One loves Pho and one loves Mustang. You could probably figure out which boy likes which. Lil Dan loves Pho. We took him to Pho 50 two times and he ate like we haven’t fed him for a week. He also prefers to spoon feed himself; therefore, he made such a huge mess. As I was at the counter paying the bill, I overheard the bus lady told the owner in Vietnamese, “Look at the way Vietnamese kid eats. Isn’t that cute?” She was being sarcastic of course. Now whenever we go out for Pho, I just request a huge empty bowl for him to scoop. He did a very good job last night when we were at Pho Today. Dan doesn’t like eating vegetables, but he likes it when I juiced them. At dinner, I made a glass of juice contained kale, baby spinach, baby carrots, celery, orange and banana. He drank half of the glass.

Dao, only the other hand, likes eating vegetables. Just dip into ketchup and he would eat it. Dao is also making a transition from train to car. His latest obsession is convertible Mustang. Every time we’re on the road, he would spot out a convertible Mustang miles away. He recognizes the shape of Mustang as well as the horse logo.

Daycare wise, Dao is already fit in. He enjoys his time in there with his friends and teachers. Dan, on the other hand, is having a tough time making the transition. After the four-day weekend, I took him to daycare this morning and he started to cry as soon as I made a turn into the daycare. Then he would clung on to me the whole time. Even though I had been through this experience with Dao, it still feels awful hearing hi screamed. I really hope he’ll get past this stage soon.

Jay-Z has everything and he’s not ashamed to brag about it again on his 12th release Magna Carta Holy Grail. He’s rich as fuck: “A million sold before the album dropped / White Lexus before I had a deal.” He’s married to Beyoncé: “My baby momma harder than a lot of you niggas.” He has swag: “Leonardo Da Vinci flows / Riccard Tisci Givenchy clothes.”

Unlike Kanye West, his protégé and collaborator who pushes his music into uncharted territories, Jay can’t get beyond his comfort zone. As a result, even his most clever drug tale in “Picasso Baby” sounds staled: “Let’s make love on a million, in a dirty hotel / With the fan on the ceiling, all for the love of drug dealing.” On the other hand, his silly punchlines turn out to be quite witty like, “Fuck hashtags and retweets, nigga / 140 characters in these streets, nigga,” and “When I was talking Instagram / Last thing you wanted was your picture snapped.”

Beside the bravado as usual, the strongest moment comes up in “Oceans.” With Frank Ocean covering the hook, Jay rhymes about cruising on his luxury yacht while reflecting on the slave ships. Here’s one of Jay-Z’s brilliant wordplay: “On the holiday playing “Strange Fruit” / If I’mma make it to a billi I can’t take the same route.”

With Timbaland laying down infectious productions (for the most part), MCHG is an enjoyable listening. While Jay-Z’s gifted flow is unmatchable, his lyricism has yet to reach the personal level since The Black Album. Other than “Jay-Z Blue,” in which he shows his affection for his daughter, he uses wealth and success to mask his true feelings.

About a week ago, one of my recent client sites got hacked. After I received the client’s notification, I checked out the site immediately. I couldn’t find any obvious code so I reinstalled WordPress, but that didn’t do it. I immediately called Lunarpages, which is the host I recommended to my client, and luckily my client did purchase the Premium Restore Service for $1.50 a month. A few hours later, the site was restored and it was back in business. I went in and changed all of the passwords for him. The previous ones were so weak that it was so easy to crack.

Lesson learned: Please, please make your password strong and purchase a restore service. Again, Lunarpages rocks.

A few days ago while I am spending time with my family, a really long time client contacted me to get me to help him upgrade MySQL 4 to 5 because his hosting provider is no longer supporting MySQL 4. When I logged into his WordPress admin, he was still using WordPress 2.7. The reason was that his host was still on PHP4 and MySQL 4.

My first task was to create a brand new MySQL 5 and then imported MySQL 4 over. The only problem was that the Vietnamese character was all messed up when I import via UTF8. It took me awhile to figure out that I needed to import Latin1. After the import was successful, I upgraded PHP 4 to PHP 5.4. I then upgraded WordPress from 2.7 to 3.52. He’s now able to upgrade WordPress automatically with just one click. I really hope that he’ll do it in the future.

Lesson learned: If your site is running on WordPress, please, please upgrade whenever you see the new version available. 99.9% of the time, it would upgrade successfully. This is one of WordPress’s awesome features.

After thirteen years of manual updates, I am more than glad to turn the task over to the staff in the McCaskey Alumni Association. McCaskeyAlumni.org is now powered by WordPress.

In addition to migrating the site into an easy-to-use CMS, I made some refinements to the visual design. Although this is not the first web site I have created, it was one of the early projects that started my freelance gig. It also marked a turning point for me in term of heading into the minimalist direction. McCaskeyAlumni.org was my very first experiment with simple design and it has stood the test of time.

Even with the new relaunch, the concept is still the same as when it first launched. The new layout is wider and responsive; the typography is more modern; but the general look and feel is still crisp and open with plenty of whitespace. The client is still very happy with the original design after all these years. They’re even more excited now that could make changes themselves.

Visualgui gets a few minor updates. The FancyBox, which was used primary to pop up slideshows, is now gone. Showshows are now just opened in fullscreen window. Without FancyBox, jQuery library is no longer needed. With the exception of Google Analytics, the site is now JavaScript free.

Links in portfolio sections are no longer opening in new windows. In the previous design, I used blank target because of infinite scroll. One of infinite scroll drawbacks was breaking the back button. Even though I am no longer using infinite scroll, I totally forgot to get rid of blank target. Coincidentally, my wife just complained to me that she hates it when web sites open up new windows. Although she was not referring to my site, my motto has always been that if your wife hates something you better change it.

On the visual side, the header and footer are switched from black to white. Somehow the back strip at top and bottom makes the layout look trapped. After changing it to white and I asked my wife for feedback and she said that the white makes the layout less divisive. I totally agreed. The new sticky navigation at the bottom has a very subtle transparency, which is inspired by Apple’s flat direction in the new iOS 7. Even though the flat design in iOS 7 has received tremendous negative criticisms from the design community, I predict it is going to be fantastic. Can’t go wrong with minimalism. Let’s wait and find out.

I have been watching a few documentaries on NetFlix and here are my quick takes on them.

Hungry for Change is quite informative on the type of food that we eat. The film inspires me to to get back into eating healthy. I have started juicing. Not sure if it works, but I am feeling good already. I am trying to stay away from processed food as well as sugar as much as possible. We’ll see how it goes.

Finally had a chance to catch Helvetica. Not sure if this film is interesting to the general audience, but quite fascinating to design geeks. The film presents both opposite views on the typeface. Love it or hate it, Helvetica is here to stay. No typeface is suitable for every situation and Helvetica is no exception even though it is ubiquitous. Use it when appropriate.

Ice-T’s Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap gives viewers a glim into the mind of rap legends like Rakim, Dr. Dre, Nas and Grandmaster Caz. Each MC gets to explain his process (style, technique and delivery), name their influences and drop a few bars. The highlights of the film is, without a doubt, the raw freestyling from rappers including Eminem, Kanye West and Ice-T himself. Not a bad directing debut at all.

Only three days into his daycare life and Dan is already losing his voice. I took him in this morning and he cried as soon as we stepped into his classroom. It was painful once again to hear him cry. Dao took quite a long time to settled in even though he started daycare when he was one. Dan is going to be even harder because he started at 19 months.

When I came to pick him up this evening he could hardly talk. Ms. Ester said he cried every time someone comes in or out the door. He was expecting his parents to pick him up. As soon as he saw me, he stopped crying. As we walked to our car he said hi and smiled at everyone he saw.

Dao was out sick today. His fever shot up to 103 degrees. It looks like he’ll be home for the rest of the week as well. Daycare is such a crazy place.

Cécile McLorin Salvant is an intriguing jazz singer with a style of her own. Her excellent debut, WomanChild, showcases her vocal range, technical chops and a rare gift for reinterpretation.

Her rendition of “You Bring Out the Savage in Me,” a controversial tune from Valaida Snow, is shocking yet humorous. Her phrasing is meticulous, particularly her enunciation in the following couplet: “My blood boils with the tropic heat / And the rhythm of my heart has a tom-tom beat.” Salvant’s take on “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” a Billie Holiday’s joint, is quite something else. She pushes her vocals, plays with her tone and swings like hell with the fantastic rhythm section led by the pianist Aaron Diehl. “John Henry” is another outstanding cover that displays her powerful voice and exquisite taste in singing standards.

In addition to the rare repertoire from jazz history, WomanChild demonstrates Salvant’s own songwriting through the title track, “Le Front Cache Sur Tes Genoux” and the album-closer “Deep Dark Blue.” With her immense talent, Salvant is going to soar. This is just the beginning of a promising career.

In response to my post on “Why I Dislike Physical Examination,” a reader wrote:

Just because you got hard by a male doctor just doesn’t mean you gotta be gay or bi. It was just a physical reaction. Just like when you get an erection when you rub yourself against a Bible, that won’t turn you into a priest LOL

He’s right. I am not gay. I was just throwing a bone his way. I got to know him through this site when I still had the comments turned on. Truth be told, I had my doses of homophobic commentaries in the early days of blogging. For the record, I am not a homophobic. I never was. I was young, cocky and listened way too much rap music. (“I read somewhere, I’m homophobic / Go through the hood, there’s mad niggas on my dick,” rapped 50 Cent.) Fortunately, gay readers liked him straightened me out and taught me a thang or two about being gay. One of the comments he made that still struck a chord with me till this day is that “being gay is not a choice.”

Although I am no longer having the comment section, I am still corresponding with him on various topics. He is a much better writer than me. His views on politics, music, religions (as you can read the comment above) and even gay sex are witty yet thoughtful. I used to love reading his blog until it was shut down. Fuck Multiply.

In a discussion of “Nhac Sen,” which came out of this YouTube video he sent me, we had the following exchange. I wrote:

For me, “sen” comes more from the singers than the music itself. I actually love the music when it is done without those over-sentimental delivery. For instance, I love how Anh Tuyet and Le Quyen made them sounded “sang” without losing the core melody. Hien Thuc’s latest release is also placed in that direction.

Maybe you’re an exception, but most gay men I have known or interacted with are really into “Sen” music, especial Quang Le and Dan Nguyen 🙂

He wrote back:

I don’t know who Dan Nguyen is, but as for Quang Le, certain gay guys like him probably not for his singing but for something else. Now that he is chubby, it might be fun to dress him up in Japanese traditional loin cloth and pretend you are screwing a sumo wrestler LOL Just kidding, I can’t stand men who sing like pussies, unless they come with sweet and sour sauce LOL

I laughed my ass off, especially the Kayne reference. For a few years, I had a chance to hang out with a couple of gay guys and it was one of the highlights moments of my life. We sipped Cosmo, gambled and cursed all fucking nights. Halloween parties were just crazy fun. Drinks and drags were everywhere. Gay clubs, particularly in New York City, were quite an eye-opening experience. I am a grown-ass man with wife and kids now so I don’t do that anymore, but I would never forget those days.

In my college years, I had a close friend. In fact she was only my close friend then. We went to dinner every night simply because I hated going to the diner all by myself. We hanged out together, watched movies, went bowling and played pool. We headed to Chinatown for Vietnamese and Chinese food. We hit the club on Wednesday nights simply because the cover charge was low and a drink cost a penny. I didn’t know she was a lesbian until I invited her to my wedding. Not sure why she kept that away from me all those years. Nevertheless, I am glad that she was there with me during my college years. She’s now speaking openly on being a gay Asian-American.

In a powerful TED Talk, Andrew Solomon demonstrated how gay have progressed in just 40 years. It had turned from an illness to an identity. President Obama recognized gay marriage last year. Solomon also taught me a thing or two about parenting. As I often discussed my wife that I want to be fully supportive of our children if one or all of our kids will turn out to be gay. I want to embrace whoever they’ll become and I also want to make sure that they can live happily with whoever they are. I want them to turn to us for love and support. In return, I want to be included into their lives.

Although Dan seemed to be having fun playing ball with his teacher when I picked him up yesterday, Ms. Ester told me that he was having a rough first day. He was happy to see me, but didn’t stop what he was playing to greet me like Dao. He was still carrying on with his game. When he spoke to me, I noticed the scratchiness in his voice. He must had cried a lot. Then he felt warm.

After we went home, I checked his temperature and it was up to 103 degrees. The good thing was that he was still very active. We gave him some Tylenol and he slept well, but the fever was still high this morning so we let him stayed home with grandma. I was teasing his cousin Khoi who started daycare last week that he got sick just after three days in daycare. Now Dan got sick for just one day. He broke all the records.

Dao, on the other hand, is probably already getting used to the environment. He enjoys playing with water and other activities in daycare.