My dearest Vương,

It’s hard to believe you’re turning three today. My little boy is growing too fast. I love hearing you developing your verbal skills each day. You have to keep up with your three older brothers. It’s a joy for me to watch you play, dance, and argue with your brothers. They can be rough sometimes, but they always loved you. You’re the baby of the family.

At three, you still have the loveliest smile on your face. You cling to your mom because you’re still on her breast. Let’s keep smiling forever, but let’s end breastfeeding this year. Yes, you can do it.

With your three older brothers’ activities, I haven’t spent too much time with you. I feel guilty about it. I can’t wait for you to pick up ice skating and rollerblading so you can join us. I am glad to see you trying out the scooters like Xuân. Now that your brothers have school, you and I can hang out together.

You still have a whole life ahead of you, son. Take your time, explore, and discover. Your mom, your brothers, and I are here for you and we will always be here for you. I wish you a happiest third birthday.

Love,
Dad

In less than a month, I switched up the design of this blog again. I still keep the typefaces: Loretta, designed by Abel Martins and Joana Correia and Captura Now, designed by Anita Jürgeleit. I got rid of the random Unsplash photos. They made the website fun, but I got tired of them quickly. They overpowered my words.

For the fifth iteration, I refocused on the typography.I increased the font size and made the layout wider. Nothing is groundbreaking, but lots of whitespace to breath with an imageless design. I hope this is the last iteration until 2022. With that being said, I always make changes this blog. It’s my personal playground where I get to experiment quite a bit. I am glad someone noticed:

I like how @visualgui handles this: he updates the fonts on his blog frequently … like once a month, I think?

I hope you like this new layout.

While waiting for my kids to take their ice skating lessons, I asked Eric who is the director at Fairfax Ice Arena who will be teaching Freestyle 2 for adults starting next Thursday. He checked his computer, but he was not sure if he would start the class with only three students. He needed a minimum of five students, but he doubted that there will be any more registrations since not too many adults take this level. He told me if I sign up, he would start the class.

I hesitated at first, but caved in. I handed him my credit card. Why not? I looked at the curriculum and I have been dappled with the ballet jump and the half lutz. I can do the one-foot spin and two arabesques, but need more practice. I don’t know what the jump sequence and dance step sequence are, but I am ready to take on the challenge. I wanted to see how far I can level up with ice skating.

Compared to rollerblading, ice skating is much safer. I injured three times from rollerblading, but none from ice skating. The skate parks with ramps and bowls are a bit dangerous, but thrilling. I don’t focus on techniques with rollerblading. I just wanted to ride the ramps. With ice skating, the techniques are more important. I tried to transfer what I have learned in ice skating to rollerblading, but I didn’t have much success. Transferring the other way was a bit easier. My kids preferred rollerblading more because they liked the excitement of skating down the ramps.

I am looking forward to taking Freestyle 2. Eric told me that the instructor might be Kim Nguyễn. I had seen her teaching private lessons. She is very young and talented. I liked my previous instructor, but I am ready for a change.

When a reader recommended that I should look into moving my sites from the terrible share hosting HostPapa to the cloud hosting DigitalOcean, I hesitated. Setting up the Droplets seemed to be overwhelming. Fortunately, DigitalOcean has excellent tutorials to guide me through the entire process.

The command line is still daunting to me, yet it is so awesome at the same time. I moved six static (somewhat dynamic) sites into one Droplet and this blog, which powered by WordPress into a separate Droplet. Setting up WordPress is a bit more complicated. Although DigitalOcean offers a one-click install for WordPress, I did the long way to have more control of the environment.

Here are the tutorials I used to setup my Droplets:

1. Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 20.04
2. How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 20.04 and Setting Up Virtual Hosts
3. How to Set Up SSH Keys on Ubuntu 20.04
4. How To Create a New Sudo-enabled User on Ubuntu 20.04
5. How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 20.04
6. How To Install WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04 with a LAMP Stack
7. How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04

How to Upgrade Ubuntu

Once SSH in, look for the number of updates can be applied immediately. If updates are available, shut off the Droplet power:

sudo poweroff

or

sudo shutdown -h now

Then take a snapshot of the Droplet through the control panel on DigitalOcean. Once the snapshot is taken, turn the power back on, SSH back in, and follow this tutorial: “How To Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.”

Here are the steps to update:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade

To check for a new Ubuntu release:

sudo do-release-upgrade

Remove unused packages (Don’t run this on the WordPress Droplet):

sudo apt autoremove

AutomaticSecurityUpdates

To automatically install security updates, the “unattended-upgrades” package was installed:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

Last month I migrated all of my sites off HostPapa and onto DigitalOcean. Since ilovengoclan.com is on a different account, I was not planning on moving it, but HostPapa kept trying to make me upgrade. I am not sure how it keeps reaching its CPU and Input/Output usages when iLoveNgocLan.com has been inactive for years. No one has written any new post and no one had made a comment for a long time. I had done all that I could to optimize the resources, but it was not enough.

HostPapa warned me that I have to resolve the issues by the end of the week or upgrade my plan from $9.99 to $23.99 a month. That’s almost 240% increase. My solution was to migrated to DigitalOcean as well. I no longer had the time and the resources to deal with WordPress anymore; therefore, I used SiteSucker to turn the entire site into static HTML files. For years, ilovengoclan.com has not been active. Keeping it in WordPress is just too much maintenance and time-consuming. I have thought of just either shutting it down completely or keep the legacy online. I settled on the latter. The site is now read only. It can no longer be updated or added comments.

Now I am completely off HostPapa. Both accounts (visualgui.com and ilovengoclan.com) had been paid to HostPapa until February of next year, but I rather take the loss than hanging in there. If you are hosting with HostPapa, you should consider getting out. My sites were fine with Lunarpages for years until HostPapa scooped them up. HostPapa is greedy as fuck. They all about forcing you to upgrade. Server technologies are cheaper now and they should offer more resources for our money, but they want to go the opposite direction so fuck them.

Kể từ hôm nay ilovengoclan.com sẽ không còn dùng WordPress nữa. WordPress là phần mềm đằng sau trang web này để những ai yêu mến Ngọc Lan có thể đăng bài viết và để lại comments.

Khoảng mười năm nay người tham gia trang web thật sự thì càng ngày càng vắng đi nhưng những spammers và hackers càng gia tăng. Vài tuần gần đây, nơi hosting provider cứ cảnh cáo là trang nhà dùng quá tải năng lực. Cho dù tôi đã dùng đủ mọi phương pháp để giảm năng lượng nhưng vẫn không đủ. Hôm nay họ cho biết đến cuối tuần mà không giải quyết xong, họ sẽ tắt đi trang nhà này. Muốn giữ lại thì phải nâng cấp hosting plan từ $9.99 một tháng đến $23.99 một tháng. Sau đó trang nhà có đứng vững hay không thì còn chưa biết. Tôi muốn duy trì trang ilovengoclan.com lâu dài nên đã quyết định rút ra khỏi WordPress.

Nếu như chúng ta không còn dùng WordPress nữa thì hackers và spammers cũng không thể tấn công trang nhà này nữa. Cho nên từ bây giờ trở đi những bài viết và những lời comments cũ vẫn giữ nguyên nhưng chúng ta không thể viết bài mới hoặc để lại những comment mới. Coi như chúng ta sẽ duy trì mãi những gì còn tồn tại nơi này. Tôi đi đến quyết định này vì trang web giờ đây rất yên lặng. Trang nhà không còn sinh hoạt sôi nổi như những năm đầu nữa. Nhưng nếu ai muốn đăng bài mới vẫn có thể gửi đến cho tôi.

Đồng thời rút ra khỏi WordPress, tôi cũng bỏ nơi hosting provider và đã đem trang nhà lên mây (cloud hosting). Hy vọng sẽ bớt chi phí mỗi tháng để duy trì trang này dài lâu. Tuy nhiên tôi vẫn giữ lại tất cả WordPress files và database. Nếu có bạn nào hâm mộ Ngọc Lan và có nhã ý tiếp quản trang nhà này xin liên lạc với tôi. Tôi sẽ trao lại hết những hồ sơ để bạn có thể tiếp tục.

Xin cám ơn tất cả các bạn luôn viếng thăm ilovengoclan.com gần 20 năm qua.

Cuối cùng cũng tuyển được người phụ tôi trong công việc. Tuy cô chỉ mới bắt đầu tuần này nhưng tôi quý trọng cách làm việc của cô. Khác hẳn với cậu trước, cô làm việc tỉ mỉ và thận trọng nên tôi rất an tâm khi giao phó công việc cho cô. Hơn nữa, cô học tập rất nhanh. Tuy làm việc với nhau nhưng tôi với cô chỉ liên lạc qua emails. Tôi thích cách cư xử chuyên nghiệp của cô, không chỉ riêng tôi mà luôn cả những đồng nghiệp.

Thú thật lúc đầu tôi không chọn cô ta là vì tôi nghĩ cô quá dư tiêu chuẩn (overqualified) cho công việc part-time này. Khi xem qua résumé, cô có bằng cao học. Hơn nữa cô giỏi Anh văn, chụp ảnh với tầm mắt nghệ thuật, và viết code rất khá. Trong phần phỏng vấn, cô chậm rãi trả lời từng câu hỏi. Cô luôn suy nghĩ trước khi trả lời và câu nào khó cô càng ngẫm nghĩ lâu hơn. Những người phỏng vấn đều thích cô. Tôi cũng rất mến cô nhưng tôi nghĩ công việc này không xứng với tài năng của cô.

Vì đây là công việc part-time nên cô không được quyền lợi nhiều. Tôi không dám hỏi về đời tư của cô. Chẳng hạn như cô có bảo hiểm cho sức khỏe hoặc cô có đủ tài chính để xoay xở cho đời sống hay không? Tuy không phải là chuyện của tôi nhưng tôi cảm thấy không công bình cho cô. Tôi sẽ cố gắng chuyển cô qua full-time.

Victoria Rushton, a talented type designer who I had the pleasure to work with on Vietnamese diacritics, has just released a typeface named Kadabra. She writes:

I inherited this typeface. My love, Dai Foldes, killed himself in April, and suddenly everything that was his became mine.

The release note is heartbreaking and beautiful. She goes on:

I don’t think this is his “legacy.” Everyone who knew either of us knows how much we loved each other, and that’s what matters. These are just vectors. He loved me more than anything, and this is just a font. He’s gone, but it’s here, I’m here, it’s mine now and I have to take it and try to keep going. Wish me luck.

This is the first type release note that puts me to tears. The scripted face is just stunning. I bought a license to use as drop caps in the near future.

Hôm qua sau giờ làm việc tôi chợt nhớ ngày Tết Trung Thu nên ghé Kim Phụng ở khu Eden mua hộp bánh thập cẩm. Khi về đến nhà đặt bánh lên bàn thờ cùng vài tách trà và vài cây nhang mời cha mẹ và bố vợ thưởng thức.

Tôi nhớ câu mẹ thường xuyên nhắc nhở, “Lúc sống cho ăn. Lúc chết khỏi cần cúng.” Lúc mẹ còn sống tôi vẫn mua về tặng mẹ trong dịp lễ cho có chút hương vị Việt Nam. Thật ra mua về thì mẹ chỉ ăn một miếng nhỏ thôi còn tôi thì ăn nhiều hơn. Giờ cũng thế, cúng rồi thì tôi cũng ăn thôi.

Ngoài trời mưa bão tầm tã. Tôi ngậm ngùi nhớ đến mẹ.

Klim Type Foundry has released a gorgeous, genderless serif family named Epicene. Kris Sowersby has written an in-depth essay on his research, thinking, and process went into Epicene. He writes:

Epicene is not a straight revival of any of [J.M.] Fleischmann or [J-F.] Rosart’s fonts. Rather I’ve reconciled details from across their body of work, integrating gestures and forms into a cohesive whole.

Epicene supports over 200 languages, and yet no Vietnamese. How disappointing? I was going to tweet about this, but I don’t want to be the Vietnamese guy who has written a book on Vietnamese Typography keep beating the drum on Vietnamese support. Since this is my blog, I can rant all I want.