It feels like my great neighbor just passed away yesterday. I used to watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood everyday with Samantha. He was such a loving man and incredibly talented individual. His messages to children were full of caring and loving. At the end of each show, Samantha would give me a big hug and mumbling, “It’s always great to have a neighbor just like you.” It’s so sad that you had left us; however, your wonderful works will be remembered and lived on forever. Rest in peace, Mister Roger.

Collaboration Project

MA Young website is a collaboration project between George and me. The site was initially intended for internal use only but they had decided to open up to the public. It is a great pleasure working with George. He is a graphic designer here at Vassar. His works have always inspired me, especially his type treatments.

Aesthetic Experience

Joy Harjo and her band performances at Vassar were phenomenal. With the integration of her astounding poetry and the musical elements of Native American tribal music, jazz, rock, and reggae, it was an aesthetic experience. I really enjoyed her soothing and breathtaking sax performance. It was inspiring to see the audiences just get up and dance so freely to her music. That was magical.

Insomnia

No, not the movie, I am talking about me. It’s 2:00 am in the morning and I can’t fucking sleep. It’s getting worse and worse each day. My head is pounding all the time now due to lack of sleep. I need some kind of drug that would put me in a coma for at least a week in order to catch up.

The Studio Gallery is based on the existing design of the Art Department. Unfortunely, the designer that worked on the Art Department site is no longer working for Vassar and the original Photoshop files were gone with him as well. Thanks to Fireworks MX, I was able to edit the graphics right in Dreamweaver MX. It was a big time saver.

Software Battles

Digital Web Magazine has an article on GoLive 6 vs. Dreamweaver MX battle. Of course, Dreamweaver is the winner. While we’re on the software battles subject. Here are my picks:

Fireworks MX vs. Photoshop 7. Here is a tough call because I use them both. No doubt in my mind that Photoshop is the industry standard designers tool. Everyone uses it either for print, web, photography and multimedia. On the other hand, Fireworks focuses mainly for the web and it does an excellent job at it. One of the benefit of Fireworks is its seemless intergration with Dreamweaver and Flash. As far as popularity, I think I am the only one uses Fireworks in our web studio at Vassar. Everyone else has his/her copy still wrapped up on the shelf.

Freehand MX vs. Illustrator 10. Here is another tough call because I rearly use either one of them. As a matter of fact, the only time I use them is when I work with graphic designers/illustrators who use Freehand/Illustrator and I have to covert their artwork for the web or Flash animation. Since I can’t draw complicated vector artwork, Flash simple drawing tools work fine for me with what I need to do. However, I know a lot of designers prefer Illustrator over Freehand. Ask Keisha, she’ll tell you why. She is an expert in Illustrator.

Flash MX vs. LiveMotion 2. Obviously, Flash is way a head of the game with ActionScript. LiveMotion would be great if intros were still hot. Unfortunately, intros are history now.

Window vs. Mac. This is not a software battle but operating system battle. Came from Window background and hated Mac OS. Came to Vassar and was forced to use Mac. Fortunately, Mac OS X rocks and I am loving it. Although I use both but I prefer Mac now. However, I prefer Mac OS X and above only. I still hate Mac older versions. It’s such a pain.

Congratulations to the great team at VnExpress.net for doing an excellent job at providing the fast online news in Viet Nam and around the world. Keep up the good work and happy two years anniversary.

Inspiration

Clean and smooth portfolio of Jonathon Yuen. Love the typographic experimental.

Great News

My sister is six weeks pregnant. Oh yeah! Another baby will be in the family. Sammie will have someone to play with. I was kind of worried that Sammie might get lonely if she doesn’t have any brother or sister. But now, I am so excited.

Sitepoint New Site

The new Sitepoint is clean, organized, and most importantly, fulfilled W3C standards. The sliding navigation is nice but it distracts the contents. As I scrolled down while reading the article, the navigation jumped down which caused me to look over and lost my spot where I was reading. However, it’s nice that they give you an option to turn it off.

Too Many Cocks

There is so much going on at db-db. The site is so much fun and I really like the pixels design. My only problem is too many cocks running around. Where are the punannies? Just kidding!

Eye Candy

For your viewing pleasures: Pixod and Hookerdust.

Unlike her past layouts, which were filled with dazing graphical visual elements, That Bitch is going back to the basic. Like she said, “Sometimes the simple shit is way underrated.”

.edu

Higher education web designers, here is a great resource. The PowerPoint presentations are very helpful. If you come across higher education web design resources, please share with me.

Weblog Wannabe

Love the clean and simple design of Weblog Wannabe; however, it doesn’t display correctly on Mac IE 5.2. The right menu dropped.

Dung Hoi Vi Sao (Don’t Ask Why)

My gosh! The piano performance for this song is incredible. Man, I wish I could play the piano. Thanh Thao sang this song beautifully.

“Dung hoi em vi sao vi sao! Hay quen nhau nhu da tung yeu nhau. De minh em lac trong hoang hon vang. Pho khong den tinh nhan chao nhau.”

“Don’t ask me why, oh why! Just forget each other like we loved each other. So I can be alone in a lonely evening. In the city without lights where lovers greet each other.” Does it make any sense? Well, it makes more sense in Vietnamese.

By the way, Thanh Thao new album “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is fantastic. She is very creative. There are tracks that make you get in the groove and tracks that make you blue.

Although I don’t know Lele personally, I can relate to what she is going through. The story about her Ong Ngoai (grandpa) is an inspiration. He is a man of honor. Lele, we share your grief. Rest in Peace, grandpa.

Get Flashed

Ok, normally I don’t post this kind of link but I thought this is a fun use of Flash. Check out Bouncing Boobs! Warning: nudity material.

Grammy Sucks

The Grammy Award sucks. Norah Jones won almost all the awards. The performances were good but not outstanding.

The 45th Grammy Award is on tonight at 8:00. The Eminem Show is going win the album of the year catagory. I want to see Eminem performs Lose Yourself, Nelly & Kelly perform Dilemma, Dixie Chicks performs Landslide, and Norah Jones performs Don’t Know Why.

RIP

God bless Jesica Santillan and her family.

So Degrading

I am a daily reader of VnExpess.net. Accidentally, I typed in VnExpress.com and came to my surprised, I was landed on a Vietnamese dating tour site. Basically, the whole tour is around $3,500 and you get to choose a Vietnamese lady (out of 100) to take on a date and eventually going to married her. Isn’t that degrading towards Vietnamese women? It looks like they are selling them. Thanks to the Vietnamese communist, all the ladies from Vietnam want to get the fuck out of the country in any way they can. They would married any strangers for some money even though they can’t communicate to their foreign husbands. Meet Hanh, a beautiful 16 years old girl who married to a 57 years old Taiwanese motherfucker to be his third wife and eventually became his slave. She had to take care of his farm and house even when she was four months pregnant. If she rebelled, he would beat the crap out of her. After giving birth to her child, she had to leave her own flesh and blood and fled back to Vietnam because she could not continued to be living in hell. What a fucking tragedy!

All Time Favorite Movie

Taxi Driver is a classic. One of Robert De Niro great performance. Saw it once a while ago but I really appreciate the details when watching it again yesterday. It’s bloody brilliant and psychological inspiration. It’s surely a masterpiece from Martin Scorsese.

It’s so crappy outside, dark and raining all day. Yesterday, I hanged out with Keisha at her crib after work. She made a blazin’ pepperoni pizza. It tasted so delicious with Alice White wine. After dinner, we watched Insomnia and drank some Alize. Although there was not a whole lot of action but the storyline of the movie was great. Al Pacino performance was outstanding as always. Robin Williams was also very good but I just can’t see him as a serious character. It’s not his acting was bad. It’s just that I had always see him as Mrs. Doubtfire. Same thing with One Hour Photo, his performance was superb but I just can’t put aside his comedic character. Anyways, thanks Keisha for invited me over for a nice evening. We should do it again some time.

Parasites

I had been getting ads on my desktop every minute came out of nowhere. They were so annoying. I thought they were pop-up ads but even when I closed my browser, they still popped up. Until today upon visiting Dive Into Mark, I was prompted with a warning message that I have NewDotNet and FlashTrack installed on my computer without my permission. Thanks to DoxDesk for pointing them out and giving instructions to uninstall these devil fuckers.

An Important Friend

Cuban President Fidel Castro visited Ha Noi, Vietnam to discuss trade and investment relations. According to spokesman, Nong Duc Manh, Castro’s visit will mark an important history of 43 years relationship between Vietnam and Cuba. In his heart, Fidel Castro is a great communist leader who fights for freedom and independent. Castro is also an important friend of the Vietnamese with his famous quote, “Vi Viet Nam, nhan dan Cuba san sang hien dang ca mau cua minh.” Translate, “Because of Viet Nam, the Cuban is willing to shed their own blood.” Obviously, both country admired each other because both shared a history of war with the United States. However, Americans are always my most important friends. During my 12 years living in the US, I find the Americans to be the friendliest people. I have always been treated with repect. Thanks American.

It’s a shining beautiful Friday. No more snow storms. It makes me want to get up out of here and go to Vung Troi Binh Yen (a peaceful place). Actually, Vung Troi Binh Yen is a title of a song, currently enjoying, performed by Dam Vinh Hung and Hong Ngoc.

“Buoc chan vui hanh phuc. Nam tay ta ve vung troi binh yen.” -Huu Tam
“Stepping together in happiness. Hand in hand, we’ll escape to a peaceful place.”

OS X 10.2.4

Updated to 10.2.4 last Wednesday and every time I boot up my Mac, it sets the time back to Wednesday, December 31, 1969. Does anyone else have that problem? Well, I am currently using network time right now until Apple fixes the bug.

Got a copy of Biggupssdotcom vol #1 from the All College Day event. Damn the album is tight as hell. This is not just an average album put together by some local artists. Each track was crafted and carefully produced. Like he said, “Poughkeepsie got some of these sickest Niggaz overlooked.” -Nomadic Thoughts.

Teenage Wasteland

While cleaning up my hard drive, I came across Teenage Wasteland. This piece is so powerful and emotional that I had to downloaded it to my hard drive so I can watch it over and over again.

Had a great time at the All College Day event. The Talent Show kicked ass and the Interactive Theatre was very creative. Many thanks to the Campus Life Resource Group for making this day happened.

Chuyen Mot Dem (Story of a Night)

This song is so emotional. I could pictured the pain, misery and hopelessness.

“Ai, ai giet con toi, ai cuop con toi giua con mong dem thai binh?”
“Who, who killed my child, who stole my child during a dream for a peaceful night?”

“Chuyen Mot Dem” was written by Anh Bang based on a true story during the war in Viet Nam. In the bloody night of Tet Mau Than 1968, terrified and worried were on the minds of the Vietnamese while hiding in the trenches. Around 11:30 pm, they heard a sorrowful screaming voice of a woman running towards them. Under the flickering light of an oil lamp, they recognized in her arms was a child about a year of age. Her hands, shirt and child were full of blood. She was screaming in tears repeatedly, “Please save my baby.” She placed the child down on the ground hoping for help. Unfortunately, it was too late because the child passed away. The mother didn’t even know when did her child stopped breathing. She kneeled down next to her child’s body and cried out in grief. She kissed and caressed her child for the last time before they would be apart forever.