Lần đầu nghe Thái Trinh trình bày “Nhé anh” (Nguyễn Hà) trong album Một thời đã xa do Đức Trí sản xuất, tôi đã chú ý đến tiếng hát của cô. Cô hát nhẹ nhàng và hồn nhiên. Giọng của cô như giọt sương trên lá sen. Tuy mong manh nhưng không hề tan vỡ. Hơn nữa tôi bị lôi cuốn bởi cách phát âm rõ chữ và êm dịu của cô.

Tôi muốn nghe cô hát trọn vẹn một album vậy mà mãi đến mấy hôm trước tôi mới tình cờ bắt gặp Trinh Acoustic, tuy cô đã phát hành album này vào năm 2020. Sau giờ làm việc mệt mỏi, tôi chạy vội ra xe để tránh cơn mưa ào ạt. Vào xe, mở Spotify lên thấy Trinh Acoustic. Mới đầu tôi nghĩ là album nhạc Trịnh nhưng khi nghe bài đầu tiên, “Khi giấc mơ về” (Đức Trí), tôi nhớ ra ngay giọng hát Thái Trinh. Tuy đây là bài hit của Phương Thanh, như Thái Trinh thổi vào làng gió dịu dàng với tiếng đàn dương cầm của Vũ Đặng Quốc Việt và dàn dây orchestra. Với “Phố xa” (Lê Quốc Thắng), cô được Dũng Đà Lạt đệm guitar mộc mạc và gần gũi.

Tuy ngoài trời mưa to và kẹt xe, tôi không lo ngại. Chỉ thả lỏng tâm hồn để thưởng thức những phút giây thư giãn và trở lại những ký ức thơ mộng với “Một ngày mùa đông” (Bảo Trấn), “Nếu như” (Đức Trí), “Để dành” (Nguyễn Xinh Xô), và “Ngồi hát ca bềnh bồng” (Quốc Bảo).

I made an arrangement with Mr. Điệp Trần to service our HVAC unit after he fixed the outside unit last November. Instead he inspected the units and pumped about 2 pounds of refrigerants. He charged me $235.

Our Trane systems are 16 years old. The inside unit is getting moldy. He recommends replacing both units and add UV lights to prevent mold. We’re looking at $15,000. Damn!

I am not sure if we should go ahead and drop $15,000 for a peace of mind or just ride the current systems until they die out. My wife and I still have some time to think about it.

I love typography. I prefer licensing new fonts over buying new clothes. I hardly wear new clothes, but I dress my websites in crisp, new typefaces whenever I can.

Yesterday, I typeset my personal blog in Job Clarendon, designed by Bethany Heck and David Jonathan Ross. It was the first time I used a slab-serif typeface for text. Since Job Clarendon Text, which David sent out a couple of weeks ago to his Font of the Month Club members, has a slightly lighter weight, I increased the font size for readability. Then again, I’ve always wanted the text on my blog to be a bit larger by default.

For the blog titles and headings, I used the variable display version of Job Clarendon. To keep the typographic system in the same family, I used Input Mono, also designed by David, for the dates and code samples. I hope you will enjoy reading my old blog in the new text face.

The main text for my blog was set in Euchre, designed by Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh. I would like to use Euchre for my professional portfolio site, but I didn’t want to use the same typeface on both places. After switching my blog to Job Clarendon, I could use Euchre for my portfolio. Since Euchre is a sans-serif text face, I needed a serif display face to complement it. I ended up with Aneto, designed by Veronika Burian, José Scaglione, Azza Alameddine, and Roxane Gataud.

To showcase my UX design, I was searching for a beautiful, readable sans-serif text face and Euchre fulfilled my needs. I could have used Inter, but I wanted to stand out, not in. I am not knocking Inter. In fact, I give Rasmus Andersson tons of props for making Inter ubiquitous in the UX community, higher education, corporation, and everywhere else. As of this writing, Inter has been served 6.14 billion times through Google Fonts API just over the last week. Inter is featured in more than 1.20 million websites.

Let’s keep it real. Inter and many open source fonts are popular because they are free. It is insane to me that a website project could cost between $100,000 – $200,000, but we can’t license a commercial font family. As a designer, I support small, independent type foundries. If I came across a typeface that I liked, I would license it without any hesitation if it had Vietnamese diacritics. My only requirement for choosing any typeface is the support for Vietnamese. Check out my growing list of typefaces that can set in English, Vietnamese, and many more languages.

Kris Sowersby writes about American Grotesk:

It is fantasy to hope that a typeface can undo the damage of an era that introduced the concept of fake news. One can only hope that truth centres itself over time, and isn’t destroyed in the maelstrom of the present. American Grotesk can’t turn back the post-truth tsunami, but can at least stand for the same honest values as Franklin Gothic.

American Grotesk supports over 200 languages, but not Vietnamese.

Bích Liên tưởng nhớ nhạc sĩ Cung Tiến (1938–2022) với 11 ca khúc của ông. Thú thật tôi nghe nhạc của ông rất ít. Dĩ nhiên tôi quen ca khúc “Hương xưa” nổi tiếng của ông. “Đôi bờ” nghe cũng quen. “Kẻ ở” dường như đã nghe qua. “Lệ đá xanh” (thơ của Thanh Tâm Tuyền) với những câu quen thuộc “Đôi khi anh muốn tin, đôi khi anh muốn tin / Ôi những người, ôi những người khóc lẻ loi một mình”. 7 ca khúc còn lại dường như đây là lần đầu tôi được thưởng thức qua giọng hát cao vợi của Bích Liên cùng với tiếng đàn dương cầm và phần orchestra tuyệt diệu, đặc biệt là ca khúc “Đêm”. Cảm ơn chị Bích Liên đã thu âm một sản phẩm giá trị để tưởng niệm người nhạc sĩ tài hoa của làng âm nhạc Việt Nam.

Berkeley didn’t go crazy like GM. Its wordmark has been updated for legibility while maintaining its connection to the Goudy typeface. For its typography, however, Berkeley opted for Inter and Source Serif, two open source typefaces. They should have licensed some commercial typefaces. Here’s a great list.

The unveil of George Mason new logo was bad, the rollout gets worse. Its typography is all over the place.

Acumin Pro and Kandal are for printing. Figtree, Open Sans, and Noto Serif are for the web. Poppins and Noto Serif are for Canva. Franklin Gothic and Cambria are for Microsoft Office. Why do we need two sans-serif faces (Figtree and Open Sans) for the web? Why not just two typefaces (Acumin Pro and Kandal) across all platforms?

What a mess.

Nghe Hồ Tiến Đạt lần đầu và lần thứ hai không ấn tượng lắm cho dù được Quốc Bảo đệm guitar. Nghe thêm vài lần thì khá hơn. Nhạc sĩ hát như vậy là hay rồi. Thú thật khi nghe anh hát “Xin lỗi” không ngỡ đó là ca khúc của anh. Bài này cũng khá nhiều ca sĩ nổi tiếng đã thu âm. Lợi thế của anh là tự mình bộc lộ những cảm xúc chính mình viết ra. Như “Em ở đâu” anh hát như được tâm sự: “Em chưa muốn về / Em đang muốn quên / Những lắng lo ngày nào những nỗi đau ngày mai”. Anh trình bài ca khúc của Quốc Bảo, như “Tình khúc” và “Em về tóc xanh” cũng tốt. Một album cộng tác giữa hai nhạc sĩ ưng ý.

A few weeks ago, I asked my wife if she loves me. I was half joking, half curious. She didn’t give me a straight answer; therefore, I asked her if she trusted me. She said “yes” without any hesitation. I can live with that.

If our marriage depended on love, we might not lasted to this day. Love is like a faucet. It turns off and on. Once the romantic period was over and reality kicked in, love could turn into hate.

Fortunately, our relationship has built on trust. We trust each other enough to stay together. Trust is the foundation of our marriage. If our trust was broken, everything we had built together would have collapsed. As a result, we guard our trust with our lives.

We never had any financial conflicts between us because we trusted each other. We never had any infidelity issues because we trusted each other (“ain’t nobody humpin’ around”). Trust not only keeps us tight, but also frees us up so we can be independents. We never had to worry if one of us was up to no good. We trust that everything we do, we do it for our family, our kids, and our relationship.

Trust helped us weathered through many storms in our marriage. Even when we faced serious issues, trust prevented us from walking out of our relationship. If we could make it through the night, we trusted that we would see a brighter day.

This past year has been fantastic for us. We made peace—not war. Of course we still argued, but we made up quickly. We still stressed the hell out, but not because of our relationship. We got out more and socialized more. Meeting and getting to know other people made us appreciate each other. We gave each other space to do our own things once in a while. I could go skiing by myself or out drinking with my friends while she held down the parenting floor. In contrast, she could spend time with her family while I held down the parenting department.

This has been the best year of our marriage so far. It took a decade and a half for us to finally figured out each other. I hope we will do even better many years to come.

I love you and totally trust you. Of course, I always know you love me too. Happy sixteenth anniversary!

In my early days in American, early 90s, I listened to “I’d Love You to Want Me” many times from Vietnamese singers. I didn’t even listen to Lobo, the original songwriter and singer. My English was pretty bad, but I just loved lines, “The obligation that you made / For the title that they gave.” I didn’t know what “obligation” mean, but I just liked the sound of it. Here I am covering the tune myself.