I have a lot of respect for Dodo’s programming skills. Not only she had written quite a few very useful php scripts, she also created many hacks for b2 weblog. The most useful one is the toggle of ‘read more’ script, which I use on this blog. Lately she had written ‘reply to comments’ and ‘comments links’ which works nicely but I don’t find them too useful. The ‘reply to comments’ is fantastic but you can’t really tell who is the latest commenter. The ‘Comment links’ is quite nice but it shows that the site’s owner just slaps up the links without even actually visiting the sites. It doesn’t show the owner’s effort to personally write down the links. Whenever I post a link on my site, I always make sure that site is worth visiting and not just slap a link on because someone commented on my site. As a commenter, I wouldn’t want my name to be part of that list. Why? I didn’t comment your site to get a link. I commented your site because I like what you wrote and not to get my site promoted. Anyhow, I still wish I had half of Dodo’s programming skills. Keep up the great work, girl.

Woohoo! I got a raise from Vassar. This is really exciting. I will continue to create clean, attractive, usable, accessible and easy-to-maintain websites for Vassar. On top of that, I will continue to push Vassar moving toward web standards using CSS and XHTML.

Wish Keish was still here.

Oh Keish! What can I say? I am going to miss you like crazy. You’ve been such a wonderful friend. I love all the moments we shared. Go out to eat, go to the movies, cook at your place, and share stories about our families. I have so much fun being around you and thanks for listening. You’re the one that I can really open up to. This job has brought you to me and I am thankful for that. Things will not be the same when you are not around anymore. You had made it really enjoyable. I admire your design skill, adore your personality, and love your cooking. You’re such a talented individual and I’ve learned so much from you. Please keep in touch with me wherever you go. I do not want our friendships to fade because of the passing of time. I will always remember you.

Love
Donny

It’s always great to spend time with family and friends. Sammy is so cute with a new haircut. She loves Monsters, Inc. She has been watching it everyday for the past week. Sammy pointed out Boo, the adorable little girl, and said, “That’s be Tu. Ma Tu hong co quay (But Sammy doesn’t misbehave)” She pointed to Sully, the big monster, and said, “Cau Doanh.” Then she laughed at me. I tickled her and made her kissed my cheeks. I kept on demanding her to kissed both of my cheeks. After the sixth times, she got tired of kissing me and just simply pushed my face away. After the movie, I put her to sleep and she was doing the sign language “You go to sleep” just like Sully did to Boo. Man, I love this adorable little girl so much. I hope she will grow up to be successful. I am kind of worry about her being too smart. She might think she will get away with everything because of her smartness and ended up ruin her life. I knew this one girl when she was eight years old. She was a cute little girl and absolute smart and outgoing. I was thinking to myself, “This girl will grow up to be somebody, maybe a doctor or a lawyer.” At the age of eight, she was baby-sitting her little three years old brother while her parents out working days and nights. Even as a smart girl, without directions, she ruined her life. At the age of fourteen, she got pregnant. When I heard the news, I couldn’t believe what I heard. Both she and her boyfriend were still in middle school. How the hell are they going to raise this kid? She dropped out of middle school to take care of the kid. I felt so bad for this poor little girl. She spent her youth babysitting her little brother and now she is spending her teen babysitting her own kid.

While at Wal-Mart yesterday, I spotted a Cambodian girl. I remembered her from high school so I came up and said, “Hey! How’re you doing?” She looked at me and replied, “Sorry, I don’t remember you.” Then she walked off with her boyfriend/husband. I felt mad idiot. Luckily her boyfriend/husband didn’t whoop my ass. I knew her when I was a freshman and she was a senior in High School. She helped me figured out where my classes were and we talked a couple of times. It’s only been eight years and she doesn’t remember me at all.

Another incident happened a couple of months ago. I saw a guy who was in my 8th grade class. I knew what his name was and I even pointed to him the class we were in. The only response I got from him was, “How are you going to pick out my brain like that? It’s been ages ago.” So next time when I see someone I know but I don’t think that person remembers me, I just pretend I don’t remember him/her to save my embarrassment.

VisualGUI is an innovative design studio that combines creativity and simplicity to produce an enjoyable web experience.

What is VisualGUI? There is a double meaning behind it. Obviously, GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. A good interface design is not only intuitive and usable but visually attractive as well. The second meaning is about me. I am a “visual guy” and this site displays a collection of my visual designs, thoughts, and inspirations.

VisualGUI was formerly known as D3 (Donny Digital Design) Studio. D3 was started in 1999 for a class project (Electronic Visual Communication) at La Salle University. Fortunately, the success of the site opened the door to freelance projects. As a result, D3 evolved into the birth of a design studio because of the continuous growing body of work that resolves around it. The purpose of D3studio was to showcase my work only; however, I decided to include my journal in January 2003. The main goal of adding my journal is to release myself and improve my writing skills. It also serves as a stress management. In April 2003, I changed the name to VisualGUI to reflects both my professional works and my personal goals. As a result, VisualGUI is a combination of a portfolio showcase and a personal weblog. I could have created two separate sites but maintaining is a big issue. Keeping one site up to date is hard enough. On top of that, I am currently a full time web designer at Vassar College which takes up a big chunk of my time but I enjoy working with all the wonderful people and talented designers.

I hope you find this site enjoyable. If you are a potential client and would like to check out my works, please ignore my personal weblog. Although I have nothing to hide, my weblog is very personal and it contains all kinds of explicit contents that might give you a wrong impression about my design. However, if you don’t mind my personal thoughts, I encourage you to explore and enjoy both of my worlds. You might figure out why I design the way I do based on my personality.

Michael Lebowitz, class of 94 Vassar graduate, gave a great presentation on Interactive Design for the Film Industry. He is the co-founder of Big Spaceship, a design company that specializes in graphic, interactive and web design for film sites. Big Spaceship portfolio includes: Gangs of New York, Identity, and Down With Love. I don’t know if I should reveal this but these guys are paid in full. The budget for Gangs of New York site was 150 grants. They also developed Battle for the Sudan, an award winning multi-user game powered by Unity Socket Server. Mike is an awesome guy who willing to push the envelope in digital media design. Make sure to check out his company’s upcoming project called Underworld. I saw the teaser and it looks hot. Thank Mike for the fantastic lecture and thank Rain for the great sushi dinner. It was a wonderful evening.

If you watch Memento on DVD, you would notice the fascinating motion graphic piece in the interface where a flipping Polaroid photograph fades away instead of develops. I was not exactly sure what happened in the movie because I was drawn into the visual design and the motion graphic throughout the film. Especially the stunning technique in the beginning where the photograph fades to white than a bullet zips out a man’s head and back into the chamber of the gun. I might have to watch the movie again to get a better understanding of the story.

Wouldn’t be neat if you can be like Leonard (Guy Pearce)? You don’t have short-term memory but you can control your memories? You don’t need to remember all the bad ones and just capture and archive all the good and memorable ones. It’ll be cool because you would do things that you would not normally do. For instance, you wouldn’t afraid of embarrassing yourself in a crowd because you wouldn’t remember that embarrassing moment anyway. Overall, Memento is a great film from clever storyline to fascinating motion graphics. As Hillman Curtis describes it, “[Memento] will give you a generous dose of adrenaline, as you take the ride on a psychological roller coaster.”

Registered visualgui.com through GoDaddy.

My homie called me up last night asking me to come to his grandma’s memory event. This is an annual event which family and friends get together to pay respect to grandma. Although, my friend is Cambodian, we have very similar traditions. The monks will be there to pray pray for his grandma’s soul. Of course, there will be tons of food afterward. Cambodian food is hot and banging. Yep, I am coming home.

Poor Tay

She just came back from her Asia travel and caught a flu. Fortunately, not that deadly flu as we have seen on TV; however, the US security gave her a hard time. They kept her in a separate room for a week until they found out for sure she did not catch that deadly stuff.

Fuck This Host

D3studio went down for more than 12 hours. This host company fucking blows. I tried to switch to another hosting company once but they did not transfer my DNS over. It looks like I am going to have to kiss D3studio.net goodbye and come up with a new name. This shit is fucked up.

A Letter From Ngoc Lan’s Fan

This kind of letter really makes my day and how can I say no to this proposal. Trong, I hope you don’t mind me posting your letter.

Hi anh Donny,

Xin mao muoi viet email nay den cho anh. Toi thay anh co mot trang trong website cua hang anh, danh cho co ca si tai cao bac menh, Ngoc Lan. Toi la mot trong mot so cac ban ai mo co ca si nay rat nhieu. Chung toi thay hien nay khong co mot cai website nao dedicated cho co ay ca, va evidently you are a fan of hers (I’m switching to English here because it suddenly dawned on me that you wouldn’t understand Vietnamese, sorry if I’m mistaken!). Would you be generous with your time and create a website for Miss Ngoc Lan? Of course I would pay for the domain name and I would pay what I could afford, but I’m really asking, no begging, you to help us out. Your site shows your truly amazing expertise and talent (not to mention very good taste!).

Would you be able to help us out with this website for nguoi dep Ngoc Lan? If there’s a charge, please let me know what the charge is and I’ll try to manage within my limited capabilities. But regardless of the answer, would you please reply to my email? I truly appreciate your considering my request. I do not seek anything other than a place for her thousands of fans to come to. She’s been gone over two years now, the wound is still so fresh, the loss so real…

Thank you for your time,

Trong