George Mason Law is now featured on Mediaqueri.es. The screenshots were captured a few months ago; therefore, the small-screen version is outdated. The latest version has the entire menu links moved to the bottom. Still, we’re very pleased to see that Mediaqueri.es is showing us some love.

Lacking of sleep finally took a toll on me yesterday. I could only make it through half day at work. I felt sick and needed some sleep. I went to Eden for lunch, but barely finished chao goi vit (porridge and cabbage duck salad). Headed straight home and knocked myself out. The headache and the dizziness didn’t go away until I took an Aleve-D, my drug for everything.

The incident indicates that I can no longer stay up late. With two boys, fulltime job and occasional freelance gigs, I need to balance my time and priorities. Blogging is hard to give up, but I have to. I know I said this a million times in the past, but I haven’t done it. I definitely can’t give up entirely, but it will be sporadic.

Thanks for reading!

Last Tuesday I attended my first WordPress DC Meetup, which was also my first Meetup ever. Responsive Web Design attracted quite a crowd that day. The speakers did a decent job of presenting RWD, but there was not anything exciting. It was more of an introduction to RWD.

The best part of the Meetup was the job announcement at the end. If you’re looking for a design job or WordPress developer job, Meetup is the place to go. Companies and agencies were there to scout talents. It was a good vibe over all.

I got a cold call from a company trying to sell me a CMS. Here’s how our conversation went:

Salesman: “Are you looking into a web content management solution?”
Me: “Not really. We already have something in place.”
Salesman: “What are you using.”
Me: “MODX.”
Salesman: “Ah ha, open source platform.”
Me: “Yes” (I was impressed that he knows about MODX.)
Salesman: “Is it PHP or .Net?”
Me: “PHP” (So he doesn’t know about MODX. It was just a wild guess.)
Salesman: “How do you like MODX?”
Me: “It’s very flexible. I was able to do HTML5 and responsive web design out of the gate… What language is your CMS written in?”
Salesman: “Java.”
Me: “Oh ok.” (Red flag. Red flag.)
Salesman: “Unlike MODX, which developed by some sixteen-year-old kid in the U.K., our system is developed by professional developers…”
Me: “Wow, wow… Hold on. MODX is developed by a team with a great community backing it up.”

That was a deal-breaker for me right there. How can you trash something that you know absolutely nothing about it? He made it too easy for me to end the conversation.

With my wife’s approval and my mother-in-law’s help looking after Dao, I’ll be attend the WordPress DC Meetup tonight. The topic is on Responsive Web Design. Definitely looking forward to it.

From the very early days of my career, graphic design has always been my source of inspiration for my web design. I also decided from the beginning that I wanted to focus on the web rather than print, but I had learned how to take print design elements and transform them into the web. Whenever I get a chance, I would pick up graphic design books to fuel my creativities. Here are some recent books I found in George Mason library:

More Graphic Simplicity: This is not a book to be read, but to be inspired. I am in awed with the beauty of simplicity showcased in the book.

Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type: A short, concise collection of user tips when dealing with typography, especially as types are increasingly popular for the web.

The Elements of Graphic Design (Second Edition): The layout of the book, which featured texts and examples around the main content, is a huge distraction. I have to mentally blocking out all of that noise in order just to focus on the primary texts. There are some great points on simplicity that I would like to jot down for future references:

Dynamic white space plus abstraction, the process of removing unnecessary details, are essential to sophisticated design (preface)

Visual simplicity eliminates unnecessary elements and structures those that remain in a logical, consistent system. Good design reduces the effort of reading as much as possible, thereby encouraging readership and uderstanding (page 3)

Again, the designer’s job is not to fill in all the space. It is to make information accessible and appealing. The best use of the page’s empty space is to help make information scannable, not to make the pages pretty. The point is to increase the page’s absorbability. (page 5)

The pauses between songs on a record show content the way white space does. Space attracts readers by making the page look accessible, unthreatening, and manageable. Leaving too little white space makes a page look crowded – good only if that’s the point you want to make. Leaving too much white space is almost impossible. I say “almost” because you will get groans of disapproval if you toss around chunks of unused white space, that is, emptiness purely for its own sake, rather than for the sake of the message. Readers are far less likely to notice or object to too much white space than to an unreadable, crowded page. (page 13)

Listening to Miles Davis’s “Move” and it fits perfect with my state of mind at the moment at work. I have finally moved sites off the server that is hosting the Law School web site. Now it’s one dedicated server dedicated to just the Law site. Everything else such as student organizations, blogs and faculty sites are residing on another dedicated server.

I set up three different networks using WordPress multisite feature. One for the faculty. One for student organizations . One for the blogs. I moved the Library & Technology Blog yesterday using the export and import feature in WordPress and the process took me two seconds. WordPress rocks once again.

In the future, anyone from the school or library request a web site for a faculty, organization or, blog, I can just add a new WordPress site instantly. They can go with the default template or create their own.

I am so glad that I could make the move with the support of my supervisor. It’s definitely a peace of mind to have the main site on its own.

ASM-Aetna Blog, a project I had involved as a developer, has been nominated for Connecticut’s Top Blog of 2012 in the following categories: Best Overall Blog, Best Health Blog and Best Business Blog. Congratulations to the ASM-Aetna team.

Thật ngậm ngùi khi xem hình của ba nhận được hôm nay từ đứa cháu gái. Ba đã già đi rất nhiều. Trong trí óc của tôi ba cứ như ngày tôi còn ấu thơ. Khi nói chuyện với ba qua điên thoại giọng của ông còn rất khoẻ nên tôi không hình dung ra được. Thật ra ngoài những câu thông thường hỏi thăm sức khoẻ, giữa tôi và ba không có gì để nói cả. Khoảng cánh giữa tôi và ba thật đã quá xa. Xét lại thì chúng tôi đã cách xa hơn 20 năm. Thời gian trôi qua quá mau nhất là bây giờ khi tôi bận bịu trông công việc và con cái.

Nhìn những cằn cỗi trên khuôn mặt của ông làm tôi bàng hoàng xúc động. Có lẻ đây là lần đầu tiên tôi nhìn rỏ nét mặt của ông tuy hình không được rỏ cho lắm. Mổi khi nghỉ đến ba, tôi chỉ nghỉ đến ông trong giai đoạn tôi có ông. Vì chuổi ngày bên ba quá hiếm hoi hoi nên tôi nhớ rất rỏ những kỷ niệm ấy. Lúc xa ba cũng là lúc tôi xa quê hương và cũng là lúc tôi xa những ngày ấu thơ tôi quý nhất. Vì mất cả ba thứ quang trọng nhất đối với tôi lúc mới lớn, tôi đã không chấp nhận nổi thử thách mới. Bây giờ tôi đã quen xứ người và không còn nhỏ nữa. Cuộc sống mới tôi đã chấp nhận. Tuổi thơ cũng đã qua tôi không hề hối tiếc. Nhưng khi nhìn ba, tôi thấy xót xa. Tôi muốn ôm được lấy ông và nói những lời tôi chưa bao giờ nói với ông: “Con rất thương ba.”

With a sleepless night and many hours of converting Flash to Quicktime movies, the motion pieces are now residing on YouTube. The process took much more time and effort then I had expected. Why am I making the transition?

Flash has become a legacy program and not supported on mobile devices, particularly on Apple products. I have been thinking of abandoning the entire motion section altogether, but then again I have invested tons of time in the pieces. Although I don’t do Flash motion graphic anymore, I still want to keep them for prosperity.

I only brought over the ones that I still have the original Flash files. The earlier pieces that I could no longer find the source are now gone.