbit.

Facebook is starting to get to know me. This was put in their: Suggested for me category..

Updated Jul 10, 2020, 9:37 AM

If you haven't checked out 23andMe's Family Tree since it went Beta 10 months ago, you should take another look. [https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3507](https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3507)

By the time we Canadians are reminded/remember to wish our Aussie friends a H. B., it's already almost over. Happy pizza birthday, Jill.

I wrote a blog post about the VGA and the talk I'll be giving next week. https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3475

I'll be giving a webinar July 14 for the Virtual Genealogy Association on "Your DNA Raw Data and What You Can Do With It". https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3475

Canada geese on the street. They don't usually have a parade down the street like this, but today's rain must be preventing the youngsters from flying back to the lake. So mom and dad will lead them.

👍👍 on your birthday, Brian.

Dante Labs no longer seems to be offering a Long Reads test.
https://www.dantelabs.com/collections/advanced-dna-tests

So I'm rather excited reading about PacBio's relatively new HiFi long-read sequencing.

It seems that they have achieved short-read accuracy >99.8% with relatively long-reads >10 kbp.

They have over the past few months, been modifying some existing Assemblers to work with the HiFi data. Since there are few errors, no error correction step is required saving 80% of assembly time, and no polishing with short reads is required as they say those introduce more errors than they fix.

They are approaching a complete human assembly, and phasing is possible as well!

My question: Is there any place right now where we can purchase a PacBio HiFi WGS for a reasonable price (e.g. < $2000)?

Happy birthday, James. Please keep up all you great blog posts and promotion of our genealogy habit. May you discover a new ancestor today.

Hi all,

I'll be giving a talk in July for the Virtual Genealogical Association on everything about your DNA raw data. I'd like to include a list of the websites that you can upload your raw data to.

Of course I know about the obvious ones, i.e. FTDNA, MyHeritage, LivingDNA and GEDmatch. But I know there are a lot more that accept your raw data for various analyzes, the main one being health.

What other websites have you found useful or heard about where you can upload your raw data?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualgenealogy/?ref=share

I was grocery shopping this morning and the daughter of a shopper had the cutest t-shirt on, which had the alphabet:

abcdefg
HIjklmno
pqrstuv
wxyz

with the letters "hi" highlighted in color.

I came home and said to my daughter that I never realized the alphabet contained words. I asked her if there were any other words contained in the alphabet.

My daughter answered: No.

I wrote a blog post about Xcode Life: https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3410

I took a look at the Xcode.life health reports. https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3410

It's always the stormiest days that have the most beautiful skies.

Does anyone have access to this article? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-020-0236-x

It's that time of the year again.

The start of an experiment. Two nights ago, I put a single walnut in a conspicuous place on my deck in my backyard 3 feet away from where I usually sit. I can see it clearly from inside the house.

Yesterday it was still there. This morning it was gone. I have now replaced it.

Will I catch the culprit in action? Will the theft happen when I'm in my chair 3 feet away?

Speaking of spam...

Two weeks ago, I finally took the plunge and converted all my sites to secured SSL, since Netfirms gives its business clients free SSL certificates.

After I did so, I found my Behold blog and forum login and registration wasn't working. So I messed around for several hours in the murky depths of WordPress and got it working.

Once I did, I started getting spam registrations, averaging about 4 an hour. Obviously fictional IDs and emails that were somehow bypassing my email confirmation and were getting directly accepted by WordPress. I'm not sure what triggered the start of this because I wasn't getting them before I made my site secure.

Over at GenSoftReviews, I had a old plugin called hashcash that used Javascript to check that it was a Javascript-based browser trying to submit a review. Pretty-well everyone now leaves Javascript on. Those who are paranoid and turn it off lose a lot of web functionality, such as sites using Ajax.

So I spent a full day and copied that plugin over to my Behold site and modified it to work with registrations. It's now blocked 20 spam registrations in the past 4 hours.

I went over to GenSoftReviews to check my hash cash stats. Over the past 12 years, it has blocked and deleted 88,016 spam posts by bots and let through 6,873 human-entered posts. So 93% were bots!

Of those 6,873 let through, about 1000 were put into a moderation queue which I do because they include a web link which is a good indicator of spam. I've found about half of those, 500 or so, are human entered spam with non-relevant text and a link to where they want you to go. So 86% of my user reviews go directly to the site, 7% wait until I approve them and 7% I delete. But the vast majority which are the spam bots, I never see.

I didn't realize how bad this problem was until I had to address it this week.

I've over-customized my versions of WordPress, so I can't upgrade to newer versions. The plugin wp_hashcash is no longer available. Do the newer versions of Wordpress and Blogspot do a good job at handling your comment spam? How much do you get? Do you use plug-ins or any other tools to reduce your spam burden?

I received this email today:

"Dear Louis Kessler,

On behalf of Genealogy Talks team, a blog that will focus on online genealogical resources (https://geneatalks.wixsite.com/genea), I hereby request permission to use a logo image/name or screenshots of Behold genealogy software.
Our purpose is writing an article in our blog where we inform our readers of some family tree programs available, while posting a logo picture of the same program with a hyperlink directly to your website.
Also, feel free to send us a software/brand logo picture of your choosing.

Thank you for taking the time to consider our request.

Best regards,
Daniela
GenealogyTalks team"

I'm on the fence whether or not to respond. Is this someone legitimate trying to start something up, or is it something suspicious?

If I keep this up, this might be me soon.

Updated May 27, 2020, 1:47 PM

Here's an article I just posted about Borland Genetics. It's a site like GEDmatch that you can upload your data to, and do some neat things at, like reconstruct your ancestor's DNA. https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3342

Here's the article I just posted about Borland Genetics.

If I've stated anything inaccurately, let me know and I shall correct.

https://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3342

A great understandable free online book of Bioinformatics Algorithms: https://www.bioinformaticsalgorithms.org/

First time McCoy ever landed in the pool when I was outside. He was quite "quacky" today. I was able to get fairly close before he flew away.

Dana's post got me thinking I should ask about my very odd ThruLines situation. I have two maternal cousins who tested, the child of my uncle Frank is my full 1st cousin sharing 1047 cM, and the grandchild of my uncle Michael is my 1c1r sharing 411 cM.

Both show up on ThruLines under my maternal grandmother, but only my 1c1r shows up on ThruLines under my maternal grandfather. My 1c does not.

On my maternal grandmother's ThruLines page, my 1c is listed as Half 1st cousin and his father Frank as Half uncle. But when I check uncle Frank's relationships, all of them are shown as Biological.

So why is my 1c thought to be just a half 1st cousin and therefore not showing up on my ThruLines for both my maternal grandparents?

I've got two squirrels who I've named Hopper and Speedy. Hopper is the darker colored one. They seem to have a love/hate relationship, but I don't know what sex either is. I think they live somewhere to the right of us, but love the trees to the left of us. So they cross our yard many times a day.

They do so on top of our 6 foot (1.9 m) tall cedar fence which has flat top boards 6 inches (15 cm) wide and jump over/onto posts 1 foot (30 cm) high. Think how you would do running at full speed along a 3 foot (1 m) wide boardwalk that's 36 feet (11 m) above the ground with 6 foot (2 m) posts in your way.

I've finally caught some good videos of them.

OneDrive’s Poison Setting http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3314

Updated May 8, 2020, 11:36 PM

Hadn't seen Sparky and McCoy for the past week until yesterday, when McCoy came alone. Today Sparky joined him. Watch the video for a surprise.

Happy birthday Carole. When there's nothing else, there's always genealogy ... and cats.

Thinking about Thomas' post about affiliates trending down, at the opposite end of the spectrum, it's unbelievable how much YouTubers are making. $5000 plus for one video with a million views. This seems to be trending upward.

So the question is how to consistently make genealogy videos that will attract a million views?

On May 12, there is a free 24-hour virtual genomics event being put on by Illumina to, among other things, highlight their new NextSeq 2000 sequencer.

Hi Everyone,
I have gone through a bag of the paper material I brought home from Europe 41 years ago and have digitized all of it. There were 64 items in the bag. I'm sure a lot of it will be familiar to most of you. On many of the maps I scribbled in the tour routes we took.

These booklets are a snapshot in time of what Europe was like when we were there. My trip was M22-1979.

I hope they bring back some memories. I've put them up on my OneDrive account: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoxUJ3_EXYNOktcdnYE0Jv_DCCr-eg?e=tq1O6Y

Sparky and McCoy like the pool much better now that the ice has melted.

The company YourDNA surveyed over 1,000 people about their experiences with at-home DNA genetic health and ancestry tests. Here's the results: https://yourdna.com/study

The ice hasn't even melted from the top of our pool cover, but the pair of mallards who "own" our pool every spring are back.

Happy #genchat birthday, Jenna.

I'm trying to use Marko Bauer's WGS Extract tool on Windows 10 to create a raw data file of SNPs that can be uploaded to GEDmatch. When I tried it with my Dante Short Reads WGS BAM file, it created the raw data file in only about 65 minutes. Then I tried it with my Dante Long Reads WGS BAM file, and as I write this it is still running after 36 hours.

My Short Reads BAM file is 110 GB in size, has 149.84 Raw Gbases, 86% mapped, average read length 100. My Long Reads file is 145 GB in size, has 109.37 Raw Gbases, 76% mapped, average read length 3627. Both files were aligned to Build 37 using BWA. Both BAM files have their bai index files available. The bai files are 8 MB (Short Reads) and 44 MB (Long Reads).

It is stuck on the samtools mpileup step. Does anyone know why mpileup might be having trouble with the Long Reads file? Is there anything I can do to speed this up, or at least figure out how long it will take to complete?

Facebook just suggested I invite these friends to a group. Don't you think they could be 4 sisters?

Just had to mention that at the end of yesterday's familytreewebinars' webinar, Geoff Rasmussen said that Judy Russell's webinar "on Friday was the number one ranked webinar of all time". I believe that was related to attendance. Con-grats Judy and keep up the stratospheric work.

Updated Feb 5, 2020, 10:48 PM

Hello everyone. I'm looking to find more of my ancestors' family from Odessa.

**Goretski or Goretsky, Silverberg**
* Originally from Odessa, Jenkov, and Kherson
* Some came to Canada in the early 1900's and settled in Winnipeg.
* Family now exists in Winnipeg and Toronto.

Louis **Goretski** (abt 1850 - 1895) and Chai Mindy **Silverberg** (abt 1850 - 1903)

Louis and Chai Mindy lived on a farm in Odessa in the Ukraine. They were both only-children, but they remarkably had seventeen, yes 17, children of their own. Three of the children, Benjamin, Ester, and Abraham immigrated together to Canada, arriving in Winnipeg in 1908. One child, Frumah, was known to have died in a fire in Odessa. The other 13 children were said to have been killed, likely in pogroms around the time of the First World War.

Abraham married Sonia **Tabachnikov** who was also from Odessa.

Photo is Ester and Abraham **Goretski** at their mother Chai Mindy's gravestone in Odessa.

I saw this in the Dante Labs Customers Facebook group, but it was such a great tip, I had to repeat it here:

Q: What is the best way to prevent contamination of a sample?

A: (by Thomas Krahn): Enjoy a good glass of single malt whisky before you spit. This will make you relaxed and kill all bugs. Alcohol actually preserves DNA very well and dehydrates the cheek cells. They crumple together and are well protected from mechanical shearing. However avoid sugar in your drink. this will be easily digested by bacteria and will enhance their growth.

Finally, Devon is willing to say it, and why, and what you should do instead.

I totally agree, and I think all your research, whether you find anything or not, should be added directly to your genealogy software sources and repositories, skipping the research log step completely.

Are you a fan of research logs? Or do you detest, dislike, or try to avoid them altogether like Noel and me?

In case you hadn't heard, the Family History Fanatics Winter DNA online eConference will be in two days, this Saturday.

I'll be speaking on Double Matching and Triangulation, Devon Noel Lee on Ancestry ThruLines, Jonny Perl on Chromosome Mapping and Paul Woodbury on DNA Evidence. There will be Q&A, something called "Genealogy Unscripted" and door prizes.

In my talk, I'm including a trick/technique you might be able to use on DNA Painter.

Registration is $25 for 6 hours of fun. Registrants will be sent a link to watch the sessions for up to a month, so you can watch (or re-watch) what you can't make it to live.

I've linked my blog post about the eConference. In my blog post are links to the conference site where you can register. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3217

Happy birthday, Kevin. May all your programming dreams come true.

Nobody's mentioned it here yet, but Jonny will speaking on Chromosome Mapping, I'll be talking about Double Matching, Paul Woodbury will be talking about DNA evidence, and Devon Noel Lee will be talking about Thrulines on Saturday at the Family History Fanatics Winter DNA eConference. https://www.familyhistoryfanatics.com/winterdna

In my talk, for all you DNA Painter people, I'll be including an exclusive trick you can use on DNA Painter.

Updated Jan 17, 2020, 8:42 PM

Happy birthday Liz. Have a great year. Hope to cruise with you again one day.

I wrote a blog post about how I aligned my Dante long read FASTQ files into a BAM file. I first did it myself using BWA-MEM and then got YSeq to do it for me using minimap2: [http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3209](http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3209&fbclid=IwAR0n66ukSsoQitzTO2iW9q2XiVIJ2MwaJpWqlo4kjYXpbphyoD_vKzaxDBw)

Updated Jan 2, 2020, 5:03 PM

Merry birthday, Thomas. Lots of genealogical happenings in 2020, so recover fast and be ready for it.

Hi. I'd like to upload my long read FASTQ file directly from Dante to usegalaxy.eu. Is there a url I can use to access the file from your AWS server? If not, can I use FTP to access it?

I hadn't heard of this company until today. It's a Canadian company in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Updated Dec 18, 2019, 11:45 AM

Updated Dec 13, 2019, 4:05 PM

Updated Dec 10, 2019, 3:56 PM

Geoff Rasmussen said today that of the 100+ live webinars held on Legacy Family Tree Webinars in 2019, the number 1 most watched was: An Introduction to DNA Painter.

Today's "The Other Coast" comic aptly displays how to keep private information out of your obituaries.

60

Thanks everyone for your wishes today. It's the most amazing sports viewing birthday of my life. Canada's first ever Davis Cup tennis final against Spain in Madrid followed by my Winnipeg Blue Bombers against the favored Hamilton Tiger Cats in the Canadian Football League Grey Cup final.

So it's couch potato birthday, hoping for a couple of incredible wins.

Privacy: To me, the privacy provided on MyHeritage for living people was not enough because Surnames still showed and Smart Matches could give details about living people to others. So I used Family Tree Builder to mark all my living people as "private". Now these people just show up as grey boxes marked "Unknown". I am fine with that.

Now I have some issues and questions for Marianne Melcherts or anyone else.

1. Is the information still kept online for these private people? I don't mind if is, but shouldn't I as site owner have access to that data online and be able to update it online?

2. Because of number 1, when I get a record match or smart match now, it becomes very difficult for me compare and decide whether to accept or reject the match because nothing is shown for my data.

3. Shouldn't there be a way online for me to make a person private, or take off the privacy? Now I have to go back into Family Tree Builder, do it there and then sync with my online tree.

Can anyone translate Wegene's web page? Unfortunately, they use a graphic on their home page, so Google Translate doesn't work on it. https://wegene.world.tmall.com/

I'm pleased to announce that today is my 17th Blogiversary. 1148 blog posts since Nov 7, 2002.
www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog

The indexed census of 1858 is available. Click on the Mezhyrichi tab at: https://www.tkfgen.net/names_district_rovno.html
If you want specific records, contact Vik Chymshyt.

In my last blog post, I analyzed my segment matches at 23andMe with Double Match Triangulator,. This time let’s do the same but with my GEDmatch segment matches.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3138

Updated Oct 24, 2019, 9:58 PM

Question for Marianne Melcherts:

As I work on my MyHeritage family tree online, I often find small things that are not worth the effort of calling MyHeritage support for. But it would be nice to be able to have a suggestion box where these items could be looked at by your support staff and considered.

Sending off a simple email somewhere, or adding it to an issue board would take less than a minute.

Is there a place I can send these sort of items?

Here's an example of the sort of minor thing that would help everybody but is really not worth the time to call support about (see attached image).

When extracting information from a U.S. Social Security Death Index, the "Last Name" in the record should be compared to the "Married Name" and not the "Maiden Name".

Also, the "Last residence" information gets saved to Contact information. That is definitely not the best place for someone who has passed. Much better would be to save it as a Residence event of type Move, and put it there along with date as: "To" date of death.

Updated Oct 17, 2019, 5:40 PM

Updated Oct 16, 2019, 8:35 PM

October 10: Our first snowfall and our first snowman of the winter.

The Dante Lab got my Dante Long Reads test on June 10, and I got my FASTQ results file on Oct 5. Last night, I downloaded the file. It took 12 hours to download 119 GB. That's unzipped in 78 minutes to 243 GB.

I'm sure a BAM file is next in the pipeline for me, but it's not there yet.

I'd like to align my FASTQ and create my own BAM file myself so that I can compare it to Dante's once theirs is ready.

I am under the impression that most alignment software is tuned for short reads and doesn't do a good job with long reads.

Does anyone know of any software specifically designed for long reads? Working on Windows or with files on my own computer without requiring an upload would be a bonus.

I likely will try last-rna ([https://github.com/mcfrith/last-rna/blob/master/last-long-reads.md](https://github.com/mcfrith/last-rna/blob/master/last-long-reads.md)) - python code and instructions for aligning long DNA and RNA reads to a genome.

But is there anything that is easier to use?

Updated Oct 6, 2019, 1:22 AM

**N.B. Anyone who downloaded 3.0, if you find the People file it creates has no names in it, please delete that file and install Version 3.0.1 (or later). Sorry about that, chief.**

I have released Version 3.0 of Double Match Triangulator. It is a Windows program that produces output that can be loaded into DNA Painter. As a result, I'm offering a free temporary license to everyone in this group (and in the GGTT group) so I can get some feedback and comments about the program.

Get DMT at: www.doublematchtriangulator.com

License info valid to Oct 31:

User: DNA Painter user

Key: 2019

(If this is not an appropriate post for your group Jonny, feel free to remove it).

**N.B. Anyone who downloaded 3.0, if you find the People file it creates has no names in it, please delete that file and install Version 3.0.1 (or later). Sorry about that, chief.**

I have released Version 3.0 of Double Match Triangulator. It is a Windows program that uses segment match files from FTDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage or GEDmatch along with MRCA information you supply to create triangulation groups and map ancestral paths to them. It will put the people you match to into clusters (yet another clustering technique) and will output your chromosome map to a file that can be input into DNA Painter.

I'm offering a free temporary license to everyone in this group (and in the DNA Painter group) so I can get some feedback and comments about the program.

Get DMT at: www.doublematchtriangulator.com

License info valid to Oct 31:

User: GGTT member

Key: 2019

(If this is not an appropriate post for your group Blaine, feel free to remove it).

Updated Oct 2, 2019, 12:05 AM

Updated Sep 23, 2019, 9:34 PM

Found a minor problem that I'm just mentioning, so it can be added to the "to fix" list and is likely an easy fix in a future update.

At 23andMe, I have a match whose name is "S Nep", with a space in position 2. On the 23andMe Gather page, when I "Choose ICW to Gather", that match is listed as " Nep" with the space in position 1. The ICW file that is downloaded is named " Nep_23andMe_FIA.csv" and the Person1 field in the file contains " Nep". In all cases, those should be "S Nep", not " Nep". Other people's match files refer to this person in their Person2 field as " Nep".

This also happens for someone named "J Pomerantz" who becomes " Pomerantz" where the first initial is cut off. It only seems to be happening for people with a single initial as their first name.

But strangely, it is not always the case. For "E Bregman", that person comes in fine as "E Bregman". I don't see anything special that distinguishes this E Bregman from the "S Nep" or "J Pomerantz".

These same left-truncated names are included in the RF file, so to find the problem, you can likely check one of your RF files and see whose "Name" is different than their name on 23andMe.

So this might take a while, eh?

My Matches by source page has Geni World Family Tree and a button to Review 25 matches. When I press the Geni Review 25 matches button, the review matches page sits there with a little progress circle running at the bottom, with a message occasionally flashing in below the circle. That message says "There are currently no pending matches for All your trees". This usually never stops, but if it does, it shows the message that there are no pending matches.

This is obviously a bug of some sort. Has anyone else encountered this and maybe found a way around it?

I have had Geni matches that worked and displayed properly. When it said I had 40, only 15 showed. When it said I had 26, only 1 showed. Once I cleared them off and got down to these 25, this started happening.

I also have 1 FamilySearch Family Tree match with this same problem.

Updated Aug 20, 2019, 12:58 AM

I've been trying for months, and finally I caught our fencepost-hopping squirrel on video.

When Reviewing a record match, we get two choices:
1. A "Confirm Match" button in the top right, or
2. A "reject it" link at the bottom.

It would be nice to have a 3rd option at the top or bottom:
3. Save to another person.

Often I find that the record does not apply to that person, but applies to someone else in my tree. What I have to do now is:

1.Confirm the match with the wrong person.
2. On the "Extract information into your family tree" page, I go to the bottom and press the "Cancel" button that is next to the "Save to Tree" button.
3. On the "This match was confirmed and saved to nnn" page, go to the bottom and there is now a "Save to another person" link that can be selected.

I really shouldn't have to Save to the wrong person before that option becomes available, should I?

Or am I missing something else I can do?

A few days ago, I noticed that when you look at your Matches by source, and you click the little gear on the right, the "Discovery Settings" box that opens has the Record Matches confidence set to 0.5.

I slid it down to zero, and I got about 800 more record matches. I've found that about half of them appear to be correct or correct for a close relative.

Yes, the other half are wrong and need to be rejected, but I think it is worthwhile going through them to find all the valid records.

The record matches below 0.5 confidence only show up when you select Matches by source. They don't show up when you select Matches by people. That is likely a bug.

Sparrows like to jump onto fenceposts ... especially when you're not looking.

There are some record matches that I have been getting from some sources, that when I press "Review Match" take me directly to the record itself at that site.

When that happens, I see no way to either accept or reject the match. Am I missing something?

Without being able to accept or reject the match, it remains in my pending match list.

The two source types for which this is happening are Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony, and Arolsen Archives Documents. Can someone who also has record match to one of these sources please verify that this happens for you as well?

Our M-22 1979 group just completed a wonderful 40th Anniversary reunion in Niagara Falls this weekend. 9 of us plus 7 significant others had a great time together. Today we said our goodbyes, exactly 40 years to the day July 14 that we sadly left London for home.

Hey Gregg! Haven't heard from you in a few years. Hope everything's going great.

Hello fellow ISEers! Nice to see you've formed this group!

I'm from M-22 1979, the first group out in our year. There were 46 of us along with Martin Keller our group leader and Fritz Felber our bus driver.

Many of our group have stayed in contact since the trip and each day for the past 7 weeks, we've been emailing each other and celebrating together what we did exactly 40 years ago on this day.

This weekend, 9 of us (and 7 significant others) will be having a reunion in Niagara Falls and will celebrate the final day of our Europe trip on July 14.

I'm looking for someone who has done Visual Phasing at GEDmatch who is willing to provide me with the GEDmatch numbers of three or more siblings, as well as a the GEDmatch numbers of at least 5 cousins and which grand or great-grandparents of the siblings each cousin relates through.

I believe what I have been developing for Version 3 of Double Match Triangulator will be able to produce the same results as Visual Phasing, but I need some actual data to see if it does and someone who has done Visual Phasing to compare it to.

I only need one or two sets of data. Don't list your GEDmatch numbers here. We'll private message each other to transfer those.

If I use your data, I'll give you a free copy of DMT.

I got an email today from Veritas Genetics saying they will be making a major announcement on July 1. https://www.facebook.com/VeritasGenetics/photos/a.1682806608637364/2292700027648016/

Blaine, last November you ordered WGS from both Dante and Veritas (see thread link). I'm very curious if you got the results back from either of those and if you did, what you learned from them. https://www.facebook.com/groups/geneticgenealogytipsandtechniques/permalink/542790316184673/

Happy birthday James. This morning I enjoyed listening to your "Piles" video about organizing.

The Canada Geese goslings are getting older, but they are still sticking close to their parents.

Is there a good reason why the Tier 1 Segment Search leaves out close relatives from its results?

The reason why I ask is that if I do a segment search for myself, and I do one for a 2nd cousin, then my 2nd's cousin's parent and siblings will be in my results, but not in my 2nd cousin's results. This really hampers analysis when comparing the two sets of matches because the 3rd match is not there to triangulate thus making it seem like this is not a valid match.

It can't be a processing issue because we are only talking about a few parents, children and siblings that will only add a few dozen matches each.

And whatever logic was used to justify excluding them based on the idea that segment matches of parents, children and siblings are not useful is just plain wrong.

Look! I think it's a baby kangaroo in our backyard.

London Calling 2019: Andrea Riposati from Dante Labs talks about his company's Long Read Whole Genome Sequencing https://t.co/FLBE13bppR

It's that season right now for Canada Geese.

Has anyone thought about how disjointed syncing your data is? I wrote this article about syncing today: http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3034

Updated May 18, 2019, 12:13 AM

I finished my analysis of VCF accuracy and recommend using the Raw VCF file for creating a raw data file for upload to GEDmatch (etc.) rather than the filtered VCF file which is the standard one supplied. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3021

I've now had a look at my Raw VCF file and my gVCF (Genome VCF) file. I requested the latter from Dante and they made it available to me.

I've learned a few things that will be of interest to the people in this group and I've posted it in this article:
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=3013

Ann Turner - said in another thread that: "You can't assume that the lack of a variant in the VCF file would be a REF value."

I realize there can be an insertion or deletion, and there is (at least Dante supplies) a separate VCF file for Indels.

But if there is no variant in the SNP VCF file or the Indel VCF file, then why can't the reference value be assumed? Aren't the VCF files giving all the differences from that reference?

Are you thinking maybe of positions that had insufficient info to evaluate a value for, and thus the difference was not detected? If so, would there be very many of these at 30x coverage?

Many happy's today. May you be surprised by a new close DNA match today.

Currently running the 23andMe Gather All ICW Shared Segments run. It's been running now for 16 hours and has completed 148 of 818.

Updated Apr 21, 2019, 3:13 PM

Updated Apr 13, 2019, 8:59 PM

Updated Apr 13, 2019, 3:12 PM

I haven't seen them yet in our yard, but our city seems to have a new varmint.

Updated Mar 27, 2019, 10:56 AM

Wishing you the very best birthday, Debbie.

Updated Mar 20, 2019, 5:44 PM

Blaine's poll today caught my interest, so I wrote this article: http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2939

Updated Mar 7, 2019, 5:32 PM

Happy birthday to my older (by 9 months) cousin. I'm still working on figuring out all our DNA matches on our Focsaner side. Tools are getting better all the time. Hopefully some breakthroughs in the next year. I'll definitely let you know when I find something.

I'm watching Mike Mansfield live on #RootsTech stream now. He says we can sync our MyHeritage tree with FamilySearch by going to https://www.familysearch.org/partner/myheritage, but when I go there, it knows who I am and I'm logged in at FamilySearch, but I get this screen: Why? How can I sign up for FamilySearch/MyHeritage Sync?

Updated Mar 1, 2019, 1:33 PM

Updated Feb 27, 2019, 10:20 PM

Happy birthday, Blaine. If I'm not mistaken, this is your first RootsTech coming up, so it will be an exciting week for you. Prepare to be overwhelmed.

Updated Feb 6, 2019, 11:29 PM

Happy birthday, Timo. Hope it's warmer in Germany than the -31 here in Winnipeg, Canada.

Back in September, I combined 5 sets of raw data from my tests at Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, Ancestry and Living DNA.

Yesterday, I uploaded a VCF file from my Dante WGS (Whole Genome Sequencing) results that I just got.

When I run File Diagnostics against both, I get what's shown in the attached image.

My "All 5" kit has 1,389,750 SNPs, of which the diagnostic says 1,128,146 are usable, and they get slimmed to 813,196.

My WGS kit has 3,442,712 SNPs, of which the diagnostic says only 590,334 are usable, and those get slimmed to 231,588.

The VCF (Variant Call Format) file represents my whole Genome but only includes my SNPs that are different from the human reference Build 37 genome. That's 3,442,712 SNPs different. All the SNPs it doesn't include are the same as Build 37. The point I'm making is that GEDmatch should be able to determine every single SNP from this file that it uses in matching. This is my whole genome.

But the diagnostics are telling me that only 590,334 of them are useable and those get slimmed to 231,588, which is much less than the 813,196 of my All 5 kit.

Is GEDmatch Genesis not including my non-variant SNPs in the analysis? Or is their diagnostic just not taking them into account?

When at GEDmatch Genesis, I do a file diagnostic of my files, the slim token will less than or equal to the token count.

But I've got an odd thing happening on Chr 23:

Chr Token Slim Token
23 14581 14581 - my Family Tree DNA data
23 14963 14963 - my MyHeritage DNA data
23 9450 9450 - my 23andMe V5 data
23 21198 21135 - my Ancestry DNA data
23 9727 0 - my LivingDNA V1 data

So LivingDNA came in as 0 on the slim token which seems very strange.

Question 1: Does anyone know why?

This is not a problem on any other Chromosome.

I also made a Combined kit from all 5 raw data files, and it also came in as 0:

Chr Token Slim Token
23 26493 0 - my combined 5 files

Just today I uploaded a VCF file from my Whole Genome test at Dante Labs. It gave me good values:

Chr Token Slim Token
23 10326 10325 - my Dante WGS VCF file

although I would have thought that Dante, being whole genome would have had at least as many tokens as my combined 5 files.

Question 2: Does GEDmatch only include the variants in the VCF file without adding the reference genome where I match it?

🎂🎈💓

Updated Jan 22, 2019, 10:23 PM

Updated Jan 20, 2019, 10:51 AM

I am very happy to get Person Discoveries. But very often, the people they suggest adding are in-laws that are not directly related to me, so I don't want to add to my tree.

What bothers me is then having only two options: 1. Add to your tree, or 2. Reject Discovery. Since I don't want to add them to my tree, I have to select 2. Reject Discovery.

But that is wrong. It is a correct discovery. I wish I had a third option: 3. Accept Discovery but don't add to tree.

Or even better, would be to select which people I want to add, such as what we can do when extracting additional information into our tree when doing a Smart Match to FamilySearch or Geni.

Is there any way to suggest this change to the MyHeritage developers for their consideration?

Happy New Years Eve birthday, Claire. Enjoyed spending time with you and had a great time at your Conference in September.

Does anybody know anything about this: Lucid - A modern sequence alignment viewer.

Does anyone know of a similar program that works on Windows?

https://lucidalign.com/

Happy BD Jan. I was so fortunate to get to meet you at RootsTech 2012 and spend more time with you on some UTP cruises. Till we meet again...

This needs to be posted in this group. https://www.facebook.com/buffalomonkeyconservation/videos/634184640310737/

Tim, wishing you a happy segment matching birthday.

Alona, I know you'll appreciate this.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/video/animals/holy-cow-is-this-australias-largest-steer/vi-BBQa5uB/

Updated Nov 27, 2018, 11:33 PM

Now I'll never be able to forget your birthday again. Mine was great. Hope yours was as well.

Kevin,

I used the Ultimate Phaser Tool and "Select 2 Related Individuals for Phasing" to phase myself against my Uncle. I saved the phased output as well as the two out-of-phase outputs.

Your documentation says that a "Reconstructed Segments data file" is created, but I don't see any such file.

Also the phased file only includes SNPs in both people. Wouldn't it make sense to include SNPs that only one person has if it has homozygous values?

Hi Kevin. Today I used your Humpty Dumpty Tool to put together my 5 sets of raw data (tests from FTDNA, MyHeritage, Ancestry, 23andMe and LivingDNA). I can vouch that it does a good job. It took about 8 minutes to Humpty Dumpty all 5 together on my (fast) computer.

I compared it to a combined file I manually created using Excel a few months ago. See my blog post: http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2700

I see when two or more readings at a position disagree, you set the position to a no-call which is good.

You handled positions with more than one rsid differently than I did. I merged them, but you included each line. I think that's fine, as long as the allele values are checked that they are same.

Nice job!

Diahan: Really enjoyed watching your talks yesterday and today at MyHeritage Live (from my home in my pajamas). Hope it made for a fun and memorable birthday!

Kevin: A question for you.

I am awaiting my whole genome results from Dante labs. Recently, I became aware that they could do a phased Whole Genome for me at an added cost ($1250 more).

This isn't fully phased as we would think of it, but they barcode fragments up to 200,000 bp and then reassemble their reads often matching the ends up. What they end up with are somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 unconnected phased segments for the whole genome, so you end up with between 40 and 400 phased pieces on the average chromosome. They connect these with what they called scaffolds, but those don't guarantee that the two pieces they connect are on the same chromosome of the pair.

Here's some info about the stLFR technology they can do: https://www.slideshare.net/GenomeInABottle/brock-peters-single-tube-long-fragment-read-technology

I looked at this for a while and even downloaded a sample bam file created using stLFR, and finally decided that it's not good enough yet as I didn't see any way to correctly assemble those pieces properly (as opposed to the scaffolds which
are not correct) to become a correct completely phased chromosome.

But might you have some insight as to a way that I might be able to use this? If so, I might still be able to change my order and get the phased WGS.

... and a few more.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2784

Updated Sep 30, 2018, 6:57 AM

Some photos from the Kelowna & District Genealogical Society Conference.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2767

Updated Sep 30, 2018, 6:56 AM

Just wanted to say that you can never stop getting good tips. I was just watching Blaine's "Who Are You? Identifying Your Mysterious DNA Matches" webinar at familytreewebinars and I never knew at AncestryDNA that "No family tree" only meant that the person hasn't linked their DNA to a family tree. By clicking on the person's name to open their DNA profile page, you'll see at the bottom a dropdown list of their trees. Blaine said in the webinar that over 20% of his matches were like that.

I went through my closest matches I couldn't identify, and match number 3, with 202 cM on 13 segments, who was named L.H., had a tree where the pedigree included my grandfather's sister and her husband in it. Jackpot!

I'm indebted to you, Blaine, for that tip. Ancestry really should change the text to "DNA not linked to a family tree" because I'm sure a lot of people like me will be thrown off by seeing "No family tree".

Here's my analysis of what improvements you get when you combine raw data files from several companies into one. I uploaded the file to GEDmatch Genesis and compared it to my 23andMe v5 upload. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2717

This doesn't make sense.

I uploaded my 23andMe data to GEDmatch Genesis earlier this year. The data was all accepted. It had 635,966 rows.

I then created a new raw data file, combining the data from my 5 tests: 23andMe, AncestryDNA, FTDNA, MyHeritage DNA and LivingDNA. I put the resulting file in 23andMe format. It had 1,389,750 rows and included every row that was in the 23andMe file and 700,000 more. I uploaded that to GEDmatch Genesis. This data was also all accepted by GEDmatch Genesis. I'll call this my All 5 kit.

So now I wanted to compare the 1 to many matches of the 23andMe kit to the All 5 kit. I had 17,069 matches for the 23andMe and 12,266 matches for the All 5 kit. That doesn't bother me.

What bothers me are the overlap values. I would have thought that my All 5 kit would have always had at least the overlap that my 23andMe kit has. But in fact, my average overlap was unexpectedly lower for the All 5 kit than the 23andMe kit.

It was especially bad for the v5 comparisons. e.g. 23andMe kits averaged 441,462 overlaps with my 23andMe kit, but only 303,782 overlaps with my All 5 kit. Living DNA kits averaged 535,992 overlaps with my 23andMe kit, but only 320,525 with my All 5 kit.

And it was true for individual people as well. One 23andMe kit owned by (let me call her Susan) had an overlap of 589,122 with my 23andMe kit, but only had an overlap of 317,794 with my All 5 kit.

Can anyone explain why this might be? When I run a 1:1 between my 2 kits, Genesis gives 100% match.

Again, my All 5 kit contains every SNP and position that is in my 23andMe kit plus more.

Jonny: Surely DNA Painter has reached the point where you can remove the "Beta" designation that you still have on it. Heck, it's advanced enough that it should be up to Version 3 or 4 already.

Hendrik Wendland has released his MapS Phasing tool. It will phase your raw data using siblings and/or parent(s), and it goes even further by allowing also half-siblings and other relatives to be used to improve the phasing. He is charging for it, with a $14.99 a year subscription rate.
https://www.maps-phasing.com/#MapS

Click on his YouTube icon at the bottom of his web page and you'll be taken to a series of his demos that show how his product works.

I've written an article that includes a lot of detail about raw data from five different testing companies that people in this group might find useful.

If I've got any of the technical details wrong, please let me know.
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2700

I've done a fairly compehensive comparison of the raw data from my dna tests with 5 different companies, for anyone who is interested. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2700

Does YSEQ do the whole genome? Or do you only do the Y and mt chromosomes? What you say on your Whole Genome Sequence page does not say anything about autosomal. Do we get 70 Mbp (Y and mt) or 3000 Mbp (at, X, Y and mt) back from this test? https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yseq.net%2Fproduct_info.php%3Fproducts_id%3D42468

What company would you recommend who does whole genome testing reliably and inexpensively?

Sorin. I know you've told me before that you couldn't find any more Focsaner records in Dorohoi. But could you please check for any of these:

Sigmund Focsaner, born about 1867 in Dorohoi,
married Fanny Barad, born about 1870 in Dorohoi.
Their children were all born in the US.

Simon Focsaner, born about 1876 in Dorohoi.
married Caroline Gerber, born about 1881 in Dorohoi
daughter Dora, born 1899 in Romania (not sure the city)
son Bernard, born 1900 in Romania
son Leonard, born 1903 in Romania
daughter Natalie Ethel, born 1906 in Romania
son Samuel, born 1910 in Romania

Isak Focsaner, born about 1880 in Dorohoi. He died in Bucharest in 1934.
married Carolina Zvoristeanu, born about 1880 in Dorohoi. We think her father was Herscu, so maybe she was a sister of Strul Zvoristeanu whose records you've already provided to me.
son Baruch Bernard Focsaner, born about 1901 in Dorohoi, died about 1915 in Dorohoi.
daughter Beca, born 1903 in Dorohoi.
daughter Otilea, born 1904 in Dorohoi.
daughter Ema, born 1906 in Dorohoi.
daughter Sofia, born 1913 in Dorohoi.
son Joseph, born 1914 in Dorohoi.

We believe that Sigmund, Simon and Isak were all brothers of Iosub Focsaner (my great-grandfather) whose records you've already provided to me. And you've shown that Strul Zvoristeanu is Iosub's brother. If Carolina Zvoristeanu is Strul's sister, then we would have a brother marrying a sister. So something's wrong here.

Any of the above records might help to sort this out. Do you have any of them?

I've developed a Genetic Relationship Notation I call BGRN. I'd appreciate any and all comments, criticisms and suggestions before I implement it in my software.
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2647

My Living DNA results are in.
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2645

Updated Aug 6, 2018, 3:35 PM

Updated Jun 28, 2018, 11:39 PM

I need the term for something, or if there is no term yet defined, then a good name for it so that I can refer to it in my software and blog posts.

I am talking about the ancestral path that a segment has taken to reach you. For instance, using F for father and M for mother, I can define the path of a segment as:

FMMFMFF

which would mean that this segment was passed to you by your Father who got if from his Mother who got it from her Mother who got it from her Father who got it from his Mother, etc.

Has such a notation already been defined and if so, is there a name for it? If not, what would be a good name to refer to this notation?

Here's a good article by James Tanner today. http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2018/06/an-update-on-organizing-your-genealogy.html?m=1

Updated Jun 9, 2018, 11:14 PM

Happy 62nd my friend. You've got a 5 month and 15 day programming advantage on me. Keep pacing me.

Updated May 26, 2018, 11:47 PM

I've just created a Privacy Notice for all my sites. http://www.lkessler.com/privacy.shtml

"You're someone who's passionate and very disciplined in everything you do. You have a very strong personality, which some might find too strong. But despite your serious façade, you also have a silly side, and those close to you know you have a big heart."

Updated May 17, 2018, 2:35 PM

In another group, some people were excited about ethnicity percentages amounting to only 4% or 6%, but I feel a little skeptical about those because I don't know if ethnicity estimates are accurate enough to pick out a small bit of ethnicity like that.

So I'm wondering from the people who've used DNA Painter's new ability to import 23andMe's ethnicity percentages (see: https://www.facebook.com/groups/127620554606673/permalink/173383023363759/):

1. How many of you have successfully painted a small group under 6% in total and have found some ancestors that are of that ethnicity,

2. and how many of you have painted that small group but the ancestors are not of that ethnicity?

CEO Gilad Japhet of MyHeritage gave a webinar yesterday. The significant things he said re DNA is that MyHeritage is now up to 1.4 million DNA tests, and that he thinks the DNA world for genealogists will eventually end up as a big 3: Ancestry DNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage DNA. So he is discounting Family Tree DNA and Living DNA from ever making it up there with the other three. http://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2018/05/the-birth-of-myheritage-and-the-future-of-legacy.html

I'm really enjoying the first ever 23andMe Live show that's been on all day today on Facebook #dnaday http://23and.me/23andMeLIVE

Are 23andMe's Ancestry Labs still available, or are they gone? https://isogg.org/wiki/Ancestry_Labs

Updated Apr 1, 2018, 11:08 AM

Updated Mar 25, 2018, 11:35 AM

Here's a comparison of my DNA tests from the four major testing companies: www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2516 from the perspective of someone who considers himself 100% Ashkenazi until something proves otherwise.

Updated Mar 21, 2018, 10:06 PM

I just got my DNA test results from AncestryDNA. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with their Ethnicity estimates. (Okay, yeah I know all about ethnicity estimates, but I'm talking about a logical problem here).

I selected "Show all AncestryDNA Regions" and then I picked Europe and within that I picked European Jewish which I then expanded as in the picture shown.

So it's giving me as European Jewish 86% (which AFAIK should be 100% but close enough) and I expand the 8 regions (which really is only 6 because they are including 2 region containers in their count).

But here's my problem and my question to you: Western & Central Europe say "Very likely connection" but the 3 regions under it all say "No connection". Shouldn't at least one of those 3 regions (in my case, the Ukraine/Romania region) say: "Very likely connection" or at least: "Possible connection"?

Am I missing something here, or are they doing something wrong?

Updated Mar 16, 2018, 3:53 PM

Updated Mar 7, 2018, 5:19 PM

Updated Mar 3, 2018, 5:34 PM

Updated Mar 2, 2018, 10:20 PM

Updated Mar 1, 2018, 9:26 PM

Updated Mar 1, 2018, 10:59 AM

Randy Seaver is maintaining a geneablogger compendium of Rootstech blog posts which he's updating several time a day. Thanks, Randy. Perfect for those of us #NotAtRootsTech
http://www.geneamusings.com/2018/02/rootstech-2018-blog-compensium.html

Updated Feb 18, 2018, 3:37 PM

Watching the Olympics and saw this snowboard brand. Well named, and amazing logo.

If you want to get organized and ready for a genealogy conference (e.g. RootsTech coming up), then I recommend a read of +Jill Ball's post: http://geniaus.blogspot.ca/2018/02/getting-conference-ready.html

Updated Feb 11, 2018, 10:47 PM

Updated Feb 7, 2018, 2:17 AM

I'm wondering how many people here store their computer files in folders that are based on where you got the data from?

i.e. People (who provided you the info), Places (repositories, e.g. libraries or archives or cemeteries where you got the info from), or Websites (e.g. Ancestry, FindAGrave or Wikipedia where you downloaded the records from).

If so, would you be able to provide some details about how you do that and what you name your folders and the files within them?

I've always believed it's best to store digital information this way, because you'll always know exactly what you've already obtained from someone or somewhere and there will always be just one place where you'll store something. Do you agree or disagree?

See Drew Smith's Genealogy Guys podcast where he interviews Ed Thompson https://overcast.fm/+o8AFv5jU

Now we're talking! Finally somebody got it right AFAIAC: My 23andMe DNA test results came in. Their ancestry composition has me at 99.2% Ashkenazi Jewish.

By comparison, Family Tree DNA only has me at 92% and MyHeritage has me way down at 83.8%.

I have no knowledge of any non-Ashkenazi heritage among my ancestors as far back as I've traced (4 or 5 generations on all sides).

There could of course have been an NPE that I don't know of, but with 99.2% that would only mean I have the wrong ancestor. But that NPE ancestor would likely still be Ashkenazi.

Awaiting AncestryDNA results which are now in the lab being processed.

Hi Liz. All the best today on your B-day and everyday. Thank you very much for the card you and Al sent us over the holidays. That was so nice of you and totally unexpected.

I saw the other post by Bonnie Belza about which family tree software is useful with Genetic Genealogy studies. Bonnie's post is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/geneticgenealogytipsandtechniques/permalink/353576785106028/

Well as a developer who is interested in putting DNA features into his genealogy software program, I have a question for all of you in this group:

What DNA functionality would you like to have in the genealogy software that you use?

Maybe we should all get 8 DNA tests for Chanukah. Happy Chanukah everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3_DPZcGTy4

The future is coming!

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2401

Updated Dec 6, 2017, 7:14 PM

Anyone who is mt haplogroup K1a1b1a

I found I have 284 exact matches at Genetic Distance 0 for my mtFull DNA test at Family Tree DNA. What I learned that means is that the mt tree can be likely be expanded further at this point.

If you did a mtFull test at Family Tree DNA and are K1a1b1a, then please consider submitting your data to GenBank to help identify new lines. This will ultimately identify closer matches on our mother's line for us that could potentially be genealogically useful.

For a bit more information on this, see: https://genealogy.stackexchange.com/questions/13641/mtdna-match-discrepancy

The submission page for GenBank is: http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/checker/submission_maker.htm

You may only submit your own results and it must be from an mtFull test at Family Tree DNA.

Updated Nov 24, 2017, 2:18 PM

Pajama Diaries, a comic strip by Terri Libenson that she bases on her Jewish family, seems to be starting a few strips about genealogy. http://pajamadiaries.com/comic_tag/family-tree/

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http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2338

All comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome.

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I've seen lots of questions about whether or not identical twins have exactly the same DNA. My question is how are their raw data files different.

I have done some analysis of the raw data files from testing companies (see linked article, below) and like everyone else, I am extremely curious about identical siblings and would like to learn from them and share this knowledge.

If anyone has had identical twins (or triplets or quadruplets) tested and would like to see a raw data comparison done with them, I'd be happy to do that and give you your specific results. I will keep your data completely private and only use them for this analysis. I'll produce an article about the overall results which will not include any of your identifiable information.

I'm looking for raw data files of identical siblings (2 or more) from all 4 testing companies: AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, 23andMe and MyHeritageDNA. Feel free to email me at lkessler@lkessler.com with your raw data.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2136

Updated Oct 1, 2017, 4:51 PM

Updated Sep 25, 2017, 8:33 PM

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2284

Critical reviews are welcome.

Well hello there, Liz. You found me! It's been a long time since we were show buddies on our Caribbean cruise in 2014. Cheryl and I have continued our cruising ways and did a Hawaii cruise in 2015, a New Zealand/Australia cruise in 2016 and a Western Caribbean cruise last February. I'm now retired and celebrated my 60th in November making that day my last day of work. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=1825

I'm keeping busy with genealogy and programming and don't know yet what it's like to be retired. Cheryl is still working as someone has to bring in the money.

Hope all's well with you and your family. Thanks for finding me.

Updated Sep 15, 2017, 6:49 PM

Life throws a little humorous twist when you give your wife what you thought was an anniversary card for your 36'th anniversary, and it turns out to be a valentine's day card. She wondered how long I've been hanging onto the card. Yes, I've had it a while because it was perfect for her.

I guess I'm going to have to give my wife the anniversary card when next valentine's day rolls around.

This is the Bing daily wallpaper for today. It shows some members of the Antarctica Jewish Genealogical Society gathering for a group picture.

Canada supports the Antarctica Jewish Genealogical Society.

Yay! We have a group!

Updated Aug 1, 2017, 2:12 AM

My bank, CIBC in Canada, supports the formation of this group.

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Nice seeing you yesterday in Osborne Village, Winnipeg yesterday for Canada Day. All I can say is this is VERY ambitious. Good luck and have fun. I hope you can finish in 2018 before the lakes ice-over.

Is there a way to download Raw Data from GEDmatch? I'm interested in comparing the raw data I uploaded to what GEDmatch has to see what gets changed by GEDmatch.

Updated Jun 21, 2017, 10:14 PM

Are we allowed to display the GBA Logo on our website with a link to the GBA website to state that we are a member of this group?

Nine artists I've seen live in concert and one I haven't. Which one haven't I seen?

1978 - The Eagles
1987 - The Beach Boys
1987 - David Bowie
1993 - Paul McCartney
1997 - The Rolling Stones
2013 - Carole King
2014 - Earth, Wind & Fire
2014 - Fleetwood Mac
2016 - Chicago
2016 - James Taylor

Nobody can be as lucky as you, Geoff, to "prove" two lines over 5 generations back on a live webinar in less than an hour.

I did a comparison of the Raw Data download of FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage DNA

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2136

I do have to give out a very special nod to Jennie Fairs, who gave me this beautiful gift at RootsTech. This is what it says on the tag:

"Your RootsTech 2017 souvenir Mug Rug was handmade by Jennie Fairs from Kirrawee, Australia.

Larger than a coaster but smaller than a placemat, it's perfect to place on your desk to keep it free of those annoying coffee rings and crumbs - even the odd wine or beer stain.

Your Mug Rug is unique - no two are alike and only 14 individual Mug Rugs were made."

Notice the 2017 rootstech label at the bottom left and the customization that was obviously done for me had to be the sheep on the right.

Thank you, Jennie.

My analysis of Non-Matches by cM.

I'll be happy to hear your comments, criticisms, and ideas.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=2003

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I've done an Endogamous Population study of % Non-Matches. It came up with results I didn't expect. I'd like to research this more. If anyone has 3 FamilyTreeDNA Chromosome Browser Results files for a father, mother, and child and would like to help out, please let me know. If you send me the 3 files, I'll send you back a spreadsheet with your data and your results. http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=1957

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I use FamilyTreeDNA and they allow downloading of all your segment matches with every person you match to in a Chromosome Browser Results file. You download it from the Chromosome Browser page with the "Download All Matches to Excel" selection. See the picture I attached.

My question for 23andMe users is do they have an equivalent or similar download?

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I'm very pleased to announce that my Double Match Triangulator (DMT) program was named one of the ten semi-finalists at the RootsTech 2017 Innovator Showdown. DMT is the first genetic genealogy software ever to have made it to the top 10.

It will be great to be able to use the Innovator Showdown as an opportunity to publicize the needs for new and more innovative DNA analysis tools. We've really only just scratched the surface of what can be done.

If you're going to RootsTech this February and will be there for the Wednesday Innovator Summit day, please cheer me on at the semi-finals and see how a genetic genealogy program stacks up to the rest. If the audience shows their enthusiasm for DNA research and the judges like the idea enough, then you'll also get to see me in the Showdown finals on Friday.

https://www.rootstech.org/innovator-showdown

I was just officially notified and super pleased to find out that Double Match Triangulator was chosen as one of the 10 semi-finalists for the 2017 RootsTech Innovator Showdown.

RootsTech will likely announce the 10 semi-finalists very soon.

https://devpost.com/software/double-match-triangulator-dmt

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Even Google knows my birthday is coming up.

Updated Nov 21, 2016, 11:56 PM

I have just released version 1.2 of Double Match Triangulator (DMT). It is a free autosomal DNA analysis tool for Windows that uses two or more Chromosome Browser Results files from FamilyTreeDNA to graphically show you Double Match and Triangulation Groups to help you identify your ancestral segments.

DMT is being entered into the 2017 RootsTech Innovator Showdown competition. The development of new tools for DNA analysis needs a boost and if DMT is selected as one of the 10 finalists, then DNA analysis will get some headlines.

If you're going to RootsTech this year, please pull me aside if you see me, and put in a good word for DMT if you think it might be useful.

http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/dmt.php

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Updated Oct 18, 2016, 11:52 PM

Just one day for the DNA results to come back. It's hard to trust those Ancestral Origins at the best of times.

Updated Oct 7, 2016, 1:32 PM

This DNA test is likely to produce some interesting results. Stay tuned ...

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Triangulation and Missing a-b Segments:
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=1799

It explains:
1. That triangulated segments may be IBS (by chance), and
2. Examples of what Missing a-b segments might be, and why you should look at them.

Triangulation and Missing a-b Segments:
http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/blog/?p=1799

It explains:
1. That triangulated segments may be IBS (by chance), and
2. Examples of what Missing a-b segments might be, and why you should look at them.

I have made a new free tool for autosomal DNA analysis called Double Match Triangulator (DMT). It uses two people's Chromosome Browser Results files from FamilyTreeDNA and combines them to find all double matched and triangulated segments and produces an Excel file with the matches and a colorful map of the results. It is a Window program. If you do not have Excel, it will produce Comma Delimited files (csv) that you can load into any spreadsheet program.

Feel free to download and try it out at: http://www.beholdgenealogy.com/dmt.php

If anyone can figure out good ways to use the results, please let me know and I may be able to program some smarts into it.

onboard

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Updated Mar 2, 2016, 8:41 AM

I avoided facebook as long as I could, but Alan Phillips finally pushed me over the edge. I'll just hide behind Gandalf for a while until I figure this facebook thing out.