I read anything written by Mary Norris—even all things Greek, which are foreign to me. With her passion for language, culture, and history, Norris takes readers on a journey to discover the ancient and modern beauties of Greek. She is hilarious, curious, and adventurous. Her writing brings everything about Greek and Greece to life. On the Amazons, Norris writes:

The Amazons were a mythical tribe of warrior of women who scheduled conjugal visits with the opposite sex once a year, strictly for procreation. The excelled at archery, and legend has it that a girl’s right breast was cauterized so that she would grow up better equipped to shoot arrows. (The name Amazon is supposedly from a-mazos, without a breast.) In our time the word Amazon is more likely to be associated with the empire of Jeff Bezos and online shopping for books and for the bows and arrows—and for bras and prostheses, for that matter. The behemoth company was named for the Amazon River, which was named for the Amazons.

What I loved the most about this book is how Greek plays a part in the English language. An enlightening read in the pandemic.

Năm ngoái cũng vào thời điểm này, chúng tôi dự một buổi tiệc sinh nhật của người anh cột chèo (chồng của chị vợ tôi). Lần đó chị đãi t-bone steak. Tuy ngại bị gout nhưng thấy mọi người ăn ngon miệng nên cũng xin một miếng.

Sau khi ăn xong thì bà vú (ngày xưa) của người anh cột chèo bảo giữ lại những cục xương để cô nấu súp. Ngày hôm sau thấy một nồi súp xương bò cùng rau quả và khoai tây. Tôi múc một chén nhỏ ăn thử. Nước súp ngọt tuyệt. Tôi làm thêm hai chén nữa.

Tôi nghĩ không biết chất ngọt là trong t-bone hay nước bọt của những người đã thưởng thức cái miếng steak. Tôi không biết cô ấy nhiều nên không dám hỏi đùa. Sợ cô giận. Đôi khi có những thứ không nên biết. Chỉ cần tin tưởng và cảm tạ người nấu cho ta những món ăn tuyệt vời.

Tôi sẽ nhớ hoài món súp đó của cô. Không ngờ chỉ những miếng xương vứt đi có thể trở thành một nồi súp ngon ngọt. Cách tận dụng thức ăn rất hay. Tôi kính phục cô.

I am happy to see the launch of “Mapping Corruption: The Interactive Exhibit.” I hope the information will shed some light on our current corrupting government. Let’s change that in November. Whether by ballot or mail, make sure to cast your vote in this extremely important general election.

I had the pleasure of working with Grilli Type to review their typefaces for Vietnamese support. I can’t wait to see Vietnamese language added to GT America, GT Pressura, and GT Sectra. I also worked with Signal Type on their Ballinger family. That’s a fine one as well.

What’s next? I started working on a website for a writer this week. She is releasing her third novel and needed a fresh website to promote it. The book won’t come out until November, but the website will be launched in the next few months.

It is unusual to have projects lining up at this time, but they keep my mind off the news, the pathological narcissist, and the coronavirus. I stopped drinking and no longer feeling depressed. I am doing my best to cope with this crisis. It hasn’t been easy, but I have to adapt. I am glad to have some resilience in me. I hope you are doing well too. Just hanging in there. Social distance is working. Stay home, stay safe, and stay informed.

Joining the CSS Naked Day 2020, I am removing my CSS to reveal the bare-bones HTML of this site. Without the CSS makeups, the site looks plain, but still works well. It also makes me appreciate the power of CSS. I didn’t realize that my SVG logo has no width or height in HTML. As a result, the default logo takes up the entire browser width. I fixed it. Other than the logo, the blog is all text. I hope you enjoy it. This is as naked as I get online.

Since becoming president, Trump has brought his brand of corruption to every federal government agency and it is hard for us to keep track of it all. In the cover story of the March/April 2020 issue of The American Prospect, Jim Lardner unlocks extensive dossiers of the activities happening inside 15 federal departments.

Last week, the magazine contracted me to create an online version of the story. After discussing with its creative director who was my advisor for my final thesis on Vietnamese Typography, I developed an interactive page based on a map illustrated by Peter and Maria Hoey. My initial impression was that I might have to create an image map, which I used to despise and hadn’t have to create one in years. Thankfully, I was able to export the illustration into an SVG, which allowed me access individual shapes of the building to create links and hover state. When users hover each department, the building moves a bit and turns dark. Another requirement was to have the dollar signs flying across the map to show corruptions.

The project turned out well. The illustration is beautiful and the dossiers are informative. I invite you to check out “Mapping Corruption: The Interactive Exhibit.”

I am distancing from both the coronavirus and the narcissismvirus. The former spreads through contacts; the latter spreads through lies; and both could be deadly. I feel my friends’ outrage about the daily briefings of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and my advice to them is don’t watch. Don’t let the narcissimvirus get to you.

With the threat to his presidency and power, the narcissimvirus is ruthless. He entertained the idea of reopening the economy when American lives are still in jeopardy. His die-hard followers took up his words for it. They were willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to prevent the economy from crashing. He considered himself doing “a very good job” if only 200,000 people die. Does it sound like a cult? Remember Jim Jones’s followers lining up to drink poisonous Kool-Aid? While Jones killed over 900 of his followers, the narcissimvirus could cost hundreds of thousands of human lives and he won’t take any responsibility at all.

We know he won’t take any responsibility because he has been blaming everyone else but himself for the American crisis under his watch. The coronavirus was not preventable, but it wouldn’t have blown into a catastrophe if someone else led the country. Let’s face it. Not only he is incompetent, but he is also too afraid to take action in this pandemic.

Quyển tiểu thuyết ngắn với những câu chuyện khó hiểu. Mở đầu người kể chuyện là một thanh niên ở nước ngoài về Việt Nam thăm người cha đang bệnh nặng. Qua chương hai, người kể chuyện đổi sang người cha. Ông tường thuật lại quá khứ và những mối tình của mình. Chương ba trở lại người con rồi chuyển sang chuyện truyện cổ tích Lạc Long Quân và Âu Cơ rồi chuyển sang lịch sử chữ Nôm. Tôi theo không kịp nên đã bị tẩu hỏa nhập ma từ đó nhưng vẫn cố gắng đọc cho xong. Tôi không rõ cách dẫn truyện của tác giả và càng không hiểu ông muốn đạt mục đích gì. Xin đầu hàng. Chắc văn chương của tôi vẫn quá kém nên không hấp thụ hết.

Tuy nhiên, tôi rất thích đoạn tác giả viết về chữ Nôm ở trang 121-122. Xin được chép lại nguyên văn Vĩnh Quyền viết:

Nhưng biểu thị vĩ đại lớn nhất của chữ Nôm là tinh thần Việt, là hạo khí độc lập dân tộc. Từ sau năm 939, khi người Việt thoát ách đô hộ giặc Tàu, chữ Nôm được tôn vinh. Đến thế kỷ 13 đã có dòng văn học chữ Nôm. Và Tây Sơn là triều đại thể hiện đỉnh cao ý thức độc lập văn tự. Trong hai mươi bốn năm cầm quyền, toàn bộ văn kiện dưới triều đại này được soạn thảo và ban hành bằng chữ Nôm.

Nỗi lo tiêu vong văn tự riêng có của dân tộc là có thực. Thứ chữ được cha ông sử dụng gần một nghìn năm, nếu chỉ tính từ 939 đến năm 1920 khi chính quyền thực dân Pháp lệnh buộc dùng chữ quốc ngữ thay thế cho chữ Hán và chữ Nôm vốn là phương tiện ghi chép, truyền tải một khối lượng khổng lồ tư liệu lịch sử, văn học và tri thức của ông cha trên nhiều lĩnh vực. Có thể nói, việc loại chữ Nôm khỏi đời sống là một đứt gãy trong lộ trình truyền đạt liên tục văn hoá Việt. Và tổn thất do việc này gây ra dường như không thấy rõ, bởi những tiện lợi của chữ quốc ngữ che khuất. Nhưng về lâu dài và từ góc nhìn bảo tồn di sản ngôn ngữ thì tổn thất đó là nghiêm trọng. Một thứ văn tự phát triển trên đôi cánh hạo khí độc lập, tồn tại nghìn năm bỗng chốc biến mất, chẳng phải là thảm họa văn hoá của một dân tộc? Con cháu muôn đời sau không đọc được chữ, không đọc được sách của tiền nhân viết ra trong nghìn năm chẳng phải là điều khủng khiếp? Thực tế cho thấy chúng ta chỉ có thể dịch một phần nào rất nhỏ từ gia tài chữ Nôm. Trong khi đó, Triều Tiên và Nhật Bản cũng vận dụng chữ Hán để sáng tạo chữ riêng của mình, nhưng họ đã không phải chịu thất đứt gãy đường văn tự như chúng ta.

Lâm Huyền Vi viết:

Donny đọc bài này chưa? Mình hoàn toàn đồng ý với tác giả bài viết. Có nhiều bản hòa âm cho các bài hát của chị Ngọc Lan dở quá. Không biết có ai đó có thể viết lại hòa âm cho các bài đó không? Tiếc quá! Giọng hát của chị thật là hay, nhưng hòa âm thật là tệ.

Tôi trả lời:

Dĩ nhiên là đã đọc vì mình chính là tác giả của bài đó. Thật là một tình cờ thú vị. Visualgui.com là trang blog cá nhân của mình. Không ngờ đã viết bài này tám năm rồi. Cám ơn Vi đọc và chia sẻ. Chúc Vi an lành và khỏe mạnh.

Đã lâu rồi tôi không viết về nhạc Việt nữa cũng nhớ nhớ. Chắc lâu lâu phải lôi ra những album cũ viết cho vui.

My résumé shows that my entire career has been working in higher education. I started off at Vassar College for five years, moved on to George Washington University for three years, and landed at George Mason University for almost nine years. Why do I choose to work for higher education? The short answer is that I wanted to make money and keep on learning at the same time. I am still doing both of these things today.

In the summer of my sophomore year in college, I landed my first graphic design internship at the Trump Marina, which was the casino the savvy businessman ran to the ground. Although I was paid, I did not do jack. The in-house graphic designer didn’t give me anything to work on. I got tired of sitting in front of a Mac computer with no internet connection. I quit after two months and decided to focus on web design instead of graphic design.

Then I landed another paid internship at Unisys. I had no clue what the company did and I still don’t know what they do now. I was working with two older gentlemen on an intranet. They worked on a zip disk, burned the site to CDs, and distributed them within the company. They gave me a copy of the site to play with, but they gave me no instruction on what to do. I gave them advice on cleaning their codes because they were using Microsoft FrontPage, but they were not interested in implementing the changes. I quit after a month and a half and joined my classmates at La Salle University working on a start-up website called weplayit.com, which was some kind of a sport registration site for kids. I was recruited because of my Flash animation skills. It was a sweet gig. Unfortunately, I got laid off the day after the site launched. I guessed no one signed up.

Then I landed a part-time job at D4 Creative, an advertising agency in Philadelphia. I was hired to do Flash work and I was tasked with cheesy email ads. After a few weeks, my supervisor told me that he didn’t have any more work for me. He didn’t fire me, but he never called me back either.

I graduated from college and faced the dot-com bubble burst. I could not find a web-related job; therefore, I ended up stuffing papers into envelopes at RR Donnelley full-time and coding HTML pages at Triple Strength part-time. I finally landed my first real full-time job at Vassar College doing web design. At Vassar, projects didn’t move as fast as the agencies and deadlines took longer, which gave me the time to design, to experiment with different techniques, and to implement new technologies. I loved the educational environment where I could work and learn at the same time. After work, I went to free lectures and even free dinners sometimes. I audited classes and my favorite one was the course on the history of jazz. That class opened up my world to improvisational music, something I had never noticed before.

I moved to Virginia, worked for George Washington University School of Business, and started my own family. I had a rough time there, but I managed to get by. I even enrolled into the MS in Information Systems Technology program. I dropped out just after two months to take on a new job at George Mason University School of Law, which had been renamed to Antonin Scalia Law School.

Although educational institutions pay less than private companies, they are more secured. You are less likely to get laid off or fired unless you screw up really bad. On the positive side, tuition is the key benefit. I have an older friend who still works at American University and he put two of his kids through college for free. He saved four hundred grants right there. For me, getting an MA in graphic design at George Mason University School of Art was such a rewarding experience. Not only I didn’t have to pay a dime, I also made money teaching as an adjunct professor while earned my credits toward my degree. I wrote Professional Web Typography for an independent study, in which I earned an A+ and made some money off it as well. For my final thesis, I wrote Vietnamese Typography and put it out for free. The book had started my consulting works with type designers.

Lately I have been thinking of enrolling into a master writing program at Mason since I love to write so damn much. I would love to do non-fiction writing or journalism. I floated the idea to my wife, but she shut it down quickly. My priority right now is my kids. When they grow older, I’ll reconsider it.

Even if you just graduated from college and want to further your education, you might want to consider higher institutions. I hope this long post will inspire you to do so.

Stanley Nelson’s documentary of Miles Davis is a disappointment. In the first half of the film, Nelson uses more still images than live performances. Based on the title, I thought the film would focus only on Birth of the Cool. Compressing Miles’s entire music career in just two hours only scratches the surface of Mile’s extensive catalogs. My criticism might be unfair because I have spent tremendous amount of time listening to Miles and read as many books about him as I could get my hands on. If you haven’t heard of Miles Davis and just wanted a quick overview, this might do it. To really appreciate Miles, you have to dig much deeper.