Downtown Georgetown on a Saturday Night

Melissa and I decided to go out and grab a bite to eat. Before we left the house I checked over the newspaper to see if anything of interest was going on it town. Sure enough, there was free concert downtown at 8pm on the court house steps being sponsored by The Scott County Council of the Arts. That narrowed our choices to some place near downtown. Since it was already after 8 and we wanted to maximize our time at the concert, we decided to grab a quick bite at Subway. As we were walking down the street I took this photo of the courthouse that was being backlit by this awesome orangish hue due to the setting sun.

While at Subway I noticed they received 100% on their latest health inspection. Somehow just knowing that made the food taste better. After we ate we walked across the street to the Concert We heard the tail end of a pretty good version of “The Dance” being sung and the singer sounded very much like Garth Brooks. We recognized the singer as Brandon Cannada. That was his last song. We were sorry that we took our time eating and didn’t get a chance to hear more of him. Brandon graduated from Scott County in 2004 and he was the senior class president. I coached Brandon in little league baseball a decade ago and I like to think it was that experience that turned him into the leader and singer that he is today. Ok, I admit I am a little delusional.

The lighting wasn’t the best for taking photos of the event as the stage was not lit, but they turned out nice anyway.

The group who performed was called The Studio Players. They were very entertaining playing all types of songs. Local Georgetonians also joined them like Brandon who I mentioned earlier and his mother Irene (red shirt) in the picture above. Probably my favorite part was when the guy on the right “Cash”, sang songs imitating other people like Elvis, Willie Nelson, John Anderson, Ray Charles, and even Katherine Hepburn. He was spot on.

 

The evening was perfect for an outside concert – clear skies, low humidity and a little on the cool side. During the concert, Melissa leaned over and remarked about how cool it would be if Donny Osmond was performing on the court house. That gave me a Chuckle.

 

Towards the end of the concert, I pulled out my SD400 and took a short movie. This is a highly compressed movie so the quality isn’t the best. Click in the little image to see the 600kb movie.  If you resize the window once it starts playing to a smaller size, the image will look better — not as pixelated.

 

After the concert, Eve Oakley talked with us a few minutes. Eve is the Georgetown dynamo who arranges these concerts and enhances the quality of life here in Georgetown. I believe her official title is President of the Scott County Council or the Arts. She told us that Jim Miller was going to provide an evening of storytelling on Sunday night at Royal Springs Park at 7:30. Melissa and I plan to attend. She also told us that she was attempting to get a return engagement of a rock band who impersonates The Beatles. They were here in Georgetown in early July and was a big hit. Unfortunately, Melissa and I were out of town that weekend and missed it. We are looking forward to that event.

 

The concert also gave me the opportunity to take some night shots like the one below.

We really enjoyed the concert. Besides the occasional whiff of second hand smoke, the outdoor concert is a great place for a family to spend a nice evening.

 

After the concert, Melissa and I stopped by Lock and Key for a couple of “Carmel Hots” for our dessert. The place was busy with people doing various things. I saw a couple playing cards. A guy was surfing the net using his laptop while chatting with a female acquaintance. Another dude was at the bar eating a sandwich and reading something. There were people in the back as well. I didn’t go back there to see what they were doing. They had live music. A gentleman was playing the guitar player. According to the Lock and Key website, the artist was Grover Mollineaux. He was very enjoyable and added to the ambience. I took short movie to give you the idea. Again I compressed it to 700K so bear with the limited quality.

 

 

After dessert, we scoped out the downtown area a little thinking about taking some night shots in the future. I figure I would need to do so around 3am to avoid photographic clutter like cars and what not. Melissa agreed to accompany me when I do. We drove around the Georgetown College campus checking out nice locations for night photography. I am looking forward to doing some night time photography around Georgetown. This is another item on my photographic to-do list.

 

Finally on our way home we drove past Live Wire and they had a band as well. Downtown Georgetown is a happenin’ place on Saturday evenings.

Georgetown's Namesake

Georgetown Kentucky was named after our first president, George Washington.  This spring Melissa and I went to South Dakota.  We met up with my Brother Bob, his wife Emily and daughter Katie.  Robby and Michael balked at going to South Dakota and stayed home. While there we visited Mount Rushmore as well as tons of other attractions.  Here is a picture of good old George that I took while out there.  If you want to see all of my South Dakota pictures, check out my South Dakota photo gallery.   South Dakota is very photographically rich.  We had a wonderful time and I suspect we will go back someday.  But I have other trips I want to take first.  There are several we are thinking about, but Key West and the Florida Keys seems to be occupying my thoughts at the moment.

Two Heads Are Better Than One

My grandma used to tell me that “two heads are better than one” when I was growing up.  This I believe to be true – at least some of the time and I will share a story to support that claim.  But before I do, I want to tell you that she also told me to eat the crust on my bread. That it would put hair on my chest.  This I believe to be false. I have a fair amount of follicles on my chest and they certainly didn’t come from the crust. You see I was a disobedient child and I didn’t eat the crust on my bread growing up. Dogs come in handy as they like crust.

 

“Two heads are better than one?”  I suppose some are wondering; what does that mean? Well it means that if two people can work together, they can do things better than just a single person alone. I told you that I was going to support that claim with a story.  So here it is.

 

Recently Melissa and I collaborated on a collage and it wound up being much better than if I did it alone.  In all reality, I had very little to do with the vision of the collage.  My involvement was that I took the pictures, did the technical stuff, and kibitzed a little. It was her vision and her relentless pursuit of excellence that resulted in our (her) best work to date. Melissa’s relentless determination for excellence, in whatever she does, sometimes conflicts with my “good enough for government work” attitude.  But that is what makes us such a great pair.  Her skills and my skills complement each other nicely so that our collaborative efforts turn out great.

 

In my post from a few days ago about Oklahoma, I failed to mention that our Lawn Maintenance Engineer, Haley Conway, had the lead part in Oklahoma as Curly.  Melissa and I decided print some of the pictures and give him a framed collage as a memento of his performance.  Of the 275+ pictures I took we culled about a baker’s dozen – unfortunately we only had room for 8 in the frame.  Going from a baker’s dozen down to 8 would seem an easy thing to do.  I suggested that we just randomly place the pictures. But Melissa declined that option and took her time to find just the right – perfect I dare say – combination of photos and placement. She has more patience for that sort of thing than I do. Then she left the work of cropping, resizing and printing the pictures to me. I am still getting the hang of creating awesome prints on my printer and it took a few rounds of printing mediocre prints and Melissa rejecting them till I had it right.

 

The result is this collage. This is a photo I took of the actual collage.  This two dimensional photo doesn’t do justice to the incredible collage that Melissa created. You’ll have to take my word for it. If you do not believe me, you can stop by Haley’s house and ask to see the real thing.  Don’t be surprised if he charges admission to see this fine art. 

 

 

Happy Cat

I caught Happy looking outside at the squirrels. I think she is convinced that some day she will catch one.  Since she is an indoor cat only, not likely.  Anyway she is extremely photogenic and doesn’t mind posing for my shots and I don’t mind taking them — so it works out.

Jen and Kevin's Wedding Movie

A few years ago my nephew was married.  I took a bunch of pictures at the time.  A few months ago, I was trying out some new photo movie software and needed some pictures to use.  So, I pulled up these photos and made a photo movie.  Click on the image below to see it.

Don’t pay attention to the silly little logo.  The software needed a logo image so I just whipped one up with my silly smirk on my face. I thought it was kinda funny so I left it.

Optical Illusions

Ok, this entry has nothing to do with my Photography, but if you like optical illusions, this site may be of interest: http://illusionsetc.blogspot.com/

Oklahoma is more than just OK, it is awesome!

I think being surprised in life may be one of life’s pleasures that most people take for granted.  Last night I had one of those pleasures provided to me right here in little old Georgetown.

 

Melissa and I went to see the musical Oklahoma yesterday evening.  It was being put on by a local community theatre group called Maskrafters at the Scott County High School. We met our friend Rhonda Currier there. I went mostly to please Melissa and I thought I could end up taking a picture or two, but I really wasn’t expecting much.  You see, when it comes to musicals, I am pretty much a snob. Yes, I admit it. I am a snob when it comes to musicals. If it isn’t a Broadway national touring group with world-class-talent and production, I just really don’t want to go.  Anything else is just a waste of time. I am very willing to pay the money to get great seats and see quality shows.  I am even willing to travel to see them.  We mostly go to Cincinnati and Louisville, but one time we drove down to Nashville to see Les Miserables (probably my favorite one).

 

I really wasn’t expecting much from a group of community actors who go by the name Maskrafters.  What is a Maskrafter anyway?  We arrive… only $8 a seat?  Ha! At $8 a seat, how could this be any good?  We take our seats.  I notice -- no pit band?  They have just an organ-type-thingy? I suppose the correct term is synthesizer, but I am clueless about these types of things.  Ok, now I am really nervous, cheap seats – no band – high school auditorium. I quickly started scanning for the exits to plot my escape without attracting attention to myself.  I was hatching a plan to sneak out, go home and watch “Big Brother”, and sneak back before it ended. I was wondering if I could do so without Melissa noticing.  I was going to give it a few minutes before I made my prison break.

 

Let me cut to the chase here, boy was I wrong. From the beginning to the end, this musical was an awesome, stupendous, colossal (you can choose your own superlative if you like) show worthy of touring status. Wow!!!  What a treat.  And where did they get all this talent?   If I didn’t know better, I would have accused them of importing some Broadway talent. What is amazing is that it wasn’t just a few of the actors who were awesome; it was all of the actors – from top to bottom – who were awesome.  I still can’t imagine how we have all of these talented people here in Georgetown.  This production is worthy of a large city.

 

 

Oh and the music.  Remember that there was just this organ-type-thingy.  Oh my goodness – prior to the event, I just knew that the music was going to let me down.  The person playing the organ-type-thingy was Nina Belle Durr.  I have heard that she was very good, but I figured even with her, one person can’t do it all.   Ok, I was wrong – again.  She can do it all.  The total magic she performed is worthy of a performance all her own.  She made that organ-type-thingy sound like dozens of instruments. She did the impossible – made it so that I didn’t miss the pit band at all. Wow, that is an amazing feat when one thinks of it. I had a good vantage point of seeing her hands on the keyboard and I spent quite a bit of time enjoying watching her magical fingers fly across the keyboard. She was flat out outstanding – an unbelievably amazingly talented woman.

 

You know, when a show comes together and is a terrific show, one has to believe that the people behind the scenes need just as much credit.  I am clueless about what all it takes to put on a production.  But I know (or have heard terms) like grips, sound people, stage hands, lighting crew, producer and director. They all need to be commended for their excellent and flawless work. 

 

Ok so for the pictures.   As I said before, I was expecting to take a picture or two. But I got caught up in the moment and started taking pictures like crazy.  So much so, that Melissa told me within a few minutes to cool it on the picture taking. She didn’t want me to bother the people around us with the constant snappity snap of my shutter.   So I slowed down and tended to take pictures when people were clapping.  Even being throttled down, I took over 275 pictures!  I placed a sampling of the pictures here on my blog, but you can view all of my pictures at  http://www.pbase.com/jimcook/maskraftersoklahoma

 

All in all, a very enjoyable and unforgettable evening.  If you live near to Georgetown, you should definitely make it on your near term to-do list to visit one of their upcoming productions.  Do it quickly before they figure out that they can charge much more than $8 for the value they provide. And if you see a photography fool taking a bunch of pictures, say hello to me!

 

Sponsor-A-Shelter-Animal Program

Melissa and her Jazzercise classes always are supporting good community causes.  I think that there is some sort of correlation between exercise and a good heart.  This is because of the tremendous generosity of Melissa’s classes and the only thing I can see that all these people of different ages, shapes, sizes and socio-economic backgrounds have in common is their desire to be fit.  I wonder if generosity is a function of exercise?  I bet if Ebenezer Scrooge would have exercised regularly he would have been a generous man. 

Ok ok — so what does this have to do with my photography?   A few weeks ago Melissa asked me to stop by class as she presented Carrie Thayer of The Scott County Humane Society with a donation that would be the 40th animal that the Jazzercise students have sponsored.  This program by the Humane Society is an awesome program and it seems to me that any business that wanted to give back to the community should consider it as it is a very worthy and easy program for them to participate in.

I took a picture of it and gave it to Carrie who wrote up a press release and submitted it to the local paper, The Georgetown News Graphic.   Well, today it was published.  I am Mr. “Photo Submitted” below. 

and here is the original photo that was submitted:

Downtown Renaissance

Tonight I went downtown and picked up a couple of subs from subway.  It started me thinking of the metamorphous our downtown has been going under.  For the longest time, only Fava’s restaurant was downtown.  Then about a year ago Lock and Key moved in.  Now we have Livewire and subway downtown as well.  And I see that there is Old Town Sports Grill coming soon to the vacated Rent-A-Center building next to the county court house.  Downtown Georgetown Kentucky is turning into a happening place to be.  I am really happy to see all this.

New Dryer

Tonight Melissa and I went to Mi Mexico to eat.  Every time we go there we swear that it will be the last time we eat there.  The food to us is just “ok”.  It may be the case that we have been totally spoiled by Moe's which calls itself a southwestern grill. We love Moe’s and I suspect that I will take photos the next time we visit and post them here.  The problem is that there isn’t a Moe’s (yet) in Georgetown.  The nearest one is in Lexington — about 20 minutes away.  Anyway, after we ate dinner, we skipped across the street to Lowe’s to take a look at their dryers.  You see, our current dryer has been slowly dying over the last several years and we decided to put it out of its misery.  We chose a Whirlpool Duet dryer.  Basically we chose this dryer because (1) it is an awesome dryer, and (2) my sister in law has one and loves it.  The dryer is going to be delivered tomorrow morning so Melissa is really excited.   On the way home she wondered about the amount of dust and other crud that is under our current dryer.   Sheesh — the things that women think of!

Stone Fences Of Central Kentucky

Melissa and I went for a car ride yesterday and it didn’t take very long find great places to take photographs.  It seems that central Kentucky is blessed awesome scenery just about anywhere you look.  All you have to do is just that, look!

This photo was taken on Yarnallton Pike which is just south of Georgetown Kentucky (KY).  I posted this image on my pbase landscapes gallery and one guest commented that this picture could have been taken in England somewhere.  I haven’t been to England yet, but I think she is right.  I have been told that the stone fences built around central Kentucky was built by Irish immigrants. 

Georgetown Kentucky Glimpse - #1

Yesterday’s post about taking landscape photographs got me thinking that I also need a “Georgetown Kentucky Glimpse” series which will show off  a little bit about how wonderful Georgetown is. Here is a photo I took back in May of a “sk8ter boi” at our local skate park.  The skate park is next to The Pavilion which is our community indoor pool and activity center.

Gorgeous Georgetown Kentucky

I was going through some old photos looking for some nice landscapes and I came across this one that I took a couple of years ago. As I remember this farm is somewhere near Midway Kentucky and just north of Lexington Kentucky.   Ok so this picture isn’t exactly taken in the vicinity of Georgetown, but it certainly represents the splendour of the beautiful rolling hill around here.  Not to mention the million dollar horses and mansion barns that populate the countryside.  

 

When one lives here — they just don’t appreciate the awesome beauty that surrounds them.   Just looking at this picture makes me want to get out and take some more.  I will put that on my to-do list and will post some when I take them. 

No More BSOD

With my upgrade of blogjet to 1.6.0 beta, my system now appears to be operating normally.  I haven’t have a crash (blue screen of death) in over 48 hours.  Woot!

Canon SD400 Wins Out

“We were most impressed with the Canon SD400 because it consistently showed some of the best performance and image quality out of all 4 cameras.”

AnandTech.com did a review of 4 Ultra-compact Digicams.  The SD400 came out on top!

Here is the review: http://www.anandtech.com/digitalcameras/showdoc.aspx?i=2473&p=1

Did I mention that I love my little SD400?

 

 

Macaroni Grill

Today Melissa and I went out looking at bedroom furniture in Lexington.  Well, before I continue with the story, here is a photo of Sox. 

Sox is Michael’s cat.  He is a big sweetheart.  Most of the time he just minds his own business, but there are times when he wants attention.  Well, today is one of those times.  He is on my desk wanting me to pet him.  He prances back and forth on my desk in front of my keyboard and butts me with his head every chance he gets. Makes it hard to get work done. But what the heck, I love the cat so I do what I am told. I took a little time out to take this photo of him and he looks a little annoyed that I did such a thing instead of continuing to pet him and scratch his head. Ahh the life of a cat!

So where was I — oh yeah — we were in Lexington on the south side of town looking at bedroom furniture.  I think we found what we wanted, but we are thinking it over before we really decide.  So, since we are on the south side of town we decided to eat at one of our favorite places to eat, Macaroni Grill.  We don’t get to eat there very often because it is pretty much a pain to get there from where we live.  There are much more convenient places to eat and we usually end up taking the easy route to get our food.

Pretty much everything we have tried there is awesome, but the dish that we are particularly fond of at the present is their Chicken Scaloppine.  Here is a photo of Melissa eating hers:

If you order it, here is a handy hint.  The lemon butter sauce is a little buttery for me.  So I ask the waiter to bring me some lemon wedges.  I then squeeze the lemon juice over the meal.  In my opinion it turns the meal from great to fabulous! Melissa usually uses 1 (or 2) lemon wedges (you can see one on her plate).  I tend to use at least 4. I really like the meal to have a stronger lemon taste than butter taste. 

 

 

 

The Bed Sheet Caper!

Yesterday I was reading Gary Fong’s blog.  And he was raving about how much he loved the sheets he was sleeping on in Rome so much that they made him oversleep.  Anyway, he has raved about his 650 thread count sheets from time to time on his blog, so I became curious. I talked Melissa into looking for some. We found some 600tc at http://www.overstock.com for $70.00.   But while looking there I found some “Luxury Sheets” at over $1000.  Yeow.  Anyway, she left my office and I continued to browse and ordered some memory foam as well.   The order confirmation came in:

which I promptly forwarded to her, but not before doing a little typing over the original…

 

When she saw that she freaked.  She could just imagine the cat’s sharpening their claws in those sheets.  She was freaking out that I would spend over $1000 for sheets.   It was pretty funny — for me — but I quickly let her in on my trick.  It is amazing she stays married to me!

We are currently sleeping on 300tc sheets she got from QVC a few years ago.  It will be interesting to see the difference.  I am also interested in the Memory Foam and see how that works out.

So what does this have to do with my Photographic Journal?  Well, not much other than it started with me reading one of my regular photography blogs that I read.

 

Lock & Key Coffee House & Cafe

Melissa and I went and had lunch at Lock & Key today.   It is a trendy coffee shop on the main street of Georgetown.  You should visit their web site http://www.locknkeycoffeehouse.com/index2.html  and check out the place.  It really rocks and I would consider it one of the treasures of Georgetown Kentucky.   If you go there — be sure to get one of their awesome scones!

 

Of course I had my little handy-dandy Canon SD400 and took some pictures.  Here is a picture of Melissa.  In the background to the right you can see the vault room where people go in and relax with a cup. 

 

 

And here is a picture of a Caramel Hot – A hot chocolate with whipped cream on top with chocolate and caramel syrup on top.  YUMMY!  This has to be my mostest favoritest type oh hot chocolate.

 

 

Of course Melissa had to snitch a sip:

 

 

And then Melissa needed to take a picture of me:

 

 

After we got home, I took a little nap and our cat Java decided to curl up between my legs and take a nap with me. 

 

Horse Show At The Scott County Park

Last night I went up to the Scott County Park and took some pictures of a horse show.  I learned a whole bunch of new terms like Pleasant Gate.  And did you know that you not only do you have your Walk but you also have your Show Walk?

 

Beside the horse lingo, I also increased my skills in photography. The lighting conditions are pretty bad at the arena and I learned quite a few things about talking pictures in dynamic lighting situations.  Well, learned isn’t exactly what I did.  When I got home and looked at the pictures, I had some pretty weird lighting effects. Here is an example:

 

 

I think I know how to correct these, but it isn’t clear to me that I have enough experience to recognize the situation again at the time of taking the pictures.  I plan to make a return trip next time they are having a horse show with emphasis on this.  Here are some of the photos that I put in as a collage using Lumapix:

 

It is pretty amazing – just a click of a button and an dragging a few photos to more appropriate spots, and I get this collage:

Collage Software

I have been investigating Collage and Album software.  Really good album software costs an arm and a leg – like $500!   But I did find a nice collage software that rocks and is less than $100.  It is called FotoFusion from http://www.lumapix.com.  It is a really sweet package.  I took some random photos (actually not too random, the first few pictures I took at Morgan’s raid a few weeks ago). But I really didn’t select my best ones, I was just grabbing photos to see how well this software works.  Quickly, I produced a couple of collages.

Ignore the little numbers in the little pictures – that is because I using the demo version. So far, I love this software for collage making.  If you buy their $299 (probably not what I am going to get) version, it will let you do multiple pages at a time and produce an album.  Take a look at their movie at http://www.lumapix.com/pages/products/IntroVideo.shtml and see how easy it is.

Blue Screen Of Death

Yes, I have not blogged lately – but I have wanted to!.  The reason is simple.  I started using BlogJet (version 1.5.0) about a week ago to update my blog.  This software ROCKS and actually makes it fun to update your blog and include pictures.  Anyway, about the time I started using it, my computer became really really unstable. I would get the dreaded blue screen of death and would have to reboot.  This would happen to me several times a day.   I had a hunch that it could be related to BlogJet as it started happening about the same time that I started using the software.   So I refrained from using the software. Well, I haven’t used BlogJet for 48 hours and my computer hasn’t crashed once. 

 

So why am I blogging again?  Because I really want to!   And, I have downloaded their 1.6 beta version in hopes that it will not cause my computer to crash.  If it does, I guess I will be forced to find another blogging client to use.  This would be a real shame as I love BlogJet.   I will keep you informed.

 

Note that this image below isn’t the actual screen I get, but gives you the idea of what I end up seeing.

Canon SD400

I have this tiny Canon SD400 Camera:

And it takes incredible pictures.  This camera is so freaking small that it easily fits in my shirt or pants pocket.  I pretty much take it everywhere so I can take photos that I wouldn’t be able to get with my big professional cameras. 

Melissa and I enjoy eating out and I like to take pictures of our food.  This little camera is perfect for this. About a month ago we went to the Merrick Inn and ate a fine elegant dinner.  Here are some pictures:

This is a picture of my steak.  I tried something in this photo and next photo that was recommended to me by an Australian who was looking at my food photos.  He suggested instead of letting it do a full flash, cover the flash with a white piece of paper to mute the flash a bit.  I used my fine linen napkin and this is the result. 

Here is Melissa’s pork.

The food at the Merrick Inn was excellent.  But I think what made it so yummy for me was that Melissa was there with me.  I know when I walk into these places with Melissa people must think I am a bazillionaire to have a babe like her on my arm.

Melissa had to have a picture of me. She did an excellent job considering the subject of her photograph. I will get her into photography some day.

This camera is so versatile, I can even take pictures of Melissa as I am driving down the road. I caught her eating a snack later on that evening.  It is amazing how much food she can eat and not pack on the pounds.  I guess that just goes to show what Jazzercise can do for you.  She is gonna live to be 100!

If you are looking for a small pocket camera that takes incredible pictures, I strongly endorse the SD400 (or its big brother SD500).  This little camera ROCKS!

Dapper Cook Men

A few days ago, I showed how dapper I was in my zoot suit.  Well here are some more dapper cook men.  These photos are from the 1970’s.

First, my Brother George Cook, and then my Granddad Clarence Cook and by other brother Bob:

 

 

Michael

Michael and Megean broke up a few weeks ago. Her loss for sure and girls are all over him now. He works for the Lexington Legends Baseball team as part of the Mac Attack squad which provides entertainment between innings.  It provides him a good way to meet girls. He is doing this as a summer job till he goes to EKU in the fall.  He is planning, well currently at least, to be an interpreter for the deaf.  Michael hates to pose in front of a camera.  I figured that I would need to wait for his next girl friend to get him to pose (see my June 26th post).  But low and behold, I can get great pictures of him!

I desaturated the picture a bit to give it a more “hip” look.

Bumper Sticker

My brother George sent me an email with various bumper stickers in it.  I thought this one was pretty darn funny:

Sharp Dressed Man

My brother Bob has been a scanning fool.  He is scanning all his slides and turning them into digital pictures. He sent me an email today entitled “A Fashion Statement CIRCA 1972”.   I prefer to think of this as “Sharp Dressed Man”.  Good god I am happy Melissa didn’t know me back then! But from the look on my face and the stance I had, I knew for sure that I was the bee’s knee’s, the cat’s meow, …   I think all that was missing from my attire was a panama hat and walking cane. 

Young Melissa

Back in May when we went to Alex (Melissa’s nephew) and Vanessa’s wedding, Melissa’s sister Andra gave me a picture of Melissa when she was just a youngin’.   I turned the picture into digital by taking a picture of it with my digital camera.   Then I photoshopped it a bit to remove the age from the photo.  Using a digital camera as a scanner works pretty good.  You just need to make sure there isn’t a glare on the photo when you look at it otherwise there will be a glare when you take the picture. What a hot babe.  I wonder what she was thinking about.  I know — she was pondering the hot stud that she was gonna marry some day.  She musta been a good girl because her dreams came true and she ended up with me!

 

University Of Akron Computer Center Circa 1977

As I said I was going to do a few days ago, I went to my brothers house over the weekend. That explains the few days missing from my blog. We had a blast there, but that is a subject for a future blog entry. Anyway, I scanned in about 75 slides. I suspect I have more somewhere, but that is all I found and took on this trip. I used his $100 HP 3970 scanjet to scan in my slides. I am impressed with that scanner. It rocked. It was slow, but I am happy with the output. Before I show some of the pictures, I think a little history is in order.

It is funny how life turns out. If you would have asked a young high school senior Jim Cook what he was going to be doing for the rest of his life, he probably would have said something to do with electronics. Well, that isn’t where I ended up. I graduated from Minerva High School which coincidentally is in Minerva Ohio in 1975. I went to college that fall to the University Of Akron to study Electronic Technology. Shortly after I was on campus I learned about their computer center and started playing the games they had on their mainframe computer. I was fascinated, took their online self study course on programming computers using a language called APL and was quickly hooked. I realized that I wanted to become a computer programmer for a living and spend most of my time — easily 12+ hours a day in Simmons Hall working on the computer terminals. I quickly became skilled at computer programming and by the spring of 1976 I was working as a student assistant at the computer center. My job initially was to assist Marge Dufala, my 1st manager, with APL programming activities. I also started to take computer programming classes and was quickly learning other languages like Fortran, Cobol and Assembler. I think it was over Christmas break in 1976–1977 I switched student assistant jobs and worked for the operating system software group. While I hated to leave Marge as she was an excellent boss, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about computers. I couldn’t have imagined a better 1st boss than Marge and the knowlege she gave me gave me an excellent foundation for the rest of my career. Being a software group student assistant had it’s perks, one of which was access to “The Platform”. The Platform is the raised floor machine room in which the university mainframe computer was housed. I would love to go up there and pester the operators and have them teach what they were doing. They were very generous with their knowledge and quickly trained me to be there unofficial apprentice. On the weekends, they would take long lunch breaks and leave me in charge of this million dollar equipment. I was in heaven and I think they thought of themselves as Tom Sawyer getting me to white wash their fences. But I didn’t mind. It was funzor!

So that is the background — and here are my pictures.

This first picture is young punk me operating the multi-million dollar computer. This computer is an IBM 370/158 mainframe with a whopping 1 megabyte of main memory. This photo is unaltered from the scan.

Notice the severe blue color shift from the fluorescent lighting. I had no idea about white balance back then. I do now and with a little photoshop magic, voila, a much better photo:

Boy I wish I had a digital camera and photoshop back then. Here I am 20 years old running this ginomous computer. I learned that word from Michael. Melissa says I look like 12 years old here. I need to show her what I looked like at 12 years old. I don’t know who took this picture of me but I am thinking it was one of the operators.

This next picture was taken from about the middle of the machine room so this represents about 1/4 of the raised floor space. The machines in the lower left are 3330 disk drives. They could hold 100 megabytes of data.

This is a picture of a 1401 card reader. Back in those days most programs and input data were recorded on punched card decks and read into a the computers memory via a card reader. The hopper on the right is where the cards were put in and read.

I have no idea what I was doing in this next picture. Maybe checking for a paper jam? This machine is a 1403 printer. It could print whole lines at a time and I think it printed 1400 lines a minute. It was extremely noisy when the cover was not down.

One of my favorite machines was the Calcomp plotter. This is a 3 pen plotter and would draw on the paper. It was fun to watch it draw the images I would create. You can see the 3 pens on the top of the paper to the left.

This is an IBM 3705 machine. All remote terminals on the campus was connected to the main computer via this machine.

Lest you think I am a total geek and nerd who only took pictures of computer equipment (which I certainly was back then — and probably still am), I did take pictures of people as well. Here is a photo of Bill Hetler. He was the lead computer operator. We used to have great fun together. One day we were in the Machine Room singing a song. I think it was the Jimmy Buffet song “Volcano”. We thought we were most excellent singing it until the telephone rang and Bill answered it. It was from the administrative offices next door asking us to quit singing so that they could get some work done. We laughed till our sides hurt on that one.

This isn’t a picture from the machine room. This is Marge Dufala, my first manager. She is in a student terminal room and she is haming it up a bit for the camera. Notice the IBM selectric terminal on the right. This is what we used to program APL. Speaking of Marge, she was working on a statistical software that she was creating that she called ADEPT. I needed to look up the word at that time to see what it meant. Well, recently I wrote a Agile Project Management system that I used the acronym of ADEPT for. Thanks for the idea Marge!

This next picture is of Nanette Norton. Nanette was an I/O girl. An I/O girl (there wasn’t any I/O Boy’s), was a computer center student employee who sat behind a caged window with a reasonable sized slot in which students could pass them their card decks with their computer programs on them. The I/O girl would put the deck in a card reader, wait for the output to be printed (could be up to hours later), put the output and the card deck together in a bin, and then give the deck and printout to the student when they returned.

I would take pictures of all of the I/O girls. Some I/O girls were more agreeable to have their pictures taken than others. Here is a picture of Kim Wargo. Kim was much more willing to have her photos taken and I probably took more photos of her than any other I/O girl. I suspect that she was so willing because she needed a diversion from the super boring mind numbing duties of an I/O girl. Kim is sitting on top of a 1403 printer. I wonder if we would have got in trouble if someone of importance would have caught us using this expensive equipment as photography props? Kim would pose on all of the equipment and I even have one of her in a trash can. She was studying to be a nurse, but it strikes me that some field in which she was in front of a camera would have been more suited to her. Wonder if she stuck with being a nurse? Taking photographs and playing with computers are two of the passions that have stuck with me.

As I said, Kim was willing to “strike a pose” at a moments notice. She is leaving work for the day and she gave me a pose on the way out.

I am going to close off my “machine room pictures” with this final one. When I took this picture I didn’t have much of a clue about lighting. And I certainly didn’t understand backlighting and the need for a fill flash. When I got this picture back from the developer, I was not happy with the results. I couldn’t see her! I am somewhat surprised that I didn’t toss out the photo at the time. Now that I scanned it, I really like the picture. I think it is an excellent silhouette. Can you tell if she is looking at you or away from you? I like the artsyness of this photo very much. I need to give it a suitable title. Girl in black probably won’t be it.

Mike's Graduation Collage

  I made this collage of some graduation pictures I took of Mike last fall. 

  I actually made this in late may right around the time of his graduation.  I need to get back to making some more of these.  I would like to improve my skills in making collages.  Another skill I would like to try is making a flush mount album.  If I can’t come up with anything to do it on, I may do one on our trip to South Dakota we took in May.  I have plenty of wonderful images from that trip. 

Slide Scanning

My brother Bob has been scanning in photos. He has tons he has been scanning in.  He sent me an email today with this photo. 

He added the caption:

Picture by Clara …….. Free

Shirt from JC Penny ….. $5.00

Bad haircut ……… $2.50

Jimmy acting out …….. priceless!

I think he is making fun of me!

The junk on my face and hands is red candle wax.  The picture in the background was painted by my Aunt Clara.  I used it to represent me, the monster, coming out of the ocean. 

I have about 75 slides that I wanna scan.  I am going to visit him this weekend and I will scan in my slides and post a couple.  These slides are from my undergraduate college days at Akron University in the late ‘70.

 

Morgan's Raid

A few weeks ago Melissa and I attended a local reenactment of a civil war battle called Morgan’s Raid.  I took a ton of pictures.

        

I went to their website, www.morgansraid.com, and sent them an email offering them the use of any of my pictures.  They took me up on the offer.  They posted all of my pictures in their gallery and used some of them on their printed brochure for next year.  You can see all of my pictures by going to the morgan’s raid website and clicking on gallery.

www.jamescookphotography.com

Over the 4th of July weekend I spend some time learning FLASH and created a web site, www.jamescookphotography.com, to showcase some of my photos.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

Fun At Jazzercise

This evening Melissa had me come to Jazzercise to take some pictures of some of her students that was going to do a pre-class dance to earn some extra beach blanket points.  It was really fun to watch them strut their stuff.  Here are some pictures.

   

 

BlogJet

I spend several hours this evening trying to find a windows application that worked well with Blogger and also had nice support for images.  There are tons of them out there, but I settled on BlogJet for the time being.   It is pretty nice. 

I have been wanting to start a blog for some time.  However, the web interface to these blog sites just made me wanna puke.  As such, I haven’t posted very often.   Now that I have a program that seems to be pretty easy to use, I will see if I end up blogging more.  I hope so.