Daily Battles: Why LG Electronic Dryer Cut Drying Cycle Short and Stops Drying

Appliances today can be very fancy. For example, Washers and Dryers these days can automatically detect your load and adjust washing/drying cycles automatically for best laundry experience.

However, you might notice that sometimes when you start the drying cycle, your dryer machine tells you that it will take 55 minutes, but the dryer would stop only 10-15 minutes into the drying cycle, and your laundry ended up not dry at all.

This also happened to my LG Electronic Dryer!

No need to dig up your warranty and call tech support. What most likely happened is that the load sensor in your dryer just got dirty and you happen to be doing a light load of laundry.

There are two ways to solve the problem:

First option is to clean the sensor yourself. Just pull the lint filter out (the one you have to clean each time after you dry a load of laundry, and the sensor is located inside the slot for the filter. Stick your fingers in and rub them against a metal piece you can feel to clean it. Since the sensor can get dirty easily, you really should be cleaning it each time you clean the lint filter.

Another option, which is my preferred option, is to use laundry balls when you dry your laundry. These laundry balls will make the load heavier, so the "smart" dryer won't cut the drying cycle short. You also get the added benefits of reducing wrinkles and lint and saving the need of using liquid fabric softeners and dry sheet. Laundry balls are very cheap, you can buy a 6-pack laundry balls on Amazon for only $7.99.

Happy laundrying!! Moving on to my next daily battle!!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard for Mac Not Working

If you actually follow my blog, then you'll know that my Logitech wireless solar keyboard ran out of battery yesterday. My keyboard is the exact same one shown above, a Logitech K750 Wireless Solar Keyboard for Mac, which sells for $53.97 on Amazon.

When the keyboard was working before but stops working, most likely it is out of battery. The easiest way to check is to push the sun button (upper left in the image below) and see if you get a happy face light (has battery) or a sad face light (out of battery). Note that if it is out of battery, there's no way to plug it into a power source, so your best bet is to leave it somewhere very bright during the day and leave it there for the entire day for it to charge.

However, after it has charged, it is very possible that even with a happy face, the keyboard still doesn't work. Don't panic, the fix is actually very simple. Plugged into your USB port, you'll find a 2.4GHz Wireless Receiver that looks similar to the one below. Simply unplug it and plug it into a different USB port would solve your problem and get your keyboard back working again.

Another option is to restart your Mac, and most likely the keyboard will resume working. I don't like rebooting my computers with so many things I have already running, so I'll stick with the first option.

So why do we have to do this? Well, just another bug or stupid design by Apple. Life goes on, so don't sweat too much over it.

Moving on to my next daily battles with technology!!

Key to Happiness: ARK - A random act of kindness a day.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: 64GB USB Disk Not Recognized Correctly in Windows

So it all started from me trying to move some large files between computers and smart devices. I plugged the USB drive into Jane (a Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences where Philip Jane is my virtual smart home butler), but the USB drive only showed a capacity of 200MB.

"What's going on?" I asked myself as I correctly ejected the drive safely (following proper Windows procedures) and plugged the USB drive onto my Mac, my main computer. It showed 58GB space.

"Maybe the drive is formatted into a Mac only format," I though to myself. And sure enough, it was in the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.

No problem for a tech savvy geek like me! Within one minute, I have successfully formatted the USB drive in exFAT format, a format that both Mac and Windows can understand.

I unmounted the USB drive (proper Mac procedure in handing USB drives) and plugged the it into Jane again. "What the heck?" It still only showed 200MB.

"Is something wrong with Jane?" I asked myself as I promptly unplugged the USB drive from Jane and plugged it into Philip (another Windows computer and one of Philip Jane's many physical existences). This time it correctly showed the USB drive as 58GB.

"Maybe Jane just can't read exFAT," I told myself, "and I really should make it FAT32, Window's favorite disk format.

I quickly launched the disk format utility in Philip. But wait? Why isn't FAT32 an option for format? The only option available is NTFS.

After reading an article named "Help Article – Fix for “Windows Format, no FAT32 option," I got it. Turned out Windows can't format any USB drive bigger than 32GB. The article suggested that I download a free utility which will let me format the drive even though it is big. But guess what, the link sent me to a page like this:

Hey, you can't fool me! Didn't I say I am a tech savvy geek? These are advertisements disguised as a legit web page! I clicked the back button and looked at the date of that help article. Yep, that article was written in 2014, 5 years ago.

I searched again, and this time I decided to open an article named "Solved: FAT32 Option Not Available in Windows 10/8/7." This one suggested that I download a free (for home use) utility called AOMEI Partition Assistant. This one looks okay. So I happily downloaded the tool and installed in on Philip. Upon opening the utility, I realized that the utility is not even recognizing the USB drive at all.

I guess I am back to square one.

I vaguely recalled that Jane recognized the drive with a volume name of something EFI, so I plugged the USB drive back in to Jane. I was correct, the volume was named "EFI System." So I started googling EFI System. Turned out an EFI System is a bootable windows partition.

Plugging the USB drive back into Philip, I opened Disk Manager so I can look at all the partitions. The USB drive actually had two partitions, an EFI System partition, a exFAT partition, and also an unused partition.

Maybe that AOMEI tool will correctly recognize the drive is there's only one partition. I quickly deleted the unused partition and the exFAT partition. Loaded up AOMEI again. Nope, still not recognizing the drive. When I tried to delete the last EFI System partition, I found out that Windows Disk Manager doesn't let me delete this partition. All options grayed out. Great!

More searching online landed on this article: "How to Delete EFI System Partition in Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista." Didn't want to mess with rebooting Philip using a bootable disk (since Philip is a headless computer, meaning it doesn't have a monitor plugged into it), I went all commando. And this time, I was able to delete the partition successfully. Thanks Brithny!

Going back into Disk Manager on Philip, I created a single partition and a single volume and formatted it as exFAT and went back into AOMEI again. GUESS WHAT? AOMEI still doesn't recognize the drive. What a piece of junk. I am uninstalling this %&*!

"Let's try the drive on Jane again!" I decided. And as soon as I plugged it back into Jane, the drive was recognized correctly as a 58GB drive. I didn't need FAT32 at all!!

So what was really going on here?

First, since the USB drive had both a FAT partition and a Mac OS Extended partition, on Jane, a windows computer, it recognized the FAT partition only, and on my Mac, it recognized the Mac OS Extended partition only. Nothing strange here.

Secondly, once I reformatted the Mac OS Extended partition to exFAT, Philip decided to use the exFAT partition over the FAT partition because Philip is a Windows 10 machine. And Jane decided to use the FAT partition and not the exFAT partition because Jane is a Windows 8.1 machine.

Thirdly, Windows won't let you format a USB disk to FAT32 when it is bigger than 32GB. But you can format it to exFAT and that should still work fine with Windows 8.1.

Mystery finally solved and I can finally move my large files in peace. Just another daily battle with technology, and I have come out triumphant once again! Hooray!!

Mind you that I did all these (and posted this blog) all without my Logitech wireless keyboard, which is out of battery!!

BTW: 58GB is the measurement in actual Gigabytes and 64GB really meant 64,000,000,000 Bytes. Manufactures like to call that 64GB to make it sound bigger and worth more!

Picture of the Day:

Don't ask me why I use a Mac keyboard on Philip and Jane, two Windows computers. But when this thing is dead, it is dead for a long while.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Daily Battles: How to Take Screenshot on Android When the Phone is Locked

For my previous post, I needed to take a screenshot of my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S8), that's when I found out that my normal screen capture gesture doesn't work on a locked screen.

To capture a screenshot on an Android phone, the easiest way is to swipe the phone screen from side to side with your palm. But this method doesn't work if phone is locked.

Another method is use Google Assistant. You can say "Okay Google" to activate Google Assistant, and then command it to "take a screenshot." However, this method also doesn't work when the screen is locked.

In order to take screen shot while the phone is locked, you need to push two buttons together. For a phone with a Home button, hold the Home button and the Power button together until you hear a click sound. For a phone without the Home button (such as my Samsung Galaxy S8), home the Power button together with the Volume Down button until you hear a click sound.

That's it! Now onto my next daily battles!

Video of the Day:

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com

Best App to Play YouTube Videos On Your Smart Phone -- YouTube Vanced

Admit it, we watch a lot of YouTube videos on our smart phones.

It has been really annoying when I started using my smart phone to listen to podcasts on YouTube, whether I was doing manual labor, or was driving my kids to various activities (and getting stuck in traffic). Why?

I tried using both the Android included YouTube app and the Chrome browser. Both of them:

• Do not remember what was the last YouTube video I was viewing and where I paused (e.g., in the middle of a two-hour long podcast).
  
  
• If I open another app, YouTube video stops playing.
  
  
• Stops playing the video when my phone is locked (whether automatically or when I do it manually).

If you are also super annoyed by these limitations, I have good news!! I have found a video player that addresses exactly those annoyances!!

Actually, some people got so annoyed (more annoyed than me) and decided to create a new YouTube video player based on the official YouTube app. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

The app is called YouTube Vanced, and you can download it from their web site. Features of this app include:

• Block all ads (togglable)
• Background Playback
• Force VP9 (or HDR) or vice versa
• Override Maximal Resolution
• Pinch to Zoom (for all devices)
• Casting Togglable (can be forced off)
• Toggle Themes (Black, Dark, White)
• PiP - Picture in Picture mode (Oreo only)
• Auto Repeat Feature
• Preferred Speed and Resolution

One extra benefit of this app is that while my phone is locked, I could still resume or pause the video play like how it is shown in the below screen capture:

Just download the APK file from the web site and install. That's it! Enjoy!

Sorry for iPhone users (which I am also one). This app is for Android only.

Do not pretend to be what you are not (and I am not a gardener)!!!

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com