Ken Elston Wins

Despite the sweeping control of the Republican, Democratic newcomer Ken Elston took the city council spot in Manassas. I am proud to have contributed to his campaign web site with my buddy Jim Van Meer.

On Teaching Advanced Web Design

In researching and thinking about Advanced Web Design, a course I might be teaching in the spring 0f 2015, I am changing my mind on the type of projects I want to implement for the class. Rather than focusing on technologies, which students could learn on themselves, I would like to turn my attention to digital design such as online editorial experiences, online marketing campaigns and web typography. Now I just need three more enrollments to make it happen.

Poplar Spring Relaunched

The new owners of Poplar Spring Inn had hired a development firm to replace the old site I had designed and developed. They turned a simple, usable, fast-performance web site into a busy, eye-candy, slow-performance site. Unlike the old site, which I carefully crafted to boost performance using MODX, the new site is jammed with all types of plugins, CSS and JavaScripts using WordPress. Take a look at the code and you’ll see what I mean. As for the new design, all the contents are hidden below the giant image on every page. The typography is also a big mess. The good thing is I am now off the hook.

Obsessive Reading

My wife complaint that I hold a book on my hand every chance I get. I am not trying to be a snob or anything, but I am juggling with three books at the moment. I am reading Robin Kelley’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. It’s 500-page long, but it is also so engaging. I am also reading John Pollock’s jQuery: A Beginner’s Guide. It’s roughly 350 pages, but he makes the concepts so easy to understand. I am also reading Sue Apfelbaum and Juliette Cezzar’s Designing the Editorial Experience: A Primer for Print, Web, and Mobile to see if I could use it for Advanced Web Design’s textbook.

Last summer Mason Law web site undergone a major realignment and simplification and we have continued to work on smaller details. We are taking small steps to prune down our landing pages. For example, the current landing page for students featured massive list of links. The new landing page for admissions is much more pleasant to look at. This is something I have wanted to do for a while, but couldn’t get buy-in to cut down the unnecessary links until now. We will be rolling out each landing page at a time.

In an unrelated note, my supervisor gave me superior performance and exceeded expectation for 2014. I couldn’t be happier. I really enjoy working at the Law School thanks to the people around me. The flexibility allows me to balance between life and work. I perform much better when I am not under stress. My deepest gratitude to them.

You must be thinking that I am being too strict on you or that I don’t love you. My dear child, I love you more than life itself and I would provide you anything I could in the world, but I also need you to know the limitation. You might get what you need, but you can’t always get what you want.

When I came to pick you up on Monday, you looked into your lunch bag and didn’t see your juice. You snapped and cried. Your favorite teacher, Miss Melissa who is pregnant, picked you up to see why you cried and you said you wanted juice. I didn’t want her to carry a 37-pound boy while holding another baby in her bell so I took you from her and promised you that we would go to the store to get some juice. You calmed down and we headed to Trader’s Joe. You enjoyed pushing the baby shopping cart around while I picked up some snacks. When we headed to the juice section, you picked out your favorite lemonade packs. We went to pay and the the cashier gave you some stickers for being a good boy. In the car, I gave you your lemonade box and you finished it in just a few minutes. We went home to have dinner.

Last night as we walked to our car to go home, you wanted us to go to the store to get more juice. I said that we had nice and cool lemonade at home waiting for you to drink, but you insisted that you wanted to go buy some juice. You started hitting me with your bag of trains. I took it away and you broke down and cried. You sat on the sidewalk and refused to walk. Other kids starring at you and their parents told them to keep on walking. As I walked off toward our car, you got up and ran after me.

As we got into the car, you kicked and screamed. I remained silent, focused on driving and waited for you to cool down. When we reached to the point I thought I could talk to you I said that, “Mommy is making some chocolate cookies at home for you and Đạo. Do you like cookie?” You responded, “Yes, I like some cookies with my lemonade.” You were fine again.

I could have taken you back to the store, but I didn’t want you to get the idea that we have to go to the store everyday. It hurt me more to be strict with you, but I am doing it for your own good. You might think that I treat you unfairly because you could see that your cousin could get whatever he wanted and you don’t. I made that mistake with Đạo when he was going through the same phrase that you are facing and it took him a long time to get his self-control together. I need you to get over it the sooner the better.

Being a parent is very hard. You will go through this when you become a father yourself. Now I understand why I was spanked at home and at school when I was a kid. I did learn to be disciplined. Time has changed and the roles have reversed. You hit me with your bag of trains just like other kids hitting their parents I have witnessed. When you grow older you’ll learn how disrespect that is do to to your parents. Just because your parents don’t hit you back doesn’t mean other kids your age won’t. So learn to keep your hands to yourself will prevent you from getting hurts from other kids.

I am writing this letter to you on my iPhone while watching you sleep like a little angel. I love you so much my dear and I hope you will understand why I did what I did. I am not a great parent, but I do the best I can.

A friend recently went on an interview for a graphic design position and she was asked to do a design assessment. She thought the assignment was extensive and asked me if she should do it. Below is my response.

Design assignment is like spec work. I wouldn’t do it unless they pay for the time that I spend on it. If they can’t make a decision based on the design in your portfolio and what you have presented at the interview than you might not be the right fit for them.

With that said, I did spend the entire weekend (day and night) working on a take-home assignment for my current job. They wanted to make sure that I was able to import data into the database and display the information on the web page. They also wanted to know if I could access the server through the command line. Even though I did some web development prior to this job, I never had to touch the database and never had to use the command line. I reached out to some of my developer friends for help and I didn’t sleep until I got it to work.

It was very hard, but I wanted the job. I also wanted to challenge myself and I learned quite a bit doing it.

We met with Đạo’s teacher today to go over his progress and one of the things that we need to work on is his self-control. He pushed his classmates when they cut in front of him at the lunch line or did something he didn’t like. His temper and self-control had been one of the things that we have worked on since daycare. He is getting much better than previous years, but not quite there yet.

Đán is going through the same phrase. When he gets mad, he is uncontrollable. He can break down quite easily. I have been a bit tough on him. If he wanted to yell, I wouldn’t stop him. I just let him do it until he calms down. It has been very stressful. Even though I could sense that he was about to break down and try to avoid it,
sometimes I was just too slow to react. I am terrible at dealing with those types of urgency.

I am not sure if everyone had those moments in their lives, but I also have that self-control issue. Obviously the older you get; the more self-discipline you possess. The simply have no choice. Wether dealing with the people you love or the people you work with, or the people you have deal with, you need to be able to control your emotion.

Blogging in the past had been a place for me to vent and spewed off my anger and emotion. Now I am much cooler and haven’t used a curse words for a long time. My topics have also changed. I no longer write much about my own emotions.

Hồng Hạnh and Thái Hòa return once again with a duet album consist of Trịnh Công Sơn’s songs. Too bad they only sing together on the opening title track, “Tự Tình Khúc” and the closing “Tình Khúc Ơ-Bai.” Thái Hòa’s charming baritone and Hồng Hạnh’s sensuous alto are a perfect complement.

Thái Hòa’s passion and devotion to Trịnh Công Sơn are undeniable. Most of his albums are his own simple, stripped-down rendition of Trinh’s songs. Most of his singings are accompanied by a acoustic picking guitar. His contribution on this album is no different. As a result, his straightforward, faithful delivery gets monotonous and predictable.

On the other hand, Hồng Hạnh brings something fresh to the record. Her rendition of “Cuối Cùng Cho Một Tình Yêu,” which arranged in the bossa nova rhythm, is quite intoxicating. Her orchestrated version of “Tình Yêu Tìm Thấy” is also hypnotizing. Too bad, she only has two solo tracks on the album.

As a whole, Tự Tình Khúc is an enjoyable record from two Trinh’s appreciators and a bonus from Đinh Tiến Dũng whose version of “Tình Sầu” is passible.

Minh Hằng’s sophomore release has seven tracks. The first three are forgettable, slow sugary pops. The forth, “Ngày Anh Đi” (Đổ Hiếu), is a contagious club joint. The beat and the rap (elementary lyrics but dope flow) saved Minh Hằng’s delivery. The fifth, “Yêu Để Em Biết” (Đức Trí), is the best track on the album. The minimal arrangement of guitar and piano gives her sexy but not-so-distinctive vocals a chance to shine. The sixth, “Ký Ức” (Đào Trọng Thịnh), returns to the slow jam with an r&b big beat. “Phải Chăng Em Đã Yêu” (Dương Khác Linh & Hoàng Huy Long) closes out the album with another dance beat that sampled the break from Psy’s “Gentleman.” While the album has some shining moments, it will not last. It took her six years to make it, but a few months for listeners to forget it.

To make the design fresh and to bring the codes up to date, I try to release a major redesign once a year. My goal has always been to simplify the layouts, markups and make changes to the things bothered me about the old design or codes.

For the previous design, my navigation had grown and I implemented the hamburger menu to accommodate the number of items. The use of JavaScript for the menu felt buggy and somewhat unnecessary; therefore, I removed it altogether in the redesign.

The inconsistency in the markups and layouts in the previous version also needed to be improved. The use of floats in layout made the markups and the CSS complicated. With the new version, I use flex box and multi-column in addition to floats to give me the flexibility to switch from one to two to three columns. In rewriting and modifying the markups, I also incorporated more ARIA roles into HTML5 elements.

To keep the site clean and lean, I no longer rely on JavaScript for fallback in older browsers. I also got rid of Normalize.css to embrace the fluidity of the web. Since my site doesn’t have to look the same on every browser, why should I try to normalize the CSS? I used Normalize.css because CSS Reset never sat well with me. Having to reset and redefine each element seemed like a double job. For a personal site, both Normalize.css and CSS Reset seem unnecessary. I also feel the same with a framework like Bootstrap or Foundation. They are just bloated with extra CSS and markups.

For the new design, my focus for the new design is still on typography. The wordmark is now set in ParaType’s Futura PT Condensed. The navigation is set in the same sans-serif typeface. Body texts and headings, however, are set in Adobe Text Pro designed by Robert Slimbach. What I love about this typeface is the readability at small size and the beautiful details at large size. Because I need a typeface that supports Vietnamese, I have a very narrow selection. I also have to limit my font choices in order to keep the file size down. Including all the character sets for Vietnamese increased the file size tremendously.

If you’re reading this site from an RSS reader, make sure to visit visualgui.com to see the new change for 2015. Although the New Year is still two months away, I wanted to do the redesign ahead of time like the way cars release their new model.

Quang Dũng là một nam ca sĩ quá đa tình. Hôn nhân của anh đã kết thúc và người tình cũ cũng đã bước sang hạnh phúc mới nhưng anh vẫn còn vương vấn. Không biết trong đời thường của Quang Dũng có đúng vậy không nhưng trong âm nhạc vẫn hiện ra rất rỏ qua những nhạc phẩm anh trình bài trong album Những Gì Còn Lại mới phát hành.

Dường như anh muốn mượn “Xa Quê” của Đức Trí để gửi gấm đến người tình xưa: “Nghe đâu sang năm chắc em lấy chồng / Đúng ra đó là chuyện vui / Thầm chúc cho em niềm vui duyên mới / Chắc tôi sẽ ở vậy thôi.” Qua ca khúc của nữ nhạc sĩ Diệu Hương, Quang Dũng như muốn tự nhắc nhở mình “Xin Đừng Quay Lại.” Tuy biết điều đó sẽ không thể xảy ra nhưng “Anh Vẫn Không Đỗi Thay” và vẫn nồng nàn “Yêu Em Bằng Cả Trái Tim” qua điệu jazz swing. “Thuở Ấy Có Em” và “Một Thời Để Yêu” bây giờ chỉ còn lại kỷ niệm. Giờ vắng em rồi “Đời Có Bao Nhiêu Ngày Vui.”

Những ai xem qua cuốn phim Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind của Michel Gondry mười năm về trước sẽ thấy được Quang Dũng trong album này bị thất tình như nam vai chính Joel Barish do Jim Carrey phụ trách. “Những Gì Còn Lại” như một tác phẩm chủ đề của bộ phim đó. Để quên được người yêu củ của mình, Barish phải nhờ đến bác sỉ mổ xẻ và xóa đi hình bóng nàng trong đầu óc của anh. Quang Dũng cũng muốn được như thế: “Bây giờ người ta nói chuyện đổi thay trái tim, và mươi năm sau người ta sẽ nói chuyện thay trí nhớ.”

Đạo is diagnosed with a mild case of Vonwillebrands. As a result we spent a whole day drawing blood test. I promised him that I would get him a set of Lego if he was brave.

He had to go three blood tests in one day. They drew 15 tubes altogether. The first time he resisted, but the second went smoothly and he didn’t cry at all. The third time, he didn’t collaborate, but we managed to get through.

It was a tough day; therefore, he earned his toy. I am thinking of getting him a flu shot also, but don’t want to push him too far. Let’s wait to take Đán as well.