Thursday 30 July 2015

Hotpoint Aquarius SALT light constantly on, fix!

This is just a quick one, probably more for my benefit than anybody else, but if you have a Hotpoint Aquarius dishwasher this might be handy. (This probably works on others too, as they all use the same principle I believe)

If your salt light is stuck on, after filling up, running a few times and it still won't go out, try this.
Run a cycle as normal, when empty open the salt cap and pour a whole kettle of boiling water down it. The theory is that it uses a hygrometer to measure the salt in the water and this is done using a float and sensor. If the float gets stuck, it'll keep saying add salt when it doesn't need it, the hot water helps the float move again and get back into the right place. Replace the cap and do as normal, fill it back up and run the wash, it should turn out sometime during the next wash.


Sunday 19 July 2015

Old blog posts ahoy! - Importing RSS into blogger

I'm pleased to announce I've finally imported all my old blog posts from Geeklog into blogger, so now all the history/archives are here.

Hopefully they work fine! I've also documented the process so anybody else wanting to import a traditional RSS feed into blogger, which may be of use to others. It uses the Google API so I've learnt a little about talking to this using PHP.
Grab the code at my github repo: https://github.com/andyb2000/blogger-import


And onto the HOWTO/README:


blogger-import

Blogger (Google API) import script from basic RSS feed
This is a simple PHP script that will allow you to import any standard rss feed into Blogger blog (using Google APIs).
Download google-api-php-client first and extract it along with this script (https://github.com/google/google-api-php-client)
A few things you need to do first: Open up a google API/developer account and get it active, go to:https://console.developers.google.com/ Create a project to use for this, create a simple name. Under "APIs & Auth" on the left, select APIs, then you need to enable "Blogger API v3" Under "Credentials" click "Create new client ID" and choose "Web application", Ensure Authorised Javascript and Authorised Redirect are set to your website URL. In my case I added all combinations (with www, without, with full /path/ and without to be sure!) That will then generate you the codes you need to edit into the script. Now create the PUBLIC api code, so click "Create new key" under public API access (for browser applications).
In index.php change "setapplicationname" to be the project name you created in Google. change setClientID to be the client ID show to you in the developer console as client id (will look like a subdomain and end with .apps.googleusercontent.com) Change ClientSecret to be the secret shown below Client ID in the google developer console. Change setDeveloperKey to the key in your public API for browser applications. Change getByURL to your blogger website address (either your own domain or something.blogger.com) Finally you need to find your blogger ID, go into your blogger admin panel (as though you are about to post a blog entry) and in the address bar you'll see the numeric ID.
Once you've done all that, you can put your full.rss file into the same folder and it should upload your pages. Whenn you visit the URL index.php will prompt for authority from Google, confirm that and it will begin importing.
LIMITATIONS:
It won't import images, url's/images aren't translated they are left as is in the content.
It doesn't 'parse' XML properly, it uses a few search/find strings and just copy exactly as seen.
All posts are marked as DRAFT so you have to put them live.
Posts are added with the original publish date, so in theory dates are preserved.