Lenovo P770 droid phone packs a 3,500mAh battery - GSMArena.com news
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Fix a noisy toilet pipe
If your toilet (or any tap for that matter) vibrates noisily like a foghorn after the toilet cistern has finished filling (or you shut the tap), there's a really easy fix.
Ours started after we'd had the water turned off a few times, and got to the point where it happened every time for several seconds - not brilliant at 3am!
To fix:
1) turn the water off using the stopcock under the sink
2) open all the taps in the house
3) get someone to hold down the toilet flush
4) very slowly turn the water back on
5) shut off the downstairs taps
6) shut off the upstairs taps
7) let go of the toilet flush
You should now have a quiet toilet again! The cause is 'pipe hammer' caused by the inbuilt air traps in the house filling with water over time. Without the shock absorbing air in the traps the sudden stopping of the water flow when the toilet finishes filling causes the pipes to vibrate.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
A Baxi Solo 2 that won't fire
Yesterday I got home to find my wife trying to try some clothes on the radiator, but the radiators weren't getting hot. I checked that both the control panel in the airing cupboard and the thermostat in the hallway were calling for heat, then took a look at the boiler.
I took the front panel shield off the boiler, to find just two lights lit (boiler on, fan on), but no pilot and no burner. My first instinct was maybe we've got no gas. A quick check next door sadly ruled that one out. The boiler was humming, but for some reason it wasn't getting as far as lighting the pilot and the burners.
Frantic googling revealed this post amongst a few others. It seems that the boiler won't fire if the fan isn't running, and the noise I could hear was the motor failing to spin the fan.
DISCLAIMER: WHAT YOU DO WITH THE FOLLOWING WORDS IS UP TO YOU. I ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PAY SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING.
So, off went the electricity, out came the front two philips screws, off came the casing, off came the four spring clips (2 each side), off came the metal panel.
At the top of the unit there's a fan, which at first glance looks like a fully sealed hairdryer-type assembly, but on closer inspection there's a small spindle on top of it with a number of small silver fan blades. Spinning this with a pencil found several places where it would stick, so I repeatedly squirted copper grease all over the fan spindle, and now it's running fine again (for now).
A bit more googling found that the Solo 2 is only 68% efficient, and therefore G-rated (I've no idea how old it is), so I think it may be time to think about a replacement as it's bound to stop again (probably xmas eve knowing my luck).
I took the front panel shield off the boiler, to find just two lights lit (boiler on, fan on), but no pilot and no burner. My first instinct was maybe we've got no gas. A quick check next door sadly ruled that one out. The boiler was humming, but for some reason it wasn't getting as far as lighting the pilot and the burners.
Frantic googling revealed this post amongst a few others. It seems that the boiler won't fire if the fan isn't running, and the noise I could hear was the motor failing to spin the fan.
DISCLAIMER: WHAT YOU DO WITH THE FOLLOWING WORDS IS UP TO YOU. I ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PAY SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING.
So, off went the electricity, out came the front two philips screws, off came the casing, off came the four spring clips (2 each side), off came the metal panel.
At the top of the unit there's a fan, which at first glance looks like a fully sealed hairdryer-type assembly, but on closer inspection there's a small spindle on top of it with a number of small silver fan blades. Spinning this with a pencil found several places where it would stick, so I repeatedly squirted copper grease all over the fan spindle, and now it's running fine again (for now).
A bit more googling found that the Solo 2 is only 68% efficient, and therefore G-rated (I've no idea how old it is), so I think it may be time to think about a replacement as it's bound to stop again (probably xmas eve knowing my luck).
Saturday, 29 September 2012
Create a generic www redirect app for Webfaction
I've just been struggling with getting my hosted websites to automatically redirect from http://domainname.ext to http://www.domainname.ext . Now it's working I thought I'd share how it's done.
Note: These instructions apply specifically to websites hosted by the hosting company WebFaction
Uunless told otherwise, Google will treat "www." and "non www." versions of the same website as two separate sites, with implications for page rankings, etc. So there's a clear need to push one version of the site over the other, and the most foolproof way of doing this is to redirect (using HTTP 301) one version to the other.
There's some debate as to which one you should keep and which you should redirect, but for the purposes of this article, we're going to go from "non www" to "www".
Now Webfaction, a company which I like very much, have some documentation on how to do this, but this particular scenario isn't spelt out, and you can make it more generic than their instructions suggest.
So, in the control panel:
Now, SSH into the server, and:
Note: These instructions apply specifically to websites hosted by the hosting company WebFaction
Uunless told otherwise, Google will treat "www." and "non www." versions of the same website as two separate sites, with implications for page rankings, etc. So there's a clear need to push one version of the site over the other, and the most foolproof way of doing this is to redirect (using HTTP 301) one version to the other.
There's some debate as to which one you should keep and which you should redirect, but for the purposes of this article, we're going to go from "non www" to "www".
Now Webfaction, a company which I like very much, have some documentation on how to do this, but this particular scenario isn't spelt out, and you can make it more generic than their instructions suggest.
So, in the control panel:
- Create a new Static/CGI/PHP-5.x application
- Call it "apache_redirects"
- Look at the websites page in the control panel and find any sites where you're using both www and non-www domains on a single website
- Remove the non-www domain from each website
- Create a new website, call it "redirects", add ALL the non-www domains to it, and point it to the apache_redirects application
- Hit save
Now, SSH into the server, and:
- cd /home/username/webapps/apache_redirects
- vi .htaccess (I'm assuming you know how to insert and edit text in vi, if not pick another editor)
- add the following lines, and save the file
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L,NC]
Job done! There's no need to create multiple versions and hard code the domain details in the above two lines, because this version works fine.
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Saturday, 16 June 2012
Honda Jazz leaking water
A few days ago I got a call from my wife with unwanted news - the driver's side rear footwell of our car was sodden with water. The car's 10 years old this year, and other than the usual for a car of it's age, we haven't had any problems with it.
We'd had some heavy rain the day before, but as our daughter normally sits in the back (and the mat is on top of the carpet), nothing was spotted until Jo's mum sat in the back of the car. A quick press on the surface of the carpet revealed a fair quantity of water would bubble up through it.
Further inspection revealed water in the boot and spare wheel well, but nothing obviously wrong with any seals, etc. After a couple of hours drying the car out, I covered it over ready for some detective work at the weekend. A bit of research reveals it's not unknown for Jazzes to ingress water, but some of the solutions really scared me ("start by removing all interior trim...") especially as ours has a sunroof, and that's one possible cause.
So, out comes the watering can and a watering can full of water is poured over the rear of the car, concentrated on the side where the wet footwell was. Removing the plastic cover inside the boot protecting the rear light cluster quickly revealed a fair amount of the watering can's contents was dripping down inside it. So off I go to Halfords to buy some sealant in the hope that resealing the rear light cluster will fix it. Wish me luck.
Update 1:
After much fiddling (and borrowing an 8mm spanner from a kind neighbour) I've taken the right rear light cluster off and resealed it, and then put it back on again (not forgetting the hidden screw), but then on further inspection (the area round the light cluster looks fine) it may actually be due to a big hulking crack in the roof trim sealant, so I've sealed that as well (without scraping out the old stuff so we'll see what happens when it rains) but hopefully it'll be less leaky than it was before...
We'd had some heavy rain the day before, but as our daughter normally sits in the back (and the mat is on top of the carpet), nothing was spotted until Jo's mum sat in the back of the car. A quick press on the surface of the carpet revealed a fair quantity of water would bubble up through it.
Further inspection revealed water in the boot and spare wheel well, but nothing obviously wrong with any seals, etc. After a couple of hours drying the car out, I covered it over ready for some detective work at the weekend. A bit of research reveals it's not unknown for Jazzes to ingress water, but some of the solutions really scared me ("start by removing all interior trim...") especially as ours has a sunroof, and that's one possible cause.
So, out comes the watering can and a watering can full of water is poured over the rear of the car, concentrated on the side where the wet footwell was. Removing the plastic cover inside the boot protecting the rear light cluster quickly revealed a fair amount of the watering can's contents was dripping down inside it. So off I go to Halfords to buy some sealant in the hope that resealing the rear light cluster will fix it. Wish me luck.
Update 1:
After much fiddling (and borrowing an 8mm spanner from a kind neighbour) I've taken the right rear light cluster off and resealed it, and then put it back on again (not forgetting the hidden screw), but then on further inspection (the area round the light cluster looks fine) it may actually be due to a big hulking crack in the roof trim sealant, so I've sealed that as well (without scraping out the old stuff so we'll see what happens when it rains) but hopefully it'll be less leaky than it was before...
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