J.A. Coulter, Gulf View Hotel, Fort Walton Beach, Florida
August 2004
2004.12.31
Happy New Year! I played golf today (shot a 90, should have been an 87 or 88 except I triple-bogied the last hole) and I'm about to go out back and drink another scotch and water and listen to the rednecks blow off fireworks. I took the above photo in August at the Gulf View Hotel, where my former employer has his office. Just thought you folks up North would like to see what you're missing out on. . .
Before GIMP light effects
After GIMP light effects
2004.12.29
My first image altered with the GIMP. And I still don't know what I'm doing. . .
Korean Folk Village Kimchee Pots, Suwon, South Korea.
January 2001
2004.12.28
For better or worse, the Korea gallery is done. I still don't know why I couldn't get a background image to display from the external style sheet. It worked when I specified it in <style></style> tags in the document itself. But I decided to go with an image I found of "Korean" spelled in Han-gul, the Korean alphabet. It is a three-character word in Han-gul, so I cropped off the last character and hopefully what remains spells Korea. If it doesn't, somebody please tell me.
Streetcar, San Francisco, California, USA.
May 2000
2004.12.26
Finally got to work on the Korea gallery. Adapted the css behind one of Owen Brigg's Box Lessons and it looks great BUT I want to use a background image behind the introductory text and I can't get the image to display. It's there, I'm pretty sure I'm calling it properly via the background-image: url(image.gif) attribute, but nothing comes up. I'll work on it some more tomorrow.
The sun came back to Florida today, but it didn't get very warm. Warm enough to play golf though, and I did, but not very well. With the annual membership Santa brought yesterday looks like I'll have plenty of opportunities to make it up.
I shot the above photo on a weekend trip to San Francisco in May 2000. It was the weekend before I left for my year tour in Korea. I think I took it using a disposable camera, which doesn't excuse it's washed out look, but that's one of things I like about it. Think of it as a preview to the Korea gallery I hope to publish in the next day or two.
Winter Storm Clearing Over Washoe Valley. Sparks, Nevada, USA.
ca January 1996
2004.12.25
Merry Christmas - it's wet, cold and dull here in the Panhandle of the Sunshine State. The picture above reminds me of what winter should like. . .
Good news! Besides getting a load of booty from Santa, including a year's membership at Gator Lakes, I finally got my Samba file server working! Now maybe I'll try to learn how to use the GIMP to clean up my scanned images.
1762 Old Ranch Road, Fort Walton Beach, FL USA.
December 23, 2004
2004.12.24
The shopping's done, the cards are sent, only the wrapping is left. A Merry Christmas to everyone!
Brad and Darren, 14 Adlerstrasse, Sohren, Germany.
ca 1986
2004.12.18
Got the Xmas letter written finally. Balanced the checkbook and flushed the hot water heater. We had some sort of sulphur-producing bacteria that made the hot water stink like rotten eggs. Turned the water heater up to 160F and cooked them overnight. No more bad smell.
Went to my boss's Christmas Open House and then into downtown Fort Walton Beach for a drink at a new bar that like so many bars in small towns trying to be a like the small bars in big towns fell a little short. The problem is no matter how well you imitate the groovy bohemian decor, you still only have small town people to fill it up. Had two beers and headed home. After I post this I'll head to bed and few pages of Herman Melville's Typee. I finished his White Jacket a few nights ago. Great sea stories and great history. Makes you realize how lucky we are to live in this day and age and at the same time a little envious that adventures like Melville's are so rare today.
The picture above is of Brad Bowser and Darryn Kennedy. I made it in 1986 when Brad and Darryn sold all their stuff in LA and came to Europe to find their fame and fortune. Darryn, at the time of this picture, was recently discharged from the Air Force. Darryn and I met at Hahn Air Base in 1983. Someday I'll tell the story of our year together and the Pile of Fear that followed.
Stoer, Early Morning. Stoer, Scotland.
May 1990
2004.12.14
I'm supposed to be writing the annual Christmas letter to include in our cards, but Gina is out shopping and I'm (as usual) goofing off.
My dad called last night to ask me about a trip I made to the west coast of Scotland fourteen years ago. He and my mother are celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniverssary on August 12, 2005 (how she put up with him - and my brother and me - is beyond me. She is a strong candidate for sainthood) and they are returning to Scotland (my mother is from Edinburgh's Morningside neighborhood) to celebrate, and after the big day they're heading into the Highlands. I made my trip while I was stationed in England. I took a week's leave, drove 350 miles up the A1 and got my uncle, Eric Johnston, from his flat in Musselburgh (everyone should have a Scottish uncle) to act as my translator (he later told me that as life long city dweller he couldn't understand the highlanders either). We spent a week touring in grand style, staying in B&B's and leaving our cash behind in the pubs. A couple of mornings I was able to get up and catch the morning light, which as you can see from the above photo, is always dramatic. This picture was taken in Stoer.
B-52 0119, Edwards Air Force Base, California, USA
November 2003
2004.12.12
Sidetracked from working on the site by my first install at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington D.C. last week and setting up a second Pc with FreeBSD 4.10 and configuring it as a MySQL/PHP development machine and a Windows file server with Samba. I got MySQL and PHP ported okay, but having problems configuring Samba. It's too late and I'm too tired to really care right now.
Went to a great Xmas party last night at Gina's bosses' house. For a change, she got to drink too much and I got to drive home. I was happy to wake up without a hangover. Next Saturday is my bosse's Xmas party; but I doubt my co-workers are used to raging through the night like I used to when I was in the service. That's okay, because the older I get the worse the hangovers are and it's really not worth losing an entire day for one night of a drunkeness. Maybe this means after 42 years I'm finally growing up.
Haven't done anything with the GIMP for the above reasons. I have started putting together the script for a photo database I hope to load on this site in the next few months.
I shot the above photo on the south side of Edwards Air Force Base last year. There are two B-52s and a weird mock-up of what looks like a B-58 Hustler just sitting in the middle of the desert. As you can see, it looks like B-52 0119 was dropped onto the desert floor and maybe it was - you never know what the test engineers at Edwards are going to do next. Whatever it was that happened to 0119, it happened years ago. She and her sister and the weird mock-up are there for anyone with access to the base to see. Edwards is a strange and wonderful place; you never know what you'll find in the middle of nowhere. . .
I hit enter too soon while looking for the Air Force fact sheets linked in the last paragraph and found this. Check it out.
I archived November. You can see it here.
