Van Gogh's Portrait

This is not Pi.

This is a portrait of Van Gogh.

Van Gogh is the shy matriarch and the true workhorse. I actually have two computers at home, and Van Gogh is the desktop pc. Truth be told, I have never used Pi that often, especially for work. The claustrophobic in me feels suffocated when using a laptop.

Van Gogh is almost ten years old. For computers, that is old; ancient even. At her heyday, she was top of the line. Alas, as is the fate of all technological devices, Van Gogh has fallen by the wayside and is now almost obsolete.

But for me, she will always be relevant.

Van Gogh taught me a lot of things. Through her, I was directed by fate to the work@home life. And even now, she continues to open new online opportunities for me.

It was Van Gogh who uncovered my fascination for customization. I have never placed anything on her desktop. I enjoy, no, I'm obsessed with tweaking icons and visual styles. I do not just use any icon sets or themes, instead I use IconPackager to change every single visible icon in the system. It is painstaking work to manually change it this way, but I am just OC like that.

Van Gogh's canvas is a 19" widescreen samsung LCD bought last year. She still has xp, but we use a visual style from deviantart to emulate vista's black taskbars and pearl start buttons. Van Gogh's taskbar icons are the programs I use most often for my home-based gigs. Her current wallpaper is Tequila Sunrise by Richard Mohler. Of course I also use Starry Night. haha!

My work requires me to be online all the time, browsing and doing research. Opera is my browser of choice. I discovered it with Van Gogh almost a decade ago, and have been loyal to it ever since. Opera's magic wand is unparalleled, saving all my login information so I don't have to type it every time. Opera first introduced tabbed browsing which has brought multi-tasking to a whole new level. You can open multiple websites and keep your taskbar clean for other programs. While we take that for granted nowadays, some years ago it was a miracle.

Van Gogh has helped me found things that I have lost or forgotten. I have found new ways of channeling my old, creative energies. I have found dear friends from tender youth. I have found some sense of control over a life that can sometimes careen off tracks.

Oh the many places I have been...Van Gogh has taken me to journeys beyond imagining.

Van Gogh is showing her age, and I know that soon that we would have to replace her... But the ghost in the machine will always be with me.

Indeed magic is to be found in the most unexpected of places; in the most mundane of things that we oft take for granted. That's why it's magic in the first place.

And Van Gogh is one such magical thing.

Hey Jeng, this is a tag right back at you. Show off that pc, girl!