I am reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and trying to detox for the hundredth time. I am fed up with Facebook allowing disinformation to spread on its platform. I removed Facebook app off my phone and temporarily deactivated my account. I am logging off Twitter as well. I’ll spend this weekend hanging out with the kids and reading Newport’s book. Have a great weekend, folks.

When accepting the offer from George Mason University, I thought I would only stay for a year or two. Eight years later, I am still with the Law School. It has been a long, challenging, rewarding journey for both my professional career and personal life.

I joined the Law School after leaving a stressful job. At first, I hesitated to take on a new role as Web Services Developer, which included server administration as part of the job. I didn’t know anything about Linux. I had never used the command line. I never heard of the content management system called MODX. I spent my first week googling how to set up RSA and SSH to access the servers. I read online documentation just to add my own admin account in MODX. It was a huge hurdle to get through in the first six months. I almost quit.

While the technical challenges stressed me out, the people I worked with were awesome, especially my kind, understanding supervisor. I simply could not let her down. She gave me the support and the flexibility I needed to balance my work and life. It is extremely important to me to have the flexible schedule because I young kids. I cannot put all the burden on my wife. Getting them to daycare and school in the morning is a challenge. Taking days off when they got sick is a must. Chaperoning them to field trips is part of being a parent. In eight years, my boss never expressed any negative vibe when I requested time off, came to work a bit late, or left a bit early. To reciprocate her generosity, I never hesitated to work on weekends or late-hours when I had to.

What has been so great about this job is the trust she placed in me. Without micro-management, I thrived on my own. She didn’t have to tell me what needed to be done. I took on projects that needed attention and look for projects that would benefit the school. In the past eight years, I expanded from three sites to thirty sites. In addition to MODX, I implemented WordPress Multisites to offer anyone in the Law School a web presence and still manageable. Even though my responsibilities were strictly web services, I offered graphic design solutions and created a unified brand for the school. It saved the school tons of money from hiring outside design agencies.

Several years ago, I was promoted to Director of Design and Web Services. In the new role, I am supervising a junior web developer to help me out with daily requests and web support for the thirty sites we’re maintaining. I am giving him the flexible and the trust that my boss has given me. At the moment, everything seems to go well.

I don’t know what the future will be like as we’re the process of hiring a new President for the University and a new Dean for the Law School. I am not sure how the new changes will have an effect on me. I do not want to think too much about things that I cannot control. I do hope that my supervisor won’t be retiring anytime soon. That will change everything.

Joe Moran, First You Write a Sentence, (p.190):

Every typographer understands that the space between the type matters as much as the shapre of the letters themselves. The letter-carver David Kindersley said that “a bad space is worse than a bad letter.” How much of a gap you leave between the letters, between the words, between the lines, between the paragraphs: it all matters beyond words. Space makes the reader feel cared for, even if she can’t put her finger on why. The way the writing looks is also what is says.

After releasing Professional Web Typography and Vietnamese Typography, I received a handful of inquiries expressing interests in using the web as a publishing platform. As a result, I decided to share the source code for Professional Web Typography. In the demo, you will get the front cover, the introduction page, and the history page. These three pages and the complete CSS file will help you get started creating your own web-based book. Because this is a demo, I have to change the typefaces from commercial to open source. I chose Source Sans Pro, by Paul D. Hunt, Source Serif Pro, by Frank Grießhammer, and Source Serif Pro, also by Hunt. I hope this demo will inspire you to create your own web-based book and share with the world.

If you supported my book, please download the files again to get the latest demo.

Less of a style guide and more of a love letter, Moran’s book explores the craft of composing sentence by sentence. “A good trick, when drafting a piece, is to press enter after every sentence, as if you were writing a poem and each full stop marked a line break.” He advises, “This renders the varied (or unvaried) lengths of your sentences instantly visible.” Through his thoughtful observation of Frank Sinatra’s singing and Bill Evans’s playing, Moran illustrates how rhythm, cadence, phrasing, and flow bring your sentences to life. He offers helpful tips such as using plain words, setting type that makes your writing visible to yourself, and keeping a sentence succinct even a long one. I dig his beautiful, poetic prose even though his florid style gets tedious at times. This book is enjoyable. I’ll definitely read it again at a slower pace to fully absorb his advice.

Here are a few notable passages:

On death (p.112):

[T]he death of a sentence is as natural as the end of life. Every sentence must die so the next one can begin. A full stop should offer a good death: natural, painless, clarifying, renewing.

On caring (p.117):

With a full stop, a sentence becomes self-supporting. It can go out into the world without the author leaning over the reader to clarify its meaning—without a reader, even, except a conjectural one. Writing a sentence well involves caring, taking pains for the benefit of others. But it is a special kind of caring: not the empathetic concern we have for people we love, but care for the anonymous humanity that may, at some future point, encounter the evidence of our presence in the world. This kid of care does not seek thanks or feedback, but offers itself up for all to enjoy, or ignore, as they wish.

On Sinatra (p.135-136)

A phraseologist like Sinatra overlays the meter with something like confiding in speech. He is all about the lyrics—you can hear him enunciate every syllable—and it feels as if he is saying as well as singing them to you, stretching out and twisting the pitch of words as we do in speech. Sinatra sings in sentences.

On flow (p.175):

Beauty may look after herself, but flow in writing does not. Flow should feel natural but almost never is. It arrives only after the way has been carefully cleared and paved. Flowing sentences are forward-facing, drawing what they need from the previous sentence and then setting up the next one.

On cadence (p.182):

Writing gets much of its rhythm from its full stops—or, more precisely, its cadences. Cadence is is used generally to mean the rising and falling rhythm of writing. But it has a more precise meaning. A cadence is what comes in writing, speech or music at the end of each phrase. In music, a phrase is the smallest unit able to make sense of its own. And it ends at this point of half repose, a cadence, where it feels as if the music has, just for a moment, arrived somewhere, usually back at the piece’s tonal center. In speech, a cadence is the fall in pitch at a natural stopping point, the end of a phrase. The voice drops on the last three syllables: a descending tritone. The American poet Amy Lowell called the cadence a “rhythmic curve … corresponding roughly to the necessity of breathing.”

I love my ten-year-old son, but I want to smack him at times. He groaned when being asked to help his three-year-old brother out with simple tasks. He snatched toys right out of his brother’s hand. He threw a fit when being asked to help his seven-year-old brother with reading. When they played Minecraft together, he always wanted all the treasures and his younger brother had to give up. When his seven-year-old brother came across something he wanted for himself, he would leave his world so that his younger couldn’t get the treasure.

At school, however, he is sweet and helpful. I got nothing but compliments from his teachers for being a wonderful student and classmate. I just don’t get it. Why can’t he be like that at home? I hope this is just the ten-year-old stage and he’ll grow out of it. Even now, I can’t stand adults who think only about themselves. I do not want him to grow up that way as I have always tried to instill kindness, selflessness, and compassionate in him. I also constantly reminded him the important relationship with his brothers—especially when we (the parents) will no longer be with them.

My seven-year-old son is improving at school and at home. I have not received any complaints from his teachers since the first week of school. He is also making peace with his three-year-old brother. He makes his three-year-old brother wanting to join the big brothers at dinner table without the booster seat. He always wanted to please his older brother and willing to play with his older brother’s rule. He is also getting better at reading. He like me to read with him; therefore, it has been a good bonding time for us. My goal now is to get him to read on his own so I can move on to the three-year-old.

Speaking of the terrifying three, he is going through that mean and whiny stage. If he can’t get things his way, he would scream no matter where we were. Unfortunately, I have been down this road twice already; therefore, I pretty much zoned out the outside world as well and just let him deal with his own emotion. He picks up words so fast. The other day, he said to me, “Daddy, it is impossible for me to put on my seatbelt.” What? Impossible?

My one-year-old son is obviously the most adorable one right now. Everyone loves him. His three older brothers treat him like a doll. They just picked him up and threw him around. So far, he survived all the rough love with a smile on his face. I am sure he will start to change pretty soon.

I am kind of surprise that life isn’t as chaos as I would have imagined with four boys. Sure, it is noisy as heck, but we seem to be able to manage with lots of yelling and caffeine.

Tuy sống xa ba và gia đình bên nội hơn ba mươi năm, tôi luôn kính trọng sự đoàn kết giữa thế hệ cô chú bác và anh chị em. Từ lớn đến nhỏ, mọi người đùm bọc lẫn nhau. Vì ở xa thật xa nên tôi không có cơ hội sống cùng đại gia đình nhưng tôi vẫn ghi nhớ tình cảm tất cả đã dành cho tôi từ lúc còn bé. Sau này mỗi lần về lại Việt Nam tình cảm mọi người đối với tôi vẫn sâu đậm tuy xa cách mấy mươi năm. Dù thời gian có dài và đường xa vạn dặm, tình cảm đại gia đình vẫn không nhạt phai.

Hôm qua trò chuyện với người anh bà con, tôi rất vui. Tuy không nói nhiều nhưng anh em hiểu sự chân thật, thẳng thắn, và cảm thông dành cho nhau. Anh là người anh lớn tôi tin tưởng và quý mến. Thậm chí nếu cần anh sẽ sẵn sàng giúp đỡ tôi. Và ngược lại tôi cũng thế. Không biết bao giờ anh em mình sẽ có dịp ngồi lại cùng chung một bàn nhậu. Thôi thì xin chúc mừng anh và gia đình trong những bước sắp tới.

Ở đời là thế, dù người thân ở xa bao nhiêu nhưng tôn trọng và nghĩ cho nhau vẫn luôn dễ dàng đối xử với nhau. Ngược lại, dù có ở cạnh nhau mà không nghĩ đến nhau thì cách cư xử cũng khó khăn, ngại ngùng, và ngượng nghịu. Dĩ nhiên luôn chỉ nghĩ cho chính mình thì cuộc sống sẽ dễ dàng và thoải mái nhưng sống trong đời sống cần có tình nghĩa nhất là đối với người thân trong gia đình.

Phim võ thuật do Lê Văn Kiệt đạo diễn và Ngô Thanh Vân trình diễn. Nội dung rất đơn giản. Một người mẹ làm nghề đòi nợ. Khi đứa con gái bị bắt cóc, người làm mẹ bằng mọi giá phải cứu lại đứa trẻ. Lê Văn Kiệt không chú trọng vào câu chuyện cũng không quan tâm phần đối thoại. Trong một tiếng rưỡi, những trận đánh nhau diễn ra không kịp thở. Xem Ngô Thanh Vân đập tơi tả những người đàn ông thật đã mắt. Đáng tiếc, đây chỉ là một phim hành động thiếu chiều sâu.

Quyển tiểu thuyết bi thảm, hồi hộp, và rùng rợn được dàn dựng khéo léo của tác giả Nguyễn Ngọc Thạch. Thường thì câu chuyện được kể qua một nhân vật chính nhưng những nhân vật trong truyện của Thạch đều được kể riêng. Người đọc sẽ thấy được những khía cạnh khác nhau. Cùng sống chung trong một căn nhà bề ngoài thì rất giàu sang nhưng tình người bên trong thì rất tệ hại. Cách viết của Thạch đơn giản và ngắn gọn nhưng đặc sắc. Thạch cho đọc giả nếm được mùi ác độc của đàn bà: “Con ong độc nhất ở đuôi, đàn bà độc nhất ở nơi tấm lòng.” Sao khi đọc mấy quyển sách tiếng Anh liên tiếp, tôi khao khát được đọc tiếng Việt. Tuy đọc sách này như uống ly nước độc nhưng thật đã khát.

Pamela Paul and Maria Russo, editors of The New York Times Book Review, have put together a pleasurable, approachable guide to nurture kids into the life of reading. The authors’ goals are to show reading at home is for pure joy and not burden. The kids are free to read whatever they want, not what expected of them. I find the concept of family library simple, effortless, and yet effective. We just need to have books anywhere around the house within their reach—including in the bathrooms. I appreciate the authors’ relaxed, unpressured ways to instill reading into the kids’ life. In addition, the book is filled with recommendations for different ages. If you want to raise a reader, pick up this book.