Wednesday night, I stayed up until 2 am to put together a temporary form for Poplar Springs. Creating a form in MODX was quite easy, but it took time. The great thing about MODX is that I had total control of the fields. I am still very happy that I chose MODX for the site.

Earlier this year, the owner emailed me to let me know that Poplar Spring had been auctioned, sold and closed down. I feel a bit sad because we worked on the site only a year ago. One of his employees who knew how to update the web site using MODX had moved on. The new owner is working around the clock trying to reopen the business in late May or early June and wanted me help out with the site. Even though my schedule is quite hectic, I do all that I could. Poplar Spring was one of the most rewarding projects I worked on.

Kristin Bair O’Keeffe is also busy promoting her second novel, The Art of Floating, which releases on April 1st, and needed me to do some updates for her web site. It has been busy time in the past few weeks at work and school projects too. I can’t wait for the summer.

Linh:

That night he never drove home, and I suddenly found myself with a guy whom I had barely known for 2 months who suddenly took out his bleeding heart & soul for me to see what was bottling up inside, who told me about the love of his life and how it ended. All the intimate details, the drama, the ugly, the beauty, all rolled into one nice big mess in my brain.

She’s about to make another grown man cry.

After replacing the windshield with scratches for our car, the technician failed to come back two times. We waited for them two days and wasted eight hours for nothing. Someone was suppose to come today around 2-4pm, but no call and no show. This is ridiculous. If you call your work perfection. You better live up to it. This company is nowhere near its name. I would never use this shop again.

Perfection Glass, inc

501 East Diamond Ave
Gaithersburg, MD 20877
240-454-5812

I started a category on typography to collect links and posts on the subject that I am passionate about. I also have two Pinterest boards on type: Typography and Jazz Typography. I’ll definitely spend more time on this category in the future.

Greg Tate:

Once during an interview with Wynton Marsalis he asked me what quantifiable musical relationship I could conceivably hear between jazz and hiphop. My first answer, besides the obvious rhythmic one, was the timbre and tonality of the voices, the male voices in particular. Even Wynton didn’t find anything to argue with in that. Developing that idea even further I’d say the great MCs of hiphop and the great players in jazz share the characteristic of having unmistakable tones, tones one can identify in sometimes one or two notes, and certainly within 8 bars. The sonic, rhythmic, lyrical organization of ideas of Trane, Wayne and Joe Henderson are immediately distinguishable to the serious listener from those of Ornette, Dolphy, and David Murray—as those of Biggie, Rakim and Chuck D are distinguishable fron the flows of Q Tip, Ghostface Killa, and Trick Daddy.

iLoveNgocLan.com received over 100 original copies of Ta Say, a collaboration with Duy Quang before Ngọc Lan stopped recording due to her illness. If you want to purchase the album and to support Ngọc Lan’s Charity Fund, email us at [email protected]. More info in Vietnamese here.

Two weeks ago (Feb. 17, 2o14), my Sienna windshield cracked. I called my insurance and the representative connected me with Perfection Glass, which is one of its vendor. We set up the next day for the replacement. The technician was supposed to call me in the morning to tell me what time he would come out.

The next day I heard nothing. Around 3 PM, I called Perfection Glass and the sale rep didn’t seem to have my record on file. After ten minutes verifying my info, she told me that they were waiting for the seal to arrive and they wouldn’t be able to come out in another three days. Why didn’t she called to let me know and let me waited a whole day? She didn’t know and didn’t seem to care.

On Feb. 20, 2014, I called the company in the morning to make sure that someone could come out. My wife was at home and a technician did come out to replace the glass. From what she told me, the technician seemed like a nice guy. The only problem was that there was a scratch on the glass and they made a deal to come back to replace a new one last Thursday.

He called me on the day it was rescheduled, but he never came and never called me back. In the evening I called him and he apologized for being behind so we have to reschedule for yesterday. Unfortunately, the snow was heavy so I didn’t expect him to come out. Now I am not even sure when they’ll come again to replace the glass.

It was such a frustrating experience. One lesson learned: never go with what your insurance company recommend.

Yesterday I received the following email from General Assembly:

Hey,

Just saw that you’re interested in learning more about our Front-End Web Development program. My name is Daniel and I handle Admissions for the FEWD course at General Assembly in Washington, D.C.

I’d love to learn more about your goals and program expectations. When’s a good time for a quick chat?

Cheers,
D

Then I realized that I was about a week ago, I was Googling for some front-end web development training in D.C. I know Google tracks me and all, but sharing my info to a third party is a bit too far. General Assembly has appeared in my Facebook feed as well. I guess this is the price I have to bay for using the Internet.

An intriguing take on “How Typography Affects Conversions.” Ankit Oberoi:

For Internet marketers, the most important thing to remember is to use typography to complement and enhance your copy. When done right, it can trigger the right emotion, mood, and even action required to get a visitor to convert.

Here are a few recent podcasts I added to my iPhone:

Let’s Make Mistakes

I love the chemistry between Mike Monteiro’s dry humor and Jessie Char’s whimsical charm. I do hope they talk about design more. I completely agree with Mike on The New York Times’s snow effect. The article was stunning, but I never get to read it.

Typetalk

This is a fairly new podcast on web typography. Dennis Gaebel and Zachary Kain still need some time to polish their chops, but the content is promising.

Real Time with Bill Maher

I am a long fan of Bill Maher, but I don’t have HBO; therefore, the podcast is a great alternative.

Song Travels with Michael Fienstein

I only caught a few episodes of this podcast and planning to go back to the archive for some artists I recognize. Unfortunately, the podcast only contains 15 minutes. Each episode is an hour long on NPR web site.