The web team at Vassar has launched several new sites. Chris reworked the History Department. Kevin completely revived the Libraries. An outside freelancer rebooted the Powerhouse Theater (a good old version of mine could still be view here). Of course, I also banged out a clean and simple design for Art Department. Congrats everyone for the fantastic jobs.
As you can see for the past two weeks, I have been posting quick thoughts and links on the right side bar via Twitter. That way I can reserve the blog for longer posts. It works well except for two problems. First, Twitter has been tremendously slow due to the increase of twits and users. It also takes while to load on my page. The second problem is much more important. My Google Ads take a huge drop because of the lacking in blog posts. Twitter makes quick posts so much easy though so I am still weighing the advantages and disadvantages between the two.
These days I hardly have anything to blog. My marriage life is so far so good. I eat right and sleep pretty well; therefore, no dramas to write about. I am also getting tired of reviewing Vietnamese music. Looking back at my archive for the past two years, not so many albums I get a positive review. In fact, these reviews make me sound like a harsh prick. There are no innovators like Tung Duong and Ngoc Khue that get me excited anymore. I am just going to wait until I come across something that worth writing about, or else I am not even going to bother anymore.
Let’s face it. Marriage kills your sentimental mood. It’s good for a guy like me, but not so for a guy like Quang Dung. I don’t make a living baring my soul; he does. In his new album, Va, he covers mostly heart-rending ballads, but he sounds more pathetic than persuasive.
Right off the opening track, Lam Phuong’s “Mot Minh,” you can tell that he’s not feeling it. When a man, who is married to a beautiful wife and welcomed a cute son into his life, sings about loneliness, do you really believe him? He doesn’t convince me at all. How pitiful is that for a man to cry on a woman’s shoulder: “Anh khoc tren vai em / Anh khoc tren vai em / Mot lan cuoi, mot lan cuoi cung?” He must be her bitch. Some songs you just can’t switch the role and assume that it will sound right.
Musically speaking, Va is just an average work. Le Quang’s productions are generic and sedative. Can’t blame the producer for not feeling inspired when Quang Dung hardly pushes his vocals. Even on a mid-tempo “Tieng Dan Toi” (by Pham Duy), he doesn’t even switch up his flow to ride with the beat. He plays safe throughout the album by delivering only in his comfy range and refusing to take chances. Evaluate between his and Tuan Ngoc’s version of Tu Cong Phung’s “Tren Thang Ngay Da Qua,” and you’ll see clearly why Tuan Ngoc is still irreplaceable.
Andree Right Hand’s “Cho Anh Fuk Lan Cuoi.” Simply awful and misogynistic.
Now that the wedding is out of the way, I would like to focus on my passion by going freelance. Of course, I still hold on to my daytime job. Although I love what I do at George Washington University, I am somewhat limited by its established design. I do have room for creativities, but my main responsibility are to keep all the sites update and consistent. It actually works out great for me. Now I can fulfill my fulltime duty and still have creative space for other projects.
When I was still at Vassar, I received quite a bit of inquiries for freelance opportunities, but I had to turn them down because Vassar required tremendous creative effort like working on the banners on the homepage, small banners on the Infosite, and redesigning each department web site to have a unique look and feel—not to mention the entire homepage gets a new look every week or so. My current position doesn’t require too much design, but it does require time and energy. So in order to balance out my time and design, I would like to take on smaller freelance work with much more creativities. Of course, I wouldn’t turn away any exciting opportunity, but I would like to concentrate on quick content and more on design. I have two areas I would like to go into.
The first one is wedding site. After doing a site for my own, I felt the site is such a wonderful complement to the entire package. The site turned out not only a fantastic piece of memory, but also very informative. On the homepage, I have a slideshow of our photos. I used our engagement photos before the wedding to drive friends and family to the site. Once they get there, I layout the entire agenda so they know what to expect. If they need accommodation, I have some hotels listed near by our houses as well as the reception place. I also included our Love Notes so they read about our story and listen to our music. But what I love most about the site is that I already have our wedding photos uploaded and ready to share to our family and friends around the world just three days after the wedding. I am now working on my sister in-law and her future husband’s site. So if you are getting marry and would like a unique, elegant site, I can work with you.
The second one is for nail salon promotions. An old school friend of mine who now own a nail salon would like me to work on a site for him. Nothing has been official yet since I’ve been swamped with the wedding and everything, but I would love to branch into this sort of work. The site would be mostly visual and a few content like about, services, and maybe some special online coupons.
I am actually just thinking out loud here. Will see how things go once I actually get some clients.
A great piece on blogging from Emily Gould:
I still think about closing the door to my online life and locking them out, but then I think of everything else I’d be locking out, and I leave it open.
Although I am no longer working for Vassar, the web group keeps me on board for freelance projects. The redesign of the Art Department is my first work after Vassar. The department wants a clean and simple site and so it was delivered just the way it wanted.
What a vibrant site for a seafood festival. Love the big red lobster on top of the header.
Airlifted out of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, Doan Hoang’s family was on the last civilian helicopter out of the country at the end of the war. Twenty-five years later, she sets out to uncover their story. The film follows her family as they return to Vietnam after decades of exile, where her father, a former South Vietnamese major, meets his brothers again to confront their political differences: one was a Communist, the other a pacifist. Meanwhile, Hoang tries to reconcile her own difficult past with her half sister, who was mistakenly separated from the family during the escape.
With her 36MM bust weighing in 20 pounds each, stripper Maxi Mounds won the Guinness World Records for World’s Largest Augmented Breasts. She shares:
“I’ve seen some pretty funny things happen. Men walking into things and getting slapped by their girlfriends because they were staring too hard.”
Women shouldn’t slap their men for “staring too hard” because you don’t see those melons around too often. I am sure women would stare at them too out of curiosity.