VietCali.com

My first iPhone app

VietCali — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:14:39 +0000

Well I’m excited that my first QEVP iPhone app made it in the App Store. It’s the adaptation of my popular Quick English Vietnamese Phrases. It’s paid version for only $.99. I’m trying to recoup the money I spent on an used but expensive iMac and the hefty developer fee. I must say if it wasn’t for the Google search engine and all the blogs and articles on how to write iPhone app out there, this app won’t be existed. It’s a very rewarding learning experience for me. I got to learn how to use the MAC, Unix commands, Xcode, CoCoa, Object-C and other ‘fun’ stuff. It wasn’t easy but I think anyone can do it if you just put your mind to it.

I love to get input from other iPhone developer out there on my first app. Or if you are also writing your first iPhone app and have some questions or need some pointers, just leave me a comment.

You can find QEVP app here or just enter “qevp” in the search box in iTunes or the iPhone’s App Store.

How to setup Cisco VPN on iPhone

VietCali — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:52:59 +0000

It’s really frustrated that I own a nice iPhone that can do VPN and Microsoft Exchange email but the IT people where I work won’t bother to support it. They just say it is not secure enough. What the heck. I mean I already use Cisco VPN client to log in my workplace’s network using my notebook. So what is the different between VPN in using the notebook versus the iPhone. It’s the same Cisco VPN client that the iPhone also supports.

Anyway, I have it figure out and the key is the PCF profile files and little known trick. For Windows, the PCF files should locate underneath where you install the Cisco VPN Client. Mine is under C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\VPN Client\Profiles. Now there could be more than one PCF files so only use the one that apply to you. Open it up as a text file and basically copy the values over to the iPhone VPN setup screen.

First, go to the iPhone VPN:

Settings, General, Network, VPN, Add VPN Configuration.   On top, click on IPSec.  The screen now displays a Cisco logo and these fields: Description, Server, Account, Group Name, Secret.

Now here are the PCF’s fields that you want to copy over to the iPhone setup screen:

Description: enter anything that you want here, UserName is for Account, Host=Server, GroupName=Group Name, Secret=???.

The Secret field is the reason I think why most of you end up here in this blog. Copy all the hex values you see after enc_GroupPwd in the PCF file and go to this Website to decode it. This is the whole secret that the IT people don’t want me to know. After you got the decrypted code enter it on the Secret field. And there you have it. You now should be able to VPN in yours work’s network.

My work has the browser interface to Microsoft Exchange email so I can use iPhone Safari to read emails after VPN is connected. I still can’t use the iPhone’s email reader directly for some reason. I think the IT just basically reject anything come in from iPhone. But who care, I can use the browser version and that is all I care.

Solution to wrong passwords nightmare.

VietCali — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:09:15 +0000

I think a lot of people now a day are run into this problem: keeping up with various user and passwords. I don’t know about you but I always forgot the user and password on those rarely use accounts. What make it worse is some of login system keep forcing you to update the password. So there are website and companies that making product to address this issue. But I can’t find any really good free solution out there. There is so called single-sign-on solution that help you get around this. But you have to purchase special key token and it cost you money. Why would I want to pay more money just to keep track of my logins. There are website that also help you keep track and log in but then another set of user/password to remember as well.
So what is my solution? I think it’s not perfect but at least it’s free and easy to maintain. I just use my Yahoo’s email account, which I use very often, and compose an email contains account URL, users, and passwords and just save it to Draft folder. Whenever I need to look up log in information for those rarely use account, I just open the email and look up the info. For added security, I don’t spell out the password in the file but just include hints or short phrases that help me recall the passwords. This way the one main password I have to remember is just my email account, which is not an issue because I use it pretty much everyday.
What is yours solution? Please comment and tell me what is yours solution to this passwords headache.

Play Chess Against Computer

VietCali — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:01:26 +0000

Testing out this Chess JavaScript

Better free Anti-Virus

VietCali — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:40:49 +0000

Now a day you just can’t operate a PC without an Anti-Virus (AV) software installed. You are asking for trouble and sooner or later yours computer will be infected. The problem is a good AV is not free. You have to pay hefty anual membership to keep them running. So is there a free AV out there that can actually protect yours PC?

In my previous post back on January I recommend a free Anti Virus (AV) software from AVG. This one works but it probably not the best one. I found a better one and have used this for couple months now. It’s the free personal version from Avira. In my opinion Avira has better detection and than AVG.

The download is about 32Mb and installation is easy. I just use all default settings. Click on the AntiVir logo below to go directly to its download page. Don’t worry it’s safe to click.

LateNite album.

VietCali — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:54:10 +0000

These are the music I recorded in that one crazy night where I pretty much stay up all night. This was my down and lonely period where I tend to withdraw from the world. I remember those solo backpack trips and many other lone wanderings. Anyway, I’m glad I recorded the song I played. It serves as a reminder of what loneliness is about so to appreciate happiness when it is in you. To think about it these song probably don’t exist if I was not in that state at the time.

Piano Solo

LateNite1-7.
LateNite2-6.
LateNite2-17.

Ensemble

LateNite1-1.
LateNite1-3.
LateNite1-8.
LateNite2-1.
Latenite2-2.
LateNite2-3.
LateNite2-11.
LateNite2-15.
LateNite1-7.
LateNite2-6.
LateNite2-17.

Play all

Best Vietnamese Phrasebook

VietCali — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:16:01 +0000

Rough Guide Vietnamese Phrasebook

My VietCali’s QEVP is probably the most simplest and free tool to help you to start speaking some Vietnamese. But I know you just can’t be online all the time to get to this page. If you are traveling to Vietnam and want to speak some local lingo then the next best thing to bring along is this Rough Guide Vietnamese Phrasebook. The book is basically a traveler phrasebook and a mini English<->Vietnamese dictionary. This book is less popular than some other phrasebook like Lonely Planet Vietnamese phrasebook but I think it’s much better in content and price. The publisher also provides audio files for some common conversation scenarios that you can download to yours MP3 player. The book also has tips and cultural tidbits that can enhance yours stay in Vietnam. There is one page titled Coloquialism but actually it contains profanity or bad words. I don’t think it’s approriate to use bad words when you travel to any country. But I guess you might need to recgonize the the words just in case you know someone is swearing at you . For less than seven bucks I think the book is a best buy for the money.

VietCali on Wordpress.

VietCali — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:56:59 +0000

I finally moved my VietCali blog from Blogger to my own hosting server and power it using Wordpress. This way I have more control on how I post my special stuff, like the QEVP. Yes, the Quick English Vietnamese Phrases is now back in VietCali.com and working properly. So far I love the Wordpress blog engine. It’s much better than using the Blogger since I have it installed on my own host server so I can pretty much customize anything I want.

One big challenge was figuring why the Vietnamese characters wasn’t displayed properly and after a long Googling session I figure out it was a mySQL database thing and able to fix. Drop me a note if you have similar issue. The short answer to the problem is you need to cofigure the database to accept data in UTF8 Unicode format, not some Swedish set up by the installing script.

I’ll try to clean up VietCali blog and put in more articles. I’m glad I finally have some free time to work on it. Thank you for coming by.

Free Anti-Virus Software.

VietCali — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:38:00 +0000

You know the first place to check for free anti-virus software is from your Internet provider. A lot of people doesn’t know this but Internet provider like mine DSL from ATT comes with free anti-virus from McAfee. It’s just that the information is not forthcoming. In my case I have to actually search around for it. If you are using DSL from ATT the free Anti-Virus software download can be found here . Click on Download and enter your account log-in info to get the software.

If your Internet provider doesn’t provide the free Anti-virus software then it’s suck. In this case you have to settle for the next best thing and it’s free version of AVG. Even this free version is hard to find if you just go to theirs portal. You need to Google for it and the current link is: http://free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition

In my opinion, anti-virus should be part of the OS functions. End user shouldn’t have to worry about finding and installing anti-virus on theirs own. I guess anti-virus company doesn’t like this idea much.

How to get rid of malware?

VietCali — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:43:00 +0000

My wife called me one day and tell me that the store couldn’t process the credit card. Strange I though to my self, how could that be. So I call the customer service and found out someone got a hold of my card and order some stuffs on a hunting sport related website. How can some one get a hold of my credit card information? At that moment, I realize I could be a victim of some spy ware virus. Someone could tracking my computer activities for private information.
So I search high and low for a free virus scan to detect these spy ware virus, a.k.a malware. The problem I realized then, how can you trust anything download from the Web these day. A malicious website can disguise itself with legitimate looking pages and you just can’t tell.
Anyway I just got luck out when my Web host service who actually get attacked by malware and they sent me a link to this free scan. I downloaded the utility, installed it, ran it, and sure enough it found a whole bunch of malicious Trojans and other spy ware virus. So if you ever click on some suspicious link and have a gut feeling that yours computer is infected with malicious malware, please take my adivce and down load this malware scanner to make sure. If the link is broken, please do a Google search for “malwarebytes anti-malware”. The software is for free to use for scanninng. You can purchase it to get more advanced features.