I received an offering letter today from the College of Visual and Performing Arts for the position of adjunct faculty. According to the letter I will be teaching Advanced Web Design in the spring of 2015. I took the opportunity to not only updating my online resume, but also recoded the whole page. I scrapped the entire microformats for a much simpler, semantic markup. The whole focus is on typography and hierarchy. I also use Adobe Text Pro and Futura PT Condensed to be consistent with this site. Check it out.

If Việt pop is politic, Minh Tuyết would be the queen of the Republican Party. She only needs to reach her base and no one else. No crime in that. Like many of her previous releases, the title alone lets you know what the album is all about. No crime in that either; however, my main concern is the one group of audience that she is targeting: teenage girls.

Although I don’t have a daughter, the name of the album, Anh Muốn Em Sống Sao, which translated to “How Do You Want Me to Live,” is still alarming to me. Penned by Chi Dân, the tune, which had been performed on Paris By Night 111 by Minh Tuyết and chosen for this album title, shouldn’t be a model for young girls. Telling them “how do you want me to live” is the same as giving up control of their own lives. I have listened to this tune at least a dozen times and Minh Tuyết has made it really damn convincing that she lived every word she sang—whether she truly meant it or through her gift of lyricizing this type of romantic hopelessness.

For me, it’s a guilty pleasure at first, but then I realize it may send a wrong message to innocent teenage girls. Let’s me try to break down the lyrics. The song starts out: “Từ sâu trong đôi mắt này, anh hờ hững không như bao ngày / Phải chăng nơi chốn đây, để anh vội đến và rồi vội đi?” The second line gives the guy the free pass. He could come to her whenever he wanted to and he could go whenever he felt like it. It goes on: “Phải chi anh thấu hiểu, rằng em đã yêu anh rất nhiều? / Nói đi anh người ơi giờ anh muốn em phải sống sao.” Translation: “Please understand that I love you very much / Please tell me how do you want me to live now?” Her own life and future are now depending on this son of a bitch. The next two bars go: “Hạnh phúc đâu dễ kiếm tìm, em vẫn đứng đây chờ anh đi tìm / Lúc anh không còn ai hết, hãy ở yên em sẽ đi kiếm.” Happiness is hard to find and she’s waiting for him to find his. When he can’t find anyone else, she is still there for him. So now we’re telling our girls it’s perfectly fine to be the last choice. The last two bars before the chorus: “Bởi em yêu người vô cớ, vì đã lỡ nhận hết đau buồn / Nói đi anh người ơi giờ anh muốn em phải sống sao?” Interpretation: “Because I love you unconditionally and have received all the distressing / Please tell me how do you want me to live?” The hook gets more depressing:

Anh chỉ đến bên em lúc buồn, vậy những ngày vui anh về nơi đâu?
Anh chỉ đến bên em lúc say, vì hết say anh đâu ở đây.
Anh là ai đi qua chốn này? Còn em là ai trong cuộc đời anh đây?
Nói đi anh người ơi vì sao anh nỡ yêu em như vậy.

He only comes to her when he’s sad and she wonders where he could be when he’s happy. He only comes to her when his ass is drunk. When he’s sober he’s not around. Who is he coming and go and who is she in his life? Now tell me if this song is not disturbing, especially for young girls who are not yet mature enough mentally to see something is really wrong with this relationship.

Why am I being so harsh on Minh Tuyết and not the songwriter? The song is rubbish, but she has the power to bring it to their ears and she chose to do so. This is just the opening song of the album. I have no fortitude to go through the 10 remaining tracks. Whether or not she picked these tunes unconsciously, she will continue to make this type of record as long as her fans continue to buy them.

My wife is usually responsible for walking Đạo to school and picking him up; therefore, I only get to do it when I have a chance at home. When time to go home, he would look to see if one of his family members would come to pick him up. Every time he saw me, his face lid up. He raised his hand proudly to let the teachers know that his daddy had come to pick him up.

Several days before Thanksgiving, I joined him for lunch at school. He was so joyful to see me meeting him up for lunch. As We sat at the round table enjoying the turkey meal with other kids and their parent, one kid sat by himself and cried. He didn’t eat anything. Dao asked, “What was wrong with [the boy’s name]?” His other friend replied, “He’s sad because his…” His mom quickly covered his mouth. I didn’t notice it at first, but was the boy at the table without his parent.

Witnessing that made me realized how important our presence is to our children. We should be with them as much as we can.

Đán loves chicken as much as his daddy; therefore, he always eats the chicken and shares the bones with his daddy.

Yesterday when picking him up from daycare, I gave him a bag of gummy fruit snack and asked him if he could give me one. He replied, “No daddy, you have to drive.” No eat and drive makes perfect sense.

The other night when we were cleaning up some the toys, Đán sang, “Clean up, clean up. Everybody do your share.” It was so beautiful.

One morning we came into class, Lincoln, his best buddy, gave him a hug. Then Sean, another buddy, gave them both a hug. Then the whole class joined in. The teachers and I stood in awe. What a joyful hug fest.

A conversation in Vietnamese between daddy and Đán:
Daddy: Train tiếng Việt là gì?
Đán: Xe lửa.
Daddy: Xe lửa có mấy bánh?
Đán: Xe lửa has no cake.

In an intriguing design experiment, Christina Beard set out to study the creative approach from 23 respected designers, thinkers and educators including Steven Heller, Ellen Lupton, Stefan Sagmeister, and Paula Scher. Beard began her journey with a poster design to communicate a simple but important message: “Wash Your Hands.” Then she interviewed each designer to see how the individual would approach the design. She then redesigned the poster based on each critique. I have to give Beard the credits for staying sane after redesigning the poster 25 times in a wide range of art directions. After three iterations, I would used a typographic approach with the message, “Please wash your fucking hands,” and called it the day.

The final project for Web Design & Usability required students to design and code their own portfolio site. The goals were to learn HTML, CSS and responsive design. The final site needed to be fully functional across multiple devices. Minimum deliverables should include a homepage, an about page, and a portfolio section with at least four projects to showcase.

To help students put together their portfolio site, I gathered the following questions:

1. What’s the purpose of your portfolio? (Get hired, showcase your work, get freelance projects, get to know you, gain reputation, communicate)
2. Who is your portfolio for and who is not for?
3. What type of work would you like to focus on?
4. Does your portfolio showcase the type of work you want to do?
5. Does your work present design as a problem-solving methodology?
6. Does your work reflect strategic thinking regarding the chosen subject?
7. Does your work demonstrate high level of typographic execution?
8. Does your work tell a story?

With this project, the concentration is on coding. We zipped through the mockups and jumped right into the coding. I planned out plenty of studio time for students to work on in class. Because I had 19 students, I allowed them to work on their own if they felt comfortable with the codes. That way those students needed help could come to class so I could work one on one with them. In the last few weeks, we stayed until 11pm (an hour over the regular class time) to code. I was glad that they were passionate about the project.

Start simple was the key element that I kept reminding students. They needed to create clean HTML5 markups with ARIA roles and clear CSS. Once they get the basics, they could add JavaScript or more fancy interactivity. Some students started out with frameworks and jQuery. Once they were stuck on something and weren’t able to customize the codes to get what they wanted, they had to start over from scratch. Doing so taught them the important lesson of progressive enhancement.

At the end, many students didn’t get as far as I would like them to be, but they managed to create fully responsive functional web site for their portfolio. My hope is that they could take what they have learned in class and continue to improve their project.

Here are some of the students’ sites available online:

• Carly Peak
• Ogo Batzorgig
• BeBe Ragsdale
• Neha Sohail

Neha’s project was different from the rest of the students. She is more advanced in front-end development. Since she already had a portfolio and didn’t to redo it for the class, I suggested that she put together a site that showcase all of the students’ site. I gave the complete freedom to develop the site. She ended up using way too much JavaScript and jQuery for a simple page, but she was able to apply some nice interactivity.

Final Thought

Teaching this course had been a learning experience for me. There are things that I can improve. Even though I detest quizzes and exams myself, I should have incorporate them into the course to make sure that the students read the book and understand the codes. I could spend more time doing workshops and demos to help them learn. The first two projects, which focused on design and usability, went quite well. The third project, which included coding, were stressful. If given opportunity, I will teach again.

This is not just another biography of Charlie Parker. Stanley Crouch brilliantly weaved the vibrant scene of Kansas City into Bird’s childhood. Spent over three decades and interviewed the people closest to Parker including his first love Rebecca Ruffin, Crouch has meticulously crafted one of the most fascinating and innovating biographical books I have read. I found myself doting almost every sentence on every page. The book, 334-page long, ends when Bird had not even met his partner in crime Dizzy Gillespie. I can’t wait to read what Crouch has to pen (in the second volume) when Bird set the jazz scene on fire.

My little boy turned three last Saturday. Because his birthday falls into the Thanksgiving weekend, we didn’t invite friends or extended family. We just had a low key party for him with both grandmas, his aunt, uncle, cousin and of course the three of us.

The best thing about turning three is that the terrible two is going away. Two was rough. Three is a bit better. We can communicate more. Đán is actually very expressive. He picks up words very fast. Although he doesn’t speak much Vietnamese, he understands everything we say to him.

Despite being strict on him, Đán is still very attach to me. Sometimes I felt horrible for being that way with him repeatedly, but he seems to understand now. I rather be hard on for a short time than letting him spoiled. I have learned that lesson from Đạo. In the past few weeks, Đán’s behavior is getting better. As a result, our time together is much more enjoyable. Let’s improve this aspect.

The number of books I have read each year:

• 2024: 62
• 2023: 92
• 2022: 47
• 2021: 45
• 2020: 57
• 2019: 72
• 2018: 92
• 2017: 90
• 2016: 50
• 2015: 56
• 2014: 70
• 2013: 30
• 2012: 10
• 2011: 21
• 2010: 10
• 2009: 9
• 2008: 8
• 2007: 22
• 2006: 40
• 2005: 22
• 2004: 20

Book Collections

• A Book Apart
• Design
• Fiction
• Music
• Special Interests
• Technical
• Typography
• Việt Ngữ
• Writing
• Wish List

This book gives me a Flash-back. I discovered Flash around 2008 and spent endless amount of time and energy learning all types of animated techniques. I also wasted a tremendous amount of time sitting and waiting for each Flash site to load over my dialup connection. Those were the days. Like many designers, Flash lost me when it became a complex programing language. I shifted my focus on web standards, but I could never imagine Flash would be dead so soon.

Seeing a book writing about the history of Flash, I couldn’t help picking it up. I am a bit disappointed that Anastasia Salter and John Murray focus mostly on Flash games. They didn’t mention early groundbreaking sites like Balthaser, Eye4U, and Once Upon a Forest or new masters of Flash like Joshua Davis, Yugo Nakamura, and Eric Jordan (just to name a few).

Flash under Macromedia was thriving. The community was strong, passionate, and sharing. If Adobe didn’t acquire Macromedia, I wonderful if Flash would have fallen as fast as it has under Adobe. If Adobe got into the browser game like Google, would it able to save Flash? In any rate, Flash definitely had its moment. As the book suggested, Flash’s influence and legacy will live on and I would love to see Flash resurrected, but the future of Flash is not too bright at all.