a guide to deptoongmaucam

I realized that I never really wrote a post explaning the arbitrary symbols behind my instagram highlights, so let's do that now, shall we? in explaining these, you will also understand the philosophy and design scheme behind this blog.

ok I ended up writing a history session too so bear with me.

a little history

deptoongmaucam is my 9th blog. my other blogs were,

KEY [number of published blogs, language]

0 tumblr, the n85 everyday blog [?, en?] (november 2018 - deleted a few days later), n85 because it resembles my initials NBS

1 wixsite no 1, the n85 everyday blog → lily ngo → photograph. → xép. [127, vn, en] (november 2018 - july 2021)

2 blogger no 1, coffewithsang [112, vn] (may 2019 - may 2021), inspired by coffee with tony, a vietnamese book

3 blogger no 2, coffeewithsang [10, en] (jun 2019 - aug 2019), my attempt to write english blogs

4 wixsite no 2, hồng diaries [70, vn, en] (jul 2021 - oct 2021), created this after watching amélie for the first time, dedicated to my ex (boyfriend back then). I have 14 drafts where I tried to study the culture of every country in the world in alphabetical order. one of the drafts were "what color is afghanistan?" (it's lapis lazuli blue you guys, herati glasses are pretty)

5 wixsite no 3, the artisan [14, vn, en] (apr 2022 - may 2022), still find it funny that I created this blog about a month before my breakup on may 4th, as if it was created just in time for me. I wrote this blog on that day, and shared it with people as I move on

6 wixsite no 4, the silk roads [8, en] (feb 2022 - sep 2022), my cas project for ib (for non ib people, it's extracurriculars), some thoughts that I was cooking in the hồng diaries blog evolved into this blog. the silk roads is inspired by a book I've seen at the library (the silk roads, a new history of the world). petit monde (little world) is inspired by a song by videoclub.

7 wixsite no 5, là dea [40, vn, en] (jun 2022 - jun 2023), think about this as beta deptoongmaucam

9 blogger no 3, deptoongmaucam [35, en] (july 2023 - now), the one you're reading right now lad. kinda glad that it was the ninth so that I can have cheap moments with tamsyn muir and her gideon/harrow/nona/alecto the ninth series.

after 9 websites and 5 years of blogging, here's what I've learned.

1. the importance of having a lore

tl;dr it's fun, do it!

by lore I mean themes, names, goals and limits.

i. themes

the question that will follow you when you start a blog and when you return to write it is this: what is your website/blog about? we usually start out with vague ideas, and obscurity is totally okay. lots of people I know create blogs just because they want a space for things they love. for me, I wrote blogs initially when I have ideas or need to vent, almost in diary form. the thing about this is sometimes several blogs turn into rant sessions, and that's not very healthy. it's healthy writing out your emotions, but keep them in your diary. if you are not specific, you will face a dead end rather quickly.

like the peel method, everything you do should start with a point. a motto that I've been keeping in my mind as I use social media is pwp, or post with purpose. doing this from the very beginning helps if you go back to your profile page and keep deleting or hiding stuff. it's up to everyone, but I like to keep my profile page as it is from start to finish so that myself and others can see the improvement throughout the years.

I'm not the only one who has a lore. when reading mason currey's daily rituals this summer, I learned that benjamin franklin had a list of 13 virtues that he want to keep, and he every time he has a check up, he would dedicate every week to a virtue. these checkups can happen back to back in a year, then once a year, and once every few years as he made fewer and fewer offenses.

this site is an attempt to do that in my own way, but in a "forget the nouns, do the verbs" mindset as austin kleon said. the thing about virtue is that they are very dry and hard to visualize. having specific themes will give me ideas of what I want to do and write about.

là dea (the website before this) is my first attempt trying to have themes. my themes were,

Φ / philosophy

CE / creative endeavors

. / write

— / em

+84 / translate

back then, I mostly write essays on philosophy (Φ), do art stuff (CE), write creative writing stuff (.), wrote stuff about myself (—), where — is the em dash and em means the feminine me in vietnamese (pretty vague meaning, lost in translation), and translate poetry (+84). the inspiration behind these were the chinese four arts, six arts, and eight elegant hobbies aiming at producing the scholar-gentleman (士大夫, shìdàfū) or the moral man (jūnzǐ, 君子). I've also looked at the quadrivium and the trivium from plato's time to the middle ages.

KEY 3rd line for each is sino-vietnamese

四艺 (sìyì, the four arts, tứ nghệ)

琴棋书画 (qínqíshūhuà)

cầm kì thư hoạ

play the guqin (instrument), play go (like chess but it's chinese), read books, draw

六艺 (liùyì, the six arts, lục nghệ)

礼乐射御书数 (lǐyuèshèyùshūshù)

lễ nhạc xạ ngự thư số

rites, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics

八雅 (bāyǎ, the eight elegances, bát nhã), think about this as the four arts but deluxe version

琴棋书画诗酒花茶 (qínqíshūhuàshījiǔhuāchá)

cầm kì thư hoạ thi tửu hoa trà

play the guqin (instrument), play go (like chess but it's chinese), read books, draw, make poems, enjoy (thưởng) alcohol, flowers, tea

the seven liberal arts, which consists of trivium and quadrivium

trivium (lower division) grammar, logic, and rhetoric

quadrivium (higher division) arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy

the goal behind looking at these historical educations is to come up with one for myself. to personalize it to fit with today's world. here's a breakdown of the synthesis of the values that these educations valued, and how I made them mine.

• music → discography
• mind games (play go, read books) → âmethyst, the idea behind this is having a space to reflect
• arts (draw, poetry, calligraphy) → arts
• enjoyment (alcohol, flowers, tea, astronomy) → travel, photography
• mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy) → I already do calculus in university this is enough, and I do go stargazing sometimes
• oratory things (rites, grammar, logic, rhetoric) → I think the best way to argue is to speak the truth, veritas, and you start doing that by being honest with yourself every living moment of your life. the whole act of writing and sharing my blog reflects this.
• sports (archery, charioteering) → photography

then I take the initials of all these, then turn them into lowercase greek characters.

this is a “full moon”
these highlights usually follow the pattern of τ, φ, α, δ, fdv,
the other way around,
or no order at all

travel, photography, arts, discography, âmethyst → T, P, A, D, Â → τ, φ, α, δ (tau, phi, alpha, delta), fdv

δ (delta) is a special one because it indicates change in scientific uses (the impermanence of life if you think about it) and also coincides with the d in deptoongmaucam and dea. hence, it's also is the favicon of my blog. my previous instagram profile pic was also a photo of me with δ in it.

âmethyst is amethyst and âme, which means soul in french. I was inspired to make the symbol as a simplified version of the flower of life (hence the name fleur de vie) in coldplay's album cover a head full of dreams.

finally, deptoong™ is my goal with this blog: function not fashion. inspired by bill wurtz, who once answered that he made his website ultra basic html blog because he hate websites that "can't load without choking itself." this is also why I returned to blogger after my wix days, which I'll explain later. ™ is inspired by the way that a chair I had for yasmun 2023 usually text (shoutout to chester), he likes adding ™ to everything, like the yasmun™ experience.

2 oct 2024 update: travel, photography, and art are more personal to me and it takes a shit ton of time to plan. philosophy and discography are more self-distancing. there's still work involved but it allows me to do it whenever with less coordination.

I try to have each cycle of τ, φ, α, δ, fdv as moon phases. 

the 1975: your new album. your new era. your old friends. the 1975. 

deptoongmaucam: old characters. new stories. deptoongmaucam. or,

old questions. new answers.

old sceneries. new eyes.

the list goes on.

the font I used for the greek characters was eb garamond. these letters were also in bold.

the colors are mostly just rainbow colors, but you can also think about it as the chakra wheels or the colors in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. I designed everything with canva broke edition.

photo credits to unsplash and behance lads

red (pawel czerwiński)

orange (fruit basket)

yellow (karen alsop)

green (rebecca orlov)

blue (pawel czerwiński)

purple (pawel czerwiński)

toong (d anh nguyen)

ii. names

oh, my lolita, I have only words to play with!

— lolita, vladimir nabokov

I already explained deptoongmaucam's meaning here. in short, it means orange beehive sandals. and figuratively it means function over fashion.

là dea adopts the characteristics that my vietnamese name sang has, which is the multiplicity of meanings in different languages: sang means luxury and abundance in vietnamese, past tense of sing in english, and blood in french.

là (vietnanamese) be, être

là (french) here

dea, drug enforcement administration, as my friends often joke about (the worse thing is when they combine it with my last name ngo, it's dea ngo, or drug enforcement administration non governmental organization)

actually, the name dea was thought of in such a way so that you can say sentences like can't spell X without dea. I also thought about our mouth shapes as we say it and its homophones in different languages.

account no longer exists, dea not dior as function > fashion

(i)dea, I was watching a lot of ted content at the time so I keep seeing "ideas worth spreading" around. one day, I thought of splitting it up as, I, dea, worth spreading. hence the name dea.

dea(th), existential shitpost

dea(r), and selfcare content

dea in vietnamese reads like đia, sounds like đi, or to go (more of to travel than to leave)

also when you read dea you mouth corners up a bit (look you passed the smile test)

dea also means goddess and good fortune in latin. it also celebrates the beauty of change (oh how δ)

before coming up with names this way, I used to look for english/chinese/french names by searching up name in X language and meanings. this is how you kill a name. instead, have a list and choose things by intuition. your heart knows best. you don't choose the name, the name choose you, like the wand chooses the wizard. you will know it when you see it.

for example, when I learned french years ago, I chose the name lucienne because it means light and I like photography. I later ditched it after watching rapunzel and see the name eugene, which I still use in personal accounts. I go by sang these days in all languages as I'm comfortable with my name now. I didn't like it as a vietnamese name as it gave of male connotations and people keep mistaking me for mr. on the phone.

my other naming attempts were naming my canon r50 kafka karamazov after franz kafka, murakami's kafka on the shore, and dostoevsky's the brothers karamazov. if I have a film camera I'll probably name it nabokov junior (manifesting that canon ae-1).

iii. goals and limits

so far, having a lore is having a theme, a name, a goal, and a limit. a theme and a name give you what to write about. a goal and a limit give you how often to write. goal is the minimum, limit is the maximum. initially, I only set up the goal of at least 1 blog a month, which I kept during college months. it's a lot less posts these days if you compare to past websites, however, I write more per blog as I now have a theme. writing blogs takes a lot out of me, and I overdid it in july, where I wrote 4. that was my bandwidth and I decided to set the limit as 4.

2. build a good website

website = platform + domain

you can try using existing platforms below as hosts, or you can code one with github.

from my experience, wix is good for a basic personal website, notion is good for personal stuff, blogger is good for hardcore blogging. substack and medium are good if you value interaction on the website (but in exchange the space will also be less personal and you’re bombarded with others’ content).

tumblr (6/10)

• free ✅ 
• easy to personalize ✅ 
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ✅ 
• not affliated with any algorithm ❌
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ❌
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ✅ 
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ❌
• not banned by instagram or the government ✅ 
• newsletter feature ❌
• interaction with readers ✅ 

medium (6/10)

• free ✅
• easy to personalize ❌
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ✅
• not affliated with any algorithm ❌
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ✅
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ✅
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ❌
• not banned by instagram or the government ❌ (banned in vietnam)
• newsletter feature ✅
• interaction with readers ✅

substack (7/10)

• free ✅
• easy to personalize ✅
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ✅
• not affliated with any algorithm ❌
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ❌
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ✅
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ❌
• not banned by instagram or the government ✅
• newsletter feature ✅
• interaction with readers ✅

notion (6/10)

• free ✅
• easy to personalize ✅
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ❌
• not affliated with any algorithm ✅
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ✅
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ✅
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ❌ (or pay $8/month for unlimited photo uploads, free is 5mb/photo)
• not banned by instagram or the government ✅
• newsletter feature ❌
• interaction with readers ❌

wix (5/10)

• free ✅
• easy to personalize ✅
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ❌ (too much gatekeeping and complicated the process so much)
• not affliated with any algorithm ✅
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ❌
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ❌
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ❌ (500mb storage per website, most basic plan is $10/month, unlimited storage is 5x that)
• not banned by instagram or the government ❌ (mine was banned by instagram)
• newsletter feature ✅
• interaction with readers ✅

blogger (9/10)

• free ✅ 
• easy to personalize ✅ 
• easy to connect domain and get found on google ✅
• not affliated with any algorithm ✅
• easy to navigate and find old blogs ✅ 
• fast loading time (both editing sites and live blogs) ✅
• can handle bulk content while still keeping high quality ✅ (the american blog was 400+ photos by my canon r50 and 7,5k words and it didn’t crash just once) 
• not banned by instagram or the government ✅
• newsletter feature ❌ (it used to exist but was removed, I’ll show how I resolved this in 3. show your work!)
• interaction with readers ✅

blogger troubleshooting

• it does take a few days for the transition between the domain and the host to be smooth and for you to be founded on google
• sometimes blogger won't upload images. when this happen, just use anonymous tab or restart device

after that, you can purchase a domain and connect it to your host. I bought this site on google domains for 5 years and it costed me around 56 dollars. google sites is now linked to squarespace.

3. show your work!

a book by austin kleon and also what I wish I did earlier. as blogger is quite shit at sharing my work, I usually have to seed my blogs in advance through text, email and instagram. I’ll text or send a catchup email to old teachers or friends and include my post as a footnote (this usually happens before the instagram phase). 

like dough, I usually let each blog rest for a few days before publishing it on instagram so that it has its own spotlight on my website. it's also because whenever I write a blog I have so much ideas that I will forget some points until a few days after its publication. this delay helps me remember those just in time before I publish it on instagram. however, there're edits that I will only remember months later, and I have no choice but to edit it months after its publication. so yeah, go reread my blogs, some are different since the last time you saw it.

for my previous sites, I didn’t share them with anyone. or even if I do, I dedicated it to one person and it’s not healthy. it’s only since the silk roads and là dea blogs onwards that I start sharing more, and I realize that the gains outweigh the losses.

2 oct 2024 update: it's important to have posts that you want to impress, and posts where you just want to chill out. if you make every blog a comeback, it's going to be very stressful. have blogs that you care nothing about the views and just enjoy yourself.

4. let go of judgement

talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. 

to go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.

— crime and punishment, fyodor dostoevsky

I used to be afraid of people judging the content and length of my blog, but after more than one year of deptoongmaucam, I’ve learned to let the relevant people stick around. whenever I worry about the length, I think about dostoevsky’s the brothers karamazov. do people ever complain that he wrote such a long book? yes, they did and always will (I was one of them). however, there will be people that care enough to read everything and think about what they’ve read. it’s ok if they don’t read everything too tbh. only time will tell you what something’s worth.

my thinking behind deptoongmaucam is this: it’ll benefit me when I live and others once I die. I believe in non-self, and my greatest joy comes from helping someone find shared experiences, someone that can listen to my stories and see themselves in there. this inspires me to stay true to myself and what I’ve experienced in my writing.

I just want to write blogs that I'm proud of, although others may or may not care about it.

and even if people care about it, I don't think I'll monetize it at all.

5. people that inspired me

bill wurtz, I love his notes and questions session (he answers questions from everyone and update his question page daily)

austin kleon, I love his trilogy on creativity (go here for sketchnotes summerizing and expanding on his works)

the fox is black, I love his taste in typography and design

michelle francl, I love that she’s been blogging for 20 years

and pawel czerwiński, so long and thank you for all the photos