I must have listened to this song a hundred times now with the kids and still inspired by this line:

Lost my job, it’s a new opportunity / More free time for my awesome community.

PRhyme:

I lost a whole bunch of money, chasing bitches / But I never lost no bitches chasing money.

Here’s another funny one:

If you are what you eat, how come I’m not pussy?

Kanye:

You will never need another lover / Cause you’re a MILF and I’m a motherfucker

I started blogging about music sometimes in 2004. As a way for me to learn English, my primary focus was to describe the details of what I heard such as how a singer moved me or how the instruments grooved me. I obviously had a lot of time on my hands back then. At the time I was working at Vassar; therefore, I signed up for a proofreading session in the writing center. Each week I would bring in my piece. The tutor and I would read over it and make corrections.

My tutor was Natalie Freeman who was an English professor at Vassar. Not only Natalie helped me with my reviews, she also recommended a few music critics I should read. She suggested Sasha Frere-Jones and Kelefa Sanneh. I sought them out and read as many articles I have written. I could not recall how I discovered Greg Tate, but he was instantly became one my favorite critics. He was fearless, eccentric, and thoughtful. I read everything Tate has written that I could get my hands on.

These days Tate has not written much; therefore, I have not reading much either. Sanneh had moved to the New Yorker in 2008 and started to cover sports and TVs. I occasionally read Frere-Jones’ pieces in the New Yorker, but he has now ended that eleven-year gig for Genius.

These days I subscribe to the New York Times’s Popcast to get the latest music news from Ben Ratliff and Jon Caramanica. I still blog about music, but my focus is mostly on Vietnamese pop. The nice thing about blogging music on my own site is that I could write whatever I like without the fear of offending or kissing up to anyone. I am not a music critic and I will never be, but that doesn’t stop me from listen to music and write down my thoughts. That makes me a music blogger.

The Advanced Web Design class I spent months and some sleepless nights to prepare had been dropped. The number of student registered fell from 9 to 6.

Although I had invested a tremendous amount of time crafting the web site and the projects, I understand the situation. I also get a sense of the way the school operate. They can cancel the course anytime despite it’s less than a week before the starting date. I apologize to the 6 students who wanted to take the course.

Now I just need to sign up for a class to take instead. My only options are Mobile App Design and Mixed Media. I am kind of interested in the former and waiting for the professor to let me in. I have no idea what Mixed Media is even though I read the course description. It would be my last resort.

Bài viết về Tình Ca Qua Thế Kỷ 2 của Hà Trần được đăng trên trang Đẹp plus:

Tiếp nối thành công của “Tình ca qua thế kỷ 1”, nữ ca sĩ Hà Trần tiếp tục cho ra đời “Tình ca qua thế kỷ 2” với những bản nhạc xưa đi cùng năm tháng. Điểm khác biệt là lần này đĩa do chính cô phát hành, đầu tư âm nhạc bài bản và có những đổi mới trong cách xử lý.

Đạo was sick all last week. He threw up every time he ate. At nights his fever shot up to 105.9°F. I had to keep him comfortable with lukewarm towel and Tylenol. He only made it to one day of school last week. Starting this week, Đán is getting sick. He has been out of daycare for two days. He’ll probably be out tomorrow as well. When Đán is sick, he is completely different person. He sits still and doesn’t bother his brother. When he’s not sick. He’s is a handful.

Taking care of sick kids is one of the challenges of being a parent. Fortunate for us, both of our jobs are flexible for us to juggling with it. The thing is that we need to stay healthy as we can. As soon as I feel sluggish, I take medication right away. As soon as I started to cough, I take Delsym immediately. I can’t afford to be sick at the moment.

Crafting the course for advanced web design has been a challenge. I started in November and kept on revising it. On one hand, I don’t want to overwhelm the students with too many projects. On the other, I don’t want to give them an easy ride. Finding the balance to fit into the schedule is not an easy task.

Last night, I made my final decision to drop four projects to three, which will give them a bit more time to work on the coding. The focus will be on HTML and CSS. I will also introduce Sass since it is becoming a standard practice. I leave JavaScript as an option for the students to explore. Once they meet the requirements for the project, they could use JavaScript to enhance the interactive experience. I might introduce some basic PHP to make their work easier.

In addition to design and technical, content is an important part of web design. One of the required readings is Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose by Nicole Fenton & Kate Kiefer Lee. The other required book is Sass For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm. I also recommend Learning Responsive Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide by Clarissa Peterson and JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development by Jon Duckett.

As for the projects, students will learn to create an online editorial experience, digital brand guidelines, and an entire design project from start to finish. For the design project, students will work together as a team to come up with everything from proposal to pricing to design to interacting with the client. It will be a fun semester.

So I let my kids listen to Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” the instrumental version of course. Đán loves the beat and Đạo finds this line hilarious: “Oh my god, look at her butt!” Then I asked my wife how to translate the sampled line into Vietnamese: “My Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun.” She shrugged so I gave it a try: “Con rắn anh chẵng muốn gì trừ khi em có bánh mì.” We laughed our ass off. Here’s Google translate: “Anaconda tôi không muốn không. Trừ khi bạn đã có bánh, hun.”

As I am preparing the syllabus for Advanced Web Design, a course I will be teaching in a week, one of the things that I want the students to get out of the class is Sass. Without even thinking, I visited A Book Apart and copped a digital version of Dan Cederholm’s Sass For Web Designers. I read through the entire book in an hour or so. Although I have been using Sass for a while, I still find the book to be an engaging read. As always, his explanations are crystal clear and his examples are easy to follow. Dan taught me CSS twenty years ago when he first published Web Standards Solutions. I am positive that he’ll teach my students to get started with Sass with this book.