Mỗi lần nhìn thấy mặt con nổi đỏ trầy trụa ba đau xót vô cùng. Thảm thương hơn là thấy con vẫn cười. Có ngứa và đau lắm không con? Đêm đến thấy con đưa tay lên gãi ba cố nắm lấy tay con để con khỏi phải gãi chóc da nhưng con không thích lắm.

Dạo này con cũng hay thức giấc rồi khóc to. Những lúc ba chỉ vuốt nhẹ lên lưng con để con ngủ trở lại. Có lúc ba để con khóc một hồi rồi ngủ trở lại. Đêm qua con không mãi không thôi. Ba la một tiếng “nín” thì con lại nín. Một lúc sao con lại khóc tiếp ba lại la thêm tiếng nữa thì con cũng nín. Bây giờ mỗi khi ru con ba cũng để tự con ngũ. Con nhào qua lộn lại cho đến khi lắng xuống rồi thiếp đi. Ba chỉ đỡ khi nào con xắp đập đầu vào tường.

Bây giờ con chập chuẩn đi. Trông tướng con rất dể thương. Giờ đây con cũng đã bớt bỏ đồ vào miệng. Con đã biết tự chơi một mình. Con biết cách đẩy xe chạy tự nhặt lên những gì con thích. Thấy con phát chuyển tốt và khoẻ ba vui mừng lắm. Mỗi ngày ba tự cười thằm và vui vẻ về hai thằng con trai của ba.

Cái cảm giác làm cha thật khó tả. Mỗi một suy nghỉ của ba điều liên quan đến hai con. Có những lúc ba thật mệt mỏi và muốn được yên tỉnh một mình. Nhưng rồi những thứ ba làm ba điều đắng đo rằng nếu ba làm những việc ấy mà phải không có thời gian với hai con, ba có nên làm không? Dỉ nhiên là không. Tiền thì chẳng bao giờ kiếm cho đủ còn tụi con thì mỗi ngày mổi lớn. Thời gian không bao giờ dừng lại. Mới ngày nào Đạo còn nhỏ xíu mà bây giờ đã có cá tính riêng. Mới ngày nào ôm Đán trọn trong tay mà bây giờ đeo con một chút là bị đao lưng đao cổ.

Anyways, I love you guys.

Even though Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors is a Big Boi’s solo album, “Apple of My Eye” is the only solo track. The rest are collaborative efforts from guest appearances includes T.I., Ludacris, Kelly Rowland and a handful of lesser-known artists. While the production is tight, the format is way too lose. Even his rhymes appear to be free form and aiming for punchlines, “I rub my stick on your chick like a violin,” rather than thought-out lyrics. With the exception of T.I., the guests aren’t up to his swag. Nevertheless Big Boi seems to make an experimental project rather than a solid work.

I cringe every time I see an article with a headline like this: “WordPress or MODX? The Winner Is…” Obviously fans of both camp would show up in the comment section and start a war. Let’s just stop it. Since both are open source, why not embrace both? It doesn’t cost you a dime.

Both WordPress and MODX are my favorite platforms at the moment. I use both for my full-time job as well as my freelance gigs. Rather than picking one over the other, why not use the one that is appropriate for your project?

I love the speed of WordPress. I could have a WordPress site up and running in ten minutes and I could also quickly create a custom design based off a starter theme. That’s the strength of WordPress.

On the other hand, MODX gives me complete control of my markup. I can create a site exactly the way I had imagined without the need of a starter theme. Obviously the process takes much longer, but the result is worth every minute of my time.

As someone who offers full web service (from design to front-end development to back-end development), I can give my clients the options. MODX would be more expensive because it takes more work. Then again, it also depends on the scope of the project. So for me, the winner is both.

Whenever Dao plays with his model trains, he has to have five cars as a set. I didn’t really get it until the other day when he asked me to set up my train to play with him. I just put together a bunch of trains, but he said, “No daddy, you have to the main engine first [Thomas, Percy, James etc.], then tender second, then freight car, then two cabooses.” My son is now officially a connoisseur of train. Here is their early Christmas present.

We were at a model train show and Dao spotted a small table with small trains. He told me, “Daddy, that’s a very small, tiny, little engine.” Even the man behind the booth was surprised how small Dao had described his trains.

While stuck at the red light I said, “Come on, I want to go home.” Dao followed up, “Please green light, we want to go home.”

At another stop light he spotted a man crossing the street and asked me, “Daddy, why is he walking home?” I reply, “He’s walking because he doesn’t have a car.” He went on, “Why doesn’t he have a car?” I said, “Because he doesn’t have money to buy a car.” I wanted to give him the value of money so I went on, “Like when you want to buy a toy, you have to have money. Do you know where the money come from?” He responded, “From the piggy bank.” I was like, “No, no. You have to work to earn money.”

As for out lil Dan, he has been mumbling quite a bit lately. He baby-talks all the time and has started to repeat what we say. Like when we say his name, he would say it back but not quite correct yet. He also knows the word “đèn” (light). Every time I say the word “đèn,” he would repeat it and look up to the lights. We’re predicting that he’ll probably talk more than his older brother since he already started early.

If one thing I learned from my professor in my Advanced Typography class, it has to be widow. Every time he saw a widow in our paragraph, he would cross it out with his black pen. While widow is easier to control on a printed page, it is much harder to do on the web because you do not have control of how your texts would be filled into the visitor’s device. I have looked at many of my favorite sites and I see widows everywhere.

Out of curiosity, I tweeted my boy Tim Brown to see if he has any suggestion and he pointed me to the Widow Tamer. I actually heard of it in the past, but was not interested simply because it requires JavaScript. My practice has always been to avoid using JavaScript as much as possible unless I absolutely have to. I looked into CSS solution, but it is not being widely supported yet. So I had a bit of a dilemma. Should I have widows and no js or should a have a bit of js and no more widow. I went with the latter for now simply because I want to avoid widow. The js file is actually fairly tiny so it doesn’t do much harm to the overall performance. Maybe I can replace it with CSS in the future.

Ngoài trời vẫn ưu ám. Tin thần vẫn ảm đạm. Nhưng trong lòng thì nhè nhàng. Lớp học tạm xong. Chỉ đợi đến thứ Tư nộp project cuối cùng. Đang nhờ bả xã làm thủ công dùm. Tôi thiết kế thì khá đẹp mà hế đụng đến cắt, dán hoặc làm production là không thể được. Nên tôi vẫn thích làm web hơn graphic design nhiều. Có làm graphic đi nữa thì chỉ thiết kế thôi còn phần production thì ai muốn làm gì thì làm.

Từ ngày ăn cari dê bệnh liên miên cho đến hôm nay. Không biết bị trúng thực hay trúng gió hay trúng cafe. Cũng sáng hôm đó được cái free drink của Starbucks. Vào order ly cối coffee frappaccino. Vậy thôi còn tham lam nên chơi thêm 3 shots expresso. Uống xong tinh thần như đang lên mây. Đã vậy thôi trưa còn thèm hủ tiếu mì cari dê ở La Cây Chợ Lớn. Có cari dê mà không có bia thì hơi thiếu thốn nên chơi thêm một chai bia Corrona lạnh. Ăn uống no nê thì có cảm giác như xuống địa ngục. Ngồi trong văn phòng mà ngủ gục nên đi bộ cho dê nó xuống. Đi bộ trời gió lại không chịu mặt áo ấm.

Có lẻ là ba thứ dồn vào nên mấy hôm nay bịnh gần chết. Nhờ vợ cạo gió cho ăn cháo trắng nên hôm nay mới khá lại được. Có lẻ bệnh nên tin thần khủng quảng nên viết ra tùm lum tùm la. Có cái blog là vậy đó. Nhiều lúc trúc hết tâm sự rồi mới thấy rằng có nên viết tất cả những gì trong đầu không? Bây giờ không còn comment nửa nên có cảm giác như là một mình viết một mình đọc. Cho nên muốn nhảm bao nhiêu thì nhảm chẳng ai để ý. Vả lại tôi viết tiếng Việt ngoài tôi ra còn ai mà hiểu được nửa?

Diana Krall pays homage to the Ziegfeld girls by dressing up quite sexy on the cover of her latest album Glad Rag Doll. The change of the image also signifies the departure of Krall’s musical direction. She puts jazz standards aside and goes all the way back to the ’20s and ’30s. The selection might be obscure to most listeners, but very familiar to Krall who spent her youth absolving her family’s record collection.

Glad Rag Doll kicks off with a fun, mid-tempo swing “We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye.” What makes the old tune so invigorating is the way she plays around with the lyrics. “Listen ladies and gentlemen / Here’s what happened to us,” she says. Instead of singing the next bars to tell us what happened to her love story, she scats. The result is quite clever.

Producer T Bone Burnett plays a key role in the album success. The best thing he has done is putting guitarist Marc Ribot in the same studio with Krall. His accompaniment on the title track is a proof that Ribot is the master of understatement who undertands emotion is much more essential than techniques. On “I’m a Little Mixed Up,” however, he switches up his distorted, rocking riffs against the slapping backbeat provided by bassist Dennis Crouch and keyboardist Keefus. The strong rhythm section gives Krall the freedom to explore the good old country bluesy licks on the piano.

Vocal wise, Krall is still at the top of her game. The cover “Lonely Avenue” showcases Krall’s raw vocals over the gritty feedback of Ribot’s guitar. With Glad Rag Doll, Krall and her musicians had successfully brought old-school songs into the new century.

In retrospect, design was not something I intended to do with my life. I actually didn’t even know what design was. When I started college, I picked the path my cousin thought I was good at. She sold me on communication major at La Salle University. In my mind, communication sounded cool and I would be controlling the board in a TV station or a music production. In my freshman year, reality struck. Communication was the least that I wanted to do. I hated public speaking. I still hate doing it now unless I have to.

After getting through the first year, I wanted out. I was going to switch to Computer Science, even though I didn’t have any passion for it. Ms. Cross at the Upward Bound Program got me into Millersville University with a major in Computer Science. I was ready to move back to my mom’s house, but then I heard about a new major coming out at La Salle called Digital Arts & Multimedia Design. The new major sounded way cooler than Computer Science so I decided to stay.

The very first class of the program was learning Photoshop and I was hooked. In my sophomore year, I landed a paid internship at Trump Maria as a graphic designer. I got to stare at a computer screen all day. I didn’t even know how to use Mac OS 9. I told my mentor that I had decided not to become a graphic designer. Not sure what prompted me to tell him that. Maybe it was out of frustration. It turned out to be a good decision. I was able to focused my time and effort on web design.

In my junior year, I landed another paid internship at Unisys. Once again I was geting paid for doing nothing. I got bored, quit and joined my classmates at WePlayIt, a startup gig. We made the site and created some Flash comic strips. The site launched all of us was let go.

After graduation, I bounced around advertising agencies. They wouldn’t hire me fulltime. They just called me in whenever they needed me. I ended up working at Staples and Donnelley. One day I got a call from Vassar and that when design took off for me. I spent five years at Vassar working with a handful talent designers on both print and web. I also took on small freelance gigs on the side.

Then I moved to the George Washington University School of Business as a web developer. As my full-time job moved me further and further away from design, I took on more freelance projects to keep my design in the game. When I took on the web services developer at George Mason School of Law, I am moving even further away from design. In addition to maintaining the school’s various CMS, I am also responsible for server administration.

Then I learned about the graduate graphic design program at George Mason School of Art, I handed in my application and was accepted. Now I am back learning where I started in graphic design. I still have no passion for graphic design. It costs way too much money and papers. The design concept, however, would help me tremendously in my web design. I really hope that the Art School would include more web design classes in its curriculum. I will be taking advanced web design next semester. We’ll see how that goes.

Height: 29.74 (50%)
Weight: 22lbs 7oz. (75%)
HC: 18.5″ (75%)

His height at 50% is understandable. Both of his parents are pretty short. His head is now as big as Dao’s and his weight will surpass his brother pretty soon if he’s keep eating the way he does. I can feed him all day long if I wanted to. He understands when we ask him to clap his hands and weave goodbye. He’s babbling quite a bit already. He seems to be a happy kid. He laughs pretty loud, but he screams even louder. He hasn’t shown anything that he liked except for food.