Spent the whole morning attending student orientation. I sure felt like being a student again. I only have one more week until classes begin. The good thing is that I’ll start out with foundation courses: “Introduction to Structured Programming” and “Database Design and Applications.”

About two weeks ago, I met with the chair and she is super wonderful. She looked at my transcripts and told me that she doesn’t see any of my undergraduate classes that are equivalent to the foundation courses for the program. I quickly told her that I don’t have a problem taking the prerequisites and then she enrolled me into the foundation courses.

I am going to have to put my design aside and concentrate on the programing side. Looking at the core and elective courses ahead, I am actually very excited because they seem to complement well with my current direction in web development. So I am definitely looking forward to going back to school. One of the perks of working at the school I am attending is that my colleagues who work in the program are looking out for me. Awesome!

Update: My professor uploaded the syllabus on Blackboard. The book for the class, Modern Database Management (10th Edition), is $190. Back in my days (10 years ago), books were about $60 on average and I thought they were too damn expensive. $190 for a book? Holy smoke.

New to Drupal? Ric Shreves and Brice Dunwoodie’s Drupal 7 Bible is a perfect starting guide. From the painless installation process to all the core features to customizations, Shreves and Dunwoodie make Drupal seems less intimidating than it appears to be. By using Drupal, one can set up a solid, powerful content management system without touching the codes.

I am fairly new to Drupal simply because most of the work I have done could be accomplished using WordPress. While both WordPress and Drupal are content management systems, they serve different purposes. The choice to implement one over the other is up to the web designers and developers, but to have both for us to use for free is a huge advantage.

Column count is one of my favorite CSS3 properties. If you’re using modern browsers, you can see that I am using it right now on this site. Each blog post is divided into two columns. The big headings separate each post. Column count works well with long posts, but not for shorter ones. The one-sentence post would look awkward with one line being spread out into two columns.

After digging around, I found a simple solution that allows me to set a limit number of words before making the split. So now the post will remain one column if the text is less than 100 words. Isn’t that sweet? Another reason to love WordPress.

We had a blast at my in-law’s annual family reunion last week. We booked an eight-bedroom house at Indian Beach, NC. More than thirty of us from Canada, Texas, California, New Jersey and Virginia gathered under one roof for a whole week. Dana, Dao and I only stayed for half of the week and that was way too short.

The day started out with breakfast including banh bot loc (vietnamese clear shrimp and pork dumplings), xoi lao Xuong (sticky rice with Chinese sausage) and green (avocado) eggs and ham. After breakfast, we headed toward the beach, which is about 10 feet from the house, then back to the swimming pool on the deck and then the jacuzzi.

Everyone gathered around the house for lunch, which included bun bo Hue (Hue’s vermicelli soup), roast pig, and pork chops with rice. Each individual family prepared a meal a day. After lunch, some folks took naps; some went back to the water, some played pool and foosball in the basement. Most of the women gathered into the entertainment room to watch kdrama.

Then we returned once again for dinner, hung out, watched TV or just chatted. On Thursday night, I bought a bottle of Patron and thought that not too many people would drink it. We only ended up with 2 and a half shots each. I should have gotten two bottles.

Dao had a lot of fun hanging out with his cousins, particular Aiden who is a couple months older than him. They chase each other around the house for Thomas Train, but then sat together to watch “Curious George” on my iPod. Dao loved both the pool table and foosball. Everyday he made me play with him. He didn’t like the water, yet the last day he wanted to stay in the pool.

Last night, I put together a video with various clips I filmed.

These days I no longer have the luxury of reviewing music in depths so I am just going to drop a quick list of what I am listening to.

Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne. A fruitful collaborative effort between two rap giants. Although Kanye can’t match Jay bar for bar, he holds up on his own. The beats are crazy. Check out “Niggas in Paris.”

Toc Tien’s My Turn. Toc Tien is one of Thuy Nga’s bright young stars. She’s not one of the sexiest singers, but still a pleasure to watch and to hear. My Turn is a bit bland, but enjoyable for a trendy pop album.

Siu Black’s K’Bing Oi. Siu Black gives some classic tunes some rock flavors with her big voice. Her version of “Con Chut Gi De Nho” is pretty damn hot.

Giang Tu and Phuong Hong Que’s Can Nha Mau Tim. Giang Tu has become one of my favorite war-related singers. His version of “Mot Mai Gia Tu Vu Khi” is quite captivating. He has a big, raspy voice similar to Duy Khanh without the over-emphetic and over-phrasing issue. Like most of the older singers, Phuong Hong Que hardly changes her singing. Maybe she doesn’t have to since she has a distinctive voice.

Uyen Trang’s Khong Bao Gio Quen Anh. Uyen Trang is new to me, but her remix version of “Xin Dung Trach Da Da” is an instant hook. Even the rapping is forgivable.

This is the first book I read on mobile web development; therefore, I find the first few chapters to be very informative, especially the concise history of the mobile web. While I am familiar with the general mobile techniques, the book has tips that I find helpful like using Sencha.io Src to deliver optimized images with responsive web design.

While the discussions of incorporating mobile web with WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! are short (mostly involve activating plug-ins and modules), the book provided some valuable comparison between the three platforms to help readers pick the right one for the project.

Mobile web is clearly on the rise and us designers need to jump on the bandwagon. Even if you don’t work with WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal, James Pearce’s Professional Mobile Web Development provides a great introduction to one of the future’s most popular web browsing devices.

I am using Sencha.io Src to deliver the homepage banner and screenshots for my sites and motion. Sencha.io Src is a free service that optimizes images and delivers them according to user’s device. Sencha.io Src is a perfect complement to responsive web design. The implementation is very simple. All you have to do is attaching this url (http://src.sencha.io/) in front of your image source.

A few weeks ago, I played Jazz for Kids: Sing Clap Wiggle & Shake in the car hoping Cu Dao would like it. He was hooked immediately, but only to the opening track, Ella Fitzgerald’s playful rendition of “Old McDonald.” As soon as the song is over, he would request, “Daddy, daddy, McDonald please.” The song has been repeat whenever we’re in the car.

Yesterday, I finally was able to draw his attention away from the song by playing Clark Terry’s “Mumbles.” He started to imitate the scatting and sounded hilarious. I wish I had the camcorder with me. Dao has learned to sing “ABC” and the first four bars of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” He sang and danced every night before going to bed.

On a different note, I moved his photos from Flickr to Picasa.

I picked up Peter Gasston’s The Book of CSS3 and read through it in almost five hours straight. I simply couldn’t put it down. CSS3 is, without a doubt, one of the core technologies that makes the web so exciting. From media queries to web fonts to transitions and animations, CSS3 brings quite a bit of flavor to not only the presentation but also the interaction to the web.

Through Gasston’s clear explanations and easy-to-follow examples, you’ll see the power of CSS3 in action, which can be used today in contemporary browsers. The last two chapters on “Template Layout” and “The Future of CSS” are intriguing to see where CSS is heading. Definitely a must-read for web designers and developers. Don’t take my word for it. Check out Gasston’s article on “The Future of CSS Layouts” to get a glimpse of you’ll get from The Book of CSS3.

It’s 10:42p.m. and Dao finally went to sleep. He napped almost four hours today in the stroller at the mall. Dung went shopping and I read a whole book. I was so happy that when he woke up I wanted to take him to play some golf, but the rain was pouring. We took him golfing last weekend and he loved it even though he was having a hard time getting the ball in.

On Saturday we went to a friend’s cookout. One of Dung’s old friend has a six-year-old boy. She told us that her son keeps asking her why he doesn’t have a brother to play with. So they are working hard to fulfill his request. The poor guy was bored at the party because most of the kids were girl. Dao is too young for him. So he just stayed with him mom the whole time.

Soon Dao will have a brother to play with so he won’t be a loner. Last night we asked him, “Em cua Dao dau [Where is your lil brother]?” He responded, “Day ne [here]” and pointed to his belly. We corrected him so now he’s pointing to his mommy’s belly.

Speaking of the new baby, he didn’t seem to like pho today, probably because of too much MSG at Pho 75. I have been thinking about the boy’s name, but the only one came to mind is “Duc.” I told my wife that we will named the following kid “Gia” so that we’ll have “Dao Duc Gia [fake morals].”

In a serious note, I would love a Vietnamese name that would be easy to say in both Vietnamese and English. Dao turns out be quite an easy name to say in both languages. Even his friends and his teachers could say his name correctly. His nickname, Duke, is now rarely used. He even refers to himself as Dao like, “Dao is smart,” which is his new compliment to himself.