About Susan BUCE

I have had several compliments on this site, and it has prompted me to dedicate a page to give a little information about myself and the BUCE BUSE BUICE website.

If you have any questions I haven't answered here, please feel free to email me.

Yes, and no. While I certainly have the information from my direct family line on this site, there is also a plethora of information here from folks who may not be related. I will gladly post information from anyone researching our common family surnames. The BUCE, BUSE, BUICE website is a compilation of all the research shared by all researchers of these family lines. Much of it has been posted on the BUCE-BUSE-Family list at YahooGroups.com. (Feel free to sign up. Members have access to over 3 years of message archives! Just go to http://www.yahoogroups.com and search for the list named BUCE-BUSE-Family. ) There are not many BUCE researchers in this world, and whether they end up being in my direct line or not, I feel that helping each one is a way of helping myself to discover a little more about who my family is and where my roots come from.

Yes, I did it myself. I am still fiddling around with the design, and imagine it will go through several more changes before I'm done. If you bookmark it, you can keep checking back as I expand my offerings!

I am a professional graphic designer, but that doesn't have much to do with how good the appearance of my site is. I used DREAMWEAVER 4.0 (by Macromedia) to do the HTML (and no, I don't get residuals!). I strongly recommend that program - of any program I've ever used, it's been the most user friendly and most consistent in being error free. The program comes with some great bonuses, like the animated FLASH buttons I used ... all included.

I took an online college class, and the professor insisted we use the book "Dreamweaver 4 H.O.T. Hands-On Training, by Garo Green, developed with Lynda Weinman. The instructions in the book are really all you need... it's VERY clear and easy to follow - especially for beginners. If you spend enough time doing HTML that you are willing to buy a web design program, Dreamweaver 4.0 is most assuredly the way to go!

I am happy to share my ideas and layout designs. However, many of the graphics are NOT mine. You can find links to my graphic sources on my Links page. Please respect the artist who created them and download the graphics from their sites and give them the appropriate credit they have requested. The remainder of the artwork and photo images I respectfully request you not copy or use on another website or in any other publication without written permission. I will review all requests on a case-by-case basis. This is so I can have a chance to review your request and direct you to the proper copyright holder.

A suggestion I might offer is to be sure your email address AND web address are somewhere on every page of your website. You never know if someone will print off the page and hand it to a friend or mail it to a relative. If there is no way listed to contact you on that page, you may have lost a golden opportunity forever. I make a point of spelling OUT my email address rather than just linking it for just that reason on every page on my site.

I place navigation text at the bottom of all of my pages. This is a trick I learned in my web design class... we learned that people with vision impairments who have to use voice-activated browser readers cannot navigate via frames and flash buttons and jpg graphics. They need the text links at the top or bottom of the page in order to navigate. So the addition of those links at the bottom makes it easier for everyone to use and makes your pages ADA compliant.

I personally recommend having your web URL at the bottom of every page... that way, if someone prints a page, or does a copy/paste, they'll have the URL to refer back to, along with the pertinent information. I've had the experience more than once of finding a neat site that I jumped to from another site that had frames... but could never figure out how to get back again, since most frames sites keep their own URL in the address when you peer out onto a link.

1) Scans of anything - text included - create "art" images like a photo. Scans are, by nature, gargantuan creatures. A scan at a high enough resolution to be clear enough to read easily will be a large file. A 3x5 color photo saved as a 300ppi TIF file might be 5 to 6 megs in size, but only 1 to 2 megs in size when resaved as a JPG. And when you reduce the resolution down to, say, 96ppi, you can take that file size down to about 80k.

2) You can save the file in a variety of formats... the common ones are .GIF, .JPG, .TIF, .BMP. The format you choose to save in will depend on the function you wish to have your scan serve. Be aware that a .JPG file is a compressed file.... that means that every time you open that file (decompress it), twiddle with it, then resave it (recompress) you will be losing image quality because each time you do that you add "noise" or dirty pixels. Eventually you could conceivably degrade the image so badly that it gets blurry. A GIF file is nearly worthless for high quality images... its main function is to display on the internet which automatically makes it a low-res photo. BMPs are missing the "shades of gray" that a TIF file provides. On the other hand, a TIF file is a stable file format that won't degenerate when you open and close it. TIF is the perfect file format for print production, but is very bloated in size when compared to a JPG.

3) For my purposes, I ALWAYS scan my photos at a high resolution in a stable file format (I use TIF at 300ppi) and save that as the "mother" file in an archive. Then I create a duplicate file, lower the resolution and resave the duplicate - using a unique name - as a JPG or GIF for the web.

4) The advantage to saving files in a TIF format at 300ppi is that if you ever plan on using these images for print production to produce a hard copy book, then you will need the image at high resolution for print. To get a good quality image in print production, you really need 300ppi resolution. The reason we use 72ppi on the internet is that computer monitors generally cannot display anything that is higher than 72ppi, so higher resolution is a waste of file size for that purpose.

5) The letters "dpi" are actually a printing term, meaning "dots per inch" and refers to the line screen used in printing to create the dot pattern you see in any photograph that has been printed on paper (you can see the dot pattern with a magnifying glass). The proper term for scanned photos is actually "ppi" which stands for "pixels per inch." This refers to the amount of data detail that is initially captured on the scan. The key thing to remember is that: If you capture LOTS of data detail by using a high-res scan, you can always make a duplicate and go back and drop it down in quality (by reducing data/detail) with a photo editing program later. However, if you do not capture the data detail right up front, you can never ADD detail later, no matter how many photo-editing tricks you try to use.

6) The difference in clarity and detail between 300 pixels per inch, and 72 pixels per inch is huge. In general, anything scanned at 72 ppi will not be clear. The balancing act is between having high enough resolution to read a difficult to read document, versus the mammoth file size that makes it impractical to use for internet viewing. As a trade-off, I generally save my census documents at a MINIMUM of about 96-100ppi.

7) To scan documents, you can get around this issue of file size by creating thumbnail copies of the scans (I save mine at about 3/4" in size, 72dpi - just enough to get the idea of what the picture looks like) that, when "clicked on" can open up to a full size high-res scan. On the page that displays the thumbnails you could include the file size so the viewer is prepared to sit and wait for the page to load for display, confident that the scan will be sharp enough for them to read and thus make their wait worthwhile.

8) The more difficult your image is to read (ie, poor photocopies of handwritten documents or census records), the higher the scan you might need to use to capture the detail. Scanning in full color in a TIF format allows you to maintain the "shades of gray". You can then use a program like Photoshop to enhance the image, sharpen it, or increase the contrast BEFORE dropping the resolution down for internet use.

To summarize, a 72ppi image is a low-res image and will never give you much clarity or sharpness no matter how much you fiddle with it using a photo-editor. To get the best quality images from your scans, start out with 300ppi and save to a TIF file (or a native PSD file if you have photoshop). Then make a duplicate of the file and lower the resolution until you find a good balance between clarity of image and practical file size.

Fonts are the bane of those of us who are graphic designers. We love what they can do to make our web pages (and WORD documents) lovely. We love to use them, but they are a major pain in the neck.

1) Fonts, sadly, should be considered "software" in the fact that they are loaded on, and live on YOUR COMPUTER ONLY.

2) PC and MAC computers do not use the same fonts. Both computers (PC or MAC) come pre-loaded with a basic font package. I can't tell you MAC fonts as I have a PC, but the PC fonts are usually Times Roman, Arial, Comic Sans, and a few other basics like maybe Palatino, Symbol, Zaph Dingbats.... perhaps 10-20 font families all together in the basic "I bought my computer off the shelf" package.

3) If you use a font like Arial, and you SHARE a document via email, disk, or via a HTML page, the person who opens that document MUST HAVE ARIAL loaded on their computer in order to see your document displayed the way you crafted it. If they do NOT have the appropriate font, their computer will flail about blindly and then substitute its default font - (which in many cases is COURIER for some god-known reason).

4) HTML pages can be coded to suggest to the browser what fonts it SHOULD use, and can list some options should font #1 not be available.

5) The reason that fancy fonts can only be read if you save them as a JPG or GIF is that you are turning the font into a non-editable piece of art like a photograph. It's as if you've taken a snapshot of the font, rather than working with the real thing. PDF files will do the same thing - they'll take a document and make a snapshot of it like a photo. Then anyone with Adobe Acrobat on their system can open and view the document.

6) Another thing to be aware of is that there are a million rip-off fonts out there that have made slight adjustments to the font style in order to avoid the copyright that type foundries hold on most authentic typestyles. Have you ever run across a font that looks nearly exactly like one you have loaded on your system, except it has a different name? Well, that's why. You will find that unless you get your fonts from a legitimate type foundry, the chances of anyone else having an exact match of your fonts on their computer is practically zero.

Like most graphic designers I have oodles of fonts on my system. However they do me virtually NO GOOD for web pages. *grumble grumble* because probably very few of you out there have some of my favorites like "Vivaldi.ttf" or "GardenCaps.ttf" or even the simple yet elegant "GoudyHandtool.ttf". My choice is to turn them into mini-art JPGs or GIFS, adding to the load time of pages that are already heavily graphic intensive at times. Or to learn to work with the boring "bread and butter" basic fonts in creative ways.

I usually opt to do most of my basic design work in Arial and Times Roman and save the graphics for photos and scans of census records. I get the custom look by using my bold, italic, and color options. It's a big challenge to make boring old plain fonts look good, but I'd rather design the page, assured that the web page I'm looking at will strongly resemble the web page someone else will see when they open the page on their own computer.

How can I advertise my FREEPAGES Genealogy website to the vast RootsWeb audience?

First, find the link to subscribe to the newsletter at: https://sites.rootsweb.com

RootsWeb Review will include this little disclaimer in every issue of their e-zine:

7. NEW PERSONAL FREEPAGES AND HOMEPAGES AT ROOTSWEB
---------------------------------------------------
[Note: When your new personal webpages located at RootsWeb are up and
ready for visitors, please send the URL (Web address) along with a brief
description to: [email protected]
Comments and questions about any of these independently authored
webpages should be directed to their respective compilers/webmasters.]

A word of suggestion... be sure to have some way to capture feedback in place on your website (a guest book, bulletin board, etc, and definitely an email link to you) FIRST before submitting to the newsletter... you want to make sure to maximize the potential of connecting with new informants.

As for the census 72+ rule, it seems like a good compromise for most folks. I personally will make an attempt to have all living persons bleeped off my site, but it's not always easy to know if the info I've been given by another researcher includes living people or not.

In my opinion, there are several very valid reasons NOT to list living family members on any website.

We don't like to admit it, but in the USA (I don't know the stats of other countries but it IS an international problem) Domestic Violence is a serious issue. One in 8 women -- 9% to 16% depending on the state --(ratio isn't as high for men) in this country were battered by their partners last year. Think about it - that at means the people you see on the streets, the people sitting next to you in church, and your own family members.... 1 in 8. Many of these people have to flee and go into hiding to escape their violent partners.

The victim of domestic violence often feels humiliated and ashamed. A prominent part of intimate partner violence is emotional, with the abuser waging an unceasing campaign of brainwashing that is designed to intentionally degrade the victim's self-esteem and sense of self-worth. Because of this emotional abuse, oftentimes the victim doesn't tell the family what is going on, especially if the family minimizes the violence ("He only loses his temper when he drinks. It's not that often. It's not that bad.") or in anyway tries to blame the victim for the violence ("If you would just try not to make him mad! Just do what he wants you to! If you would just <fill in the blank> then he wouldn't <fill in the blank>").

I worked for some time in the field of violence prevention, and as a domestic violence advocate. In my own family I'm aware of family members who had to flee their homes with their children for their safety. Because of my background in violence prevention and the relationship I had with my family members, I was asked for my professional opinion in both situations. But I can assure you, the entire family is not aware of this fact.

I would challenge you to think again. Do you know a family member (by blood or by marriage) that makes you uneasy? Is there a family member who you find repugnant? Is there a family member that you don't trust and you don't like being around?

If so, then you should congratulate yourself. Your intuition, and your skills at observation are giving you important clues. You may have just identified an abuser.

As abusers get more savvy about technology, they use the computer and the internet to stalk their partners. Homicides between relationship partners are nearly always domestic violence related. You probably cannot even imagine the weird and bizarre behavior of an abuser. If not, then consider yourself lucky. It is literally crazy stuff, and sane, law-abiding people cannot even fathom the heinous stuff these people pull in an effort to control their partners AT ANY COST (including their lives.)

Please, please... for the safety of our families.... leave the living OFF your public internet documents. You don't always know all the story.

First of all, you should be aware that domestic violence is an issue of power and control. Unless they have a true mental illness, abusers are fully capable of controlling their tempers. If they get angry at a policeman for giving them a ticket, but can accept the ticket without trying to beat the snot out of him, they have the capacity for controlling their temper. It's NOT an issue of anger. It's an issue of having power over, and control of, another person.

These are some signs that might tell you a family member is experiencing domestic violence:

Contact your local domestic violence program. If you cannot find them in your phone book, your local health department should be able to refer you, as should your local law enforcement agency. All of these organizations will be happy to answer your questions, give you suggestions, and make referrals.

You could also contact the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence at http://www.ncadv.org/.
The toll-free National Domestic Violence Hotline phone number is: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

Please be aware that abusers are tricky and a savvy computer user can check the TEMP INTERNET FILES and COOKIES on your computer to track down the websites you've been to. These files can lead them to the websites you have visited. If you are concerned that your web activity is being monitored, use a friend's computer or phone, or visit your local library in the USA. Most domestic violence shelters have toll free numbers or accept collect calls.

Remember, it's important to offer emotional support. But it's even more important to connect people experiencing domestic violence with the resources that can actually help them make a change. Encourage them to make that phone call, and offer to help.

Learn all you can about domestic violence. Someone in your family may be needing help today.

People think the "danger" issue is an over-reaction. Not me. I've known way too many people who've been stalked and harrassed, and the vast majority of them have family & friends that have unwittingly helped their stalker find them. I had a good friend once who had to move suddenly overnight after her ex-boyfriend located her and her daughter. I never heard from her again.

I believe in the "you know everyone in the world within 6 people" theory. (For an interesting article about this theory, check out "The Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" at Gladwell.com.) if you ascribe to the 6 Degrees theory, then it's interesting to note that I know someone who knows someone who used to work with the parents of actress Rebecca Schaeffer who was stalked and murdered by Robert Bardo who found her home address by obtaining DMV information in the State of California. So anyone who knows me, knows a stalker and a murderer... within 6 people. (On a lighter note, I've also personally met actor Martin Sheen, singer Kenny Loggins, and Arun Gandhi, the 5th grandson of Mahatma Gandhi... so within 6 people we ALL now know some of the greatest leaders and most talented folks of the 20th century. And if that isn't enough for you, I knew someone who knows someone who's horse was stabled next to Mr. Ed.)

Ahh, everything is relative! It might be interesting to have a page of "who the family knows"... sort of a collection of brushes with fame stories!! heh heh. I have a genealogist friend who's ancestor rode the train with Abe Lincoln after he was elected. Another friend's husband's grandfather was shot by Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame. And I had an ancestor on one side of the family waaay back that was the godson of William Shakespeare! Hmm... it might add some levity to the site to have a page like that!

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http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~buce