An excerpt from the School of Art’s mailing list to students:
As you can imagine the start up cost to get a website for this type of service has a nice price tag. I would like to know if there is interest from the School of Art to showcase their talents by helping [us] create a website and platform much of the likes of Facebook.
Not a bad way of getting students to create something like Facebook for free or low cost.
Players: 2-6
Age: 12+ years
Game Board
100 Question Cards
50 Music Samples
6 Movers
1 Dice
Answer questions about jazz to advance along the board. Player who reaches the final destination first wins.
Each player selects a mover and sets it on the board’s start space.
There are four sets of cards. Each set has its own color and category.
A jazz application that plays 10-second sample of a jazz tune. A smartphone or a computer with internet connection is required to access the application.
The path is made up of spaces with the same colors as the cards with the exception of black and audio color. For the black space, the player gets to choose which question he wants to answer.
Each player rolls the dice to determine who goes first. The highest roller starts. The first player rolls the dice and moves according to the number on the dice. The color of the space he lands on determines the question he would be asked. If the player provides the correct answer, he gets to roll the dice again and advanced until he misses the question.
If one player lands on the same space as another player, he has two choices to make.
For each audio challenge, each player only has to answer either the artist or the title of the tune. Once he answered the first part correctly he could answer the second part for a bonus point. If he answers the bonus point correctly he gets to advanced one space. If he misses the answer, he moves back one space.
A player must land exactly on the last red space. Once he is on the last red space, he must answer both parts (the title and the artist) of the audio challenge correctly to win.
Once the player reaches near the winning zone, he must roll the dice until he lands exactly on the last red space. Even if he couldn’t land exactly on the last red space, he could still answer the question related to his current space and roll again. If the player in the last red space gets the question wrong, he stays there and play continues as it is a normal turn.
I started to collect Vietnamese ballads arranged in jazz flavors over the years. Whenever I heard something jazzy, I just drag it into my “Visualgui.com Presents Viet Jazz” playlist, which now has 90 tracks, which takes 7.5 hours to get through. I am in the process of edit down the number of tunes, but here’s the list so far:
1. Ai Dua Em Ve/Thuy Vu
2. Ao anh / Le Quyen
3. Bai Khong Ten So 8 / Y Phuong
4. Bay Gio Thang May / Le Hieu
5. Bien Can / Nguyen Hong Nhung
6. Bong Ngay Qua / Quynh Hoa
7. Buon / Ho Ngoc Ha
8. Chan Tinh / Le Quyen
9. Chay Tron / Tung Duong
10. Chieu / My Linh
11. Chieu Nay Khong Co Em / Thang Long Bass
12. Chim Trong Muon Thua / Nguyen Ngoc Anh
13. Co Hong / Nguyen Thao
14. Con Mat Con Lai / Duc Tuan va Vua Lua
15. Con Tuoi Nao Cho Em / Trinh Vinh Trinh
16. Cuoi Cung Cho Mot Tinh Yeu / Thanh Ha
17. Cuoi dem / Tung Duong
18. Da Yeu / Toc Tien
19. Dau Chan Dia Dang / Thu Phuong
20. Dem Do Thi / Thanh Ha
21. Dem Hoai Vong / Tuan Ngoc
22. Du Nang Co Mong Manh / Nguyen Khang
23. Duyen Kiep / Anh Tuyet
24. Ghen / Duc Tuan
25. Gui Gio Cho May Ngan Bay / Ngoc Quy
26. Ha Trang / Tran Thai Hoa
27. Hoang Vang / Tan Son
28. Huong lac / Le Cat Trong Ly
29. Huyen Thoai Nguoi Con Gai / Hong Hanh
30. Khuc Tinh / Tuan Ngoc
31. La Do Muon Chieu / Tran Thai Hoa
32. La Thu / Ngoc Quy
33. Lang dang chieu dong Ha Noi / Ngoc Anh
34. Lang Le / Ho Quynh Huong
35. Lau Dai Tinh Ai / Thuy Vu
36. LK Ai Ve Song Tuong – Toi Di Giua Hoang Hon / Nguyen Khang
37. Loi Ru Mat Em/ Tran Thu Ha
38. Mai Mai Ben Em / Le Quyen
39. Mau Dem / Jazzy Da Lam
40. Mo / Tung Duong
41. Mo Coi / Lieu Anh Tuan
42. Mong Duoi Hoa / Thuy Vu
43. Mot Coi Di Ve / Hong Nhung
44. Mot Doi Quen Lang / Khanh Ha
45. Mua Dong Cua Anh / Tan Minh
46. Mua Thu / Tran Thu Ha
47. Mua thu canh nau / Hong Hanh
48. Mua Thu Chet / Thu Phuong
49. Mua Thu Khong Tro Lai / Hoang Nhat Minh
50. Mung Xuan / Y Phuong
51. Nang Chieu / Ngoc Quy
52. Nang Thu / Thu Hoai
53. Nguoi Yeu Toi Khoc / Thuy Vu
54. Nhin Nhung Mua Thu Di / Hong Hanh
55. Nho Anh / Ho Quynh Huong
56. Nho Mua Thu Ha Noi / Thu Phuong
57. Nhung Buoc Chan Am Tham / Phuong Vy
58. Nhung Con Duong Nho / Hong Nhung
59. Nhung Khung Troi Khac / Nguyen Thao
60. Noi Long / Ho Ngoc Ha
61. Pho Ngheo / Tran Thu Ha
62. Phuc Am Buon / Anh Tuyet
63. Roi Mai Toi Dua Em / Tung Duong
64. Roi Nhu Da Ngay Ngo / Hong Nhung
65. Rung Xua Da Khep / Thanh Ha
66. Sang Ngang / Duc Tuan
67. Sau Y Biec / Tuan Ngoc
68. Se Hon Bao Gio Het / Nguyen Khang
69. Ta Ao Xanh / Tung Duong
70. Tam Su Nguoi Ca Si / Viet Hoan
71. Thoi / Nguyen Khang
72. Thu Quyen Ru / Mai Hoa
73. Tinh Ca Cho Em / Hong Hanh
74. Tinh Cam / Quang Dung
75. Tinh Lo / Thanh Ha
76. Toi Doc Bao Cong Cong / Nguyen Dinh Thanh Tam
77. Toi Tim Thay Toi / Ho Quynh Huong
78. Toi Voi Troi Bo Vo / Tran Thu Ha
79. Trang Khat / Tung Duong
80. Trong Co Don / Ho Quynh Huong
81. Tuoi Da Buon / Thanh Ha
82. Ve Em / Tan Minh
83. Vet Lan Tram / Anh Tuyet
84. Voi / Tuan Ngoc
85. Vung Lay Cua Chung Ta / Tran Thai Hoa
86. Xin Con Goi Ten Nhau / Duong Quoc Hung
87. Xin Mat Troi Ngu Yen / Anh Tuyet
88. Yeu Dau Theo Gio Bay / Hien Thuc
89. Yeu Nhau Di / Hong Hanh
90. 60 Nam Cuoc Doi / Phuong Vy
Hieu:
Dear Donny,
I’ve read a lot of your reviews / comments on Vietnamese DVD / Albums but it has been a while without seeing your critics on Thuy Nga Paris by Night . How about this time with Paris by Night 107 which has just been released a couple days ago ?
Best,
Hieu V
My response:
Dear Hieu,
Thank you for reading. Unfortunately I no longer have the luxury of sparing a couple of hours watching Paris By Night, let alone writing a review for it. These days I only focus on albums that I feel worth mentioning or worth my time reviewing.
Best,
Donny
My use of social media has changed unconsciously over the year. In the beginning, I tried to connect all my networks together. My blog RSS feed would go to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. My tweets would feed into Facebook and LinkedIn.
These days, I separated out my networks. I use Twitter mainly for web-related topics and keeping up with the industry. Facebook is mostly to connect with friends and family. I am not using LinkedIn as much as I used to. I hardly use Pinterest and gave up on Google+.
I used Google Reader quite a bit to keep up with my favorite blogs, but now that Google shut it down I am going back to Feedly. I love Feedly interface design, but somehow the functionality always confuses me, especially the “today” tab.
Out of all the social media activities, blogging and reading blogs remain my favorite. I like the personal space when I blog and I like reading blogs in which the authors put more time and effort into writing them.
Jen Karin, one of my favorite clients, once again gave me a creative opportunity to do a fun project. Jen will be speaking at a conference and she wanted something to hand out to the audience. She likes the idea of giving a 4×4 card with her contact info on the front and her powerful strength message on the back. In a few hours, I came up with these designs in Illustrator. I really love a small project like this. It allows me to come up with something creative fast. For me, no project is too small. If you have something creative you need help with, do not hesitate to contact me.
My lovely wife wears many hats. In addition to taking care of me and my boys, she’s my only usability tester and browser checker. Every time I make some front-end updates to this site, I would call her up to ask how is my site looking on her IE8.
For the past few weeks, she said that the homepage banner doesn’t show up on IE8, which is intentional if I am using an SVG banner. A few days ago, she called me and said, “Is your site hacked? I keep getting the CAPTCHA box.” I then realized that I set the security on CloudFlare really high. As a result, if CloudFlare thinks you’re a spam, it will ask you to fill out CAPTCHA.
I went back into CloudFlare today and turned down the security setting down a bit. You still need to fill out CAPTCHA, but it won’t expire for a month. I apologize if it is causing you any inconvenience of accessing the site, but I rather be safe than sorry.
Just rolled out a few updates on Mason Law. Brought back the image slider one the homepage, added more links, tightened up the typography and jazzed up the footer a bit.
While the visual only gets some minor changes, the entire CSS structure is completely rewritten using Sass. I went through line by line of CSS and convert everything into SCSS. Managing CSS with Sass is much easier and much more pleasurable. The more I use Sass the more I appreciate its maintainability. I also reduced to fewer media queries and put more focus on the mobile version.
Dad: Were you being a good boy at school today?
Dao: Yes, I was a good boy. I didn’t hit anyone.
Dad: You’re not supposed to hit anyone.
Dao said to his mom: “Daddy pee pee standing up. Dao pee pee standing up. Can you pee pee standing up mommy?
Our lil Dan is starting to show his effection for others. Every morning I dropped him off at my sister-in-law’s house, he would give his cousin Khoi and hug and a kiss and sometimes a few slaps on the head as well. If I ask him for a kiss, he would do it as well. He’s also starting to copy his brother. He wants the same food Dao eats and the same toys Dao plays.
In the past couple of months, I have been thinking about redesigning the Mason Law web site. One of the things I would like to accomplish is to clean up all of the menu items. One of the approaches I wanted to explore is having one menu button that would launch the entire navigation system. As I started to look around, Disney is doing it. The problem is that the menu system is not implemented across all of Disney sites. The bigger issue, though, is that the launch nav disappeared with JavaScript turned off.
The new Teehan+Lax site also taking the same approach and having the same no JS issue. Even with the JavaScript turned on, I started to get annoyed rather quickly that I have to make that extra click every time I want to go to another section of the site.
Accessibility wise, the JavaScript dependency is not going to work for a higher educational web site. Design wise, it is not going to get pass my superior. I am actually reworking the homepage to include more links. It is getting way overwhelming. So now I am going to need to figure out a different solution.