Adam Phan was my web design student and teacher assistant. He’s a charming and caring guy. In a recent fire incident, Adam lost his home and his belongings. He shares:

To be honest, I’m not all right as I witness my home and everything I’ve worked for go up in flames. It was traumatic and surreal. When I was finally able to walk up to my apartment building, it did not look anything like the home I had known.

It was dark, heavy with smoke and debris. My friend and I were escorted by some firemen up to the building. My building looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Inches of water mixed with wet drywall, insulation, burnt cinders and neighbors’ belongings. And when it came to my apartment—it was something out of a horror film. I woke up to a beautiful condo loft home and came back to a burnt down, flooded shell.

If you can, please help him out.

I removed the blogroll from my homepage since many blogs on my list are inactive. Bloggers don’t write like we used to anymore. I just found out that Ms. Nguyễn has made her blog private. I followed her journal for a long time. She was my only Vietnamese blogger left. She was like my blog confidant. I am going to miss her writing. It is hard to find passionate bloggers to follow nowadays. Of course I could turn to books to read, but I have always loved the raw form of blogging. I appreciate the unfiltered thoughts as well as the immediacy of publishing to the whole world to read.

I still love writing and I have learned that this is the only place that allowed me to write freely. Facebook is not a place to post lengthy journal. No one reads my writing when I cross post my blog on Facebook. As a result, I just post everything on here only. Maybe it is the fact that I don’t know who is reading has allowed me to just write. I don’t care about the likes and the comments. I just dash off a few hundred words off my head and hit publish.

Since I removed the blogroll off my homepage, I am just going to keep it here as an archive. I am not going to curate it. If the blogs go inactive, let them be. I might go back to add more in the future if I find blogs worth reading.

• Adactio
• A Working Library
• Bảohouse
• Colly
• DJR
• Ethan Marcotte
• Frank Chimero
• Hey Georgie
• I Love Ngọc Lan
• Lilgui
• Lil Xuân Shine
• Maggie Appleton
• Matt Mullenweg
• Ms. Nguyễn
• Robin Rendle
• Sơn Phước
• Susan Jean Robertson
• Tinigui
• Winnie Lim

I have been pouring my heart and soul out on this blog for almost two decades. My dream has always been to turn this little blog into a full-time gig. Then again, a dream is just a dream and it is still a long shot, but I haven’t given up because I still love blogging.

I dedicate a big chunk of my time to this blog and it costs more than time and energy to sustain. If you enjoy reading this blog, please consider supporting my efforts to keep it free of intrusive advertising and third-party tracking. Your contribution will help pay the bills and keep this blog active.

Ways to support

• Credit Cards
• PayPal: [email protected]
• Venmo: @truongdonny
• Zelle: 845-337-2187
• Buy me a coffee
• My Amazon Wish List

My thanks to the following generous supporters

• Nguyễn, Tân
• Nguyễn, Toàn
• Silverman, Chris
• Tanskanen, Matti

On Monday I took Đán and Xuân to private piano lessons and bought along a music sheet I found only for Kanye’s “All of the Lights” (Interlude). I asked their instructor to show them how to play the tune. Without even listening to the tune, he played the interlude so beautifully and he let me filmed it. Take a listen.

If you live in Northern Virginia and would like to take piano lessons, I recommend checking out the NOVA Piano Studio.

Hơn tuần nay, tôi làm biên tập cho một quyển sách của gia đình do dì út tôi viết. Trong đó dì có viết lại bài cao dao như sau:

Dùi đánh đục, đục đánh săng.
Ách giữa đàng, quàng vào cổ.
Ăn bữa giỗ, lỗ bữa cày.
Ăn chưa no, lo chưa tới.

Khi tôi google thì không tìm ra được bài thơ này. Dường như đây là những câu tục ngữ. Và tôi đã dịch lại như sau:

Stick hits chisel, chisel hits wood.
Putting on one’s neck a yoke from the middle of the road.
Attend a death anniversary, lose a day of plowing.
Not fully eaten, not yet worried.
Eat new rice, have old conversations.

Nếu bạn đọc nào giỏi cả tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt có lời góp ý, xin vui lòng liên lạc với tôi.

The Times Book Review has released its list of “The 10 Best Books of 2021” and I have read none of them. I bookmarked it. Will pick up a few of them over the winter holiday break after I finish editing a family book. If you don’t see me blogging much these days, it is because I am working on a family project and it takes more time than I had anticipated.

Highlights from JAY-Z’s 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction, including inspiring speeches from Dave Chappelle and JAY-Z himself. Worth half an hour of your time.

Radek Sidun is publishing The Manual of Diacritics. He writes:

With a few exceptions, the drawback of literature devoted to diacritics is that they are predominantly textual and often lack sufficient illustrations. Because most of us work visually, a textual description of how something should be correctly done and how the result should look is not very helpful. Examples should primarily be shown, specific approaches visualised and clearly demonstrated. This is why, instead of complicated descriptions of the problems associated with diacritics, I chose to put together a set of clear visual examples of possible solutions. To achieve this, I completely redesigned all accents from scratch. The result is 15 typefaces with a new diacritical set designed by me.

The book includes 33 languages. I would love to see his process and approach for redesigning all the accents. Unfortunately, Vietnamese is not included.

With all the shit surrounding Facebook lately, it is time to delete this toxic platform. I went into my activity log on the Facebook app, scrolled down, scrolled back up, selected all, and delete. I deleted all my text and status updates all the way back to 2008. I tried to do the same for photos and videos, but Facebook kept telling me “No network connectivity.” Facebook doesn’t seem to want me to delete my photos and videos in bulk.

I don’t want to delete my account completely because I still want to be connected with family and friends. I won’t be posting on the platform, but I still want see what my family and friends are up to. I don’t want to deactivate my account either, but I might have to if I can’t delete my photos and videos all at once.

I have also been thinking about making this blog private or at least for my personal posts. For the past 18 years, I have written a lot about personal stuff. I have come to the point where I am not sure if I should keep them in public. If I make it private, I don’t see the point of continuing to blog. I have plenty of things to write about. I am just not sure where to draw the line. I am not sure what to do yet.

I just bought another typeface from Victoria Rushton. Lovegrove is a beautiful display typeface designed by Victoria and her late husband Dai Foldes for their wedding invitations. Victoria has expanded it to include wild swashes using variable font. What sealed the deal for me is that Victoria is planning on creating Vietnamese diacritics. I can’t wait for the Vietnamese support so I can use it for our own wedding webpage. If you like some fancy for wedding and special occasions, get a license. It’s only $20. An instant steal!