How To Fix A Plastic Bolt Without A Washer

While this Tip shows a quick-fix to a problem with securing a toilet seat, the same method can be applied to similar problems with other plastic situations.

seatA toilet seat, usually with a hinged cover, is bolted to the toilet bowl for a flush system. The bolt is usually made of plastic with one end flared to secure the seat to the bowl. The problem is, very often the flared end of the plastic bolt slips right through the hole of the hinge’s base. You can get a metal washer but it would rust in no time. Anything else (stainless steel washer, plastic washer, etc) would be too much of an effort to find/buy, if at all available.

 

 

seat-3A view of the component parts. The seat, the hinge, the plastic bolt and nut.

 

 

 

seat-5aSee the bolt inserted in the hinge but is able to slip out of the hole.

 

 

 

seat-6aAll that’s required. A chisel-like tool ( a large screwdriver will do fine ) and a hammer ( or a rubber mallet, if you are a stickler about using the right tool ).

 

 

seat-7Use the screwdriver+hammer to make indentations in the plastic bolt’s flared end.

 

 

 

seat-8Compare the two bolts: one has the indentations completed.

 

 

 

seat-9Both completed. Just a minor tip here: in a paired situation ( two bolts, two lamps, two batteries…etc.) always repair both/change both together. If one has failed, most likely the other will fail soon too.

 

 

seat-10The bolts now stay well in place in the hinge. Re-bolt the seat to the toilet bowl and we’re done..

Remove the visible edge around a transparent box

You create a nice logo using a fancy font (eg. Papyrus) on a rectangular banner box, say 960p x 105p.

You save as a JPEG and open in Photoshop, mode RGB.

Then like a maestro that you are, you use the magic wand, lasso or magic eraser to make the background transparent, with only the text as your new logo. Simple enough, right?

Then you save as transparent GIF or PNG and upload to your WordPress website, and …. you don’t get what you expected. Or rather, you get more than what you want: the rectangle edge is clearly visible.

Before you spend hours reviewing what you may have done wrong in the transparency procedure….check your Theme’s CSS! It’s likely that the Theme designer has added a border to images by default.

You know how to add a customised CSS to your Child Theme to remove the border, right?

Another simple tip that may save your hair.

How To Change Photo In Your Skype Profile

How to change your photo In your Skype Profile?

That should be obvious enough, right? But I’ve learnt that sometimes the best tip is also the simplest one.

Over the weekend, my sister complained to me that after upgrading her Skpe from version 5.xxxx to version 6.xxxxx, she suddenly cannot change her photo in the profile anymore.

What she meant was that in the Skype profile, when she browsed her computer for the replacement photo and clicked to use the new photo, ……nothing happened. The new photo just refused to get uploaded by Skype.

A quick check with various online forums showed that she was not alone with this peculiar problem. Various people complained that this only happened after upgrading their Skype from version 5.xxxx to 6.xxxx. Someone claimed that the problem diasappeared after he/she reverted to the older version. The Skype support page did not help either…it says that Skype will automatically resize your photo to fit. Well,yes and no.

I took a quick look at my sister’s collection of photos in her PC and discovered that they were all massively large photos of zillion pixels. And that will probably be true of most digital camera enthusiasts…just snap and save in the highest resolution. It turns out that Skype just cannot swallow too large a picture; it will choke.

I saw that she didn’t have any photo editor on her PC. So the first step was to download and install the free Paint.net for her.

Next, I just cropped her picture to a square to highlight her closeup profile, I chose resolution 96 pixels/inch, and cropped to  about 400p x 400p. Went to Skype profile page and tried again to change her photo. Browsed the PC to pick this cropped photo, and viola! It worked! 

So the simple tip is: crop your photo to an acceptable size that Skype can accept….then it will resize to the 97×97 profile image. I do not crop to 97 x 97 because that would be too blurry. 

A simple tip that may help someone.