VietCali

Bau Cua Ca Cop Game.

2008-05-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

I wrote this Bầu Cua Cá Cọp, game for Cafe75.com using Flash. I really enjoy the game and the backgound music. Give it a try.
You can play the game in full screen by click here.

Online Vietnamese Keyboard

2008-04-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

If you ever want to type in Vietnamese and the system you're using doesn't has Vietnamese keyboard suppport, try this online Vietnamese keyboard. To use it, type your text then copy and paste it over whatever application you're working on. The Javascript just bascially filter some assigned keys and convert them to Vietnamese characters using Unicode. It's a pure and simple tool to get Vietnamese characters into any application. All thanks to the popularity of UTF-8 encoding and Unicode. I tested the Javascript on IE, Netscape, and Firefox browsers and it works fine.
Try out the VietCali's Online Vietnamese Keyboard.
Nếu các bạn muốn đánh tiếng Việt mà computer của bạn đang sài không có cài phần mềm cho bộ gỏ tiếng Việt, bạn có thể dùng bộ gỏ online của VietCali viết bằng JavaScript. Xin mời các bạn dùng thử.

Q.E.V.P Flash

2008-04-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

There is a flash version of the famous Quick English Vietnamese Phrases. With this version there will be no more waiting for the sound to download. Just click on the Vietnamese words and hear the sounds instantly. You can find this at Cafe75.com website under card-n-games. Or click here to go to the page.

Taekwondo Forms

2008-04-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

My sons are taking up Taewondo at Than Phong Martial Arts. The forms they're learning are from WTF (World Taewondo Fedearation) which are all new to me, not like the ITF forms I learned at Than Phong long ago. Compare to ITF forms the WTF form are much more simpler. Anyway, I like to archive all the forms they learned for future reference. Taeguk Oh Chang.

A new Vietnamese and friends social networking site.

2007-11-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

There are still a lot of visitors visit this site mainly for Vietnamese translation help. So I've decided to keep VietCali.com domain for this site and create another domain cafe75.com for my new "Vietnamese and friends" social networking site. The site is in beta stage and ready for visitors. So please come to cafe75.com and join as member so you can interact with many Vietnamese friends. As a member you can share music, video, post articles, create your own blog, chat or IM to other members, classified ads, games, and many other features. Oh, we will also create a special Vietnamese-English forum so you can post your Vietnamese help to all members for faster help. Click here to check out cafe75.com. Please join and also invite your friends to join and help build our new Vietnamese friends gathering space on the Web.

Future of VietCali Blog

2007-08-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

As you can't see I can't keep up with VietCali Blog anymore. I don't have the drive to write new article and help you with yours request. This will be the last Blog that you see. So what will happen to VietCali? I will start remodel VietCali.com in the next few weeks. I want to change it to a social networking portal type of web site. It's like mySpace but aimed specifically to Vietnamese friends. This way the site is more useful to you because as a member you can contibute to the site, not just me. I will try to keep the popular Quick English-Vietnamese Phrases alive in the new site. The new VietCali.com is not about me but about Vietanmese friends community. Hope to see you soon in new VietCali.com.

System hang with blinking cursor

2007-06-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Good to be back and post some computer tip to VietCali.com. This time I want to share with you a fix to a computer problem I ran into last week: a corrupted MBR or Mater Boot Record. The symptom on my case is the system no longer boots into WinXp. All I see is blinking cursor on upper left conner of the monitor. How do I know it's corrupted MBR? Because I can boot the system from bootable USB so there is something wrong with my hard drive boot sequence and it only point to MBR. So if your system suddenly blinking on you, just try to fix the MBR on your hard drive. How? 1. Put the Windows XP installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer. 2. Press a key when you are prompted to boot up from CD. 3. Press "R" to start Recovery Console. 4. Enter your Administrator password. 5. At the input prompt, type FIXMBR and confirm with Y 6. Choose EXIT to reboot the system. 7. Remove the CD, and the system should now boots WinXp normally. No more blinking cursor on my case.

Quick English Vietnamese Phrase 2

2007-05-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

I finish the QEVP2. This is an ehanced version of my older QEVP. With this new version you can hear the audio for the Vietnamese phrases just by placing the mouse over them. No more tedious file downloading. I hope you find this new version more easier to learn some common Vietnamese phrases. Hope you enjoy it. Please leave comment if you find something wrong. Click here to go the page.

Scecret to making money online.

2007-02-15T16:25:00.000-08:00

If you're searching the web trying to find a way to make some money online please be careful. There is no such thing as easy money. It's not that easy to make money online as most the ads want you to believe. Sure you will make some, but the amount is not that significant compare to the work that you put in. I'm not saying there is no opportunity there. I just want to warn you first so you won't got cheated out of your time and money. [more...]

Don't pay any money, even one dollar, to people that promise if you want to get rich send in the money. Theirs ideas is just try steal a little from a lot of people. To you $10 might mean nothing, but if you add it up like 100 people a day, that mean big bucks. Usually, the information they send back are worthless or just some endless motivational stories. You need to research thoroughly before invest on an online opportunity. Don't click or reply to any email that promise you rich. Those kind of emails potentially contain spam-ware and virus. Theirs main purpose is spam you with ads or steal yours passwords and identities. Just delete those on first-sight. Don't even bother to read them. So what really is the secret to making money online? Just like with real estate's slogan "location, location, and location", to make money online I think you need "traffic, traffic, and traffic". Traffic here means number of hits on a website. If you have a killing product but nobody can find you on the web, then it really mean nothing. There are tons of way to make money on the net and most of them have to do with what they called affiliate program. The idea is you get pay by refer customers to theirs online business. If you have a personal homepage about your hobbies, it's very good chance you can find a affiliation program out there. For example, if you are into flowers just Google for "flower affiliate", choose the most popular one out there, signed up for an affiliate id, PROMOTE that site, and collect your money on the mail box :). So easy right. The key here is promotion, traffic. This is the only one true ingredient to making money online. So how do you improve traffic to yours web site? This is where the hard work come in. Remember I already told you there is no easy money. You need to be patient and consistent with one gaol in mind: improve traffic to your site. Sometime it cost money to make money. You might want to pay money to get on first on the search engine. This is about search ranking and very specialized subject so I don't discuss it here. You can Google for "ranking optimize" to read more about it. So if you already have a website with good traffic, you're on your way to make money online. Now it's time to promote VietCali.com's affiliate website. You know there will be a catch to this article don't you. Anyway, trying helping out VietCali.com if you can by visiting these sites the next time you need a tshirt, phonecards, air ticket or hotel booking. VietCali designed tshirt: vietcali.spreadshirt.com Vietnam Phone Cards: vietphonecards.com Cheap Airline ticket and Hotel: cheapairhotel.com Thanks.

Happy Valentine

2007-02-14T13:49:00.000-08:00

February month is a lovely month. Don't worry if you didn't have a chance to send any special gift to your love one. You always can send a love message. Internet is open 24 hours a day.

My friend sends me this rare flower. A lovely bird couples. I never see this flower before. When I receive this picture through my email, I'm feeling so relax from a stressful day. I love to share this to VietCali readers.

Have a Happy Romantic Valentine day to all VietCali readers.

Love from VietCali

What is yours filing system?

2007-02-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

Do you have a filing system where you keep yours bills, receipts, records, and misc documents? What do you keep? How long do you keep them? And how do you file them? Now I am one of those guy that don't want to spend anytime on these boring stuffs. The less filing I have to do the better. I don't want to spend more than 30 minutes paying and filing my monthly bills. [more...]

I know people that keep all theirs bills and receipts, more than five years worth of papers, in storage boxes. Theirs argument is you never know when you need a copy to prove something. So the best way is to keep everything. If you are one of these people, I'm admiring your effort. For me, I have a much simpler system. My thinking is you only need to keep about 13 months copies of bills and receipts. Look if you don't discover a mistake on your bills in a month then why should you keep it more than a year. The reason I want to keep 13 moths worth of document is purely for tax purpose and in case you need those statements for loan application and stuff. Let call it a "13 plus" filing system. So here is how my filing system work. I have 12 folders, label January through December. And one extra folder labeled "January*". Why do I choose January? That is the month I usally do my tax. If you want you can change this to Feburary, March or April and label your extra to such. So if you are the April type, then the first and the last folder are labled "April". Now every month after I pay my bills, I just dump all the copies into that month folder. I don't care about sorting the phone bill from the gas bill, or whatever. In my experience so far, I never have to go back and look for anything anyway. And it doesn't take taht much time to look it up either. So just dump all the papers for that month into one folder. Keep doing in this for every month util you reach your 13th folder. This is 13 months so far. On the 14 months, or let's say on its aniversary, I just shred the old content and replace with new ones for that month. You can see the reason I want to keep the 13th month is want to keep a whole year worth of stuff when I am doing my tax. Now, to make it easier for tax paperworks I aslo have a separate tax folder, where I will throw in there all tax-related stuffs regardless of what month it is. As long as they are on that same year. Things like car registration, property tax payment stub, medical payment stub. And when the W2, 1099s are coming back, I also throw them in this folder too. So when it time to do the tax, I just pull out this one folder. Finished tax forms then also go back in this folder. Now these tax folders, I will have to keep them at least five year. So over all this filing system needs only about 18-20 folders and you should only spend 1 minute to file them.

Happy new year, now do your tax.

2007-02-01T20:19:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but I just hate when it come time to do the tax. It's just a nightmare. Look, there are people that make theirs living just by helping us do our taxes. Why do we have to put up with this! Why won't there be simpler system to pay tax instead of all these mysterious tax questions, credits, deductions, dependents, records, receipts, 1099s, w2, etc Worst this year, I think I will get hit with the AMT tax. If you don't know what AMT tax is you better learn about it now before it too late. In a nutshell, everyone is suppose to figure out two taxes. One regular tax and one AMT tax and pay whichever higher. I think we should get rid of AMT tax. The only reason I think why the government want to keep it so they can basically rob more of our hard earned money. I know there are software that make filing tax a lot easier, but our tax system to me is too complicated. You shouldn't need to spend more than a day to do your taxes. And you shouldn't need a computer and software to do it either. What worst you get to buy different version every year. Why can there be a simpler system so we can do away with the tax forms. We're living in the computer age, and yet we still need to figure out at the end of the year if we pay too much or too little taxes!! Do away with tax credits and deductions and just pay a fix tax percentage for everyone. That is what I think we should do. So I assume there must be good reason not to change our current tax system, and I guess it has to do with money. Somehow, somewhere, someone just can't afford to give up robing us our time and money. What do you think. Am I overreacting?

New VietCali TShop

2007-01-21T17:56:00.000-08:00

Grand Opening! VietCali TShop. Please visist and help me making some money to maintain VietCali website. Currently there is only few designs for coming Valentine and I am working on more designs. I know a lot of you try to learn to speak few Vietnamese phrases to impress your Vietnamese friends so I created the "N.U.M" and "M.U.N" desgins. What the heck is MUN and NUM. If you pronounce each letter in English slowly it will sound like "Anh yêu em" and "em yêu anh". This is perfect to wear for Valentine day if you're to shy to say "I love you". Get them here or click on the picture below. Free shipping until the end of January. Use coupon code "FREESHIPPING07" when check out.

Are you googling?

2006-12-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

Seem like I can't do anything without the Internet and Google these day. Not only me but all my friends at work seem to agree. Everytime I need to find something or even have a health question I head to the my computer. I don't bother to pick up the phone to call someone to chat about it or look up a book for some reference anymore. And 90% of the time I start out with Google. I can pretty much what I call 'googling' everything in the web. People seem to open about sharing theirs ideas and knowledge. It seem like the web is a big virtual front porch where you sit and getting to know yours huge virtual neighbors. Of course there are bad neighbor anywhere and you always have to keep a look out for. I think we are spending more and more time on the Internet as the year goes by. Like just last night I used the Internet to do my shopping, book the hotel for a little vacation, order some wine for the Chrimas party, down load some Chrismas music, chat to some friends in Vietnam, and then gooling for how to mod my kids's Xbox. I always interest in find out how things work and 'googling' is the best tool. I'm not working for Google by the way. Just want to post this to tell you how I feel about my dependency on the internet these day. How about you? Are you googling? Merry Chismas. P.S. I did sucessfully mod my kid Xbox and now can make back ups and watch DVD with it. I must admitted if I didn't googling around, I wouldn't know that I can do such a thing with my Xbox. Happy googling.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T12:06:00.000-08:00

Không có gì đễ nói, Chỉ xin chúc các bạn một ngày lễ Tạ Ơn vui vẽ và tràn đầy hạnh phúc trong mái ấm của gia đình mình. I also would like to take this opportunity to say a very special thank you to all our troops who have to spend the holidays away from theirs families to fight for our safety and freedom back home. Thank you.

VietCali supports Vietnamese2020 Writing Reform Proposal.

2006-08-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

There is a Vietnamese2020 Writing Reform Proposal that I think all Vietnamese should consider of using. Basically the proposal is instead of writing the words separately like "vui vẽ" for happy, it's better to merge them together like "vuivẽ" instead. For myself I see at least two benefits right away: 1. It's easier to recognize the words if you can't type in Vietnamese characters. For example take the word "dictionary" in Vietnamese is "tự điển". If you type in "tu dien" they can be mistaken for something else entirely in some context. But if you lump them togeter like "tudien" then there is less chance for them to be mistaken for something else. So I suggest if you can't type in Vietnamese characters, try to at least lump common words together like: "mayvitinh" for computer, "dienthoai" for telephone, and so on. 2. Really help with speed reading. I just glance over the paragraphs quickly and understand the context faster. I guess when you see common words that lump together, you kind of register the meaning in your brain right away. Whereas if the words are separate, you need to find out what the next words are before you register the meaning to your brain. This extra step slows down the speed reading significantly. So from now on you will see I start using ViệtNgữ2020 format hoping to help promote this proposal a little.

Requested Vietnamese phrases

2006-08-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hi all, I know some of you posted requests for me to translate or pronounce some Vietnamese phrases but it's hard for me to response on time because your requests are spread around on different articles. So I decided to post this article titled "Requested Vietnamese Phrases" where you should use to comment in with your requests and I will try response ASAP. So this article will be updated with new requests so check back often. Thanks. Requested phrases: "I'm hungry" - Em đói bụng "Happy birthday mom, I love you" - Chúc Mẹ Sinhnhật vuivẽ, con thương Mẹ. Now "Mom" in Vietnamese has many names and mostly depend on the tradition of each familly usage, but the generic and popular are Mẹ or Má. "Will you help me learn Vietnamese?" - Ba mẹ giúp con học tiếng Việt nha?

Travel to Vietnam?

2006-05-20T19:49:00.000-07:00

I found this page at a travel website that is really helpful if you want to learn more about Vietnam before travel there or just want learn more about Vietnam in general. The article is copyrighted by Rough Guide To Travel and it has extensive information on Vietnam's history, good tips on foods, cultural hints, safety, getting arounds, and a lot of other helpful information. Read it here

Happy birthday to me

2006-04-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I am 42 years old already. I still remmember the days when I first came to U.S. I was only about 13 years old but now I'm already 42! Oh boy, how time flies. Looking back I still see myself as the same old me. Nothing change except looking a lot more older. Nhớ lúc còn nhỏ đi học cô giáo có dạy cho bài thơ gì đó mà bây giờ quên mất tiêu. "Thời giờ như thể chim bay, ..." Tuổi trẻ con ở Việt Nam bây giờ nhớ lại sao thấy thèm qúa trời. Mổi buổi trưa trốn ngũ đi tắm sông với đám bạn. Đôi lúc bị bà gìa bất được, đánh cho một trận đã đời. So với đám con cũa mình bên Mỹ, tụi nó dầu sao cũng không quậy hơn mình hồi nhỏ. Chúng nó bây giờ chỉ biết "quậy" với TV và video game. Thôi dỉ vãng đã xa, cho nó qua một bên. Let's concentrate on tasks at hand. I still have quite a few years ahead of me. I better finish the Updated Quick English Vietnamese phrases for you before I became too old and too lazy. Please reply to me on the articles with your opinion and will try to my best. I know some of you want me to put more word in "Quick English Vietnamese Phrases" and that is what I'm going to do. Happy birthday to me, la la la la lá la.

Updated Quick English Vietnamese Phrases

2006-01-31T23:18:00.000-08:00

Please use this updated QEVP2. No more individual WAV file downloading. You can click on the header to expand the phrases. Mouse over the words to hear the sound.

VietCali Music

2006-01-28T09:03:00.000-08:00

These are the same MP3 I posted sometime ago but in SWF format to make them easier to listen to. Listed here are some of my favorite creations. Enjoy.
Piano Solo

Late Night - Vol1Track7
Late Night - Vol1Track7
Late Night - Vol2Track17
Late Night - Vol2Track6

Ensemble

Late Night - Vol1Track8
Late Night - Vol2Track1
Late Night - Vol2Track2
Late Night - Vol2Track3
Late Night - Vol2Track11
Late Night - Vol2Track15

Romance Vietnamese phrases

2006-01-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

OK finally I have time to get around and translate your request for some romance Vietnamse phrases. I must admit they are sounded a bit corny when I translated them. It remind me of my dating dates. I hope my wife doesn't get any wrong idea when she heard me record these phrases. Again "Anh" is for a man and "Em" is for a woman. So if you are a man and you want to say to your lady friend that you love her then it is "Anh yeu em". "Em yeu anh" is for lady. So here we go with something other than I love you. Click on the player below to hear the audio clip. I will love you forever. Anh sẽ yêu em mãi mãi. I am yours forever. Anh là của em mãi mãi. I am unhappy when you're not around. Anh rất buồn khi không có em bên cạnh. You're my life. Em là nguồn sống của anh. I adore you. Anh thương em.

gabcast.com

Successful lower cholesterol story?

2005-11-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

If you have a successful and natrual way of lowering cholesterol story please share it. My doctor put me on Vytorin but I hesitate to start this because it's bad for the liver. I am trying to exercise more and eat less fat for now. I did Google "lower cholesterol" and see a lot of natural herbs ads but just wonder if they really work. Please share your lower cholesterol story here.

"I love you" in Vietnamese?

2005-02-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

A lot of you sent in request for how to say I love you in Vietnamese. I know Valentine is near so I like to take this opportunity and post the "I love you" MP3 phrases in Vietnamese for you. "I love you" in Vietnamese is Anh yêu em for man to woman, and Em yêu anh for woman to man. In these two phrases, "Anh" and "Em" doesn't has any age affect. This is as a man to woman and woman to man in a romantic way. Anh yêu em. Em yêu anh. Please also see my Quick English Vietnamese Phrases to learn more. If you have any specific Vietnamese phrase that you want to learn, please let me know. I can post the MP3 for you in a ziffy. Hey this is free translation service. Don't ask me to translate official document though. Happy Valentine

Computer tips

2005-01-31T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here you find all the computer related articles posted at VietCali.com

More computer tips to come by VietGeek.