Đán and Xuân’s school is raising funds for classroom projectors and outdoor learning spaces. Xuân kept asking me to sign him up and I kept pushing off until today. The Fun Run event is on Friday. If you can, please support them $1 a lap or a flat contribution. You can make a pledge on Boosterthon.

Kể từ hôm nay ilovengoclan.com sẽ không còn dùng WordPress nữa. WordPress là phần mềm đằng sau trang web này để những ai yêu mến Ngọc Lan có thể đăng bài viết và để lại comments.

Khoảng mười năm nay người tham gia trang web thật sự thì càng ngày càng vắng đi nhưng những spammers và hackers càng gia tăng. Vài tuần gần đây, nơi hosting provider cứ cảnh cáo là trang nhà dùng quá tải năng lực. Cho dù tôi đã dùng đủ mọi phương pháp để giảm năng lượng nhưng vẫn không đủ. Hôm nay họ cho biết đến cuối tuần mà không giải quyết xong, họ sẽ tắt đi trang nhà này. Muốn giữ lại thì phải nâng cấp hosting plan từ $9.99 một tháng đến $23.99 một tháng. Sau đó trang nhà có đứng vững hay không thì còn chưa biết. Tôi muốn duy trì trang ilovengoclan.com lâu dài nên đã quyết định rút ra khỏi WordPress.

Nếu như chúng ta không còn dùng WordPress nữa thì hackers và spammers cũng không thể tấn công trang nhà này nữa. Cho nên từ bây giờ trở đi những bài viết và những lời comments cũ vẫn giữ nguyên nhưng chúng ta không thể viết bài mới hoặc để lại những comment mới. Coi như chúng ta sẽ duy trì mãi những gì còn tồn tại nơi này. Tôi đi đến quyết định này vì trang web giờ đây rất yên lặng. Trang nhà không còn sinh hoạt sôi nổi như những năm đầu nữa. Nhưng nếu ai muốn đăng bài mới vẫn có thể gửi đến cho tôi.

Đồng thời rút ra khỏi WordPress, tôi cũng bỏ nơi hosting provider và đã đem trang nhà lên mây (cloud hosting). Hy vọng sẽ bớt chi phí mỗi tháng để duy trì trang này dài lâu. Tuy nhiên tôi vẫn giữ lại tất cả WordPress files và database. Nếu có bạn nào hâm mộ Ngọc Lan và có nhã ý tiếp quản trang nhà này xin liên lạc với tôi. Tôi sẽ trao lại hết những hồ sơ để bạn có thể tiếp tục.

Xin cám ơn tất cả các bạn luôn viếng thăm ilovengoclan.com gần 20 năm qua.

Victoria Rushton, a talented type designer who I had the pleasure to work with on Vietnamese diacritics, has just released a typeface named Kadabra. She writes:

I inherited this typeface. My love, Dai Foldes, killed himself in April, and suddenly everything that was his became mine.

The release note is heartbreaking and beautiful. She goes on:

I don’t think this is his “legacy.” Everyone who knew either of us knows how much we loved each other, and that’s what matters. These are just vectors. He loved me more than anything, and this is just a font. He’s gone, but it’s here, I’m here, it’s mine now and I have to take it and try to keep going. Wish me luck.

This is the first type release note that puts me to tears. The scripted face is just stunning. I bought a license to use as drop caps in the near future.

Klim Type Foundry has released a gorgeous, genderless serif family named Epicene. Kris Sowersby has written an in-depth essay on his research, thinking, and process went into Epicene. He writes:

Epicene is not a straight revival of any of [J.M.] Fleischmann or [J-F.] Rosart’s fonts. Rather I’ve reconciled details from across their body of work, integrating gestures and forms into a cohesive whole.

Epicene supports over 200 languages, and yet no Vietnamese. How disappointing? I was going to tweet about this, but I don’t want to be the Vietnamese guy who has written a book on Vietnamese Typography keep beating the drum on Vietnamese support. Since this is my blog, I can rant all I want.

John Kehayias writes for Vice:

“Self-hosting” is a practice that pretty much describes itself: running your own internet services, typically on hardware you own and have at home. This contrasts with relying on products from large tech companies, which the user has no direct involvement in. A self-hoster controls it all, from the hardware used to the configuration of the software.

I need to look into this. Maybe I should start hosting my websites from my basement.

Nhạc sĩ Đức Trí đánh thử vọng cổ theo giai điệu jazz swing. Nghe cũng hấp dẫn lắm. Các bạn nghe thử nhé.

The following exchange between myself and an account manager at HostPapa had prompted me to migrate all my sites off HostPapa. If you are in a similar situation, you can take our sites elsewhere. I also hope that
HostPapa will back off its up-saling strategy. I am not revealing the account manager’s name because I don’t want to get them in trouble.

Hello Donny,

My name is GB from the HostPapa’s Solutions Team. I’m contacting you concerning the email storage of your web hosting plan.

As you know, LunarPages was acquired by HostPapa a year ago. All hosting accounts originally purchased with LunarPages have been migrated to our HostPapa servers. It now shares the same resources as all of our other shared plans.

As a hosting company, it is our main priority to provide a stable and secure server environment and make sure that the hosting accounts provided by us are not used for data archiving. To help you with the transition, we have provided you with a higher storage limit than our most basic shared hosting plans for the past year. However, because storing large volumes of email on your account has a negative effect on your account and the server, it is not feasible for us to continue providing unlimited storage for your email accounts.

That being said, our system administrators notified me that one or more of your email accounts has exceeded that limit allocated to your plan by using 1GB or more per account. You can learn more about the limits we have for our shared hosting plans here.

Please reply to this email with the best way to reach you (email/phone), so we can find a way to resolve this quickly and find a more suitable solution for your needs.

I look forward to hearing from you!

My respond:

Hi G,

Thanks for reaching out to me about my email usage. I actually don’t use any hosting email. I only use email forwarding; therefore, there shouldn’t be any issue with usage storage. If there’s mail on the server, please let me know how I can delete them.

Thanks,

GB replied:

Dear Donny,

Thank you for your reply. Our administrators have detected that the website regularly receives CPU faults and I / O faults (see below).

It can be due to many reasons, malware / viruses / bots / unoptimized scripts / heavy images etc.

When these spikes occur, it means that your visitors cannot access the website properly (for example, they may experience huge load times or a complete inability to open the site). It also destabilizes the system and may endanger other users.

In this regard, it is extremely important that we resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Option 1:

You can try to optimize your website scripts and traffic as much as possible to reduce your account’s resource usage and try to bring it back below the limits of your hosting plan. (1) Make sure your apps are updated to the latest version, (2) Remove unnecessary plugins and themes, (3) Review your traffic through AWStats and block IP addresses you deem illegitimate through IP Blocker.

How to minimize the use of your shared web-hosting server

Option 2:

If you prefer to deal with this issue transparently, I can also offer you a solution that will resolve your issues immediately, without you having to spend time reducing your account’s resource usage. Time is the most precious resource we all have, so if you want to go with a solution that ensures long-term sustainability, you can upgrade to a Business Pro plan that will better meet your project requirements. A Business Pro will provide dedicated resources, removing any limitations you face in our shared hosting environment.

I personally recommend an upgrade to Business PRO if you are looking for a long term solution that will provide you with the power and flexibility to grow your business. I have worked with clients who have faced similar issues in the past and they have found it to cost them more (short term patchwork) to regularly optimize their site than to upgrade to Business Pro.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need further help with this. If you are interested in upgrading to a BP, I would be happy to send you more detailed information on the pricing terms available and calculate the credit you would receive for the unused portion of your current plan.

Kind Regards,

I replied:

Hi G,

Thank you for following up on the issue. Is the email storage limit still an issue?

I use CloudFlare to help with the bandwidth. I only use a couple of plugins for WordPress. I am not sure where the spike comes from.

I am on vacation at the moment. I will take a look to see what I can do with option 1. As for option 2, I cannot afford a Business Pro plan because I only run a small personal blog and a few small personal projects.

Thanks once again,

GB responded:

Dear Donny,

Thank you for getting back to me.

I apologise about the confusion, the email storage is not an issue with your account.

The only issue is the resource usage.

Please look into the potential optimisations and I will scan the account afterwards.

The reason I’ve recommend the upgrade to BP is because it is similarly priced to your current plan.

You are currently paying $155 per year (or $465 for 3 years), while with the BP if you were to prepay the 3 year term, the price would be $466.20.

It would be roughly the same as you are paying right now, but with the benefit that it will provide you with more resources.

I look forward ot hearing back from you and if any questions arise along the way, I am here to help!

Kind Regards,

GB followed up:

Dear Donny,

I hope you’re doing well!

Have you had a chance to evaluate the situation and decide how you’d like to resolve this issue?

I wish you a great day and I look forward to hearing back from you!

Kind Regards,

I replied:

Hi G,

Thank you for following up with me. I have decided to move my sites to cloud hosting.

I paid HostPapa until January 2022. Do I get a refund on it?

GB replied:

Dear Donny,

I hope you’ve had a great weekend!

Unfortunately, a refund is not available, as it can only be acquired in the first 30 days after the purchase.

If you don’t mind me asking, why have you decided to move your websites to cloud hosting?

Kind Regards,

My last respond:

Hi G,

I understand about the refund not available. Would you please make sure that I won’t be charged automatically in January 2022?

As for my decision to move my websites to the cloud, I was concerned with the constant up-sale from HostPapa. I hosted my sites with Lunarpages since 2003 and I was satisfied with it until HostPapa acquired Lunarpages in 2019. My plan was increased from $8.99 to $14.99. Since two years with HostPapa, I had been asked to upgrade. With the recent spike of CPU and I/O usage, I was asked to upgrade to $23.99 a month. With the pattern of up-saling, I worried that I will be asked to be upgrading again in the future.

I tried to to solve the CPU and I/O usage by deleting all the mails on the server, compressed all my files, prevented hot-linking to my images, deactivated my WordPress plugins. Nothing seemed to bring down to 1G of CPU limit and 1MB/s of I/O limit; therefore, I think it was time to move on. Furthermore, my decision to migrate away from HostPapa was reaffirmed after reading similar complaints from numerous ex-Lunarpagers.

You have been patience and responsive and I respect that, but I can no longer be hosting with HostPapa.

Regards,

My oldest son, Đạo, wrote a fiction piece title “From Dirt to Diamond” in forth grade. It’s an impressive read. So proud of him.

We’re looking for a part-time Web Content Specialist to join our team. The main responsibility for this role is to help us keep our websites up to date. We use MODX for our main site and WordPress Multisite for everything else. Although we’re using content management systems to update our sites, we need someone who can write semantic HTML markups and a bit of CSS. Copywriting and editing skills are not required, but strongly desired.

This position is mostly telework and can be flexible; therefore, it is ideal for novice web and graphic designers who would like to gain web experience. You will get an opportunity to do some graphic work as well as to learn coding for the web. You will definitely learn HTML and CSS, but you can also learn PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, MODX, and WordPress to take your web skills to the next level.

This is a part-time position with decent pay and tuition benefits. If you’re interested, submit your application online and let me know.

6:00 AM: Woke up and read.

8:00 AM: Made Vietnamese ice coffee and hit the skatepark to rollerblade.

9:00 AM: Rollerbladed again on the boardwalk while the kids biked.

11:00 AM: Relaxed then had lunch.

2:00 PM: Hit the beach with the kids.

6:00 PM: Had dinner.

8:00 PM: Hit the arcades on the boardwalk.

10:00 PM: Played Monopoly with the kids.

12:00 AM: Went to bed.