For All Who Care - Viet Speaking Mission Website is Down

Every now and then, I like to pay my respects to an old website dedicated to Vietnamese Speaking LDS Missions around the world. It dates back to the 1999's and is very much so a 1990's website, complete with an animated Kokopelli tooting away on his flute (why Kokopelli, I do not know). The site contains a curious mixture of former missionary contacts, messages, games, articles and "Java-enabled" VietChat. I actually used some of the articles on the site for a project I did back in school, but that was the last time I had visited... until tonight.

The website is located here: http://members.aol.com/nomhawj/viet/mission.html Go ahead, click on it. See the circular logo and the totally rad sidebar and Mr Kokopelli tooting away? Probably not. You probably see a nasty dark page with some smokey header informing you that blah blah blah we shut down this page forever we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thanks for the apology, but you shut down my page!

Well, it wasn't my page, per se. In fact, I don't know whose page it was, or is, or else I'd let them know that they've been shut down forever and request that they migrate the site to another host. Fortunately for all of us, there's a nifty web service called WaybackMachine, located at archive.org, which allows you to see webpages that aren't there anymore, like ones that have been "shut down forever" for example. Using this service, we still have a vestige of our wonderful Viet Speaking Mission site, a snapshot from 2006 which seems to be the last time the webmaster made a major update. Here it is (no nasty smokey header this time):

Viet Speaking Mission

Take a look through the Mailing List which provides a smattering of former missionaries' contact info reaching all the way to 1981. Or my personal favorite, the Missionary Corner, where you can find some Gospel-related Vietnamese-language materials, and make sure to follow the "Vietnam and the Church" link which leads to several articles about, you guessed it, Vietnam and the Church.

Now, we don't know when archive.org will decide to dẹp tiệm (which they probably won't but anyway), but in preparing for the worst, I would recommend taking a look through the archived site and extracting what info you want/need right now. Just in case.

Small print:I am toying with the idea of setting up a new site for former Vietnamese-speaking elders, but don't know when/where it will take place. Feedback?

Want to use a smiley outside of chat?

Try this:

☺

Using that little mess of numbers (called an HTML character entity) in your online document will yield a cute little smiley:

☺

This little smiley (and all the other character entities) will work if your online document or page is using a standard font (the fonts in this post should all work) and is being displayed in a modern browser (more on this below). Here are two extensive and detailed lists of character identities: Character Entity HTML Reference and HTML Character Entities. Here's a quick reference of the ones I think are coolest:

Looks like	Character Entity	Description
☺	☺	Smiley face
☻	☻	Inverted smiley face
☹	☹	Frowny face
	 	Non-breaking space - like hitting the spacebar (ever noticed your double-spaces after a period don't work online? Use  )
¼	¼	Fraction one-quarter
½	½	Fraction one-half
¾	¾	Fraction three-quarters
•	•	Bullet
©	©	Copyright sign
®	®	Registered sign
™	™	Trademark sign
♥	♥	Hearts suit (in cards)
★	★	Star
☂	☂	Umbrella (rain)
☮	☮	Peace sign
☯	☯	Yin & Yang
♘	♘	White Knight (chess)
♪	♪	Eighth note

How it works: Browsers are designed to read HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) documents (history of HTML here). Unlike plain-text or word-processing documents (static documents), HTML documents are built up with all kinds of tags and symbols and codes, telling the browser how to display the content. So you could be typing a sentence and mid-way decide to break into song "♪A whole ♩♬ new world!♫" Try it. Next time you update your facebook or twitter, throw a little ✄ or ☢ to really get your message across.

Sometimes the most common things are the hardest to do

Life presents us with so many choices sometimes it's hard to do the things that are most important to us. Whenever I have a day off at home, I plan to do so much housework- all those things that I can't do during the week. But at the end of the day, I look back and realize that I actually accomplished nothing. Except maybe updating my facebook. That's my dilemma - doing the things that I don't need to do in place of the things that I should be doing.

Saturday night I had the hardest time deciding whether or not to go to church (it was stake conference, after all). I knew I wouldn't be thrust down to hell for not going, but there a dull nagging in the back of my head that I SHOULD go, that thing we call "conscience" or "duty" or whatever. I was so tired and had been out all day and hadn't done any of the home stuff I had planned and blah blah blah, I just didn't want to go. Finally, my wife convinced me to go (and came along for the ride!) and upon arriving I felt like I had actually done something right (or my wife, rather). The talks were good and I got pretty beat up by the spiritual 2x4, but the last speaker really drilled it home. He basically said "there are some of you here that didn't plan on being here, or didn't want to be here, but you showed up anyway and that's the important thing." Before I could give myself a pat on the back, he motioned behind him to the chorister and said "it wasn't easy for Sister Carlson to be here, but she made it." I later learned that her husband had passed away the day before.

There are so many things that we should be doing - that we must be doing - but somehow slip through the cracks. Sometimes we're too tired, sad, sick, or downtrodden to look beyond the bare necessities to those things that will help others or brighten their day. Of anyone in that congregation, Sister Carlson was the ONE who had a valid excuse not to be there, but despite the sorrow she came and did what she knew she must. Let's follow her example. Let's get up right now and do that thing which we know we should have done last week. Write that letter (email) to your loved one, apologize to your neighbor (or spouse), find the strength to forgive, pay that debt, clean that room, whatever it is that you've had on your mind for so long but haven't had the strength or the faith to do, go do it now. Really. Stop reading and go do it. Get out of here. Someone's waiting.

Vietnamese Input - A Few Methods of Typing Vietnamese

Here are three ways of using Vietnamese characters in your workflow:

• Vietnamese input method software that you install on your machine


• Online service that acts as input method software


• Online Vietnamese manual keyboard

Input Method Software

I'm partial towards one piece of Vietnamese input software, and it is called Unikey. Great open-source software (that means it's free!) that is incredibly small, efficient and mobile. Other software includes VNI, VPSKeys, etc, which includes dictionaries, spell checkers and a lunar calendar for goodness sake, but if you only need the ability to type in Vietnamese, I would recommend Unikey above the rest. I've used it for 5 years now and love it.

• First, download Unikey (zip) here


• Unzip the file and save the contents in some folder you'll remember


• Open the file named unikey.exe, make sure the little icon at the bottom is a "V" instead of "E", and start typing

That's it! You're done! No installation, no registry changes, no library files to clutter your system32, nothing! Because it is so small and lightweight and doesn't require an installation to run, you can actually copy the contents of your folder to a USB drive and then plug it in to any other computer to start typing Vietnamese. If you want to make sure that the your Vietnamese characters are readable to the vast majority of viewers (ie webpage, email, Word document) then make sure that the Character Set in the Control Panel is set to Unicode and that you use one of the following fonts:

• Arial


• Courier New


• Myriad Pro (Adobe)


• Palatino Linotype


• Tahoma


• Verdana

There are a few others, but these are the main Unicode fonts that contain all the characters in the Vietnamese alphabet. A standard installation of Windows will include all of these fonts (minus Myriad Pro, which comes bundled with Adobe CS products).

Online service

Although there is no service that I can find that is specifically intended for this purpose (I have one on the back burner but it's really beyond me right now), if I'm stuck at a computer with no Vietnamese input software and I left my USB drive at home, this is my next best option. We will basically be using a Vietnamese dictionary site that facilitates Vietnamese input then copying the text and pasting it where we need it.

• Navigate to a dictionary site that provides online Vietnamese input (my personal favorite of all time: http://dict.vietfun.com/)


• Make sure Output Format is UTF-8 and Input Mode is VNI or VIQR


• Start typing your content in the search box


• Copy the text and paste it where you need it

This method works well for single words or short phrases. It also can be used for mobile devices, except the iPhone which can't copy and paste (yet. OS 3.0 should).

Online Vietnamese Keyboard

My last option, if all else fails, is to use a manual keyboard (one that gives you all the Vietnamese characters and you click on the one you want). I found a nice one today for this article, here at Incks.com You can type the standard English letters, then click on the Vietnamese-specific letters as you come to them. Huge impediment in the typing process, but better than nothing. Also has the option to zoom in/out, save as a text file or view and print.

Hope this has been helpful. Let me know your thoughts, and if you use other methods of typing Vietnamese please add it to this post in the comments! It would be cool to see how everyone else does it.

One last thing: A huge player in the open-source world of Vietnamese input is Hồ Ngọc Đức. This man is the master-mind behind both Unikey and the dictionary I mentioned above. He is a professor at Universität zu Lübeck in Germany and has made substantial contributions to the Vietnamese input method community. Visit his homepage here. And, if you really need a lunar calender but don't want to pay for VNI, he has one of those, too.

Update: Just remembered, my friend developed a tool to convert between different Vietnamese character formats (Unicode, VNI, VPS, VIQR). This could also be used to type Vietnamese characters, if you're familiar with VIQR, which can be typed with any keyboard. Read up on VIQR and then type your content into the tool and hit Convert. Here is Nguyễn Trí Minh's Vietnamese Conversion tool.

Change of Direction

I've been MIA for the last little while. Work is picking up, and after my last blog redesign I've kind of pulled away from the computer at home to make way for some other things (ie. planting blueberries!). Actually, I've turned more towards Facebook and Twitter and Flickr as vehicles to keep in touch with friends and stuff, because it's so quick and easy and I'm lazy. Anyway, I am going to start a new topic on this blog, namely Tips and Tricks for computer stuff. Just a series of short posts regarding things I've found to speed up my workflow. Today is the first article and it pertains to inputing Vietnamese characters.

Tết Pictures In!!

Better late than never. Here's my coverage of the festival this year. I was mostly caught up doing what I do best (running after my wife) but I was able to capture a few fun moments. My favorite was going behind the food vendors' booths and sneaking shots while my wife told them how they can sell their wares more successfully.

Click here for the slideshow


[images hosted by flickr]

Taking Notes Helps!

An article in Pistachio today informs presenters on presenting while people are Twittering. Quite an interesting phenomenon, and this article gives a nice perspective. The author lists the reasons why Twittering during a presentation is positive, and I'd like to point out the first of these reasons. I quote from reason number 1:

The more I’m allowed to interact and play with the content the more engaged and ultimately the more learning happens.

This concept has been pounded into my head since childhood, and I always find it perfectly true in every instance. Whether I'm sitting in a class or reading the Bible or trudging through a meeting that I really don't want to be in, taking notes always - yes, always - yields strong results in the end. Here's what happens:

1. I have to listen to take notes, so I start off more engaged
2. The more I take notes, the more questions I ask what I'm hearing
3. The more questions I ask, the more I use that thing between my ears (brain?) to try and figure out the answer
4. Inevitably, after a series of questions and answers, I subconsciously start to draw the content out of the abstract and into my own ballpark
5. This is when one piece of that content takes on a life of it's own and starts to mold to fit my current situation and other, unrelated questions start to be answered by what I learned here
6. Now the meeting/presentation is over and I can hardly believe it because I feel like I just started taking notes, even though I have ten full pages

Wonderful, huh? There's nothing as enlightening as having a good note-taking session. Except maybe choosing idleness instead of taking notes, which is what I usually opt to do. :)

A Wealth of Data Visualization Links

Thanks to a friend, I've been introduced to a truckload of data visualization links. I don't know if there's enough time in my whole life to thoroughly read through them all, but just a peek was enough. Hope you enjoy as much as I did (and will!):


Edward Tufte - the da vinci of Data

5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year


OSM 2008: A Year of Edits


visualcomplexity.com


Swivel Preview

The Best Tools for Visualization

Graphic Design - My 2009 Hobby

I've always loved art. I remember painting landscapes for my friends one year for Christmas. I remember listening to Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid and furiously drawing
characters from Final Fantasy or Metroid, or whatever Nintendo Power was highlighting at the time. I remember sitting for hours in my room carefully studying each page of my Michael Whelan or Alan Lee books, wondering how in the world did he get so much detail on that spaceship wall, or how did his stroke void of any detail at all still capture exactly the form of the dragon. I remember sitting in the basement at the computer for days on end, scrupulously writing and rewriting POV-Ray code and patiently watching as the the rays were traced one by one and my screen became a three-dimensional parallel universe. I loved it, but over the years other priorities have taken - well - priority, and I've lost a lot of the experience I built up as a child and a younger-than-I-am-now person.

I've lost so much ground in my technical drawing skills so I get easily frustrated when I'm trying to draw or paint freehand anymore. Luckily, over the last several months and because of my deepening passion for web development and design, I've been re-introduced into the world of art. Art infused with information and seamlessly presented on a canvas of HTML and CSS. Moll's clean vintage look with just enough texture to make you feel like you're reading a book; Spooner's mixture of bold vectors and calm browns; Inman's striking minimal mathematical approach; Nick La's explosion of motion and flow and contrast - it's all amazing and delightful to me, from the markup to the stylesheets to the javascript to the polished, shiny finished product it's all beautiful to me. So, I'm re-applying myself to art, this time in the form of graphic design which allows me to be creative without getting stuck on the fact that I still can't draw an anatomically-correct tree (so I borrow someone else's).

Want to see my new favorite site? This changes by the day, but at least for yesterday and today I'm submitting Viget Inspire as the most visually appealing blog in the whole world wide web (or "WWWW" for short). Isn't it nice? Well, it was this blog and a tutorial based on that blog that pushed me over the edge last night. After an hour of homework and a handful of Dove Blackberry Carmel Dark Chocolates, I plugged in my wacom and downloaded some watercolors and trees and GIMPed up a painting (the one at the top). It turned out ok, but more importantly, it's my start. From today until 11:59pm December 31^st 2009, I am officially... ummm... doing more art stuff. I'll post it to my flickr so stop by occasionally and take a gander.

Thanks to mom and dad and Morgy and Jennie and Harmony for being my inspiration.

Discussion Forums are Frustrating

I've learned all of my measly scripting skills from one of two sources: documentation and discussion forums.  As riveting those documentation pdfs are, I have to say that discussion forums are even more frustrating because it starts out with the exact predicament you find yourself in, then halfway through they're talking about their own project or some other post they posted or their neighbor's dog. 

Today I found a discussion forum that yielded the one piece of information I have been lacking for the last two weeks.  I'm about to publish a test suite of a document management system and the core functions are still buggy, including uploading which is like number one priority.  Long story short, Yoda showed me the way and as I am not a member of that community and therefore cannot reply to skeeter1jd to express my heartfelt gratitude, I'm going to do it here.

Thanks.