My friend Jim has decided to shut down Thinkpoint Creative. My involvement was developing its website, which I still keep the case study on my portfolio. I didn’t do any work through Thinkpoint. Boutique design agency is hard to survive.

With social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram, websites are no longer essential for small businesses. If small businesses need a website, they would go with website building platforms such as Squarespace and Wix). Custom web design is no longer necessary.

For over 20 years, I failed to launch my own freelance career as a web designer. As a result, I ended up working under someone else. It’s all about paying the bills. My hopes and dreams had not come true. It’s all good!

It is now 6 am and Harris appears to be losing all of the swing states. Republicans also have taken control of the Senate. This is a crushing defeat, but the people have voted.

I was too naive to hope once again that America would pull through for Harris. Even though she had run an outstanding campaign, America has shown we are nowhere ready for a Madam President. I should have known and the results should have been expected.

The next four years will be dark and doomed. Our democracy won’t survive this time around. I hope I am dead wrong because there is nothing I can do about it.

2016 to 2020 was too stressful for me. I can’t go back to that period of my life again. The only thing I can do now is to stay out of politics in the next four years to keep myself from going insane.

I have lost faith in American politics. I don’t want to hear about politics. I don’t want to read about politics. I don’t want to talk about politics. I don’t want to write about politics.

I am done with politics. I should remove the entire political category from this blog to protect myself. Freedom of speech might not be possible anymore in the near future.

Today is the day to get rid of Donald Trump once and for all. Trump is unhinged, unstable, and unfit to be our president. Trump has neither the moral nor the temperament to be a leader of the free world. Trump is a racist, a sexist, and a xenophobic. Trump is a pathological liar. Trump is corrupted and convicted. Trump is weak, unintelligent, and easily manipulated. Trump is a failure and a loser. Trump is deranged and dangerous. Trump creates cults and chaos. Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Let us vote to end the Trump era today.

The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board:

Not Donald Trump.

His visit to Helene-devastated areas was a vehicle to spread lies, inflame and divide…

This is how Trump leads. He doesn’t. Even in a desperate hour of need, he exploits. Even from people who have lost everything, he takes…

And understand this: A man who will exploit a deadly hurricane will exploit you.

The board is spot on.

David Remnick writes in the New Yorker:

Every editor who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that endorsements are of modest influence at best. The editors of this magazine, when it recently published a lengthy essay describing (for the thousandth time) the authoritarian prospects of a second Trump Presidency, and endorsing Kamala Harris, had no illusions. Editors may be as prone to sanctimony as they are to the common cold, but there was never any thought that such an endorsement would suddenly tip the balance in the battleground states, much less win majorities in the Deep South or the Great Plains. The point was that we, like other publications, attempted to make a cogent case, and had the editorial freedom to do so.

I love reading newspaper and magazine endorsements. Even if they don’t move the needle, these are some of the best political essays I had read and often quoted them on this site. I am glad publications like the New Yorker still have the spine to stand up to Trump.

My friend Tim Brown is giving away Flexible Typesetting. Head over to the beautiful book website and subscribe to his mailing list to get yourself a copy. Right now, Tim only offers the PDF version. I hope he will turn it into a web book in the near future. No pressure, Tim.

In over 25 years of using computers, I had done countless copy and paste texts. Yet, I got annoyed with formatting every time I performed these two tasks.

Recently, I was helping Đán with his homework and I watched him copied and pasted text in to his assignments without the formatting.

He showed me how:

Win: Ctrl + Shift + V
Mac: Cmd + Shift + V

How in the world have I not known this all these years? Then again, better late than never. Thanks kiddo!

Steven Reisner writes for Slate:

This election is not about politics; it’s much more basic—it’s about how the American determines what is real. Will the future of the country be based on evidence and law, or will government be twisted to reflect whatever Donald Trump tells us is true?

As my wife and I headed toward the exit doors at a Great Wall supermarket, we spotted a table with free books. Most of them were about Buddhism. What caught my wife’s attention was a tiny book that could fit into her palm titled Heart of a Buddha.

She handed the book over to me because she knew I liked to read. As I flipped through the pages, I found many words of wisdom such as “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love,” “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection,” and “Overcome …greed with generosity, …anger with lovingkindness, …ignorance with understanding.”

After reading a few quotes I posted online, friends and family members would like to read the book as well. That sparked my interest to turn it into a web book. According to the book copyright, reprinting is allowed for non-profit use.

As much as I loved the content from the book, I was not too crazy about the type choice. The entire book was set in Papyrus. For the web version, I set the body in Rosarivo, designed by Pablo Ugerman. For the title, I selected Arizonia, designed by Robert Leuschke.

What took the most time was not only copying, pasting, and writing the HTML, but also styling the text to match the pages in the book. Each piece of text in the book was set to create a dynamic rhythm and I would like to retain that for the web version with CSS styling.

I invite you to give it a read. A Heart of Buddha is not a religious book and I guarantee you will find happiness, wisdom, and serenity. Spread the love.

For more enlightening reading, check out a collection of web books I designed.

Our family went out to dinner on Sunday night. The phở and bún bò Huế weren’t too good. Nevertheless, we paid $140 (including tips). Everytime we went out to eat, we paid over $100. They add up.

I need to stop myself from taking the kids out to eat. I don’t even enjoy eating out anymore. It is just convenience to do so. It has become such a bad habit. I console myself that I am still working; therefore, I can still enjoy myself. Just eating out alone is one of the obstacles that tie me to a job. I would like to have less financial burden.

My wife will be out in Paris for a week starting tomorrow. I will challenge myself to not eating out anymore. We’ll just make something at home.