This is the home page of Larry Gilstrap - former sailor, student, stepfather.  Here you will find a few items I wish to share with others as a way of enriching the communities which have given me so much in the past.

One of my life long loves is star gazing.  Since my first toy telescope at age six, I’ve been involved with amateur astronomy and telescope making.  If you are looking for instructions on how to collimate a telescope, grind a mirror, calculate magnification and field of view, or determine the surface profile of that mirror, click on the ATM and Amateur Astronomy link at left, or here.

Art and photography are among my other passions. For many years, it was hard to find the inspiration and time for creativity. However, web page design has opened up a number of great opportunities for creative self expression.

In particular, I would like to acknowledge the makers of some rather impressive software: Corel / Jasc for producing Paint Shop Pro, now at version 10, and NetObjects, for their Fusion web site development tool.  Both are fully employed in this version of my home page.  Finally, we should not forget Opera for distributing the best internet browser in the world (now for free!), and both Borland and Microsoft (yes, them) for continual product improvement and helping the standardize the worlds of programming and computing.

Upcoming Projects

Though I often cast horoscopes and read Tarot cards, nothing beats a good plan for creating a positive future. Here are a few of the ideas currently in the works:

• Logo Design
• Web site development
• Political advocacy
• Community Improvement
• Greater involvement with the First Unitarian-Universalist Church of Austin
• Teaching Tarot classes
• Improving the Mirror Surface Profiler software tool
• Distributing other free ware utilities
• Posting my resume and other interests here.
• A few unusual recipes for the more adventurous souls.