The "New" Rob Enderle

Over the years no pundit has taken quite as much flack as Rob Enderle (some less charitable than myself would probably say deservedly).

Although I still think that his anti-Linux stance really didn't do him any favours it is fair to say that he certainly isn't a pro-Microsoft shill. One of his latest articles could almost be proof of that.

A well written article mixing Apple Computers, Politics and Dancing with the Stars? You betcha!

So is Rob now on the side of good? A reading further through his output unfortunately reveals that his anti-Linux stance is as much in evidence as ever, whilst he can still churn out pro-Microsoft stuff with the best of them.

Whilst I still don't think that he is a paid shill (although he does a darn tooting impression of one I must admit) some of this anti-Free Software stuff just doesn't do him any favours. Many companies can (and do) support free software solutions mixed in with the commercial ones. These days it is so common that it hardly even warrants a mention.

The company I work with supports both Open Office AND Microsoft Office, although we only install Microsoft Office where there is a damn good business case for spending money on the software licence. Does Open Office cost us any more to support than Microsoft Office? Of course not. Don't be silly.

You see, in a support role you often end up supporting desktop applications that you haven't had full (or in some cases any) training on. It doesn't matter whether it is a Microsoft, Sun or Joe Bloggs Open Source program, part of a good technicians skills are being able to deal with new stuff "on the fly" as it were and learn (and remember) enough to be able to support the users.

So what Open Source stuff gets widely used? Apart from the obvious such as FireFox and OpenOffice, tools such as ImageMagick are in heavy use (often as part of the back-end software for commercial products). Some of the more useful Unix commandline utilities have been ported to Windows and again, can often be found as part of the "glue" behind larger commercial products. Samba is so common that it is almost a certainty to find it installed on any given Unix server that you find.

And as for Linux not working on the desktop? Some of us switched to it years ago, and I can tell you this: even with some of the issues I've encountered over the years I'm not switching back! (Using the beta version of Windows 7 has made that decision a damn site easier to handle!)

Hide KMix at start-up on KDE 4

Although I've rather got to like KDE4 there has been one thing that has been a constant (although minor) irritation to me - and that is that KMix doesn't minimise at start-up.

Well, it can be done. In ~/.kde4/Autostart create a file called kmix which contains the following script:

#!/bin/bash
kmix; qdbus org.kde.kmix /kmix/KMixWindow close

Make sure that the script is executable

chmod u+x kmix

Now when KDE starts kmix will launch and minimise straight to the dock.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope - First Impressions and problems

I've had a bit of a love / hate relationship with Ubuntu in the year that I've been using it as my main desktop.

The big problem for me has been the fact that the via_pata driver that they insist on using isn't reliable on my hardware, causing random lock-ups. Not nice that, and certainly not what I expect from Linux.

I've managed to get around it by using an older 2.6 kernel that was patched to use the original via82cxxx module, which is a less than satisfactory solution really (and yes, I'm already using 80 wire IDE cables thank you very much).

With all this in mind it was with some trepidation that I took the plunge and upgraded to the new Ubuntu 9.04 beta. If you want to do this, then simply run update-manager -d and follow the on-screen prompts to upgrade.

The upgrade itself was (as usual) painless, although it did take about two hours for the download / upgrade process to complete. Once the upgrade was complete I rebooted and. . . .

I was faced with a nice, shiny KDE 4.2.1 desktop. There was a problem though, which I discovered about ten seconds after launching Amarok and trying to update my collection. Yes folks, the system locked solid. Trying to launch the old version of the kernel left me without a graphical desktop, so back into the latest kernel and a second attempt to update my MP3s in Amarok - followed by a system lock after a few seconds.

I should be able to get around this problem by recompiling the kernel to allow me to revert to the original via drivers (like I've got the time for this shit. . .). As a last resort (and after consulting my good friend Google) I've added "defoptions=all-generic-ide" to /boot/grub/menu.lst and restarted, which so far seems to have done the trick as I've been able to update my collection without any locks.

I'm going to have to see how well the system holds up. If this sorts it then great, but if not then I'll have to look using a different Linux distro.

. . .

As it turns out this didn't sort the problem at all. Spooling a video to my XBox caused the system to lock solid - so onto Plan B - recompiling the kernel.

There are some pretty straight-forward instructions here on how to recompile the kernel for Ubuntu. One thing that shocked me is just how long it takes to recompile the Ubuntu way. With Slackware compiling a kernel took less than an hour, with Ubuntu? I gave up waiting after a couple of hours. God only knows what it is doing, but it is certainly taking its time about it.

Adding in support for the old via82cxxx module is reasonably straight-forward, and after the compile had finished I installed the new modules, checked the blacklist to make sure that the pata_via module wasn't going to load, rebooted and. . .

No difference. Running lsmod didn't show pata_via, but it also didn't show via82cxx. In fact, I couldn't see any modules relating to the IDE drives. Checking /proc/bus/pci/devices shows that pata_via has actually been loaded. What?

Checking back through the kernel configuration shows why - they've compiled support for pata_via directly into the kernel rather than as a module. Bastards!

After setting it back to being a module (rassen frassen Ubuntu) I did a clean recompile as per the Ubuntu instructions. So now I'm going to spend the morning waiting for the compile to complete, and hoping that the PC doesn't lock up in the meantime.

Fun, I don't think.

*** Three hours later ***

OK, so I've recompiled the kernel, reinstalled it and rebooted and yes! We are no-longer using pata_via, the drive names have reverted from SDxx to HDxx, and hopefully that should be it for the lock-ups.

If (like me) you are using the NVidia drivers then you will also need to recompile the Ubuntu restricted drivers.

One further problem was that the kernel package I'd created never seemed to complete installing (even though it was added to the grub menu and I could boot the system using it). After a fair bit of faffing around I traced the problem to the file /etc/kernel/postinst.d/nvidia-common throwing errors due to the new kernel. To get around this I removed the nvidia-common package, at which point the custom kernel completed installing without any errors, then I re-installed nvidia-common. Easy when you know how. . .

So, what's new? Faster start-ups, at least it seems faster to me. A new notification system (for Gnome at any rate), updated apps, 2.6.28 based Kernel and an awful lot more "polish" to the desktop experience. Oh, and the splash screen is slightly different too.

For those of us using KDE we now get KDE 4.2.1 - which is a seriously nice upgrade to the KDE4 series. One bone of contention over the past couple of years is that Ubuntu's tools tended to be better integrated into Gnome than KDE - but this time round I'd say that both desktops are on an equal footing - and personally I'd say that KDE4 may even have a bit of an edge.

I've been so impressed with the latest release that I've upgraded my Toshiba Satellite Pro from Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04. This has been, shall we say a time consuming exercise. Firstly I had to upgrade to 8.10 and from there to 9.04. Each upgrade took around four hours.

Upgrading to 8.10 was fine, everything worked without problems, however upgrading to 9.04 killed knetworkmanager. The program launches, sees the local wireless network but won't connect. As the network connection still worked from Gnome I had a search around and found that yes, knetworkmanager is stuffed on the latest KDE.

I finally got the wireless network running from the network pane of the Systems Settings.

One further bonus is that 3D acceleration now works on the laptop's Trident Cyberblade/XP card. It isn't fast, I'll admit, but at least it now works.

DanO vs XBox 360 and 3 Red Lights Part 2

Well, it finally happened - a couple of in-game lock-ups followed by three red lights that just won't go away. As I mentioned before, Microsoft have extended the warranty for the Red Ring of Death to three years, so even though the standard warranty is over, registering the console with Microsoft (via www.xbox.com) still allowed me to request a repair.



Sending back the XBox

Depending on where you live and how old your XBox is one of three things will now happen, either:

A: You'll receive the return packaging from Microsoft.
B: Microsoft will post you the UPS packaging slip.
C: You'll be emailed the link to a UPS Packaging Slip and a delivery receipt.

In my case I received the link to download the prepaid packaging slips. Once you've printed them out you'll need to find a box big enough to hold the XBox (don't use the original XBox packaging as it won't be returned) and something to keep it securely in place.

When you've packaged it up neatly (and remembered to write your name and the customer service request ID on the outside of the box) it is time to phone UPS and arrange a time for them to pick it up, or to be more exact a day that they can collect it as they refuse to be narrowed down to a time, and they won't collect on a weekend.

You can track the package at the UPS website. From the UK it takes around two days for the package to make its way to the repair center at Frankfurt.

As well as checking the UPS tracking status, you can also check the repair status with Microsoft, again via the XBox Live website. A word of warning to the impatient (like me): there is likely to be a delay from when UPS delivers the parcel and the status changing from "Waiting for device" to "Device received". In my case it took a worrying 20 hours. I'm guessing it depends on just how busy they are.

Of course, you don't have to keep checking as Microsoft will email you once the status changes.



The next email should be when the repair has (hopefully) been completed.

A couple of days later. . .

After checking the repair status today I found that my repair status had changed from "Device Received at Service Center" to "No pending repair". . .

What!?!??

As I haven't had an email to state that the console had been repaired or replaced this is more than a bit worrying.

I decided to contact Microsoft's customer support (0800 587 1102) and see what had happened.

After negotiating their phone system and finding out that the voice recognition system isn't keen on a Northern accent ("Check status. . . I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Check Status!. . . I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. CHECK STATUS!!!") I was transferred through to a customer support agent.

Apparently my 360 has been replaced and is being shipped back to me as we speak - along with a one month gold card for XBox Live. Hopefully I should get an email and tracking number later on today - and all being even the console before the weekend.

I'd also like to mention that the customer service guy was extremely helpful and very thorough in dealing with my request - so full marks to Microsoft there.

Later that afternoon. . .

Still no email from Microsoft, but the repair status has now changed to "Device shipped to customer - Your console has been repaired or replaced. We are shipping it back to you," and there is a tracking number for UPS too.

Something else has changed too. The console has gone from being "out of warranty" to "in warranty". It is back under full warranty until June of this year.

A couple of days later. . .

UPS came to visit today, "Hi, here's your XBox." Yes!!!

So I've finally got my 360 back! Well, not my original 360 but a refurbished one. How can you tell that it is a refurb? Look at the tag on the back of the console. A console that has never been repaired should have a "manufactured date" on it. A refurb has a "serviced date" instead.

Also, the documentation that comes back with the console states that the console is a refurbished one, and that it has a different serial number to the original one - although all warranty / registration details will be automatically updated for me.

So how long did it take? From being collected by UPS on a Tuesday afternoon, I received the replacement back the following Thursday. Nine days isn't a bad turnaround in my opinion.

I've quickly tested the console out - and so far, so good. It actually sounds less like a washing machine on the spin cycle than the original 360 did, and has played the games I tried it on without any problems.

So is it worth sending your 360 back, I'll say a resounding YES to that. For Gods sake if you have any warranty left send it back before trying to mess around with the "alternative" methods.

The benefits of sending it back?

1 - You get a properly repaired 360.

2 - You get an additional three months of warranty on the repaired / replaced machine (longer if your machine was still under the regular warranty).

3 - You get one month's XBox Live Gold subscription as a "sorry" from Microsoft.

It certainly looks like Microsoft are starting to get their act together when it comes to dealing with customer issues, although there are some things to look out for.

Don't take their word for it about getting confirmation emails. Although I got the one to say that they'd received the console - that was it. I had to check to website to see how things were progressing (and eventually phone customer services).

The customer services phone system stinks, but once I'd got through to him the customer services guy was pretty good.

Overall - not a bad experience, although not without its problems.

Update: I've just received an email from Microsoft telling me that my XBox 360 has been shipped and should be with me within the week, the same XBox that arrived yesterday. . .

One of the things in the email was that all licenses should be automatically transferred from the old console to the new one, this would enable me to use my paid-for content when not online. All I should need to do would be to re-download the content. Unfortunately it didn't work.

There are a couple of things you can do at this point. One is phone customer support, another is to use the license transfer tool on XBox Live. Using it is actually quite simple. When you run it for the first time you are shown how many xboxes have your content is assigned to, all licenses are transferred to your live account, then when you log onto your live account from your xbox all licenses are transferred back.

After I'd run though this I redownloaded Space Giraffe, logged out of live and was still able to play the full version of the game.

The Pros and Cons of second hand software

Regular readers may have already read about my newly resurrected XBox 360. Having a console (for free) is A Good Thing, but having something to play on it is even better.

The Xbox 360 can allegedly play some XBox games. Some, but not all. Unfortunately for me, you need to have at least the 20gig hard drive for this to work, and all I have is a 256meg memory card.

Also, just to make life that bit more fun, I didn't have a controller either. My USB keyboard works the 360 Dashboard, but does sod all in games. Something I've got to say about the 360 is this - the controllers for it are bloody expensive, even second hand. After a bit of shoping around I managed to snag a wired controller for it for £15 (a wireless one would have been around £25).

As for cheap games, there are a couple of places that you can get cheap software. Aside from your friendly neighbourhood back-street games shop, there are a couple of places on the highstreet that specialise in second hand stuff.

Game (formerly Electronic Boutique) sells a mix of new and second hand gear. This was my first stop to get something to test my 360 with. After a brief hunt I walked away with a copy of Blue Dragon for £4.

As it turns out the game is, essentially, Final Fantasy 7 with Dragonball Z artwork. Spread over three DVDs it is a really nice, well paced little RPG, I'm actually surprised at just how good it is.

Of course, one game is never enough, so for our next jaunt I headed over to CeX. A bit unusual this lot, as all of their stock is second hand. You can also drop in your old DVDs, consoles or games and either get back cash, or use them against purchases in store (you get back more for your stuff this way).

I came out with Project Gotham 3 for a fiver, and the XBox 360 Live Arcade compilation for £4. Sadly Project Gotham 3 didn't work, but the Live Arcade disk did, and apart from me playing Uno into the small we hours on XBox Live, the rest of the family were hooked to Boom Boom Rocket.

Trying to return Project Gotham was a bit, well, strange. I still had the receipt for the game so I didn't forsee any difficulties in sending it back. As it turns out the game was physically damaged, and after a fair bit of muttering, huddled employees examining the game disk and "are you SURE you bought it from us?" they replaced the game. I've not had the chance to play it yet (hopefully later on tonight) so fingers crossed.

Looking closely at the game that I've now got in my grubby hands, I've actually ended up with Project Gotham 4 in a Project Gotham 3 box. As this retails for £12 then I'm quids in - assuming that it actually plays!

I also traded in some of my old DVD box sets and used the money to buy a 20 Gig hard drive for the 360 for £35. As with Project Gotham I'll be testing that later on tonight, once I get chance to get onto the 360.

(Later)

It looks like my luck has held out - both Project Gotham 4 and the hard drive work perfectly. So, yay for that!

XBox 360 Controller on Ubuntu 8.10

Seeing as I've now got an XBox 360 which uses a USB controller, I thought I'd give it a shot on Linux (or on Ubuntu to be exact).

Most devices these days are plug-and-play in Linux, and this controller is no exception - but. . .

It detects it as a mouse! The left stick causes the mouse pointer to move, which is less than helpful for playing games.

However, help is at hand. To get the gamepad working, open a command window and enter the following:

xinput list

This should give you a list that contains the XBox controller details:

"Microsoft X-Box 360 pad" id=5 [XExtensionPointer]
Num_buttons is 32
Num_axes is 2
Mode is Absolute
Motion_buffer is 256
Axis 0 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000
Axis 1 :
Min_value is -32768
Max_value is 32767
Resolution is 10000

Type the following, replacing [device] with the device ID provided above (in our example 5):

sudo xinput set-int-prop [device] 'Device Enabled' 32 0

And that's it, at least until you reboot.

Update: For those of you on 9.04, good news! The controller works properly without any additional configuration. Nice one!

DanO vs XBox 360 and 3 Red Lights

I've just been given a "broken" XBox 360. Basically I've been told "if you can fix it, you can have it." As my future brother-in-law has already bought a replacement this was a nice challenge.

Update: Before we go any further with this there is something worth mentioning. Microsoft have extended the warranty on ALL XBox 360s to three years for this problem (and this problem only), so if your XBox 360 is less than three years old and you have the Red Ring of Death then call Microsoft for a replacement first. Read more about this in part 2.

Powering the console on gives 3 Red Lights, otherwise known as The Red Ring of Death (or to be more exact a general hardware failure).



There are a lot of rumours going around on the causes and fixes to the Red Ring of Death, so this looked like a good opportunity to maybe put the myths to bed.

Apparently the "R.R.O.D." can be caused by the soldered connections cracking on the GPU. This can be fixed by re-soldering the GPU (if you can get hold of a micro-solder kit), replacing the X-Clamp that holds the GPU in place with one that gives a tighter fit, or by "baking" the console.

Now, I've already sent off for a replacement X-Clamp (courtesy of EBay), but in the meantime I've been having a bit of a read-up on how the repair takes place.

According to popular rumour, the baking method goes something like this:

Step 1: Remove the hard drive, video cable, memory cards, in fact everything but the power supply from the XBox.

Step 2: Power on and wait for the three lights (making sure the XBox is lying flat).

Step 3: Taking three large DRY bath towels, wrap the XBox up completely, and leave for around 25 minutes.

Step 4: Unwrap the XBox which should still be showing three red lights and power it off.

Step 5: Wait for the XBox to cool completely (30-60 minutes) and power back on.

The theory goes that this causes the XBox to get so hot that the solder melts fixing any cracked joints.

Seeing as the XBox hasn't cost me anything, I'm going to try the "baking" method.

. . .

So after following the above instructions I powered the XBox back on and. . .

Still three red lights.

Just in case it hadn't been hot enough I re-wrapped it again, making sure it was nice and snug, and this time. . .

SUCCESS!!!

One working XBox! At least it was for around three minutes before it locked up. At this point I turned it off for another half-an-hour to make sure that it had cooled completely, and then tried playing a game - after half-an-hour of playing Dead or Alive 4 it was still working perfectly.

Nice one!

It is worth mentioning a couple of things at this point. One, if you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Two, keep an eye on the XBox, as a house fire isn't fun for anyone concerned. Three, if you have a warranty on your XBox, then for Gods sake use that rather than messing around with alternative methods.

Also, this isn't necessarily a permanent fix. According to some people they have to do this every week or so.

And - just in case you do want to try this yourself. . .

The Towel Fix



NOTE: No, that isn't me in the video. Just so you know.

Another alternative fix - The Penny Fix



And, of course, the X-Clamp fix



Update 2 - Four days later. . .

So, the big question is "Is the XBox still working?"

All went swimmingly for a day or two, right up to the point that I tried to sign up for XBox Live. Half way through the sign-up process the XBox froze. Powering off and back on again brought me back to the three red lights.

Aaaaargh!

One more go with the towels (wrapped up for 30 minutes this time) and I had a working XBox 360 again. One the XBox had cooled I went back and signed up for XBox Live, downloaded a couple of demo games, watched some movie trailers, played a couple of DVDs, set up a UPnP server on my PC, watched a couple of episodes of Family Guy, and basically messed around for a couple of hours whilst waiting for the inevitable return of the red lights.

Not one lock-up.

On Monday I bought Blue Dragon (which I highly recommend to any Final Fantasy fans out there) which, in common with most RPGs shows the game play time on the saves. To date I've had over nine hours of game play with no lock-ups or other problems.

So does that mean that this time the fix is permanent? Who knows, although probably not. Since it turns out that this XBox is still covered by Microsoft's extended warranty for the Red Light problem it will be winging its way back to them should the issue re-occur.

Update 3: 1 week after the "towel fix"

Strange but true - the XBox 360 is still going. I did have one moment of "aaaargh" when the power cable got knocked partly out, followed by the familiar three red lights, but powering off and back on again with the cable securely in place did the trick.

The system has coped with what I'd call normal usage for a console (around three hours usage a night) without any problems.

In a fit of purest optimism I've bought another couple of games, and more importantly a 20 gig hard drive, so hopefully I'll be able to play some of my old XBox games on it too.

I'll be posting some more on my first impressions of the 360 in a different post, so stay tuned.

Update - Around three weeks since the last "towel fix"

The RROD has come back, so this time I'll be sending it back under warranty rather than messing around. Want to know how this went?

Read on in Part 2

The Best (and worst) of Cooking

The Internet is a great resource for anyone interested in cooking. There are so many different recipes out there, many of which would be unlikely to appear in any regular cook books.

Some, like Latka, have become a regular part of our cooking, others such as Loco Moco have given me a new favourite "junk food" type snack.

There are some great resources out there. Old Scrote's Real Food Cookbook is one of the best old-fashioned cook books going, with a range of UK and International recipes and cooking tips, with the added benefit of a good dollop of British humour.

So, as you can tell, I enjoy cooking, and I definitely enjoy trying out new recipes. Today's new recipe was one for Chocolate Mousse. This is a really easy one to make from scratch and proved to be a hit with the whole family (again, a big thank you to Old Scrote for that one).

Out of interest I had a bit of a search around to see what alternative recipes for Chocolate Mousse they were, and happened upon this "gem".

The crux of the above recipe is this: make up a packet of instant mousse, pour into glasses and eat.

I hate to point this out but THAT IS NOT COOKING!!!

This is one of my pet hates - convenience food that isn't convenient. Let me give you an example: Yorkshire Pudding mix, just add milk and an egg. In other words what you've got is a small packet of very expensive flour with a touch of salt. It is cheaper and just as fast to make a Yorkshire Pudding from scratch. More convenient? Not really.

As Old Scrote appears to be off-line at the moment I'll finish with his recipe for Chocolate Mousse - enjoy!

Update: Old Scrote himself has been in touch, his site is now available at http://www.oldscrote.talktalk.net/.

Chocolate Mousse

There are not many recipes for desserts in Scrote's repertoire but this one is a cracker, very easy, impressive and despite the tiny portions, devastatingly rich. You need a whisk of some sort and a bowl which you can set over a pan of boiling water (i.e. not plastic) to melt the chocolate. For four servings you need a large ½lb bar of plain chocolate (200g) and four eggs. The eggs must be very fresh.

For each person allow 1 egg & 2 ounces of ordinary plain chocolate. (Do not use cooking chocolate, it is a completely different stuff.) Break the chocolate into small pieces and set to melt in a bain marie- a pyrex glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. Meanwhile separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, into separate containers. When the chocolate has completely melted, remove it from the heat and mix into it just the egg yolks (the whites are used later). The chocolate will become stiffer and take on a 'greasy' appearance- this is correct. Cover & set aside for 15 minutes to cool a little. In the mean time beat egg whites with a balloon whisk until eventually the mixture becomes white & stiff, so that it stands up in soft peaks. After the 15 minutes, fold the beaten egg-white a little at a time into the chocolate mixture, mixing very thoroughly.

Pour the resulting creamy chocolate mousse mixture into serving glasses (short glass tumblers or wine glasses are ideal) & put in the fridge to chill for 2 hours and set. Serve with a generous pouring of single cream. (Ruth puts a dash of Armagnac in and then adds the cream to keep the alcohol in!)

William the Conqueror

Hey kids! Annoy your history teacher with this fun fact: "William the Conqueror" (b. 1028, d. 1087) was known at the time as "William the Bastard" (Guillaume le Bâtard).

He got this name because he was the illigitimate son (ie. a bastard) of "Robert the Devil", Duke of Normandy.

So you could say that the bastard did well for himself...

Fun Things to do around the house #1: Repair a washing machine

As you've probably gathered from the sidebar (assuming you've read it), I'm the proud parent of three little nippers. Their ages range from just over three months, to nearly nine years old for our eldest daughter.

Recently our eldest has decided to help out around the house - which is nice. Well, usually it is.

The other day she decided to help mummy out by filling the washing machine. OK, so she didn't sort out the colours from the whites, and God only knows how much washing powder she used, but hey, it's A Good Thing that she is willing to help.

Unfortunately that was when the washing machine started doing a pretty good impression of a machine gun, and then stopped whilst half-full of water, which my wife only discovered when she opened the washing machine's door and flooded the kitchen.

Trying to run the machine again (in a vain attempt to get it to drain the water) just resulted in a red flashing light on the front of the machine. Luckily the machine is only around six months old so it's still under warranty, and we had purchased an extra couple of years extended warranty on top of that.

Of course, where there is an upside, there is also a downside. Where the heck did we put the warranty information, because without it they won't even come to look at the machine.

Whilst in the process of searching around the house I decided to check online to see if anyone else had reported the same sort of problem with their machine and managed to get hold of the user manual which gave me the details on what the flashing light actually meant. . . .

"Unable to drain water."

Gosh, that was helpful. I KNOW that the water isn't draining, my wet feet are a testament to that fact. More useful was the troubleshooting information - check the outlet hose and the filter, and a further note on how to remove the filter.

Removing the filter was a slow process, especially as there was still water in the machine, so it was a case of loosening the filter casing, catching most of the water that gushed out into a tin tray (the only thing thin enough to slide under the filter casing), empty that into a bucket and repeat.

Half-an-hour and two full buckets later. . .

Once all the water had gone I was able to completely remove the filter, and out fell a five pence piece which must have been left in some-ones pocket. Sensing victory, I put the filter back in, crossed my fingers and selected the "Spin" mode and turned it back on.

It worked! Sadly it still sounded like a machine gun, and also made some quite worrying grinding noises when it started up.

I waited for it to finish, eased the tray back under the machine and re-opened the filter, and this time a rather battered hair clip fell out.

Feeling slightly braver, this time I selected a "Rinse" cycle, and it worked, didn't sound like it was ready to explode, and finished without any problems.

We'll still have to find where the warranty is, just in case our eldest decides to help again (aaargh!), but hopefully she'll wait to be shown what to do next time.