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:

• 2025: 42
• 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.

It’s a no brainer that Jon Duckett follows up his beautiful, successful HTML & CSS with JavaScript & jQuery. As with the previous book, this one is for beginners. Pleasing design, clear writing, and comprehensive coverage make it an excellent reference. A must-have for web designers who want to add interactivity to their site.

A thorough and compelling biography of Thelonious Monk, a genius of modern jazz. Monk’s music, is often misunderstood, has always been a fascinating matter. Fortunately Kelly knows his music well and brilliantly sheds the light on Monk’s signature styles such as his beautiful melodies, dissonant chords, and complex rhythms. For Monk’s life, which often seemed eccentric and erratic to the public, Kelly provides the charming and passionate side of the man through detailed research and interviews with the people who were closed to Monk, including his family members. For the man who used very few words and whose entire life dedicated to music, this book does do him justice.

A companion to Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design, Scott Jehl’s Responsible Responsive Design is a required read for front-end developers who want to make the web more accessible and faster. Because of his expertise on web performance and his experience in working in places with limited access, Jehl explains clearly the important of delivering images, CSS and JavaScript without blocking the contents. Even though this one is brief, as with all the books from A Book Apart, Jehl was able to pack all the technical details you need to know to make a better, smoother user experience across networks and devices.