From the very early days of my career, graphic design has always been my source of inspiration for my web design. I also decided from the beginning that I wanted to focus on the web rather than print, but I had learned how to take print design elements and transform them into the web. Whenever I get a chance, I would pick up graphic design books to fuel my creativities. Here are some recent books I found in George Mason library:

More Graphic Simplicity: This is not a book to be read, but to be inspired. I am in awed with the beauty of simplicity showcased in the book.

Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type: A short, concise collection of user tips when dealing with typography, especially as types are increasingly popular for the web.

The Elements of Graphic Design (Second Edition): The layout of the book, which featured texts and examples around the main content, is a huge distraction. I have to mentally blocking out all of that noise in order just to focus on the primary texts. There are some great points on simplicity that I would like to jot down for future references:

Dynamic white space plus abstraction, the process of removing unnecessary details, are essential to sophisticated design (preface)

Visual simplicity eliminates unnecessary elements and structures those that remain in a logical, consistent system. Good design reduces the effort of reading as much as possible, thereby encouraging readership and uderstanding (page 3)

Again, the designer’s job is not to fill in all the space. It is to make information accessible and appealing. The best use of the page’s empty space is to help make information scannable, not to make the pages pretty. The point is to increase the page’s absorbability. (page 5)

The pauses between songs on a record show content the way white space does. Space attracts readers by making the page look accessible, unthreatening, and manageable. Leaving too little white space makes a page look crowded – good only if that’s the point you want to make. Leaving too much white space is almost impossible. I say “almost” because you will get groans of disapproval if you toss around chunks of unused white space, that is, emptiness purely for its own sake, rather than for the sake of the message. Readers are far less likely to notice or object to too much white space than to an unreadable, crowded page. (page 13)

Covered:
Installing Red Hat 6, which took almost half a day.
Using GNOME graphical desktop.
Editing files with gedit.
Managing files with Nautilus.
Getting help with manuals (F1 for help)
Managing system clock.
Configuring printers.

Command Lines:

uname -r (find out what version of Red Hat)
$ su – (log in as substitute user)
# useradd visitor (add username “visitor”)
# passwd visitor (add password to “visitor”)
# ip addr show eth0 (show ip address)
# ls /usr/share/doc (documentations)
# man man (access manual)
# man -k print (-k is for keyword)

Summary: The first day is a very basic introduction to Linux. Installation process took half of a day.

Listening to Miles Davis’s “Move” and it fits perfect with my state of mind at the moment at work. I have finally moved sites off the server that is hosting the Law School web site. Now it’s one dedicated server dedicated to just the Law site. Everything else such as student organizations, blogs and faculty sites are residing on another dedicated server.

I set up three different networks using WordPress multisite feature. One for the faculty. One for student organizations . One for the blogs. I moved the Library & Technology Blog yesterday using the export and import feature in WordPress and the process took me two seconds. WordPress rocks once again.

In the future, anyone from the school or library request a web site for a faculty, organization or, blog, I can just add a new WordPress site instantly. They can go with the default template or create their own.

I am so glad that I could make the move with the support of my supervisor. It’s definitely a peace of mind to have the main site on its own.

Strength is a motivational message written by Jennifer Karin. I discovered this hidden treasure when I redesigned her personal web site. The message was put together as an image, which I didn’t find it to be usable. Last night I whipped together an HTML page. I also wanted the message to be passed around through mobile devices as well. My main focus is on the message; therefore, I chose Calluna, courtesy of TypeKit and used colors for the emphasis. So read it, remember it, feel it, embrace it and share it.

ASM-Aetna Blog, a project I had involved as a developer, has been nominated for Connecticut’s Top Blog of 2012 in the following categories: Best Overall Blog, Best Health Blog and Best Business Blog. Congratulations to the ASM-Aetna team.

With last week’s three-day conference, I started eating out again. Check out the stack of Hoban’s Burger at James Hoban’s in Dupont Circle I had last week. The burger was pretty wicked.

On Monday I drove to Eden and had a plate of rice filled with roast duck, roast pig and BBQ pork at Cho Cu Sai Gon. Yesterday went back to Viet Royal for Sautéed Lobster in Shell with Salt & Pepper. I am now addicted to that dish. I think I can have it once week until I get tired of eating it.

Dana came over today to try out the burger at Wiinkys. We shared a double bacon burger and eight wings. Pretty good lunch, indeed. Now I need to get back to jogging as well, but that hasn’t happened. I had to take off my wedding ring because my finger is getting way too fat.

A friend’s wedding is coming up this weekend and then I’ll be heading to the Red Hat training all next week. It’s going to be more food and less jogging.

My initial intention for I Love Ngoc Lan was to bring the markups and CSS up to date and to make the layout responsive, but then I ended up with a redesign. The new layout has only one column because I wanted to focus on readability. Once users get past the homepage, which features a large banner, everything else is just clean text. The navigation has moved to the bottom instead on the right column to put the emphasis on readability.

The new design is responsive with mobile-first approach. The markup is based on HTML5 Boilerplate and dashes of CSS3 fanciness. I Love Ngoc Lan had been powered by WordPress since 2003. At the time, I didn’t know how the site would turned out and I used WordPress simply because it was the easiest solution. Now the site has grown into a very nice community and I am so glad that I picked WordPress. It has proven to be the perfect choice.

I was interested in the three-day conference for technology in library particular in the tracks on mobile trends and web presence. Sine my supervisor attended the latter, I went into the topic on mobile trends. The speakers covered mostly on mobile apps and designing a separate a mobile web site. The strategy is to offered only contents that mobile users would want. One speaker went as far as providing a device-detection javascript with a whole list of variable for every mobile device. The easiest way to make a mobile-friendly site is to provide a css file to hide all the big, unnecessary design elements on the desktop site. One speaker mentioned mobile-first design, but didn’t really give responsive web design its justice. While the conference was informative, the library folks need some catching up to do.

I also signed up for a post conference workshop on taking Drupal to the next step. Unfortunately the workshop was only three hours and the instructors spent the first half an hour install Drupal and modules on people laptops. We didn’t get very far and I wanted to see how to create a theme. It looks like the best approach is to take a base theme and modify it to meet your needs. I took a look at some of the starter theme and there are tons of php and css files to customize. I’ll take a crack at theming Drupal one of these days, but right now MODX seems like the best choice for really coding the site the way I wanted.

As my wife and I are trying to refinance our mortgage loan, I decided to give Susana, our realtor who helped us purchased our house, a call to ask her for a few tips. Her phone had been shut off so I called her office. The frontdesk guy told me that Susana had passed away a few months ago. Cancer claimed her life.

The chill ran down my spine. I was shocked. After a year of house-hunting together, Susana became more than just our realtor. We considered her as a friend. She was a hard worker who never said no to us when we wanted to look at the houses. She was such a lovely lady with two adorable twin girls and a very nice husband.

Even after we purchased the house, we kept in touch and invited her family over for dinner every once in a while. I actually was a bit sad that we didn’t get to go look at houses with her anymore. Then the last two years had been crazy for us. All of the sudden, Susana is gone. Life is just way too short.

Thật ngậm ngùi khi xem hình của ba nhận được hôm nay từ đứa cháu gái. Ba đã già đi rất nhiều. Trong trí óc của tôi ba cứ như ngày tôi còn ấu thơ. Khi nói chuyện với ba qua điên thoại giọng của ông còn rất khoẻ nên tôi không hình dung ra được. Thật ra ngoài những câu thông thường hỏi thăm sức khoẻ, giữa tôi và ba không có gì để nói cả. Khoảng cánh giữa tôi và ba thật đã quá xa. Xét lại thì chúng tôi đã cách xa hơn 20 năm. Thời gian trôi qua quá mau nhất là bây giờ khi tôi bận bịu trông công việc và con cái.

Nhìn những cằn cỗi trên khuôn mặt của ông làm tôi bàng hoàng xúc động. Có lẻ đây là lần đầu tiên tôi nhìn rỏ nét mặt của ông tuy hình không được rỏ cho lắm. Mổi khi nghỉ đến ba, tôi chỉ nghỉ đến ông trong giai đoạn tôi có ông. Vì chuổi ngày bên ba quá hiếm hoi hoi nên tôi nhớ rất rỏ những kỷ niệm ấy. Lúc xa ba cũng là lúc tôi xa quê hương và cũng là lúc tôi xa những ngày ấu thơ tôi quý nhất. Vì mất cả ba thứ quang trọng nhất đối với tôi lúc mới lớn, tôi đã không chấp nhận nổi thử thách mới. Bây giờ tôi đã quen xứ người và không còn nhỏ nữa. Cuộc sống mới tôi đã chấp nhận. Tuổi thơ cũng đã qua tôi không hề hối tiếc. Nhưng khi nhìn ba, tôi thấy xót xa. Tôi muốn ôm được lấy ông và nói những lời tôi chưa bao giờ nói với ông: “Con rất thương ba.”