April 2014 - Helpful Colin

Repairing A Toilet Silent Fill Valve

Introduction

I recently heard my cistern overflowing. On investigation I decided to adjust the float level to stop it by reducing the height to which the water in the cistern rose when it filled. A few days later I heard the distinct sound of the cistern overflowing again. I then realised I needed to repair my Toilet Silent Fill Valve.

Targeted Attacks via Internet Explorer Confirmed by Microsoft

There is a vulnerability (flaw) which allows targeted attacks via Internet Explorer versions 6 through 11 to be made on MS Windows PC’s.

The attack seems complex to me and probably not easily made against the masses. The ultimate goal of an attacker would be to encourage a PC user to visit dangerous websites.

Microsoft plan to fix the problem with updates distributed in their normal way, i.e. monthly updates.

If you want to find out more you can visit ITPRO here. Some PC’s will be more vulnerable than others depending on what version of Windows is used and whether Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail are viewing an HTML document.

Or you could visit Microsoft here and read Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983, Published: April 26, 2014.

WordPress Vulnerability Affecting Mobiles

I just want to pass on knowledge of this WordPress vulnerability affecting mobiles, detected by AVAST, whereby mobile device users are susceptible to redirection. They can be redirected to a malicious web site from WorbPress blogs where the blogger is using a plugin called OptimizePress. NOTE: I am not using that plugin in this blog.

Read all about it in this AVAST Blog Post published on 17th April 2014.

This is the malicious web site so I have not embedded a link to it — http://149.154.152.129.

Reference:

Unblocking My Wash Basin Drain

Introduction

I recently noticed the waste water leaving my bathroom wash basin drain was taking more time than usual to drain away. Realising this meant a total blockage may be imminent, I set to work dismantling the waste pipe and bottle trap so that I could begin unblocking my wash basin drain. Boy was there some gunge to clear out.

A Meteor Narrowly Missed A Skydiver

When A Meteor Narrowly Missed A Skydiver

A meteor narrowly missed a skydiver, Anders Helstrup in 2012, when it passed him, on its way to earth, after he opened his parachute whilst skydiving above Hedmark, Norway. It was all captured on his helmet cam.

The “dark flight” meteor (called that because it was not glowing hot) is thought to have broken off a larger meteor higher in the atmosphere. It was considered to be the first time such a meteor has been captured on video.

My featured image has been enhanced using PhotoZoom Pro 6 by BenVista.

Below you can see the video of the event:

You can read all about it here at PetaPixel.

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My Latest News

6th October 2019: I have in the last few months worked through all my blog posts and pages and converted them from Classic Editing mode to Block Editing mode. While doing this I have found posts that had problems which I fixed. In particular with linked videos which were no longer working. I deleted one post amongst these. I may be tempted to delete more posts which are no longer relevant and just take up space on the server.

Along with the list of contents introduced to longer posts I have added a list of pictures too. I have been able to do this by giving the pictures their own headings. They could be interspersed with the contents but I am keeping them separate at the moment.

On some posts I have introduced a Preface to give a simple description of the post. This enables me to put the contents before the introduction.

The contents are compiled from all the headings in a post and underlined. These can be selected in the normal way in order to navigate straight to them. This should save a lot of scrolling for anyone who is referring to a post and its pictures to help them fix the item described.

NOTE: I have noticed that selecting a heading might not scroll all the way to it at the first attempt. Successive attempts during the same viewing get nearer. I hope to get this fixed in the course of time.

I have found that the reason the headings on small screens aren’t emboldened is because they aren’t set to use a bold font. On large screens there isn’t an issue because the headings look like headings anyway. However I use Jetpack to convert my blog for display on mobiles which displays headings as normal or bold according to how they are set. So I will be emboldening headings to give a better display on mobiles as and when i get around to it.

NOTE: I do expect most people to read my blog on a mobile phone these days. So I will try to keep it looking good for them.

3rd June 2019: I’ve had a go at making testimonials look better. The previous method was a mess so I’ve used the Kadence Testimonials block to produce a testimonials page with two neat columns which are now accessed from the Posts menu since they all originate via Post Comments.

1st June 2019: Continuing to edit using blocks I have changed to a Kadence FAQ block to display Frequently Asked Questions and their answers. I spotted a problem with the accordion block and Ben Ritner has very kindly edited the block to resolve it. There has been some editing of the Qs & As and you might find I mess with it some more.

I have also begun using the Contents Table block by Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg to show the contents of my posts. I am inserting this block after the Introduction. If I put it first, as it would be in a book, it causes some issues:

In my list of posts that is shown in reverse date order I only want the Introduction or part thereof to be seen. If I put the contents block first that will be seen. It will take up a lot of screen space and won’t be very interesting.
The contents block links to all the headings used in the post but that doesn’t work when it’s viewed in the list of post snippets described in 1 above.

Continue to My Latest News Archive.

Site Construction

The site helpfulcolin.com was originally built in September 2011 by Digitalog© now Wolf & Player using the Side Blog theme and handed over to Helpful Colin by his mentors in December 2011. It was changed to a ‘Twenty Fourteen’ child theme in February 2014 by Helpful Colin.

The theme was changed again in December 2015 when WordPress version 4.4 became active and Helpful Colin changed the theme to the ‘Twenty Sixteen’ theme which is designed to look good on all screen sizes. Although this may have improved the blog for mobile users it has removed some functionality available in ‘Twenty Fourteen’.

Helful Colin took on board Gutenberg at an early stage and has since converted all posts to use the block editing format. The current version of WP used at 30/09/2019 is 5.2.3. Jetpack is used to convert the Helpful Colin posts to display correctly on mobile devices.