Today marks my 12^th year working at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. Twelve years at the same job is a long time, especially in the web industry. I worked under three different deans. I had a great run with my previous supervisor for a decade. She retired last year. I miss her terribly.

My title as Director of Design and Web Services remains the same, but my role has changed drastically. I am moving away from hands-on design and development and taking on more providing direction. I don’t mind directing at all since I still do hands-on design and development on my own projects. I won’t lose my design and technical skills.

For the law school’s main website, the technical portions are being outsourced. We are throwing lots of money at outside vendors and the top is clueless; therefore, my responsibility is to make sure that the designs and developments are up to our standards. I offer my advice and expertise even if they aren’t taken.

As the main website becomes less of my responsibility, I am taking on a more prominent role on the network of Scalia Law Sites. I recognized the needs for a network of websites many years ago and I created the WordPress Multisite for the law community. In collaboration with the University’s ITS, my team supports and maintains almost 40 sites. The network is growing and we still have tons of work to do.

I don’t know what my future with the law school will be. I don’t want to think too far ahead. I no longer have the passion, but a job is a job. I don’t need the passion, the motivation, or the inspiration to do my job. I just need to put in my time and get out at the end of the day. Work is no longer on my mind after hours. I don’t let all the bureaucracies and incompetencies distract me. I balance my work and life. I enjoy the benefits I have earned in the past twelve years. I need to do what I need to do to support my family.

When Wakefield renovated its skatepark a year ago, I wanted to drop down from its highest half pipe. The only way to get on top of the ramp is to get enough speed to pump up. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to get my fat ass on top of the ramp until this evening. As expected, dropping down was not too scary since I had all the protective gears and a helmet. I overcame the challenge of climbing up. Now I can join Đạo and Đán for the thrill. I am a year behind them, but better late than never. Check out the clip.

Adrik Ivanov:

Greetings,

It is nice that accessibility is one of the things you take care of when designing your blog. I found your musings interesting as a Vietnamese from the “motherland.” I honestly don’t know what else to say more on the topic. Besides hoping that in the future, more website designers would take care in designing websites for disabled folks and people who browse the web using the terminal for whatever reason.

Warm regards,

Adrik

This email made my day.

The largest heating surface element on our Whirlpool’s stove burnt out. I followed this YouTube video to replace a new one. The process took about five minutes. The cleanup took almost an hour to get all the grease out of the entire exterior of the stove. The new heating element cost $110. The entire stove looks new again. The wife is happy; therefore, the life is also happy.

As usual, I drove Đán and Xuân to their weekly private piano lessons. Instead of dropping by the skatepark afterwards, we went straight to my sister-in-law’s house to celebrate her mother-in-law’s 88th birthday.

After we sang “Happy Birthday” and cut the cake, I asked Đán and Xuân to play their latest song they had been practicing for months. They both declined to play even though they just practiced with their teacher just half an hour ago preparing for their informal recital in two weeks.

Then I asked them to play any song and Đán chose “Ode to Joy.” He played it with one finger so he could get back to playing video games. They both had taken private lessons for almost two years and all one of them could play was ten seconds with one finger.

My wife and I argued over their piano lessons. She wants them to continue. I don’t see the point if they don’t give a damn. They threw tantrums every time they were asked to practice. They just wanted to get it done and over with so they could play video games. They took months to learn one song.

They have lost their interest. It is just another wasted opportunity like everything we offered them. It has been dragging for months and they are making regress instead of progress. I am done with them on this one too.

In his live coaching session, “Improving Your Heelside Turn,” Nev Lapwood from Snowboard Addiction, pointed out that you need to keep your weight on top of your board by bending your knees (like you are sitting on a chair) and lifting up your toes.

In “Improving Your Toeside Turns,” Nav suggested the opposite. You still needed to keep your weight on top of your board by bending your knees and pushing your hips forward. He didn’t mention lifting your heel up or pushing down your toes down. Pushing your hips forward should do it.

In “Improving Your Carving on a Snowboard,” Nav suggested flowing your body into your turns. Using your front hand to point to the direction where you wanted to go.

In “Beginner Snowboard Lesson Pt. 5,” Nav suggested leaning downhill into your front foot instead of backward when riding down steep slopes.

I will keep his suggestions in mind when I snowboard this winter.

I always loved this clip of Xuân jamming at his friend’s birthday party. While everyone else was standing still, he got his groove on and he didn’t seem to pay attention to anything around him. The expression on his face was priceless.

For more fun clips, check out my collection of Shorts or subscribe to my YouTube channel. I post a clip every 12 hours for the entire month.

Name Sans, designed by Stephen Nixon, reached version 1. It took Stephen over three years to get here. What a milestone. I appreciated the thoughtfulness Stephen brought to the Vietnamese diacritics. I often used Name Sans as an example for designing diacritics for sans-serif typefaces.

Recently Đán asked me for a copy of Adobe Animate. He wanted to do some cartoon animations. I am cool with that—as long as he’s not spending time on his computer playing video games too much.

Yesterday, I discovered that Animate is the new Flash. Why didn’t know know about Animate until my son asked me for it? All this time, I had the impression that Adobe killed Flash, but they made the right decision to keep it as an animated tool.

When I opened up Animate, the Flash interface brought back so much memories. I used to spend so much of my free time learning Flash and creating slideshows and typographic motions. Now Đán is doing similar thing. I hope he will joy and passion in Animate.

I played around with Animate a bit last night and it is quite a time-sucker. I am not sure if I want to get back to it, but I am happy to see it is still around. I might pick it up again in the future to create simple animations.

When Dan Cederholm announced his first typeface, he had moved on from web design into type design. I was a bit sad and nostalgic. I learned web design, CSS techniques in particular, from reading Dan’s books. In Twenty Bits I Learned Making Websites, Dan shared his “little slice of web design history” and revealed some hints about leaving web design behind. The part about him not getting HTML is a bit baffled to me, but I understand his other reasons. Modern web design requires too many tools and frameworks. That’s why I am an old-school web designer who still crafts websites by hand from scratch and not relying on pre-packaged sites. Well, thanks Dan for all the knowledge you have shared and best of luck on your new endeavors.