Với chất giọng countertenor tốt (không chua chát như Bằng Kiều, không mỏng manh như Mai Thanh Sơn) và tiếng đàn guitar mộc mạc, Anh Khang thổi một làn hương mới vào “Hoa Sứ Nhà Nàng” (Hoàng Phương). Với cách phát âm rỏ và lối dứt câu ngắn gọn, Anh Khang xóa đi chất mùi mẫn trong “Ai Khổ Vì Ai” (Thanh Sơn) và “Mùa Xuân Không Còn Nữa” (Lam Phương) mà chỉ giữ lại những cảm xúc trong ca từ. Song ca với Ngọc Anh, hai chị em cùng tâm sự nổi nhớ “Quê Nhà” (Trần Tiến) khi đang sống trên xứ người. Như “Quê Nhà,” những bài xuất sắc trong album được Anh Khang tự đánh đàn cho tiếng hát của mình. Phải chi cả album đều thu âm như thế.

Chiều hôm qua bốn cha con thả bộ đến sân chơi. Lúc đó có hai chị người Mỹ (khoảng mười mấy tuổi) đang đứng trò chuyện. Đạo bảo tôi đưa em Xuân đến để khoe với hai chị. Thằng Đán chạy đến dắt tay một chị đến để ngắm em. Hai chị thấy thằng Xuân dể thương quá nên hỏi chuyện. Thế là hai thằng rủ hai chị cùng chơi trò lái tàu hải tặc. Hai chị tuy hơi lớn tuổi nhưng cũng chịu khó chìu theo hai thằng. Bốn chị em chơi với nhau cho đến giờ ăn tối. Lúc về còn lưu luyến muốn rủ hai chị về nhà nên Đán hỏi, “Hai chị có muốn về nhà em chơi không? Nhà em có rất nhiều hột xoàn [Lego].”

Hai thằng con này mới bây lớn mà đã biết lợi dụng em bé để dụ gái. Tụi nó giỏi hơn ba nó lúc xưa rất nhiều. Hồi nhỏ tôi nhát gái lắm. Bây giờ vẫn thế.

Rewriting the content for ON Designs motivated me to reread Nicely Said by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee. I wanted to make my writing clear and concise. Furthermore, I simply enjoy the beautiful typesetting by Kim Scott. It’s a must-read for anyone who works on the web.

Qua tám ca khúc quen thuộc, Hồ Bích Ngọc hát hết tất cả tâm hồn. Hòa vào âm nhạc nhẹ nhàng sang trọng của Thanh Tâm, giọng hát đầy truyền cảm của Ngọc đưa người nghe vào một không gian thân mật ấm áp. Đặc biệt qua “Cho Em Quên Tuổi Ngọc” của nhạc sĩ Lam Phương, Ngọc cho ta cảm nhận được một giấc mộng chua cay của một con tim ngậm ngùi. Ngọc là một album thính phòng giản dị đáng được thưởng thức.

Although I didn’t get through the entire book, I found some fascinating, which “comes from the Latin fascinum, a representation of the erected penis” (p. 17), vulgarities:

It is much better to fuck a hairy cunt than one which is smooth; it holds in the steam and simulates the cock. (p. 20)

Futuo could be translated more literally as “to penetrate a vagina.” Pedicare means “to penetrate an anus.” (p. 30)

The verb irrumare involves pretty much the only other orifice available—it means “to penetrate the mouth.” (p. 31)

• “When Did Porn Become Sex Ed?” by Peggy Orenstein
• “Can we save the open web?” by Dries Buytaert
• “The Unbearable Homogeneity of Design” by Morgane Santos
• “In Defense of Homogeneous Design” by Yaron Schoen
• “Nina Simone’s Face” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

For a design exercise, I took on the challenge of redesigning the edX’s homepage and the course page. The goal was to create a working (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) prototype in 10 hours. Because of the limitation, I needed to set my priorities. What can I accomplish with the time that I had?

For user research, I relied on myself as a student who wanted to take an online course at edX. While browsing through the site I kept the following questions in mind:

1. What am I looking for?
2. Can I find the courses I want to take? Why not?
3. How quickly and easily can I find the courses?
4. What does the current site do well?
5. What does the current site do poorly?
6. What is the most important goal needed to be considered in the redesign?
7. How does the user interface need changing?
8. What areas can I improve in the new redesign?
9. What features can I eliminate in the redesign?
10. What features can I highlight in the redesign?

After spending an hour using the site on my laptop and mobile phone, I concluded that my priorities are speed and simplicity.

Eliminate Distractions

On the homepage, my first priority is to eliminate distractions. For new students who just want to see what edX has to offer, they don’t need to see all the navigational items until they logged in; therefore, I eliminated all the menu items, except for the “sign in” button.

For the main hero image, I wanted to move away from stock photography of students using their laptops to a simpler illustration. The image of the figure carrying the entire world on his head, illustrated by Jim Frazier, indicates knowledge and worldwide education. I also removed popular courses to feature various programs student can take at edX. Below that is a list of some of the schools that partnered with edX.

For the footer, I had detailed navigation to allow students get answers and information they have about edX as fast as possible.

Take a look at the current edX homepage and my redesign.

For the search page, I displayed the large heading to showcase how many courses EDX has and the search box appeared immediately underneath. If students don’t know what they are searching for, they can check out some of the popular courses below.

One of the key differences between the old and the new design is the remove of the images. On the current site, the thumbnail images don’t help much because most of them are simply stock photography. Removing the thumbnails make the courses load faster and allow more room for the course description. Furthermore, it forces me to make good use of typography.

Take a look at the current course page, the redesigned search page, and the redesigned result page.

Process

I knew that I don’t have much time to mockup the pages in Photoshop; therefore, I went straight into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I also knew that if I use a framework like Bootstrap or Foundation, I would have spend much more time customizing the design; therefore, I just do it from scratch. SASS helped tremendously in speeding up my time.

For responsive design, I started with the mobile first approach and take advantage of the screen space on desktop without breaking the layout or making the text harder to read—thanks to CSS Flexbox.

The edX redesign prototype is on GitHub. Feel free to play with it.

After winning big victories last night, Hillary Clinton entertained her supports with references of hip-hop lyrics: “Whoever’s out of hand, I’ma give ’em handles / Light ’em up, blow ’em out like candles.” She used Jay-Z’s line, “I got 99 problems, being a bitch ain’t one, hit me.”

Clinton then thanked Bernie Sanders for his incredible campaign. She urged him to fight to the end to keep her from being bored and forgotten in the next few months. She will keep him entertained, but her next move is focusing on her Vice President.

Clinton told her supports that her running mate has to help her galvanize young voters and take on Wall Street. She said, “No other candidate can champion those two issues better than the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Ann Warren.” The crowd went wild chanting: “Woman Power.”

Every night before going to sleep, the boys wants to do bedtime stories. Đạo (my soon-to-be-seven-year-old son) usually tells us what he did in school or in his Minecraft world. For me, I just pick out recent family trips to remind them the good times. My four-year-old Đán sticks to his dinosaur stories, but the details just seem to get darker and darker each time. For instance, his story last night went something like this:

Once upon a time, there’s a T-Rex and a Brachiosaurus. They got into a fight. The T-Rex bit the Brachiosaurus’s neck. Blood spilled everywhere. The Brachiosaurus was eaten by the T-Rex.

He went on to provide more graphical details, but I couldn’t remember all of dinosaur names he was dropping. Suddenly, he switched:

There were two eggs. They hatched into baby dinosaurs. The babies were hungry so they fought each other. One killed the other. But then both got stomped by a Giganotosaurus.

For a four-year-old, Đán has an impressive dinosaur vocabulary, and yet I haven’t been able to get him to recognize the alphabet letters beyond A, O, and X. His expressive storytelling is also intriguing, but I am not sure if it is a gift or a curse.

Chiều hôm qua đến đón thằng Đán thì có một bé gái Mỹ trắng chạy đến rỉ tai tôi nói, “Cho cháu đến nhà bác chơi được không?” Tôi đáp, “Cũng được nếu như cha mẹ cháu cho phép.” Bé hớn hở nói tiếp, “Đán nói với cháu là nhà bác có Barbie nên rủ cháu đến chơi.” Tôi cười đáp, “Nhà bác không có Barbie chỉ có dinosaurs thôi.” Thì ra thằng con bịa chuyện dụ gái về nhà. Bó tay!