Monthly Archives: February 2009

Belkin – life-time warranty

Posted by on February 28, 2009 2 comments

My trusty gigabit Belkin N1 Vision router decided to croak two days ago.

At the time of purchase (Aug’ 08) this was one of the first N-draft gigabit routers on the market and accordingly came in at a hefty price of R 2,700. I am not sure if the sudden death was related to the firmware I installed in November, or if the router didn’t want to shuffle gigabytes around anymore.

Lightning was certainly not the cause, since any electrical surge has to travel past an APC surge arrestor and then through an APC Back-UPS C350. Somehow it appears that the router’s firmware got corrupted as it kept rebooting itself and even a hard-reset did not convince the Belkin to reset to factory defaults.

The one thing you might not know is, that every Belkin router has a life-time warranty and as long as lightning does not blow up your equipment, Belkin will repair it or replace it.

Even more surprising was, that when I went to Incredible Connection today to send the router in, they went and gave me a brand new one over the counter. I didn’t even have to provide the packaging and I walked out with a brand new and shrink-wrapped model.

So don’t be tempted as I was and chuck the router in the dustbin, go to the place where you bought it and ask for a replacement, as it has a lifetime warranty. (If you struggle, let me know, I have a few contacts to get you sorted)



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Garmin 2009 streetmaps are out

Posted by on February 28, 2009 No comments

I have finally been able to get my hands on a copy of the latest Garmap Africa Series 2009. As usual, the DVD can be purchased for R 10,00 at most outdoor shops (I got mine from Trappers Fourways).

New and a pleasant addition is that the DVD is double-sided and now caters for both Windows and Mac. While I previously had to use Windows to transfer the maps, this is now a seamless Mac-experience.

- First the MapManager needs to be installed, which allows you to transfer the maps to your Mac
- Then you install MapInstall which allows you to unlock the maps as well as transfer them to your Garmin
- Lastly you should install RoadTrip which is the Mac equivalent of the Windows Mapsource application.

While you are giving your Garmin a fresh update of the so often changing street-names, you should install WebUpdater and update the firmware of your trusty Garmin as well as POILoader to update all your “road-hazards” (and be up-to-date with those nasty speed-traps).

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The Friday Picture: Anal Fisting?

Posted by on February 27, 2009 No comments

The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:

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A little fame / reminiscence of origin

Posted by on February 22, 2009 No comments

A few weeks back I got contacted by a journalist from Austria who wanted to do a series of editorials about Austrians abroad and their lifestyle.

It is a humbling experience to know that the article was published today in my province’s newspaper to a readership of 200,000:

Südafrika ist seine Heimat

Many South Africans are seeking greener pastures abroad and are looking to emigrate for lifestyle (political environment, crime) and economic reasons. Unfortunately it is not always greener on the other side. While the first few months in another country are exciting, very soon you will miss South Africa and it’s culture.

Comparing South Africa to Europe or Australia/New Zealand you will find that you will move backwards in lifestyle. While you would live in a plush cluster home in South Africa, you would only be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Europe – so be prepared to take a few steps back and start from the bottom again. For me it’s South Africa all the way!

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The Friday Picture: 56k

Posted by on February 20, 2009 No comments

The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:

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The Jesus-firmware for your ADSL modem

Posted by on February 20, 2009 4 comments

Well, not quite, but close enough. If you happen to have a Netgear DG834XX ADSL modem router, I strongly suggest that you have a look at the DGTeam custom firmware:

All the features are listed after the break, but to wet your RSS-appetite, you should get excited about wake-on-LAN, TCP/IP tuning features, advanced ADSL tuning (including lockdown of SNR) and improved firewall modules. With the firmware comes native telnet-support, which has made my ADSL traffic statistics a lot more reliable.

The firmware can be flashed the same way you will flash any other Netgear firmware via the routers admin-console and after a few minutes you will have a more stable and feature rich firmware having features such as:
Continue reading “The Jesus-firmware for your ADSL modem” »

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The R114 roadsafety/upgrade petition

Posted by on February 20, 2009 1 comment

I travel the R114 (commonly known as the Lion Park Road between Lion Park and R511) frequently to drop my son off at school (Heronbridge College) and on the way to work. The road is covered in potholes with taxis and trucks moving into oncoming traffic to avoid those craters. I am lucky enough to drive an old Landrover and feel sorry for people wrecking their cars.

If you are a Heronbridge parent, travel the R114 frequently or just want to help, then please click on any of the links or images to sign the petition. You need to put in your name and your email address (you will not be spammed, but a valid email is required to confirm you entering the petition). Your details will not be used other than for the purpose of handing it over to authorities to make your voice heard. (Once you signed the petition, you will get an confirmation email which you need to confirm)

Only 3 weeks ago, a oncoming truck lost golf-ball sized rocks, shattering my windscreen into pieces and damaging both lights. The Audi TT behind me was a wreck. Not a week goes past, where cars fly off the road due to the many bumps, narrow roads and the bad overall road condition.

I therefore created the R114 road-safety petition which will be forwarded to the authorities in the hope that something will be done.

With this I am hoping to petition the relevant authorities to effect urgent repairs to this road, in order to make it less dangerous to travel on in the short term, and implement a long term plan to rebuild this road to acceptable standards for one carrying such high traffic volumes including, but not limited to, widening of roadway itself, provision of shoulders and taxi pull off areas, upgrading and protection of intersections, improved road markings and signage, improved access and egress points including additional lanes for turning vehicles and law enforcement with respect to speed limits especially around schools and important intersections.

Please spend a few minutes filling out the petition, your email-address is required to make this petition legit. Petition details: R114 road-safety petition

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The Friday Picture: You suck!

Posted by on February 13, 2009 No comments

The Friday Picture will provide you with inspirational and (de)motiviational guidance to make the approaching weekend so much more appealing:

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Updated Timemachine guidelines

Posted by on February 11, 2009 1 comment

If you are one of the many users who have followed my guidelines “OS X: Time Machine backup to Synology DS107+“, I strongly urge you to revisit the article.

A number of users reported some issues which require your attention:

  • If your backups are larger than 250 gigabytes, there are issues with regards to the size and the number of bands being used in the sparsebundles. To fix this, you can either convert your current sparsebundle or start a new one. You are not affected if your sparsebundles are smaller.
  • Some people reported issues with mounting the images over AFP. I could verify this as well and found that mounting the images via SMB was more reliable. I am uncertain if this is related to OS X 10.5.6 or the firmware on the DiskStation.

Continue reading “Updated Timemachine guidelines” »

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