Diary – LarryLai

Grohe Bath/Shower Mixer Diverter Replacement

larry — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 23:47:04 +0000

Background
Prior to doing some research, don’t trust any expert in plumbing service. It’s because the return of the finding after research may be larger than expected. While so-called experts in plumbing telling you to replace the whole set of bath shower mixer, pay attention to other opportunity to save the existing mixer, especially if you’d like to be environmental friendly.
They’ll tell you that no parts is available for the obsolete model. Got 11 so-called quotations from an online experts matching platform, cfumaster.com, none of them provides repair services. Indeed, most of them suggested that there must be replacement of the whole mixer set. Another one called 水道屋, they have a contact person to get requirement and response, but also said no parts available for fixing. However, unnecessary replacement of durable building materials is harmful to our environment. I guess they want to earn you money by providing installation service of a new mixer.

Issue
Water could barely be diverted to the shower after pulling the diverter knob, but aside from this malfunctioning the bath shower mixer is still in good condition.

Solution
Purchase the appropriate diverter from a building material store, Luen Hing Hong Building Materials Ltd. in Portland St., Mongkok. The replace it on my own according to the instruction given by the sales of the store.

Tricks

The video footing about replacement of bath/shower diverter for other brands is totally irrelevant to this model Grohe 33485.
Neither pliers nor adjustable spanner wrench can help to remove the parts as the inside material of the knob is rubber-like material, i.e. not rigid. Only 6 point combination wrench with size 11/16 can do the trick.

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Panasonic EX750 Setup

larry — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 18:27:30 +0000

Panasonic TV is great in terms of price-performance. To release the full potential, it is probably required to adjust some default settings to fit one’s own taste and environment.

Issue:

Got a Panasonic TV 50EX750h for a week. (h is referring to HK models). The colour is brilliant, but the default setting of picture is not good enough at least on displaying red colour.
Need to first turn off the Colour Remaster from Picture setting,

go to Picture -> Advanced setting
Change Colour Gamut so as to make the red colour more comfortable
The default is Rec. 709, but my preference is SMPTE

Trick:

Choose the picture setting to Custom before going to Advanced setting.
Changing the Colour Gamut I think is easier than tuning Colour Management or White Balance.

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Cannot Change Ownership on NFS Files

larry — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 06:24:26 +0000

Issue:

After moving mounted volumes from Qnap NAS to iMac as host with CentOS as client, the directory and file ownership cannot be changed to Apache at the client side. No matter using root or user privilege to command the chown.

Solution:

Add the following in iMac’s /etc/exports:

[nfsshare] -rw -maproot=root:wheel

Tricks:

-maproot directive can pass the root control from nfs host to client, without it even changing the directory access and file permission to 777 in host, or changing the mount options at client cannot solve the issue.

Config:

OSX: 10.12.3
CentOS: 7.3

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2nd Batch Slides

larry — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 16:49:05 +0000

With a feedback of “look perfectly fine”, 2nd batch order from a professional institute of 1348 slides were collected this afternoon.

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iPhone WhatsApp Intermittent Missing Message Input Window

larry — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 15:46:42 +0000

Issue:

Suddently found that the message input window was missing. Instead there’re only labels as Earlier and Later appearing at the bottom of screen, and you cannot find a way to input your message to send out.

Solution:

Drag to the top of the message history
Click “Info” at top right corner
Drag to bottom of the screen
Click “Send Message”

Config:

iOS 7.1
WhatsApp 2.11.8

Tricks:

WhatsApp is supposed to be a user-friendly app, but it’s frustrating that when you want to send out message immediately as a reply to a friend, you cannot find a way to input any message.

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WordPress qTranslate Add Language Select on Header

larry — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 01:20:03 +0000

Issue:

qTranslate is the best free multilingual plugin of WordPress, but its standard method to include language selector is adding widget. One deficiency of WordPress is that most themes do not provide many defined widget areas (same as regions in other CMS). In case the language select is to be displayed on the header, then some codes modification has to be done.

Solution:

1. Create child theme (if not yet available)

2. Copy header.php from mother theme to child theme

3. Include the following codes before of file header.php under child theme

4. To remove the bullet points at the front of each language, add the following codes at the end of file style.css under child theme:

.qtrans_language_chooser { list-style-type:none }

.qtrans_flag { border:1px solid #b6b6b6 }

#qtranslate-chooser li {

margin-bottom: -3px;

}

Config:

WordPress 3.8.2
qTranslate 2.5.39
shopifiq theme 2.0.8

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Correct Pricing Tables Ready Plugin’s Currency Position

larry — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 15:26:20 +0000

Issue:

Ready! Pricing Tables is a great free plugin for making price tables in WordPress, but its gray template has a weird behaviour that the currency sign appear after the price instead of leading the price.

Solution:

Open the file under the plugins directory: pricing-table-ready/constructor/gray/column.php

Change line 2 from:

…{prt Price} {prtCurrency}…

to become:

…{prtCurrency}{prtPrice}…

Trick:

Under WordPress admin panel, the file to be modified does not appear when you click “edit” to the plugin Pricing Tables Ready.

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WordPress qTranslate Home URL Issue

larry — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:05:53 +0000

Background:

Using qTranslate on WordPress is good choice as it is a free plugin that can provide multilingual feature to WordPress, and present various languages neatly.

Issue:

After choosing secondary language, whenever clicking the Home menu, it goes back to default language.

Solution:

Create and activate a child theme (if not done) of the current deploying theme

Create functions.php under the child theme with the following (suggested by Luis Alegandre’s blog):

// Fix for qTranslate plugin and “Home” menu link reverting back to default language

if (function_exists(‘qtrans_convertURL’)) {

function qtrans_in_nav_el($output, $item, $depth, $args) {

$attributes = !empty($item->attr_title) ? ‘ title=”‘ . esc_attr($item->attr_title) . ‘”‘ : ”;

$attributes .=!empty($item->target) ? ‘ target=”‘ . esc_attr($item->target) . ‘”‘ : ”;

$attributes .=!empty($item->xfn) ? ‘ rel=”‘ . esc_attr($item->xfn) . ‘”‘ : ”;

// Integration with qTranslate Plugin

$attributes .=!empty($item->url) ? ‘ href=”‘ . esc_attr( qtrans_convertURL($item->url) ) . ‘”‘ : ”;

$output = $args->before;

$output .= ‘’;

$output .= $args->link_before . apply_filters(‘the_title’, $item->title, $item->ID) . $args->link_after;

$output .= ‘’;

$output .= $args->after;

return $output;

}

add_filter(‘walker_nav_menu_start_el’, ‘qtrans_in_nav_el’, 10, 4);

}

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GIMP No Transparent Background

larry — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 06:17:51 +0000

Issue:

After correctly using Gimp’s Color to Alpha feature to turn white (or other colour) background into transparency. It appears also correctly in Gimp. However, every time export the image, there is no transparent background, instead the white background appears.

Solution:

Export image to PNG format instead of JPG

Config:

GIMP 2.8

Trick:

In case the image to be edited is in JPG format, then whenever it is to be exported, GIMP makes the default format same as the original, i.e. JPG, and you can never get the expected transparent background even the process of editing is correct.

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Deployment of WordPress Shopp

larry — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 07:52:10 +0000

Background:

Need to apply tiered pricing schedule for the service, however, WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing Extension is unreasonably high at US$129 for single-site license.

Issue:

There are some ecommerce plugins in WordPress, but like WP-ecommerce, the pricing discount setting is too complicated, and I wonder if it works for my pricing schedule.

Solution:

Shopp plugin comes with clean and logical admin interface.

Config:

WordPress: 3.7.1
Shopp: 1.3.1

Tricks:

Most of the WordPress ecommerce plugins claimed them as free, but some require upgrade to chargeable pro version even for very basic function, few free plugins are offering comprehensive features. Shopp is definitely offering quite comprehensive features. WooCommerce is good but not as a free plugin. There is no pro version for WooCommerce as they want to charge every bit of feature as chargeable extension at unreasonably high price.

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