Using money to hide your incompetence only shows that you are a fucking idiot.

I picked up Brian Miller’s Principles of Web Design because I have not read a book on web design in a long time. I have been in the game for over two decades and I haven’t followed the industry since responsive web design, which was 13 years ago. I am curious to know if the principles have changed. According to Miller’s book, the principles of web design hasn’t changed much since he wrote this book in 2008. In the latest edition, Miller focuses on three sections: plan, design, and optimize. Principles of Web Design is a review for me to see if I have missed anything in recent years. If you are new to web design and want to get into the game, this is a good book to get started on.

End of autumn already, where are you, My Love?
Lying inside the cold earth, you must be grieving?
O Autumn! Please wake up her spirit
I want to come inside her grave
My Love! Where are you now?
What do you dream about?
Each night, I wish and pray
the color of the incense smoke
is the color of your eyes.
My Love! Have you come back?
Will you come back soon?
Moon and stars gone, now only a dim lamp
Lying down, I read a poem to invoke your Spirit

My Love!
Do laugh loudly, and create echoes in the nether world
During the cold autumn moon, quiet footsteps
of the wandering spirits so many ages ago,
will now be lying in the same bed.
My Love! Do laugh out loud!
Do cry out loud!

Where’s the moon of love legends
that shines on pledges of love?
Lotus instep of beauteous maiden
causing heart stirs in the mythical night.
I wandered in the land of the fairies and spirits
Across the river Styx, I saw the ferry of Hades
I sent a spirit-invoking poem
Is the person inside the grave shivering?
Do the cold dried bones still feel Love?
Do your breasts still evoke lust?

O Virginal Spirit
Infatuated with you, I wish to leave this human body
My soul will enter tree and grass and love you each night
Are you happy, My Love?
Are you sad?
I’m sitting by your grave
Tell me of your feelings…

The Angel of Death laugh in his crazy chest
I hear in your breath the sounds of distress
Past feelings awaken, dispelling Desolate Loneliness
Infatuating scent coming from the earth,
The moon’s rising…

Translated by Vương Thanh

Gửi người dưới mộ

Trời cuối thu rồi – Em ở đâu?
Nằm bên đất lạnh chắc em sầu?
Thu ơi! Đánh thức hồn ma dậy
Ta muốn vào thăm nấm mộ sâu
Em mộng về đâu?
Em mất về đâu?
Từng đêm tôi nguyện, tôi cầu
Đấy màu hương khói là màu mắt xưa
Em đã về chưa?
Em sắp về chưa?
Trăng sao tắt, ngọn đèn mờ
Ta nằm rỏ lệ đọc thơ gọi hồn

Em hãy cười lên vang cõi âm
Khi trăng thu lạnh bước đi thầm
Những hồn phiêu bạt bao năm trước
Nay đã vào chung một chỗ nằm
Cười lên em!
Khóc lên em!

Đâu trăng tình sử
Nép áo trần duyên?
Gót sen tố nữ
Xôn xao đêm huyền
Ta đi, lạc xứ thần tiên
Hồn trùng dương hiện con thuyền U Minh
Ta gởi bài thơ anh linh
Hỏi người trong mộ có rùng mình?
Nắm xương khô lạnh còn ân ái?
Bộ ngực bi thương vẫn rợn tình?

Hỡi hồn tuyết trinh!
Hỡi người tuyết trinh!
Mê em, ta thoát thân hình
Nhập hồn cây cỏ, đa tình mỗi đêm
Em có vui thêm?
Em có buồn thêm?
Ngồi bên cửa mộ
Kể cho ta biết nỗi niềm

Thần chết cười trong bộ ngực điên
Ta nghe em thở tiếng ưu phiền
Nỗi lòng xưa dậy tan Thanh Vắng
Hơi đất mê người – Trăng hiện lên

Đinh Hùng

Whose singing voice this evening floats on the waves
Remember Lưu ‘n’ Nguyễn of olden days
who wander into the land of the fairies.
O the road to Fairyland,
the Source of Inspiring Love
Heavenly music floating on the wind,
touching one’s heart with soulful melodies.
Melodies warm and loving,
like the water embracing
the boat’s hull.

Music waves touch the falling peach blossoms
A misty haze in the distance circles around the sky
The small boat floats in loneliness on the waters
The homeland gradually disappears beyond the mountains.
Feeling wistful as the boat’s rowed across the Jade Stream
Someone singing on the shore of the fairy realm.

In this fairyland, the spring flowers
had never met an earthly butterfly.
There’s peach season which Time’d never wither its fruits
We Fairies would like to offer you these fragrant peaches
This heavenly exotic dance, the two young men
join in the fun with the fairies.

A magical night under the moon and stars,
the music stirs one’s heartstrings with nostalgia.
The Fairyland melody, timeless and soul-floating,
makes a man forget about earthly life.
O The music of the Fairies…
O The music desiring Love…

The Fairyland’s moonlight dreams of dissolving
into an earthly mount’n stream.
A fairy’s moment of wild love passion
does it only once happen?

The singing floats on the wind; the drums echo near and far.
Don’t mention the olden times,
it just makes my heart feels sad with nostalgia…

O Fairyland! Lưu ‘n’ Nguyễn forget earthly life
Living together with the fairies for many years
As sunsets go by, longings for their hometowns grow
They ask the fairies if it’s possible to come back for a visit.

Lưu and Nguyễn came back to human land
But hundreds of years have passed since then
They went back to search for Fairyland
But the fairy realm’s nowhere to find.

Those late evenings when the moon’s rising
The singings still reverberate in the fairy realm…

Translated by Vương Thanh

Thiên thai

Tiếng ai hát chiều nay vang lừng trên sóng
Nhớ Lưu Nguyễn ngày xưa lạc tới Ðào Nguyên
Kià đường lên tiên, kìa nguồn hương duyên
theo gió tiếng đàn xao xuyến
Phím tơ lưu luyến, mấy cung u huyền
Mấy cung trìu mến như nước reo mạn thuyền

Âm ba thoáng rung cánh đào rơi
Nao nao bầu sương khói phủ quanh trời
Lênh đênh dưới hoa chiếc thuyền lan
Quê hương dần xa lấp núi ngàn
Bâng khuâng chèo khua nước Ngọc Tuyền
Ai hát trên bờ Ðào Nguyên

Thiên Thai chốn đây Hoa Xuân chưa gặp Bướm trần gian
Có một mùa đào dòng ngày tháng chưa tàn qua một lần
Thiên Tiên chúng em xin dâng hai chàng trái đào thơm
Khúc nghê thường này đều cùng múa vui bầy tiên theo đàn

Ðèn soi trăng êm nhạc lắng tiếng quyên
đây đó nỗi lòng mong nhớ
Này khúc bồng lai
là cả một thiên thu trong tiếng đàn chơi vơi
Ðàn xui ai quên đời dương thế
Ðàn non tiên đàn khao khát khúc tình duyên

Thiên Thai! Ánh trăng xanh mơ tan thành suối trần gian
Ái ân thiên tiên em ngờ phút mê cuồng có một lần

Gió hát trầm tiếng ca tiếng phách ròn lắng xa
Nhắc chi ngày xưa đó đến se buồn lòng ta

Ðào Nguyên trước Lưu Nguyễn quên trần hoàn
Cùng bầy tiên đàn ca bao năm
Nhớ quê chiều nào xa khơi
Chắc không đường về
Tiên nữ ơi!

Ðào Nguyên trước Lưu Nguyễn khi trở về
Tìm Ðào Nguyên, Ðào Nguyên nơi nao?

Những khi chiều tà trăng lên
Tiếng ca còn rền trên cõi tiên.

Văn Cao

In her clear and concise book, Mary C. Dyson shares her research on the legibility of type, typography, and beyond. Print legibility has been covered before, but not so much on screen legibility. I wish Dyson delves deeper on the screen portion. Nevertheless, Legibility is an essential read for designers—particular web practitioners.

The entire book is published on the web. How awesome is that? The book is typeset in Adapter, designed by Rosetta Type. While I like a sans serif text face like Adapter, I still prefer a serif text face for book form. Somehow I got a bit bored reading long text in a sans-serif font, especially with a dense subject like ligigility. Of course, this has nothing to do with legibility, but serif text is still more readable even on the screens.

I’m wandering in search of the lake willows,
to see its leaves gently swaying in the wind.
Or should I look for the lustrous stream of hair
flowing down a pair of shoulders.
A vision of her enchanting smile
and slender figure
was forever impressed
in my mind…

We were together on a tranquil autumn night
She stood there in silence for quite some time
Hesitantly, I want to read to her
a few lines of heart verse:
Please let the brook and the mountain find each other
Just like us, a couple of times rebonding our love

I want to take you across the green mountain ranges
We will visit the gently flowing brook
But nature’s not as gentle as your raven hair
But last autumn’s not as clear as your eyes…

I want to write a few lines of verse
Or play music, or paint flowers
O Darling, please know that:
Our Love is manifest
in Music, in Poetry,
and in… Your Lustrous Stream of Hair!

Translated by Vương Thanh

Suối tóc

Tìm cho thấy liễu xanh xanh lả lơi
Hay đi tìm dòng suối tóc trên vai
Ghi trong khóe mắt u hoài hình bóng ai
Anh với em một đêm thu êm ái

Người em gái đứng im trong hồi lâu
Anh ngập ngừng lòng muốn nói đôi câu
Xin cho suối nước non ngàn tìm đến nhau
Như chúng ta đôi lần hàn gắn thương yêu

Anh muốn đưa em qua miền rừng núi xanh
Chúng ta cùng thăm con suối dịu êm
Nhưng thiên nhiên không êm như tóc huyền
Nhưng thu qua không trong như đôi mắt em

Lòng anh muốn viết lên đôi vần thơ
Hay cung đàn cùng nét bút tranh hoa
Xin em biết nhé cho tình hai chúng ta
Trong ý thơ, cung đàn, và suối tóc mơ

Thy Vân

I haven’t tweeted for five months. I am pretty much done with Twitter. I haven’t bothered to archive my tweets. I am not even going to bring them over to this blog. As you might have already noticed, my sharing category is my replacement for Twitter. I post links and quick posts just like I do on Twitter. I need to add a quick title as well; therefore, the headline might be silly.

Same goes with LinkedIn. I have not posted for anything for five months. I went back to Facebook briefly when we skied in Vermont. I posted a few videos of the kids I wanted to share with family members. Last week, I deactivated it. I just want to get away from social media completely and focus on this site.

Everything will be posted here from now on. I hope you enjoy your stay as well as the coming weekend. I got nothing but love for ya.

Roxane Gay opines in the New York Times:

We are at something of an impasse. The list of things that can get you killed in public is expanding every single day. Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life. We can’t even agree on right and wrong anymore. Instead of addressing actual problems, like homelessness and displacement, lack of physical and mental health care, food scarcity, poverty, lax gun laws and more, we bury our heads in the sand. Only when this unchecked violence comes to our doorstep do we maybe care enough to try to effect change.

She’s damn right.

I have been so out of touch with hip-hop. I don’t know any new or young rappers. Since I have a subscription to Amazon Music, I wanted to hear new hip-hop albums. NF’s Hope was on top of the list. I had no idea who NF was so I gave him a try. On the opening title track, he sounded white and a bit angry at the industry. He sang a bit and he had the flow. His lyrics were decent and I noticed that he didn’t use any curse words. In the second track, “Motto,” I heard him mentioning God. Then he talked more about God in the song he wrote about his deceased “Mama.” I realized I was listening to a Christian rap album. I got turned off.

I was sitting in our car next to my four-year-old son. He was napping. As I was dozing off, my phone rang. I picked it up to prevent my son from waking up. The voice on the other line introduced himself as someone from Alumni Relations.

He reached out to me to see how I am doing. I told him I am doing fine and prepared for him to ask me for donations. I couldn’t catch the first part he was telling me, but I could hear the second part, in which he asked me to contribute $100. I politely declined because I witness first hand how they spend money like throwing confetti.

When I said “no” to the $100 donation, he immediately hung up on me. Just a minute before, he sounded as if he genuinely cared about my being, but as soon as he couldn’t get my contribution he clearly didn’t give a fuck.