My book, Vietnamese Typography, is now completely self-hosting all the fonts. I wrote about moving off Adobe Fonts a couple of weeks ago. In the past two days, I moved off Google Fonts as well. I also wrote about self-hosted vs. subscription-based fonts. I am going for the self-host approach as much as I can.

Yesterday, I received both Skolar and Skolar Sans from Rosetta. Thanks David Březina. While making the update, I redesigned the recommendation section to better showcasing the typefaces with Vietnamese lyrics from Trịnh Công Sơn. I am very with the selection I am featuring and I will continue to add more in the future. I also gave a shoutout to the type foundries and designers who have provided me their font files.

Meagan Fisher shares her own experience of why and how she learned to code:

My absolute favorite thing about writing code — and the reason I stuck with it through the initial learning curve— is that there is pretty much always a right answer when it comes to code. Your code either works or it doesn’t. This is not the case with almost anything else in life. When you write an essay, paint a picture, or design a website, you never really know if you did it “right.”

With code, there is a solution. You want to replicate the little boxes you drew in Sketch in your browser? There is a concrete set of words you can type in your text editor to do that.

This is a great advice for beginners.

Sau khi ăn tối, tôi lôi trái xoài trong tủ lạnh ra. Cắt làm ba miếng. Tôi gặm hột và mời vợ cùng thưởng thức. Vợ lấy muỗng xơi hết hai miếng xoài lạnh và ngọt lịm ngon lành. Tôi nhìn nàng ngỡ ngàng và thèm thuồng. Tôi đùa, “Em phải người Hà Nội không sao mà tự nhiên thế?” Vợ trả lời, “Mời thì ăn thôi.” Đúng là có mời cho lịch sự ai ngờ có người thật thà chơi hết không chừa miếng nào. Vợ chồng mười mấy năm vẫn không hiểu ý nhau. Nói cho vui thế thôi chứ đâu có trách móc gì. Thấy nàng ăn dễ thương vô cùng.

Cả nhà ngồi ăn cơm nên đặc thằng Vương vào ghế của nó ngồi. Khi chán nó hét ầm lên. Tôi bế nó lên nó cười thích thú. Tôi nói với nó, “Con trai của ba dễ thương và đẹp trai giống ba.” Thằng Đán nói, “Vương là của mẹ vì mẹ đẻ nó.” Tôi trả lời, “Nhưng Vương giống ba.” Nó hết lên, “You cheated.” Rồi nói tiếp rằng lúc trước Vương giống nó nhưng tôi ăn gian cạo trọc đầu nó để giống tôi. Hú hồn. Tưởng đâu nó muốn nói tôi ngoại tình.

The 2020 U.S. News law school rankings, which will be published next Wednesday (March 12, 2019), has been leaked. Above the Law has posted the ranking on its website. Scalia Law School has slipped four spots to 45. Hey, we still got the dough. More than you know.

Antonin Scalia Law School receives $50 millions from the estate of the late Judge Allison M. Rouse and Mrs. Dorothy B. Rouse. Scalia’s brand alone brought in $80 million for the school. Changing its name was a good move after all.

Michael Brice-Saddler writes in The Washington Post:

An 18-year-old from Ohio who famously inoculated himself against his mother’s wishes in December says he attributes his mother’s anti-vaccine ideology to a single source: Facebook.

Ethan Lindenberger, a high school senior, testified Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and underscored the importance of “credible” information. In contrast, he said, the false and deep-rooted beliefs his mother held — that vaccines were dangerous — were perpetuated by social media. Specifically, he said, she turned to anti-vaccine groups on social media for evidence that supported her point of view.

The misinformation of Mark Zuckerberg.

My membership for Font of the Month Club has been automatically renewed today. The past two years had been wonderful. I enjoyed playing around with the fonts David has been making for the club. I have used them on this site, my portfolio, and a few projects at work. I look forward to every first of the month for a new font. Cheers to another wonderful year filled with fun fonts.

The headline says it all: “Billionaire Diamond Trader Dies During Penis Enlargement.”

This blog still runs on WordPress. It’s a theme I have designed and developed years ago in B2, which was the father of WordPress. I coded the theme from scratch using only PHP hooks specifically for my blog. Even to this day, my theme has three files: index.php, style.css, screenshot.png.

These days WordPress has become way too complex to start from scratch. I can still take a starter theme like Gutenberg and go from there, but it already packed too many things I don’t need. I prefer to have control of WordPress instead of the other way around. I want to know exactly how my HTML ended up in the browser. I tried not to sweat it and just lived with whatever an existing theme spits out, but it just feels wrong.

I would love to learn how to make a WordPress theme from scratch using the Gutenberg’s blocks. I have not found any tutorial like that. If you do, please let me know.

Because WordPress has lost me, I can no longer develop clients’ website with it. I turn to Kirky instead. Kirby is not free, but it is worthwhile paying for. Kirby allows me to stand up a site quickly and doesn’t get into the way I design the website. Every piece of HTML is rendered exactly the way I have coded. The best part is that the panel knows which piece can be updated by content editors. As a result, Kirby is an ideal CMS for a small websites.

At fifty-four, Shapiro discovered an unsettling truth about herself through a DNA test. Writing this book is a way for Shapiro to cope with her new identity and the the people who were involved (related or not). In addition, Shapiro’s investigative journalism shows how easy it is nowadays to find out anything about ourselves through online technology and social media. It’s a beautiful, moving, and deeply personal memoir.