Top 50 Common Vietnamese Surnames

I'm doing some research for a project at school and ran into this tidbit. Thought I'd share:

1. Nguyễn


2. Trần


3. Lê


4. Phạm


5. Huỳnh


6. Vũ


7. Phan


8. Trương


9. Hoàng


10. Ngô


11. Đặng


12. Đỗ


13. Bùi


14. Võ


15. Lý


16. Dương


17. Lương


18. Đinh


19. Trịnh


20. Lưu


21. Đoàn


22. Đào


23. Thái


24. Mai


25. Văn


26. Cao


27. Vương


28. Phùng


29. Quách


30. Tạ


31. Diệp


32. Tôn


33. La


34. Thạch


35. Thi


36. Thanh


37. Đàm


38. Vong


39. Triệu


40. Bưu


41. Phú


42. Vĩnh


43. Quang


44. Tiều


45. Hòa


46. Trang


47. Giang


48. Lục


49. Banh


50. Nghiêm

Wikipedia has a nice post on Vietnamese surnames, but they're not all in order. I added the tones so they might be off. Let me know if I muffed your last name! I'll fix it.

This list is used by the US Department of Justice and is based on several sources:
Abrahamse A. F., Morrison, P. A. & Bolton, N. M. (1994). Population Research and Policy Review: 13 383-398.
Barringer, H. R., Gardner, R. W. & Levin, M.J. (1993). Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. The Population of the United States in the 1980s.
Buechley, R. W. (1976). Generally useful ethnic search system: GUESS. University of New Mexico, Cancer Research and Treatment Cetner (mimeo).
Choi, B. C. K., Hanley, A. J., Holowaty, E. J. & Dale, D. (1993). American Journal of Epidemiology 138: 723-734
Kuo, J. & Porter, K. (1998). Health status of Asian Americans: United States, 1992-1994.

15 days to the 2009 Shakeout!

15 Days to the 2009 ShakeOut! Dear Participant, At 10:15 a.m. on October 15, 2009, millions of Californians will “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” in The Great California ShakeOut, the largest earthquake drill ever! September is National Preparedness Month, and you'll be hearing from many organizations about how to update your disaster plans and restock your disaster supplies kits. It's also time to register for the 2009 ShakeOut! If you participated in the 2008 drill or not, this is your once-a-year chance to practice how to be safe during earthquakes: Drop, Cover, and Hold On. Over 5.4 million southern Californians participated in the 2008 ShakeOut. As a statewide drill in 2009, this number could be doubled... but we can only include if you register at www.ShakeOut.org/register. As of August 31, over 3.7 million participants are registered statewide! There are many ways to participate in the ShakeOut in 2009. At the least, plan a "drop, cover, and hold on" drill involving everyone in your household. You can also discuss your overall disaster plan with your family or roommates, secure the contents of your home so they won't fall, and restock your supplies. The updated ShakeOut.org website is the central source of information for how to participate, learn about your area's earthquake hazards, and find local events, news, and participant lists for all California counties. Everyone can participate! Individuals, families, businesses, schools, government agencies and organizations are all invited to register. Talk to your employer, neighborhood association, faith-based organization, or others about registering as well. Your involvement in the ShakeOut insprires many others to register and hold their own drills! Register today at ShakeOut.org

Batch IP Locator - New Home

Ok, just wanted to announce that my little project has a new home (because the other one is about to expire):

Batch IP Locator
Geocode or map multiple IP addresses - free

Batch IP Locator - Official Launch

A week or so ago, I launched the very-beta version of a new app I'm working on. Today is the "official" launch of a greatly-improved product. After a week of poring over code and markup, the back-end has been revamped, UI is more functional (and looks better, too!), and an API has been added (with documentation). Now I just need to add content. Ugh. Not what I want to do after a week of coding. If I can get homework done early I'll shoot for that at the end of this week.

Stop by and visit, and leave me your thoughts (feedback) on what needs improvement:

Batch IP Locator ~ Geocode and map multiple IP Addresses - free!

ps. I made a new twitter account for it, too. lol

Batch IP Locator - Beta!

I've been looking for a service to geocode a list of IP addresses for awhile now, but to no avail. Well, for free anyway.

I just launched my version of a Batch IP Locator this morning, it will locate a list of IP address, returning the country, city and latitude/longitude coordinates. I'm hoping to fill a hole.

Years ago, I ran into "Map Multiple Locations" which opened my eyes to the power of data plotted on a map. As cheesy as it sounds, it was really a defining moment in my life (I am starting grad school on Monday, in Geography, after all). I hope to provide a similar service.

This beta is barebones for now. There is much in store (mapping integration, JSON output for ajax calls, etc), but for now I just have to settle with I've got.

Design inspirations

I've had some positive feedback regarding the redesign (many thanks to my wife who is full of patience and kind words even when she wishes her husband would spend time with her instead of the computer :) so here's my reply.

I don't do designs for hire, yet anyway. haha I'm just starting school again so time is limited, but I think it would be fun to do a little project once in awhile. Let me know what you've got in mind and maybe I can point out possible ways to achieve it.

For those of you thinking about web design but maybe "dragging your feet," here's some inspiration:

• Best of CSS Design 2008: The websites we use everyday seldom invoke an emotional response deep within out heart. Here are 50 that did for me late last year. Especially true for Viget Inspire (just beautiful!), Carrot Creative (smooth use of jQuery navigation) and Nine Lion Design (dark texture, bold contrast and warm ambiance)
• Nature Inspired Painted Background: This was the tutorial that got me "painting" again (see my attempt above) and generally interested in art once more, this time in the digital sphere.
• 17 Techniques for Creating Designs Inspired by Nature: Interestingly enough, I started looking into my designer feeds (I subscribe to 15 rss feeds on design that provide constant inspiration) and found this article, posted one day after my redesign launch, that outlines many of the principles I used this time around. It's a great starting point for someone who's thinking about being interested in learning more about maybe playing around with design :), especially if you're into nature photography.
• Web Style Guide 3: This book (yes, the entire text of the book in available for free online) is for those who already have design experience, but are looking into web standards and SEO and creating complex corporate websites. It takes a very conservative approach to web design, but is a good anchor and balance when your design needs to meet usability and interaction halfway.

A year ago, my wife started getting into food blogs, and I was blown away at how vastly enormous the food blog network is and how I had never seen a glimpse of it until then. Design blogs are the same - it's a whole new world out there and once you're in, you're in for good. Life just becomes one big design.

xanghe redesign! (yes, again)

It started out as a sketch. I was bored at the fair so I scribbled up a little scene I had in my mind. That night I scanned it and played around with it in Inkscape and then the GIMP. That was last Wednesday. The 6 following days have been pretty much wasted with me in front of the computer, but I have to say, this is my favorite design yet.

Enjoy. I promised my wife I this one would last at least a year.

Still Learning

The jasmine and bougainvillea I bonsai-ed are coming along beautifully. I think I prefer smaller trees. That has nothing to do with this post, though.

I'm still learning from my parents. I saw two characteristics over this past weekend that I guess I've always known, but for some reason hit me with more force this time.

My mom is an optimist. Not the blind kind, but the kind that takes lemons and makes lemonade. The active kind that pursues good out of the "bad." She's facing serious tests right now, mainly dealing with uncertainty and personal challenges, but she doesn't break. She calls them "opportunities" and "the perfect chance to prove what I've been believing."

This picture was taken 30 mins after getting out of the car, arriving home from a 3-day camping trip in the Uintahs. We had driven ("He" had driven, rather) for 4 hours to get home and everyone was very tired. It was 90ish degrees outside. I sat inside the air-conditioned house drinking water and eating cookies, thinking how it was so nice to be able to rest, when I looked out the window to see dad watering the garden (this is after he put away all the camping gear). Then I remembered that before our camping trip, he had been camping with the scouts for the week before that, and he had been the hiking advisor so did a total of 50+ miles hiking with little boys over the course of 4 days. Then I remembered that before that he went with a friend to climb Lone Peak - backpack in 7 miles, then climb the 700-foot vertical face of the peak. I recalled him saying that over the past 10 day period he had showered twice, even after all that physical exertion. He wasn't resting in his room or showering under cool water or even eating cookies before dinner... he was outside watering the garden, and teaching me something about priorities and work ethic.

Needless to say, my parents raised me well and are still teaching me by example the things that I should do. I guess no matter how old I am, I will always keep learning if I but keep my eyes open.

Google Money Master: The art of designing web scams

"Google Money Master" - sounds cool, huh? And $5000 a month from home (working only 10 hours a week!) doesn't sound bad either. Oh, and this author is from Orange County, too! Great, where do I sign up? Obviously these underlined, blue words are links, so I'll click on one of these. Uh oh, this new page looks like a scam... but Mike Richardson from Orange County said it's legit!

Haha, that's what went through my mind this morning when I hopped on the article from the "Los Angeles Tribune" about a way to make $5000 a month. After sheepishly collecting my wits upon realizing that I had been scammed (no I didn't sign up), I turned back to the page to find out how I was so easily deceived. I looks like scammers (yes, those people capitalizing on unemployed people) are listening in web design class. Here are some ridiculously true principals that I should have caught off the bat, but that seem to catch me (us?) every time:

• 

  Localization

  First and foremost, the scammers localize the content. The page was created in PHP, which means everytime it's served from the host, it can look at your whereabouts and figure out where you're located at the time of viewing. Mine says "Orange , CA" (notice the extra space after "Orange" - a sign of hasty coding) in two places. And the "Los Angeles Tribune" is not a real newspaper... I'm sure if you're in Houston it will say the "Houston Tribune." We are prone to believe something if it's happening in our back yard.



• Content

  They employed typical hoax content, using a fictitious name, realistic circumstances and a reputable entity (usually a media outlet or law enforcer, this time it's Google). It gives us a creditable source, or at least uses words that seem creditable. It even gives his email: "Tom Chilton@www.Financial-Weekly.com" - It's the first time I've seen "www." in an email's domain. lol This scam even holds true to form in its grammar - poor.



• Layout

  photo from Web Style Guide
  Here's my favorite part. We as web surfers behave very differently in many situations, but in some ways we act exactly the same. Like how we scan documents. As the images above illustrate, our eyes spend a lot of time at the top-left area of the page, and the scammers capitalize on that. The bold, alluring title, the photo of a young work-at-home millionaire... look at the little social networking icons! Looks just like the real thing.



• Reader Feeback

  At the bottom of the page, as all news articles or blogs should, we see a bunch of user comments. Some are skeptical, some affirm our hope that Google will truly send us a check within 48 hours of signing up. What better way to include non-obtrusive peer pressure! Notice the date of the comments happen to be before the "Created At" date, and they all were posted at the same time. And "Created At?" Is that English?



• Functionality

  No no, this is actually my favorite part. Click on the news tabs at the top. Go ahead and login, or post a comment. Or reply to a comment or favorite it, or hover over anything that we web surfers know so well to be links or functional buttons. No little pointy hand, no subtle animation. Not a single link on the entire page, except the handful they want you to click that lead to their trap homepage. Ha! This should have been the first warning that this was a fishy site, but just like a skilled magician, they distract you from what they're really doing by directing your attention to a little trick.

And so it goes. The hoaxes are still hoaxing people. Especially when we are in a financial rut. Hopefully we can take a look at this page and laugh, then take a deeper look at what other imitations are designed specifically to deceive us. When designed well enough, we may just scan our way into a trap without even knowing.

Google Money Master: a bona fide folk tale. Pass it on. ;)

Oregon road trip 2009

After plans to go to Vietnam, the Mediterranean or Belizé, we ended up going to Oregon. It was a very close second.

I finally got the pictures uploaded. Come take our road trip with us... from the comfort of your own chair!

Oregon Road Trip Pictures