Beyond the Sea

Recently saw "Beyond the Sea," the biopic about Bobby Darin, one of my favorite singers. He sang "Splish, Splash." "Dream Lover," Mack the Knife" and other great songs. Kevin Spacey wrote, acted and directed and did a great job. Definitely will buy the DVD.

Back again....

Finally got a copy of Captain John D. Whidden's seafaring book: "Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days From Forecastle to Quarter-Deck and enjoyed it immensely. He covers his life from age twelve, when living with his maternal grandparents in Marblehead, MA twenty-five years later when sailing is no longer a profitable enterprise for American boats.

I've tracked his and third wife's graves to Evergreen cemetery in Los Angeles. It seem there were no children.

I highly recommend the book and note there is a second edition published after his death in 1922 with a longer preface.

a couple of urls for Whidden researchers

Here's some other urls:

http://genforum.genealogy.com/whidden/

and

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/board/an/surnames.whidden/25/next

Here is a url for Whiddon/Whidden families compiled by Edward L. Whiddon of Alabama:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~elw827/

Go here for some comments over the past several years:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/whiddenwhittenmorefamilyinfo/

or here for some genealogy info:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rwhidden/idxsnweb.html

or to select among several options:

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

Whidden Wanderings by Ray Whidden

Welcome to my blog, a word I hate but it's forced it's way into our vocabulary and I suppose we're stuck with it and since I can't come up with a better one that every one instantaneously adopts, enough whining. I've had other homes on the free web and lets hope this one, like Yahoo, sticks around longer than Webjump and Angelfire.

My interests are computers, an industry I've worked in since 1967 when I worked for Honeywell Information Systems (HIS) when a mainframe computer was 16 K bytes, a control panel so you punched buttons for the register, memory address and memory contents (keyboards came around a few years later), 4800' reel tape drives (disk drives also came a few years later), card readers, card reader/punches, paper tape readers, paper tape reader/punches, drum printers and magnetic drum mass data storage.

I now do phone tech support in a major Edmonton call center but won't be going to Dell who are currently hiring for their midnight shift.

I lived for 30+ years in the Toronto area but have been living in Edmonton for the past four years.

As well as working in computers, I work with computers in my genealogy hobby and currently finishing off the database in preparation of a final draft of a Whidden genealogy expected to be 1,300 + pages with CD-ROM including photos and research material.

I invite readers to drop by and leave your comments.

Cheers, Ray
Edmonton, Alberta
celebrating 100 years as a province in 2005
February, 2005