Trong bài viết cho The New York Times, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai đề cập tới quyển tiểu thuyết Dumb Luck của Vũ Trọng Phụng. Tháng trước đứa cháu gái qua Việt Nam chơi và đã mua quyển sách này và cháu cho tôi mượn đọc. Sau khi đọc xong lời giới thiệu khá dài của Peter Zinoman, trong đó ông có nói về cách dịch sách sang tiếng Anh, tôi lại nghĩ tại sao phải đọc sách dịch mà không đọc sách nguyên bản của tác giả? Tôi tìm được quyển sách tiếng Việt trong thư viện ở khu tôi ở nên mượn ngay về đọc.

Phải công nhận rằng Vũ Trọng Phụng là một nhà văn đi trước thời của ông. Số Đỏ phát hành 87 năm trước mà nội dung chẳng những không bị cũ kỹ mà vẫn còn hấp dẫn. Giữa văn minh và lạc hậu, giữa giàu và nghèo, giữa trí thức và hạ lưu, giữa tình nghĩa và tình dục (giữa tuổi dậy thì và lúc sắp về già), ông viết rất thoáng. Chẳng hạn như đoạn ông viết về nhân vật cụ Hồng

Xưa kia, cụ là một ông Phán. Sau khi hưu trí, nghiệm rằng cụ đã giúp nước phò vua trong 30 năm tròn. Nhà nước bèn ân thưởng cho cụ cái Hồng lô hiếu khanh. Cụ đã là một người dân bảo hộ trung thành, một viên chức gương mẫu, một người cha nhân từ vì sợ sệt và vâng lời con cái như một người nô lệ. Cụ lại còn nghiện thuốc phiện nữa, điều ấy mới thật tỏ ra cụ hoàn toàn là người Việt Nam.

Tôi thưởng thức tác phẩm này của ông và sẽ tìm đọc những tác phẩm khác.

Over at donnytruong.com, I added a big typographic footer to give people a quick way to contact me. They don’t have to hunt around for me email anymore.

Over at simplexpression, I changed the logo once again. The wordmark is set in all lowercase to give it a simple style. I chose Pomfret, designed by David Jonathan Ross, because of its elegance. I like the simple, elegant, expression.

Because my wife has been so busy, she hasn’t had the time to devote to her passion project. We haven’t sold anything in a while. I want to see if I can use other platforms like Facebook Marketplace or Amazon to make some sales. I need get her inventory together before I kick off the experimentation. I did OK with selling used skis and snowboards on Marketplace. I want to see if I can also sell other things.

Just upgraded Scalia Law website to MODX 3.0.4. The upgrade process in MODX Cloud is simply a click of a button. This could be the last MODX upgrade. The new site is under development in a new CMS. It is expected to launch in March, 2024. We’ll see.

I wen to back Ravensworth Service for an inspection. The inspection took 10 minutes. My brake light burned out. The inspection cost $20 and the brake-light replacement cost $15. It was a fair deal.

I used Ravensworth Service years ago. It looks like the shop has gone through several management. From last year to this year, there are only two older Vietnamese technicians. They both are very nice, but their shop isn’t as busy as it used to be. I actually prefer that over Aalan’s Service. I was thrown off by Khang’s cockiness; therefore, I am going back to Ravensworth from now on.

Neither shop wanted to fix the AC issue. Driving in the heat without AC has been excruciating. Pumping refrigerant is no longer fixing the issue. There has a be a leak somewhere. I am not sure what to do with it. I am just going to drive it in the winter and decide next year what I want to do with it. Since I am now commuting using the Mason’s shuttle, I don’t need a car anymore. We still have the 2018 Sienna as our main vehicle for traveling.

I don’t want to spend any more money on car. It is such a waste, especially with all the maintenances and fixes. I don’t want to have to rely on a car anymore.

I have been using DigitalOcean Droplets to host my sites for over two years now. Setting up the cloud servers was a great hands-on learning experience. The Droplets has been stable and solid. The only downside is that I have to do the update and upgrade every few months. I am fine doing it for now, but what will happen when I am gone?

I just read blog post from Matt Mullenweg on “Preserving Harvard’s Blogging History” and Pressable seems like an ideal solution for WordPress in the long run. Pressable will take care of all the maintenance to make sure my WordPress site up-to-date. The prices are reasonable; therefore, I might consider moving my blog to it in the future. For now, I just continue to do the updates myself to keep myself up-to-date on the backend technologies.

As Director of Design and Web Services at Antonin Scalia Law School, I am doing more of directing than doing myself. I actually enjoying it. Our leader outsources all designs and developments to outside vendors; therefore, my job is to make sure that they meet our requirements. From design, accessibility, accessibility, typography, front-end development, to back-end administrations, I know exactly what we need each step of the way. I have been asking lots of questions and making lots of requests. They might get annoyed with me, but I am just doing my job.

It feels nice to be on the directing side instead of the doing side. I just need to know what the fuck I am talking about.

Do web designers and developers still use Sass? I am still using it everyday, especially for nesting. That might change once CSS Nesting gets more support in the browsers.

I just purchase Dan Cederholm’s Twenty Bits I Learned About Making Fonts and Twenty Bits I Learned About Making Websites (use FALLBOOKS promo code for 30% off). I downloaded the epub files to my MacBook Pro and imported them to Apple’s Books.

I preferred reading e-books on the phone; therefore, I opened up the Books app on my iPhone. I waited and waited, but the new books didn’t synced on my iPhone. I checked my iCloud to make sure the Books app was activated on both devices. Still, no new books showed up on my iPhone. I googled a bit and still couldn’t find the solution. I ran into this issue in the past and it frustrated me that Apple couldn’t just make this integration works.

The hack I came up was emailing myself the epub files. I opened up the message I sent to myself on Apple Mail, tabbed to download the files, tabbed it again to active the share screen, and select Books. That was it. I shouldn’t have to do this, but that was how I solved the issues. Now I can read the ebooks on my iPhone.

Toni Morrison:

I only have 26 letters of the alphabet;
I don’t have color or music. I must use my craft
to make the reader see the colors and hear the sounds.

Word!

I have been sick since last Wednesday. First was the sore throat. My throat was burning so much that I couldn’t sleep. Then the cough. I tried to beat the sickness by being active. On Thursday, I went ice skating because the skate park was wet. My skills are rusted. I tried to learn the waltz jump, the toe loop, and the salchow. I could only get the first two down.

I went back to the ice rink again yesterday. I ended up trying to learn ski carving on ice skates. I think I figured out how to transfer my weight to my outside ski when I carve. Of course, I have to try it out on the mountains to see if I can get it down. My goal for this winter is to nail ski carving.

Yesterday evening, I went to the skatepark myself. The weather was beautiful. I had on a light jacket to block the winds. I didn’t cough at all when I breathed in the fresh air.

Unfortunately, today my sickness is getting worse. I am coughing more. My whole body is a little sore. I am also having a headache. I haven’t done anything but lay in bed all day trying to catch some sleep with cải lương music. For some reason, I always return to cải lương when I feel sick.

I also miss my mother terribly when I am sick. She was always taking care of me when I was sick. I hate being sick. I can’t wait for it to go away. I hope that when the winter comes I won’t be getting sick. I have skiing and snowboarding to do.

I can’t hardly wait to hit the mountain this coming winter. I have been watching tons of snowboarding tutorials. My goal for the season is to focus on my posture, turns, and carving. There are quite a bit of YouTube videos on snowboarding. My favorite snowboard instructor including Malcolm Moore, Nev Lapwood, Tommie Bennett, Johnathan Buckhouse, Doug Fagel, and Kevin Pearce

To practice my turns I will tune into Tommie Bennett’s “Proper Snowboard Heelside and Toeside Turn Technique 101.” I like his analogy for squashing the bug on toeside turns and opening the door on heelside turns. In “Five Reasons Your Carving Sucks,” Jonathan Buckhouse shares the mistakes that beginners make and how to correct them. Nev Lapwood has some great tips on “How to Carve on a Snowboard” and “How to Keep Your Weight Over the Top of Your Board.” Finally, I really love Doug Fagel’s “Snowboard Tips: Steeps Riding.” I can’t wait to try it on the double-black diamond terrains.

I also want to learn carving on skis, but I haven’t found any tutorial that clicks. Skiing videos are harder to find than snowboarding. I need to dig some more. Can’t wait for the snow storms to hit. Please Mother Nature, make snow this year. You haven’t given us much in the past two years.