Yesterday morning Dana and I met an inclusion specialist at JCC to touch base on Dao’s behavior. It was heartbreaking to hear how unhappy he was in class because he cried every time he couldn’t get what he wanted. We had turned him into a spoiled kid. The specialist gave us some techniques on consequences and warned us that it will be tough discipline him now, but we need to reign him in.

After work I went pick up cu Dan and went home. Dao was eating dinner and watching TV. Things seemed to be fine until I asked him to go take a bath. Of course, he refused so I brought out Lightning McQueen, which I bought a few weeks ago, just for him to take a peak. I told him, “If you’re good, I’ll give it to you at the end of the week.” He replied, “Yes, I am a good boy. I want to go take a shower.” As I was giving him a bath and washing his hands, he told me, “Hands are for holding, not for hitting.” Wow, I was so proud of my son.

After the shower, things started to get wild. He claimed his prize, “Daddy, I am being a good boy. Can I have Lightning McQueen? I really need it. I want to play with it now.” I said, “Yes, you are being such a good boy and if you keep up this behavior I’ll give it to you at the end of the week.” He started screaming, rolling down the floor, putting his fingers in his mouth trying to gag up. I stayed firm and continued to explain to him that type of behavior is not going to get him the toy and I love him. He tried to hit and scratched me. I held on to his hands and asked, “What are hands for?” His respond was, “For hitting.” I let him go, he picked up books and tissue box and tossed them at me. I just let him went on until he could calm down. When he did he asked for mommy. When Dana came up, he tried to tell her that “Daddy is not nice to me.” Dana stood by me and explained to him why he didn’t get his toy. Not sure what she told him, but he came and apologized to me. He gave me a hug and kiss.

The whole experience was quite something. I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t spank or yell at him. I didn’t led up either. I re-emphasized several times, “I love you, but I don’t like your behavior.” It was eye-opening to see a three year old put on quite a show. He is actually not a hardheaded kid. He just knew that he could get away with it if he pushed harder. When he knew he couldn’t get it he stopped and tried other methods like turning to his mom. He makes a much bigger scene when we’re in a room full of adults. This little fellow is a good actor. Back when he was one or younger, he slided on the floor when he didn’t get what he wanted, but he wouldn’t slide on a hardwood floor. It was hilarious seeing him looking for spot that had the rug to slide down on his stomach.

As someone whose work revolves around the web, I have a tough time separating professional and personal matters. If I don’t keep up with the web I will fall behind, but then I got caught up with everything else as well. Refocusing on my priorities has been on my mind for sometimes, but now I just have to do it.

Blogging needs to be reduced, which I have been doing, but cannot go away completely. I need this platform to write down things that I can’t talk in other forms. Social media, on the other hand, I can do without. I am not going to delete all my accounts, but my activities will be spared. I just use Twitter to follow up on web development. Likewise, I’ll only read books that are necessary for my work. Reading for pleasure will be limited to children books.

Freelance projects are on hold at this time. I am not accepting any new clients. I am just going to finish up my obligations at the moment. If the projects keep dragging on and getting stressful, however, I’ll return the full deposit and move on.

My main priority is my boys. Right now I want to give them 100% of my focus when I am not working. In the future I might not be able to see them as much as I want to. I hope that day will never come.

After work around 4pm, I usually picked up Dao from JCC and headed over Dana’s sister’s house. Dana came in around 7pm then we had dinner before heading home. Since lil Dan stays with grandma during the day, it would give me an hour or two with him before he goes to sleep. I don’t get to spend much time with them on weekdays. The problem was that Dao misbehaved when he knew that he was surrounded by a group of people who loved him.

Yesterday I took him straight home, and as always, he was very well behaved when we were alone. I fed him sweet rice I bought for lunch and he loved it. We played together and watched some TV. Then we headed over to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner. Dana had a headache and Dan was sleeping so they stayed there. I took Dao back home. We showered, brushed our teeth, read two books and went to sleep. It was the most wonderful day I had all week.

The thing is I can’t repeat that pattern with Dao. His mood varies from day to day, but he behaves much better with only the two of us. As much as I am going to miss hanging out with Dan, I am going to have to just be alone with Dao until he gets over this behavior. I really hope that we won’t have to go through this again with Dan. He has been a very calm kid and I am loving his personality. I was even able to to work from home on Friday while keeping an eye on him.

Dao has his good and not-so-good moments. When he’s good he could get me to do anything for him. When he wants something he would say, “Daddy can you get me something special? I am listening to you. I am a good boy.” Last Saturday, four of us went to Wegman’s for breakfast. Somehow I really dig Wegman’s inauthentic version of Pho, which has shrimp dumplings and all type of veggies including carrot and broccoli. The clear broth is a winner for me since I can no longer tolerate the level MSG in Vietnamese Pho. In any rate, Dao spoke the whole time he was there asking us everything he saw in the store. He drove both us really crazy, but we can not ignore him. If I don’t even answer him fast enough, sometimes I have to think about the item that he asked me, he would say, “Daddy, I am talking to you.”

The other day, he and I were driving home from the bookstore and he told me, “Daddy, drive faster.” I responded to him, “I can not drive fast, the police will catch me.” He thought for a minute and said, “Me too… and they take the car away… That’s not nice.” I laughed and thought to myself, “I never told him all that.” Yes, there are plenty of things that I couldn’t recall telling him, yet he already knew. He must have picked them up from JCC.

At times, Dao stresses me the hell out, but he also is a joy to be with at times. I am pretty sure both joy and stress of being a parent will be with us for the rest of our lives.

Type Matters by Jim Williams: A visual intro to typography that takes less to read but more to marvel its gorgeous design. This is a perfect example of a graduate thesis project in graphic design.

Typographic Web Design by Laura Franz: Not too many books devoted to web typography. This one has some useful tips on legibility when choosing types for the web. In-depth HTML & CSS tutorials are helpful for beginner web designers.

Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton: Read the first edition a while back. The second edition is a much needed refresh. Love the type crime examples.

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst: Rereadinging this book seems to take slower and slower each time just to digest the information.

A friend commented on the redesign: “Your new site looks weird as if it is not designed for desktop.” He’s right. The new site was not designed for desktop or mobile. It was designed for readability. The redesign process focused on how the text is comfortable for reading. The width of the column depends on the text size and its characters. I also played with indents with no spaces between paragraphs for the body text. Microtypography is the main inspiration for the site.

Many rappers, including Jay-Z, often use this line: “What you eat don’t make me shit.” That’s not the case with breast-feed babies. What Dana eats does make Dan shits. Not sure what she has been eaten, but his shit is pretty kicking. When he shits everyone knows. Every time he shits on my lap, I could feel the vibration on my legs.

I just wanted to let that out of the way. Dan went to the doctor today for his six-month check up. Unlike Dao, who fell off the chart when he was three-month old, Dan is the 70-75 percentile. He weighs in at 18lb and 13z. His height is 27in and his head circumference is 17in. He’s growing beautifully. He’s chubby, happy and most importantly easy, at least easier than his big brother.

He loves human interaction. He laughs and talks back if someone interacts with him. He loves to take a bath and would splash the water with his hands and feet. Whenever he gets excited, he kicks his feet like when we took him on the train at the mall for the first time or when we put him on the swing. I could carry him with the carrier all day and he would not cry even if he fell asleep. Speaking of sleep, he slept over night for three days or so.

The the doctor office, he smiled and talked to the nurse when she took his measurements. When she told me that “this is the best age,” I concurred. I am enjoying every moment I have with him now because it is not going to last.

For the past two months, I have to have my Sautéed Lobster in Shell with Salt & Pepper once a week. The owner and servers now recognized me. The waitress knew exactly what I was going to order as soon as I stepped into the place.

Last week, she said, “Anh order tom rang muoi voi chai Tsingtao phai khong? (You want lobster and a Tsingtao, right?)” I replied, “Lobster thoi khong co Tsingtao. (Lobster yes, but not Tsingtao.)” She mocked, “Wow, hom nay sao hien vay? (Wow, why being so good today?)” I smiled, “Con phai di lam nua chu. (I have to get back to work after lunch.)”

The lobster came out and it was delicious as always, but something was missing. I called her over and said, “Ok give me the Tsingtao.” She brought it out and said, “Da quen vay roi. Thieu sao ma duoc. (You’re already used to it. Can’t just miss it.)” She was right and deserved a big tip.

Today I went back and tried something different: Lobster with tamarind sauce and a bottle of Bia 33. The tamarind sauce is decent, but not as savory as the salt and pepper. Still I had a very nice lunch. Love the Trinh Cong Son’s music playing in the background. The arrangement was simple and peaceful, which was perfect for the lazy afternoon. The singer sounded like Thuy Tien, but I was not sure. I asked both the waitress and the owner, but neither of them knew who the singer was.

Melody Gardot flirted with Latin flavors in her stunning 2009 My One and Only Thrill. In the new release, The Absence, Ms. Gardot devoted the entire record to the bottomless swaying rhythm. With the support of Brazilian guitarist and composer Heitor Pereira, Ms. Gardot takes listeners to Brazil, Portugal and Argentina for a journey of musical exploration.

From the sweet morning dew in “Mira” to the open sea in “Amalia” to the street vibe (with church bell ringing) in “Lisboa,” Gardot offers a spellbinding travelogue with her effortless vocal delivery backing up by Mr. Pereira’s lush, elegant arrangements, in which string orchestration weaving in and out of acoustic picking guitar seamlessly. Also what makes Pareiar’s work so damn mesmerizing is the way he skillfully arranging his instrumentation around Gardot’s voice rather than the other way around. In “Goodbye,” the music ebbs and flows and even growls to accomodate Gardot’s bluesy phrasings.

The Absence marks another expansive musical direction for the multi-talented singer-songwriter. Can’t wait to see where she would take us next in her musical discovery.

So I have been listening to Norah Jones’s …Little Broken Hearts in the past couple of weeks and I was not planning on writing a review, but then the album started to grow on me. Now I can’t seem to get it out of my brain, particularly Jones’child-liking phrasing in “Say Goodbye” backing up by melodious keyboard licks and groovy beats courtesy of Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton. I even started singing in my head lines like, “She’s 22 and she’s loving you.”

While Jones has never been an energetic singer, what makes this collaborative project with Danger Mouse exciting is that the talented producer knows how to nudge Jones up a notch. In the title track, he provides the right tools, midtempo beats mixed in the 60’s psychedelic electric guitar, for her to take revenge: “Beautiful soldiers in their beds / Making love inside their hands / With no chance to defend / Tonight could be their end.” The drama escalates on “Miriam.” Once again, Danger Mouse sets up the cinematic backdrop for Jones to do the Quentin Tarantino’s style of killing: “You know you done me wrong / I’m gonna smile when I take your life.”

From the bouncy “Happy Pills” to the heavy “4 Broken Hearts,” Norah Jones and Danger Mouse offer some of the sweetest revenges ever heard on record even though it takes some times to sink in.

After a decade of working on the web, I am still fond of simplicity. With each redesign, my goal is to simplify the layout and the markups. The new Visualgui is no exception and the focus is on readability.

To accomplish the new goals, I had taken the content-first approach. The layout is reduced to one column and the sidebar is dropped to make the content front and center. Typography is the most crucial part of the redesign, but I actually don’t have too many choices because I want the site to render appropriate Vietnamese characters. Google Web Fonts only has three Vietnamese types and I used two out of three. Headers and logo are using Open Sans by Steve Matteson and body text is using Noticia Text by JM Solé. The two types are quite decent and I am satisfied with the pairing.

In the previous design, the homepage always had to have a banner and the width had to be 940px. With the new design, I want the banner to be optional and flexible. I don’t always have to have one and I can crop the banner any size I want. As for the background color, I am moving off white a bit for less glaring. The color choice is inspired by e-reading devices like Kindle and Nook.

With one column, the markup is now much lighter. HTML is streamlined and modified to not depend on Shiv or Modernizr for IE6-8. CSS is also simplified by hand. I must confess, I have not wrapped my head around LESS or SASS. Of course the new site wouldn’t be completed without responsive design.