Fish sauce again? Of course, fish sauce will enhance the chicken, but we’re not using it this time. For a distinctive taste of chicken wings, flavor them with chao (fermented tofu). Let the chicken sits for at least three hours (the longer the better) to allow the smooth and creamy tang of chao marinate into the meat. Deep fry the chicks and that’s it. However, it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that spicy thang. The infamous Tuong Ot Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce (no blue cheese is necessary) is a perfect complement to the wings.

Doan Trang’s “Bang Khuang” is the funniest Vietnamese R&B and hip-hop joint I have ever heard. You have to check out Okio’s rap near the end. Flipping Twista’s style, he flows in Vietnamese, “Honey, you have to go to class tomorrow, so go study.” Wow! Not too many rappers would tell their girl to pick up her book and go study. Most of the time, rappers would tell their girl to drop her books and her panties too.

Also on R&B music, does anyone have “Bai Ca Ho Chi Minh” (The Song of Ho Chi Minh) written by Ewan MacColl (a Cuban musician) and performed by Ho Quynh Huong? The song is a special tribute to Uncle Ho in a rock-up R&B style. I am interested the lyrics because a song about Uncle Ho reminds me of the line that has been stuck in my head for years. It goes something like this, “Nhu co Bac Ho trong nha thuong cho quan, vua moi ra bi xe can u dau,” which loosely translated as “Uncle Ho steps out of a mental hospital, gets hit by a bike, bruises his head.” Please don’t get political on me. I have nothing against Uncle Ho. The man was gone before I were even born. I didn’t know what the heck I was singing when I was a kid.

Yesterday Visualgui.com exceeded its bandwidth limitation. We’re only half way into May and this site eats up more than 40 Gigs already. The significant increase in traffic is unexpected. I bought extra bandwidths and took down many large files including MP3, Flash, and video to keep the site rolling until the end of the month. However, if the site exceeds again, please be patience and don’t give up on me. Thanks all for visiting, and I really appreciate those who sent me emails about the down time.

If I have to learn CSS from scratch, I would start with Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos’s Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web. CSS is easy to learn, but to understand how to use it correctly is a bit challenging. In order to take full advantage of CSS, designers need to know how each element was built, and what purpose it serves. Who else can show us these things better than CSS creators themselves?

The best part about this book is not how to use CSS, but how it was created to handle certain tasks. For example, the em unit is developed to make scalable style sheets. The creators describe the thinking behind it, and prove why we should always use ems to set font sizes. Their clarification on using ems over pixels is making much more sense to me than ever before. The short background on em is interesting to read, and clearing up some confusion as well.

Even though the book does not delve into advanced techniques such as styling a menu or design a complex tableless layout, it nails the fundamental concepts to the ground. From “CSS Selectors” to “Space Inside Boxes” to “Relative and Absolute Positioning” to “Colors,” the explanations are clear and the theories behind the elements are invaluable. The authors also remind us to “know when to stop” by keeping our styles clean and simple.

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web is an important book to learn CSS the proper way. With the third edition, the book covers all the features in version 2.1, making it the definitive guide. Even though I have been using CSS heavily in my work, I still find the theories (what each element was created to do) to be intriguing. My favorite reading is the chapter on “the CSS Saga,” in which the authors give a brief history on CSS and how browsers play an important role in it. Believe it or not, Microsoft Internet Explore 3.0 was the first browser that supported CSS.

World music with an attitude is the sound of the Sri Lankan MC, Maya Arulpragasam, who goes by the name M.I.A. Her debut album, Arular, is a hard knock life and beat. Underneath the big and bouncy arrangements are the bold and provocative lyrics ranging from politics to prostitutions. The jungle beats suggest partying and dancing, but her words advocate bombing and rioting. So don’t mistake the petit figure and the pretty face for being fragile. She is nice, but “a nice nice fighter,” and she will “fight you just to get peace.”

What sets M.I.A. apart is her fusion of controversial contents into the playful productions. On “Pull Up the People,” she raps behind the trunk-crusher bass, “Every gun in a battle is a son and daughter too / So why you wanna talk about who done who?” She aslo proves that less is more with her minimalism rhyme scheme. Hiding in between the heavy beat and her wordless refrain on “10 Dollar,” she flows in the British accent, “Lolita, was a man-eater / Clocked him like a taxi meter. Fuck gold, she was platinum digger / Shakin-ass-making moves on a mover.”

When M.I.A. talks about sex, she makes bubbles rise in our bloodstream. On the dancehall reggae “Hombre,” the verses are simple yet disturbing, “You can stick me / Stab me, grind me or wind me / Fuck, we can even ask your wifey / Rich bored at home with a kiddy / She don’t know about you getting nookie.”

The power of her music is rooted in the rough rhymes that are merged inside smooth beats. She wants the body to move, but the ears to listen as well. That’s the M.I.A. thang.

Like a candy shop, My Tam’s Color of My Life is filled with sweet pops. Many young musicians transform their styles to rebirth themselves; My Tam does not have to. Her loyal fans love her just the way she is. Therefore, she spends time blowing her bubblegum instead of popping it. She not only pens some of her own songs, but also gets involve behind the boards, and feeds her idea to the album design.

My Tam is undoubtedly a young and smart entertainer. She knows who pay her bills (if there are such things in Viet Nam), and she knows just what they want from her. Taking clues from the unexpected success of her 2003’s Yesterday & Now, she recycles the scheme by throwing in a song from Trinh Cong Son, two translated popular ballads, a few club joints, and plenty of puppy loves. Although I am living in the States, I can hear teenage boys and girls in Viet Nam flirt with each other using her elementary rhymes, “Oh! First kiss. You make me so happy. You make me so crazy.” The entire lyrics of “Nu Hon Bat Ngo” (A Surprised Kiss) were written in Vietnamese except for that line. She did it on purpose to get the listeners hooked. Despite how exasperating I get every time I listen to that hook, I must admit that the beat is bouncy and the lyrics are catchy, and the song comes straight from her pen. My Tam also proves that she can write both fast and slow jams. She has composed a light lay back melody on “Nho…” (Remember…), and she sings with the calmness of her breath and sweetness of her voice.

My Tam’s own compositions only filled up a quarter of the album. The rest comes from today’s popular songwriters such as Le Quang, Vo Thien Thanh, and Tuong Van. My Tam has given her best shot, without breaking a sweat, to make these songs her standards. On Tuong Van’s “Roi Mai Thuc Giac” (And Tomorrow Wake Up), she knows how to tag her name to it by giving a polished performance. If she closes out the album at track ten, “Nhip Dap Dai Kho” (Foolish Heartbeat), the album would still have been completed. But she goes the extra miles to recover a few popular songs. Unfortunately, her version of the Japanese pop’s “Nguoi Yeu Dau Oi” (Oh, My Darling) is not as rejuvenating as it could have been. With Trinh’s “Em Hay Ngu Di” (Sleep Well Dear), nothing is reviving until the last part where she breaks free from Trinh’s style and injects her own. It’s not the best rendition I’ve ever heard, but it has bit of distinctiveness.

Popular albums work like batteries. They start off strong but get weakening over time. Although My Tam has crafted a tight record in both performance and arrangement, I don’t see myself coming back to Color of My Life over and over again like I do with Thanh Lam’s Nang Len (Sunrise). Then again, young listeners would not give Nang Len a chance.

While many instrumental albums take several spins to reveal their visual aesthetics, Suzanne Z. Shu‘s Love for Homeland only needs one. It must be the power of God. Through her Er-hu (a traditional Chinese two-string bowed instrument) and her love for Jesus Christ, she connects listeners with her music. Using her instrument as a melodic brush, she captures exquisite images with her sound, and God is in the details.

Love for Homeland is like a trip down memory lane for Miss. Shu, and she takes listeners on the journey with her. The album opens with a gorgeous landscape of “Spring in Southern China.” Composed by Chang Yao Zhu and accompanied by Yang Qin’ zither, Miss. Shu’s Er-hu leads us through “the incomparable beauty of Southern China’s river villages” (album notes). The voyage continues with sounds of nature on Lien Hua Liu’s “Birds Singing on the Mountain.” Her intricate fiddling style on this track is simply amazing. Her saws are fast and clear. I am stunned by the variety of sounds that come out of just two strings. The part where she scratches her Er-hu is like a DJ on a turntable, only the sound is much more distinctive and impossible to accomplish with a record.

Miss. Shu and her ensemble have not only created a joyful image on Hai Huai Huang’s “Horse Racing,” but they have also added a dazzling motion to the composition. All we have to do is imagining Ziyi Zhang riding a horse through the green grass plains, and let Miss. Shu’s Er-hu fill in the motion graphics with her wondrous harmonies of nature. In contrast to “Horse Racing” ‘s energetic vibe, “Childhood,” which composed by Shu when she was seventeen years old, is a calm and delightful reflection of her upbringing in China. In this particular piece, her Er-hu is a reminiscent of a human voice, a female vocalist with a sophisticated level phrasing and perfect breath control. The music is quiet, but the image is accessible.

Even though I have never met Miss. Shu, she has inspired me as someone who uses her God-sent talent to serve God. Instead of taking her masterful skill to fame and fortune, which she could easily achieve (Kanye West would be thrilled to sample her sounds), she uses it to praise the Lord. Her rendition of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” is both uplifting and astonishing. The Chinese instruments give this Western classic a unique harmony. Like the words of God, every sound that comes out of Miss. Shu Er-hu is soulful, graceful, and powerful.

Last night, mom came into my room several times to tuck me in. Although she had wakened me up, I still pretended I was asleep as tears rolled down my eyes. She still takes care of me like yesterday when I was a child. Her love is higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea, and I am thankful everyday for it.

After Charles Wyke-Smith answered a lengthy question on CSS, his friend told him, “You should put this all in a book – I’d buy it.” Through his connection with an editor at New Riders, Wyke-Smith landed himself a book deal.

Like many CSS books on the market, Stylin’ with CSS introduces web standards, XHTML, and of course CSS. Wyke-Smith explains how CSS works, how to style text, how to create page layout, and so forth. Since the book offers nothing new or unique, isn’t it a bit too late to come out with a beginner CSS book at this time?

In Wyke-Smith’s introduction he writes, “Stylin’ with CSS is all about designing and building Web pages that look stylish and professional…” Yet the examples provided in the book are anything but those two elements. Although the book is not about design, and the main focus is on CSS, the author should at least try to create something visually appealing to attract the designers. The example does not have to be like a Zen Garden piece, but a simple layout with a nice use of type is good enough. Unfortunately, the screenshots provided in the book turn me away. The pages look as if they were designed in 1994 – when the author first started designing for the web.

If Stylin’ was published a year ago, it might make some impact, but it is too late now since there is an array of well-written CSS books already published. From a designer standpoint, I have no need for this book. Why should I learn to create something that does not pull me in? Besides, the raw tutorials covered in the book could be found online.

Not a whole lot of changes. Still keep the cleanness and the crispness. The whitespace and the structure are untouched. Just needed more visual impact and some fresh graphics. Another reason for the renovation was to get rid of negative margin, which Win IE 5 and below don’t seem to understand. Anyway, enjoy the new look!