Super quick and dirty BBS Alloy Centre Cap overhaul

Problem: My old BBS alloys need a serious refurb, and the worst looking parts were the centre caps. I can’t afford a proper returb!

Solution: The centre caps are plastic, with a thin alloy stamped, painted and lacquered inset. Firstly I removed the plastic cap from the main alloy centrepiece. Continue reading “Super quick and dirty BBS Alloy Centre Cap overhaul”

Replacing the Blue Coolant Temperature Sensor in the Golf VR6 Mk3

Problem: My VR6 was having trouble starting and idling when cold. Many forums suggest this is due to a faulty “Blue” temperature sensor.

Solution – Testing the Sensor: To test the sensor while it’s fitted to the car, remove the latched plastic connector from the sensor and measure the resistance (Ω) between the 2 pins.
If the sensor is working correctly it should measure about:

  • 5500Ω at 0°c
  • 2500Ω at 20°c
  • 1250Ω at 40°c
  • 600Ω at 60°c
  • 325Ω at 80°c

I’m my case, the resistance was infinite, I.e. open circuit. So needed replacing.

Solution – Replacing the Sensor: The parts you will need are:

  • 1 x 2-pin Blue Sensor (VW: 025 906 041 A, GSF: 929vg014)
  • 1 x O-ring / Seal (know the part number? Please tell us in comments below)
  • Metal or plastic retaining clip (know the part number? Please tell us in comments below)

Continue reading “Replacing the Blue Coolant Temperature Sensor in the Golf VR6 Mk3”

Edit crontab with NANO on centos (crontab -e)

Problem: I don’t know where my root users crontab file is, and this doesn’t usually matter because using the command ‘crontab -e’ opens it for editing anyway… but it opens in VI and I am too stupid / lazy / in a rush to use VI.

[Edit – mid 2018: Earlier this year I went through about 3 weeks of IDE/Editor hell and taught myself Vim. It’s… wonderful]

Solution: The -e switch makes the file open in whatever the default editor for the environment is. To override this, pass the EDITOR environment var to the command when it’s run:

sudo env EDITOR=nano crontab -e

Please let me know if this nano tip was useful, just one click!
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Can’t activate Spotify Premium account on VodaFone 4G Red contract.

2017 Update: This tips is very old now, and the information is almost certainly out of date.

Problem: Just bought a new VodaFone contract that includes Spotify Premium (or Sky Sports something or other), and we website / in-store / 191 support don’t seem to know how I should actually activate it.

Solution: Send a text with the word ‘Entertainment’ to 97613. You’ll get a reply from VodaFone with a link and instructions. This worked at time of posting, 5s’s are new, 4G-ready contracts are new. Expect this to change.

How to use wp_get_attachment_image_src() properly…

Problem: No matter WHAT I do, wp_get_attachment_image_src() is NOT working. I JUST want the featured image source of this $post->ID.

Solution: Yes is probably is working… but stupidly I’m trying to pass it the POST ID and not the ATTACHMENT ID like I should be. The Attachment ID can be found with the get_post_thumbnail_id() function, and then passed like this:

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$thisimg = wp_get_attachment_image_src(get_post_thumbnail_id($arr->ID),full);
print_r($thisimg); //shows the Array of bits you need.

Duh… me.

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Warning: the CA certificate does not sign the certificate – Plesk 10 and GeoTrust Certs

Problem: After requesting a renewal QuickSSL Premium cert from GeoTrust, and uploading the Cert and CA Intermediates to the Plesk 10 interface, I’m warned that: “Warning: the CA certificate does not sign the certificate”.

Solution: Don’t worry about it! No idea why it happens. If you’re confident that you’ve added the correct Intermediate files, then go ahead and use one or two SSL Checkers like www.geocerts.com/ssl_checker and http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html to confirm it’s all ok.

Notes: If there is a problem with the CA intermediate certs, it’s worth attempting to get them straight from the horses mouth. Sometimes the Intermediate cert you are sent along with your SSL Cert order isn’t enough. For all the current GeoTrust Intermediate certs, have a look here: https://knowledge.geotrust.com/support/knowledge-base/index?page=content&actp=CROSSLINK&id=SO15690

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Zurb Foundation Tooltips for and WordPress thumbnails

Problem: I wanted to use Foundation 4’s tooltips on some WordPress post thumbnail (featured) images, but wasn’t sure how to add the necessary data attribute and classes.

Solution: It turns out after some playing about that an array of attributes can be passed to the WordPress ‘get_the_post_thumbnail()‘ function. Firstly we need to add the class ‘has-tip’ (and any extra positioning classes like ‘tip-top’ if that’s where we want the tooltip to appear – see the Foundation Docs link at the top). We then need to add the data attribute ‘data-tooltip’. An example of how to do this is in the following code where I pull out a value from an Advanced Custom Field, and display a list of images with tooltips:

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$icons = get_field('accom_spec_icons');
if ($icons && !is_wp_error($icons)) {
	echo '<ul class="small-block-grid-4">';
	foreach($icons as $icon) {
		echo '<li>',get_the_post_thumbnail($icon->ID,'box-thumb',array('title'=>trim(strip_tags($icon->post_title)),'class'=>'has-tip tip-top','data-tooltip'=>'')),'</li>';
	}
	echo '</ul>';
}

It’s important to add the ‘data-tooltip’ attribute with a value of ”, otherwise it wont be inserted into the generated image tag correctly.

Removing
tags around WordPress Shortcodes while retaining wpautop() changes.

Problem:
I’m building something using Drew Morris’ Foundation 4 Theme for WordPress (http://fwp.drewsymo.com/) and it allows shortcodes like [row] and [column] to be used, so that content can be aligned to the grid.

The problem is, when those shortcodes are used with any sort of line break after them, wpautop() plays havoc with the markup. I could just disable wpauto() with `remove_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘wpautop’ );` but I want it to effect all other content.

Solution:
Wordpress 3.6 has an nice new tag called has_shortcode() which can be used along with some RegEx and preg_replace() to replace the offending <br /> tags. Here’s my first version… it can be improved but it’s working pretty well so far!

add_filter ('the_content', 'cleangridshortcodes');
function cleangridshortcodes($content) {
  if(has_shortcode($content,'row') || has_shortcode($content,'column')) {
    $patterns = array("/([row])
/","/([column(.*)])
/","/([/column])
/"); $replacements = array('$1','$1','$1'); $content = preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $content); } return $content; }

Uploading / Configuring a Laravel 4 app on cPanel type hosting ( public_html )

Problem: This morning I wanted to quickly move a little Laravel test project onto my live server. The default file structure of Laravel stores all the framework resources in a vertical tree of files and directories, and then the ‘public’ directory is adjacent to these. Like so:

- [app]
- [bootstrap]
- [public] etc

To host it on my CentOS box running cPanel I want to adhere to the following (standardish) structure:

- [.htpasswds]
- [etc]
- [mail]
- [public_ftp]
- [public_html] etc etc varies depending on server

I could just upload everything in my Laravel project to the ‘public_html’ directory… but then to run the app I’d need to browse to http://example.com/public/. Worse still, my whole framework file-structure will be visible if I browse to http://example.com

Solution: With a little path remapping in two files, this can be easily achieved. Here’s what I did:

1) Create a new directory called ‘laravel4’ adjacent to ‘public_html’ so that your remote file structure now looks like this: Continue reading “Uploading / Configuring a Laravel 4 app on cPanel type hosting ( public_html )”

Accessing selected payment type in Shopp Summary.php (Checkout and Order Confirmation page)

Problem: Someone on the Shopp Helpdesk asked how they could display the payment type that a customer had just selected, on the following Order Confirmation page. They were using multiple ‘Offline Payment’ type options, and presumably they needed the customer to be able to visually confirm what they’d selected. As far as I can see, there’s no template tag provided for this.

Solution: All sorts can be pulled from the ShoppShopping() object directly. In this case the following worked:

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<?php echo ShoppShopping()--->data->Order->Billing->cardtype; ?>

Bonus: To display the same info in reciept.php, the following can be used:

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<?php echo shopp('purchase','cardtype','return=1'); ?>