Mista Vista

Maybe the horns in my previous post are appropriate because I've been bad. After making rather derogatory comments about Microsoft in previous posts, I now have Windows Vista installed on my laptop. How did I come to embrace the Great Satan? Well it happened like this. The school where I work entered into a software site licence agreement with Microsoft a couple of years ago and part of the deal is an entitlement to free software updates for Office and Windows, whenever they become available. As an employee, I'm can install these programs on the laptop that I use at school, validate the installation with Microsoft over the Internet and the software won't cost me anything.

The temptation was simply too strong, I upgraded my Office 2003 to Office 2007 some weeks ago and after recently increasing my laptop's RAM to a hefty 2Gb, I made the transition from Windows XP to Vista TODAY and earned the moniker "Mista Vista", the first kid on the block to get to play with Microsoft's latest operating system. So far, and it's only been a few hours, I'm quite impressed. It offers a very slick interface and the whole experience is made sweeter by the fact that I haven't had to hand over any of my hard earned dollars to Bill Gates. The photo in this post was taken from the same location as the photo in an earlier post showing Tux (the Linux mascot) towering over Microsoft's head office.

Alfresco Blogging

Sitting outside this morning with my laptop, I actually noticed a variety of insects in the garden and the occasional arrival and departure of some small birds. There is wildlife in Jakarta but because I spend most of my time indoors, either at home or school, I rarely notice it. There are certainly some beautiful butterflies or kupu-kupu as they're known in these parts. I have grown insulated and disconnected from my environment.

Ah well, as the day warmed up, I'm ashamed to say that I retreated to the comfort of my study and played around a little more with Adobe Photoshop. The thing about a bald head is that it is just so bald and what better way to add interest than by growing horns, which I've done. I like the look but in a conservative country like Indonesia it would probably lead to the revocation of my work visa. So let's keep it a secret, shall we.

The Equinox Cometh

It's nearly here, the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Sun reaches the first point of Aries and the days and nights are of equal length. Of course, in Jakarta, the event marks the autumnal equinox because the city is just a little south of the equator and it will occur at 7am. The configuration of the planets at this time is unusual in that all the planets (including the Sun and Moon) are contained within an arc of about 135 degrees with Saturn spendidly isolated and diametrically opposite this grouping. This would be an interesting planetary pattern to be born under.

Meanwhile, I've been making use of my holiday time by adding the ability to receive postings to my blog via email or a blog feed accumulator. Furthermore, my old blog postings from my Geocities blog have been transferred to:

http://reeves.sean.googlepages.com/oldblogentries

and I've resurrected my Geocities site at:

http://www.geocities.com/sean_reeves/

for professional purposes, specifically to start working on my curriculum vitae. I've already put a rough draft up and will refine it over the next few weeks.

My Google site at:

http://reeves.sean.googlepages.com/home

will be used as a personal, rather than professional, website. I've just got a basic opening page up at the moment with a link to my old blog entries. I'm basically having a bit of a tidy up and reorganization of my cybersites in an effort to avert cyberchaos. Such an enterprise is of course appropriately Saturnian because Saturn represents the psychic urge toward structure and categorization (amongst other things).

Born Again

I watched an interesting documentary the other night called "Jesus Camp". It's deservedly garnered a number of awards and focuses on evangelical Christians in the United States. To qualify as an evangelical Christian, you apparently have to be born again by accepting Jesus as your saviour. Unfortunately, 43% of those who were born again were under 13 years of age when the experience befell them. Equally disturbing was the fact that 75% of home-schooled children in the United States live in evangelical families. Some of these kids are then sent off to summer Jesus camps such as the one depicted in this documentary where they are indoctrinated even further.

The evangelicals see themselves as involved in a battle to reclaim their country for Christ and to make it a Christian stronghold against the dark forces of liberalism and secularism that the devil has unleashed. They view the devil as a very real force at work in the world and are very firm in their belief about heaven and hell. The documentary features Ted Haggard who in 2005 was voted by Time Magazine as one the top 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Unfortunately, in November 2006 (soon after the documentary was produced), poor Ted resigned or was removed from all of his leadership positions in the evangelical movement because of allegations of homosexual sex and drug abuse (which he subsequently confessed to). The evangelicals are far too unshakeable in their beliefs to be troubled for long by embarrassments like Ted. They'll put it down to the work of the devil and have an extra prayer session.

The brainwashing that these children are subjected to is a reminder of what goes in some of the Indonesian pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) where a similarly narrow and distorted view of the world is inculcated. It makes you wish that a secular education was made mandatory for all children and that religion was declared a form of mental illness. George Bush owes his presidency to the support of these evalengicals and in the documentary it was reported that Ted Haggard used to meet with the President every Monday. I wonder if the meetings have been cancelled now that Ted has been disgraced, or maybe he still turns up and the two of them share a little methampetamine and laugh about how gullible the American electorate is.

Everybody wants to be a dog

The writing is very small in the photograph above but it says "Everybody wants to be a dog" and it's one of a number of photographs that I found on a blog professing to display the 100 best advertisements of all time. It shows a terrapin knocking on a door wanting to be taken for a walk. Just struck me as funny because our household has both terrapins and a dog. I don't know what the product is that's being advertised.

For many years, in fact until quite recently, I'd not had much contact with animals. I'd long ago given up eating any of them but I wasn't close to any sort of animal. In fact, it occurred to me about a year ago that I'd become quite estranged from them really. It was just an observation and I didn't do anything about it. As she's grown up however, Sabina has been intensely interested in all the animals that she has come across and I've started to see the animal world again through her eyes.

It was her insistence on buying terrapins and a dog that led to their current incorporation into the household. Every weekend, Sabina helps me to clean out the terrapin tank and shampoo the dog. She very much wants to be involved in every aspect of their care. Her success in acquiring terrapins and a dog has of course emboldened her and she is currently very insistent that we acquire a horse.

There are small horses that she often rides beside the supermarket where we shop and so she is constantly reminded of their existence. Her persistence will be to no avail however, because our backyard is too small. If we acquired the block of land next to our house on the other hand, we could ... no, that's silly thinking.

Here's a photo that was taken of her on a horse. She has added some special effects that are available with her mother's camera phone software. Nobody else really knows how to add these special effects but Sabina is quite competent is accessing all of the phone's features, including music and video.