Jeffrey’s Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards is unbelievably valuable. He literally answered all my confusion questions throughout the book. He explained clearly why we use css a certain way or the benefits of designing one way over another. I am so glad I picked up this book. I’ve learned so much from it even though I have been designing sites with xhtml and css. I really like Zeldman’s writing style. He kept it informational as well as pleasurable to read. This is by far one of the best web design book I have read. It’s just amazing how much I’ve learned from this book. I highly recommend this book without a doubt.

VisualGUI is an innovative design studio that combines creativity and simplicity to produce an enjoyable web experience.

What is VisualGUI? There is a double meaning behind it. Obviously, GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. A good interface design is not only intuitive and usable but visually attractive as well. The second meaning is about me. I am a “visual guy” and this site displays a collection of my visual designs, thoughts, and inspirations.

VisualGUI was formerly known as D3 (Donny Digital Design) Studio. D3 was started in 1999 for a class project (Electronic Visual Communication) at La Salle University. Fortunately, the success of the site opened the door to freelance projects. As a result, D3 evolved into the birth of a design studio because of the continuous growing body of work that resolves around it. The purpose of D3studio was to showcase my work only; however, I decided to include my journal in January 2003. The main goal of adding my journal is to release myself and improve my writing skills. It also serves as a stress management. In April 2003, I changed the name to VisualGUI to reflects both my professional works and my personal goals. As a result, VisualGUI is a combination of a portfolio showcase and a personal weblog. I could have created two separate sites but maintaining is a big issue. Keeping one site up to date is hard enough. On top of that, I am currently a full time web designer at Vassar College which takes up a big chunk of my time but I enjoy working with all the wonderful people and talented designers.

I hope you find this site enjoyable. If you are a potential client and would like to check out my works, please ignore my personal weblog. Although I have nothing to hide, my weblog is very personal and it contains all kinds of explicit contents that might give you a wrong impression about my design. However, if you don’t mind my personal thoughts, I encourage you to explore and enjoy both of my worlds. You might figure out why I design the way I do based on my personality.

Michael Lebowitz, class of 94 Vassar graduate, gave a great presentation on Interactive Design for the Film Industry. He is the co-founder of Big Spaceship, a design company that specializes in graphic, interactive and web design for film sites. Big Spaceship portfolio includes: Gangs of New York, Identity, and Down With Love. I don’t know if I should reveal this but these guys are paid in full. The budget for Gangs of New York site was 150 grants. They also developed Battle for the Sudan, an award winning multi-user game powered by Unity Socket Server. Mike is an awesome guy who willing to push the envelope in digital media design. Make sure to check out his company’s upcoming project called Underworld. I saw the teaser and it looks hot. Thank Mike for the fantastic lecture and thank Rain for the great sushi dinner. It was a wonderful evening.

If you watch Memento on DVD, you would notice the fascinating motion graphic piece in the interface where a flipping Polaroid photograph fades away instead of develops. I was not exactly sure what happened in the movie because I was drawn into the visual design and the motion graphic throughout the film. Especially the stunning technique in the beginning where the photograph fades to white than a bullet zips out a man’s head and back into the chamber of the gun. I might have to watch the movie again to get a better understanding of the story.

Wouldn’t be neat if you can be like Leonard (Guy Pearce)? You don’t have short-term memory but you can control your memories? You don’t need to remember all the bad ones and just capture and archive all the good and memorable ones. It’ll be cool because you would do things that you would not normally do. For instance, you wouldn’t afraid of embarrassing yourself in a crowd because you wouldn’t remember that embarrassing moment anyway. Overall, Memento is a great film from clever storyline to fascinating motion graphics. As Hillman Curtis describes it, “[Memento] will give you a generous dose of adrenaline, as you take the ride on a psychological roller coaster.”

Registered visualgui.com through GoDaddy. This is the beginning of a long blogging journey.

My homie called me up last night asking me to come to his grandma’s memory event. This is an annual event which family and friends get together to pay respect to grandma. Although, my friend is Cambodian, we have very similar traditions. The monks will be there to pray pray for his grandma’s soul. Of course, there will be tons of food afterward. Cambodian food is hot and banging. Yep, I am coming home.

Poor Tay

She just came back from her Asia travel and caught a flu. Fortunately, not that deadly flu as we have seen on TV; however, the US security gave her a hard time. They kept her in a separate room for a week until they found out for sure she did not catch that deadly stuff.

Fuck This Host

D3studio went down for more than 12 hours. This host company fucking blows. I tried to switch to another hosting company once but they did not transfer my DNS over. It looks like I am going to have to kiss D3studio.net goodbye and come up with a new name. This shit is fucked up.

A Letter From Ngoc Lan’s Fan

This kind of letter really makes my day and how can I say no to this proposal. Trong, I hope you don’t mind me posting your letter.

Hi anh Donny,

Xin mao muoi viet email nay den cho anh. Toi thay anh co mot trang trong website cua hang anh, danh cho co ca si tai cao bac menh, Ngoc Lan. Toi la mot trong mot so cac ban ai mo co ca si nay rat nhieu. Chung toi thay hien nay khong co mot cai website nao dedicated cho co ay ca, va evidently you are a fan of hers (I’m switching to English here because it suddenly dawned on me that you wouldn’t understand Vietnamese, sorry if I’m mistaken!). Would you be generous with your time and create a website for Miss Ngoc Lan? Of course I would pay for the domain name and I would pay what I could afford, but I’m really asking, no begging, you to help us out. Your site shows your truly amazing expertise and talent (not to mention very good taste!).

Would you be able to help us out with this website for nguoi dep Ngoc Lan? If there’s a charge, please let me know what the charge is and I’ll try to manage within my limited capabilities. But regardless of the answer, would you please reply to my email? I truly appreciate your considering my request. I do not seek anything other than a place for her thousands of fans to come to. She’s been gone over two years now, the wound is still so fresh, the loss so real…

Thank you for your time,

Trong

Sister Helen Prejean, best known as the author of Dead Man Walking, gave an inspiring lecture on the death penalty and the injustice system. Minorities and the poors are more on deathrow than the whites and the riches. She covered many incidents during her journey and the interesting one she touched on was president George Bush. He executed a woman while he was a Texas governor. According to Sr. Prejean, the woman had picked up the bible and began to changed her life. She also taught other prisoners the words of God. She could have been sentenced to life but Bush decided to execute her. The woman’s life and death were in his own hands. He had the power to give her half of a chance but he did not.

Watch the film Dead Man Walking, if you haven’t seen it; however, her lecture was even better then the film. The way she described her experience and her interaction with the prisoner was phenomenon. She also expressed how hard it was facing the conflict between the victim and the accused murderer family members. At the end, she encouraged Vassar students to get a good education and start taking actions against death penalty.

The screening was filled with professors, administrators, and students. They actually ran out of seats. Jose Padron, the director, traveled all the way from Cuba to share his film. This is his first time to the US and he thanked Vassar for it. There are a few directors from Cuba that were suppose to come to the US for a film festival; however, they could not get here because of the war. Isn’t Vassar powerful or what?

Leo Brouwer is one of the world greatest guitarist. I knew his music before but didn’t know it was his until I saw the documentary today. I was totally fascinated with the way he plays his guitar. It sounded like there were forty fingers playing instead of ten. Although the documentary was only 70 minutes long, it took Jose Padron 22 years to complete it due to political and financial issues. The film deals with Cuba social issues so it was not pleasing the officials. He wanted to have the complete control over the artistic part so he was funding the movie on his own. He shot the entire film with a 35mm camera which is a pain. Well, all his hard works paid off because the documentary was fantastic and I enjoyed it very much. Congratulations! Jose. Oh by the way, he is a very nice individual.

Film Presentation

Jose Padron, one of Cuba’s most important contemporary filmmakers, will show and discuss Leo Brouwer, a documentary about the world-renowned Cuban musician, composer, and conductor. Of course, I am going to be there. Man, I love working at Vassar. They always have all kinds of great events, lectures, and resources. This is the type of college that I would definitely send my kids to. The tuition is kind of high but it worth every penny of it. If you’re looking for a “real” intellectual institution, you might want to consider Vassar. Come and visit us, I will guarantee that you’ll fall in love with the campus. I remembered my first interview. My first impression was the beautiful campus. I am not kidding you. If you don’t believe me, take a sneak preview at the slideshow presentation. Please keep this on the down low. The presentation is still in its development stage and only you can get a sneak peak at it because I love you. As a visitor to D3studio.net, you are very special to me. Alright, let me stop kissing your ass. Go ahead, launch the presentation. Caution! The movie is 11.9 mb. Dial-up users, you might want to launch a smaller version (2.8 mb) instead. Enjoy!

Can’t believe I have been blogging almost everyday for the past three months. The whole purpose is to improve my writing and I am enjoying it very much. I know my English is really bad but hey, I am working on it. Actually, I was a good writer when I was a kid studying in Vietnam. Ironically, I hated writing when I was in fourth grade. I always bribed the girl next door with ice cream to write my papers. She was not a good writer because I always got C grades on the papers she wrote. My dad caught me one time and beat the hell out of me. After that she was not allowed to come over to my house anymore. I was forced to write on my own and it came to my surprise that I got a B on the first essay I wrote. The teacher actually liked my writing. I began to discovered my talent after that.

In fifth grade, I was selected to represent my class in a writing competition between all the fifth grade classes at my school. Although, my essay was good but I came in second place because the judges said my writing was too violent. The topic was “describe something you did that you regretted.” So I described how I disobeyed one of my teacher and he slapped the taste out of my mouth. I might be exaggerated a little bit but teachers did hit students. Thank God they don’t do it anymore. If I did not remembered a poem or failed an exam, the teacher would slap my hands with his/her wooden ruler. My hands were swollen everyday. After getting hit so much, I didn’t feel pain anymore. Of course, the judges were the teachers so they didn’t admit that they were wrong that was the reason that they gave me second place.

After fifth grade, I left Viet Nam to start a brand new life. I had to learned everything over again. Of course, as a hard headed as I am, I didn’t want to learn. Time drifted away, I lost my Vietnamese and my English didn’t seem go anywhere. My whole life is such a waste so far.

The screening for Feminist Pornography was packed and of course most of the audiences were females. I was the only employee there and the rest was students. Obviously the porn industry is dominated by males but this documentary focused on females who produced and controlled their films from feminist perspectives. I might be ignorance about pornography but the film did not inspired me at all. It’s true that all porns are the same. They all do the same damn thing. I do want to see people takes pornography into a higher level. I don’t mind women take control by being aggressive and erotic but fuck my ass with a dildo? Hell fucking no. I can’t even watch shit like that. It’s against nature. In addition, how can a girl gets aroused when she has a dildo strapped on and another girl sucks her dildo? Makes no sense to me. The dildo should get aroused not the person who wears it. Maybe it’s a feminist thang.

Unbelievable!

It’s still snowing in Poughkeepsie. Tonight, Vassar is showing a documentary by Becky Golberg called Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography. Screening to be followed by a Questions and Answers session with the director and the director of photography. Interesting! Hope it won’t be cancelled due to the weather.