Yesterday, I logged into my account at my webhost Netfirms and I was met with a somewhat alarming message: That was not pleasing to me. I knew what that meant. Likely I’d need to make major revisions to my website to get my Behold blog and my GenSoftReviews site to work under the new version of PHP. My ...

In my last post, I discussed a methodology that I could quickly put together an ancestors-only tree for my niece at MyHeritage. I was able to get back to about 3rd great-grandparents on most of her lines. But it was her mother’s father’s mother’s side that started to get interesting. My niece’s ...

A few months ago, I decided it would be interesting to investigate my niece’s genealogy. I entered information about her parents and grandparents into a new tree at MyHeritage and let MyHeritage’s Record Hints and Smart Matches go to work. It wasn’t too long before I had a couple of hundred people ...

Two weeks ago, I was interviewed on Zoom by Ditsa Keren for an article that was published on DNAweekly today. DNAweekly publishes an interesting blog with a wide range of articles about consumer-based DNA tests that extend into their use by genealogists. They reach out and look for third-party software that ...

Ancestry has recently made changes to its display of the amount of DNA you match with someone. The amount is shown in cM (centimorgans). Most DNA testers using their DNA for genealogy purposes know what cM are and what they represent. Your DNA match list shows the Shared DNA you have with each of your ...

Big update Oct 27:  Much easier way to do this than in my post below.  Leah Larkin informed me that I can do all 3 scenarios at once like this: So all three hypothesis indeed can be included at once. And the results with WATO Version 2 come out as: Showing Hypothesis 1 (Brother) is 37 times ...

I’ve been quiet lately because I’ve been enjoying doing some research with my wife’s cousin Terry Lasky on one branch of their common families. Terry has got several dozen of his relatives on that side of the family to do DNA tests. One aspect of what we are doing led to Jennifer Mendelsohn suggesting ...

Lots has been happening on the DNA analysis front in the past few months. Lots of very divergent opinions on a whole bunch of issues. Here are my opinions. You are free to agree or disagree, but these are mine. AncestryDNA Ancestry has had performance issues. Couldn’t they have been more honest to ...

Have you heard the big hubbub going on in genetic genealogy circles?  Ancestry will be dropping your 6 and 7 cM matches from your match list. In my case, I have 192,306 DNA matches at Ancestry. Of those, 54,498 matches are below 8 cM meaning Ancestry will drop over 28% of the the people on my ...

A very exciting day for me today, as most of you reading this will relate to. A second cousin of mine who I know showed up on my 23andMe match list. She matched me with 3.1% = 234 cM on 19 segments, which is exactly where she should be according to The Shared cM Project tool. I have 9 other cousins who have ...

In just over a week, on Tuesday July 14, 2020 at 8:00 pm EDT, I’ll be giving a live online talk for the Virtual Genealogical Association @VirtualGenAssoc   The description of my talk is: Presenter Louis Kessler explains those mysterious files that we download from DNA testing companies, helps us to ...

I’ve written over 1100 genealogy-related blog posts since I started blogging in 2002. But very rarely have I written about my own genealogy research. It’s actually going okay now. This blog was started to document the development and progress of my software program Behold, that I’m building to assist me ...

I have now taken 5 DNA microarray (chip) tests with Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, Ancestry DNA, MyHeritage DNA and Living DNA. I have also taken two Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) tests with Dante Labs, one short-reads and one long-reads. I analyzed the accuracy of these tests by comparing individual SNP values in ...

Kevin Borland is the author of Borland Genetics, a fantastic site where you can upload your Raw DNA data, match to others, and use tools to reassemble your ancestors’ DNA. I very recently wrote a blog post about Kevin’s site. Kevin also has a blog in which he has been posting very interesting articles, ...

On Facebook, I was delivered a sponsored ad for getting health reports from your DNA raw data at a 55% discount from a company called Xcode Life. @xcode_ls I’ve always been much more interested in DNA for genealogical purposes than for health, but I had never heard of this company and it sounded ...

There’s another website I recommend you upload your DNA raw data to called Borland Genetics. See this video: Introducing Borland Genetics Web Tools In a way, Borland Genetics is similar to GEDmatch in that they accept uploads of raw data and don’t do their own testing. Once uploaded, you can then see ...

OneDrive's default setting of no limit for network upload and download rates has caused years of Internet problems at my house. Unbeknownst to us, it would from time to time consume most or all of the Internet bandwidth affecting me when on my ethernet connected desktop computer and affecting everyone else in ...

In my last post, New Version of WGS Extract, I used WGS_Extract to create 4 extracts from 3 BAM (Binary Sequence Alignment Map) files from my 2 WGS (Whole Genome Sequencing) tests. These extracts each contain about 2 million SNPs that are tested by the five major consumer DNA testing companies: Ancestry DNA, ...

Back in May 2019, I wrote about a program called WGS Extract to produce from your Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) test, a file with autosomal SNPs in 23andMe format that you can upload to sites like GEDmatch, Family Tree DNA,  MyHeritage DNA, or Living DNA. The mastermind behind this program, who prefers to ...

Remember the words inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover of the book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC I returned 9 days ago from a two week vacation with my wife and some good friends on a cruise to the southern Caribbean. While away, we had a great time, but every day ...

#Delphi25 #Delphi25th – I came across an email I sent to a friend of mine on February 6, 1997 (at 1:17 AM). I’ll just give it here without commentary, but it should amuse and bring back recollections of people who were early PC users.   --- You should find this message to be a little different. I ...

The Delphi programming language is having its #Delphi25 #Delphi25th birthday on Friday Feb 14, 2020. I’ve been using Delphi for about 23 years since 1997 when Delphi 2 was released. Delphi is an amazing language. I use it now for Behold and Double Match Triangulator, and I’ve made use of it for a number of ...

I’ve working hard to get Behold 1.3 completed. It will primarily be a newer iteration of Behold’s Everything Report. Once that is released, I’ll start my effort to add GEDCOM export followed by editing. I’ve designed Behold to be a comprehensive and flexible GEDCOM reader that understands and presents ...

The Family History Fanatics’ @FHFanatics online Winter DNA eConference has just finished and it was so much fun. Andy and Devon sure know how to put un a good show. This was the first time I’ve presented at an online conference.  I was able to do this comfortably from my office at home and my family ...

I released small upgrade to Double Match Triangulator today. It includes a few fixes to minor problems and a couple of improvements: Fixed the display of Base A-B segments in a combined run. They were always showing as single matches, but when they triangulate, they should show as Full Triangulation. ...

I’m looking forward to the Family History Fanatics eConference coming up in a week’s time. I’ll be one of the speakers on what will be a great day of DNA talks. I have given many talks at conferences, but this will be my first virtual talk from the comfort of my office at home. I just submitted my ...

I purchased a Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) test from @DanteLabs for $399 USD in August 2018. My Variant Call Format (VCF) files were ready for me to download in January 2019, which I dissected in a blog post in February:  My Whole Genome Sequencing. The VCF File. My 1 TB hard disk containing my raw data ...

I’ve released an update to Behold that includes a 64-bit executable that will run on 64-bit Windows computers. If Behold 1.2.3 is running fine for you, there’s no reason to upgrade. There are no other changes in it. The new installation program now contains both a 32-bit and 64-bit executable. The ...

I’m pleased to announce the winners of the 11th annual GenSoftReviews Users Choice Awards. Users of genealogy software go to GenSoftReviews to rate and review their software and say what they like and don’t like about it. These awards are given to software that has achieved at least a 4.00 out of 5 ...