Category Archives: info

DSTV and flashing lights

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EDIT: For some reason I’m getting a lot of hits on this page at the moment, it only addresses one element on one decoder. If you have any other hassles with your decoder check out this link.

I went home this evening for a family get together and walking into the TV room I noticed an annoying flashing orange light on our Multichoice DSTV decoder. Although others had noticed it, no one knew anything about it. While browsing through some channels my sister pointed out a small “letter” icon which had popped up in the one corner of the screen. Going to the menu and opening the “Mail Messages” option gives one a brief notice about new terms and conditions relating to Multichoice. It also stopped the flashing light.

Mentioning this to my Dad, he told me my Gran had been complaining about the light too, quick phonecall to her and problem solved, along with a set of instructions she was to pass on to her friends.

Now I like the way that Multichoice have integrated this feature into the system, it’s just a pity that I doubt anyone actually knows about it. I’m also very curious to know how many phone calls the service centre got about this flashing light that just started randomly last week.

So for anyone wanting to get rid of the flashing orange light:
Turn on your TV and Multichoice Decoder. Take your remote and push the bottom left “Menu” button. A menu should come up on your screen, scroll down to the “Mail Messages” option (if I recall it was option 4) using the cursor/arrow buttons, and use the select button to go into the Mail Messages. It should display a message with regards to the new terms and conditions. Once read, the light should stop flashing and you can press the white “Exit” button once or twice to resume your viewing.

Minecraft Peculiarities

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I haven’t played minecraft since November, but was lus to play the other day so downloaded the latest version: Beta 1.3_01. I ran the program, loaded one of my maps and was met with an unplayable environment. Severe lag being the main cause, and when movement did occur it resulted in unstoppable spinning movements. I tried playing the in browser version, but for some reason it won’t let me out of the menu and into the game, it appeared to not register my mouse clicks.

First thing I did was update my Java to the latest version, this appeared to have no noticeable effect.

Next was my graphics driver which at least appeared to solve the lag issue, but the mouse would start my man spinning at the gentlest nudge. Searching for such issues mainly resulted in issues with Java and the in browser version. Finally found a reddit post mentioning Synergy (which I run). Turning off Synergy fixed the issue so my Minecraft is once again playable, although it does hamper my multi-tasking abilities with Synergy closed.

My Garmin is logging my every move.

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A while ago while researching a new toy, my Garmin Nuvi 200, I found a neat way to get my model, and several others, to log the route you followed. It’s a slight hassle but works fairly nicely, see instructions below. but the other day I was searching through my Garmin and happened upon a file by the name of “Current.gpx” with a second file “1.gpx” in an archive folder. Both were gpx files so I quickly imported them into Google Maps to take a look.

Now after I’d had a look, I went and looked for the same files on my Dad’s GPS, a Garmin nuvi 350, and found the same files. His files just contained a marker with each of his favourites which then popped up all over Google Earth, mine however contained a very detailed history of every journey I had ever made while my Garmin was on. On one side I thought this was pretty cool, on the other hand I wondered how many people out there are selling there GPSs with thousands of kilometres of driving history sitting on them. It’s quite fun to actually look at the routes. In Google Earth you can select each “route” or section of time while your Garmin was online, so each journey say. Then you can generate a cool altitude, speed vs time graph, and follow it around your route.

After thinking about it a bit and checking out my archive file, it seems that it only activated this “feature” after I used the hacked method to get it to log my single route, so I don’t think it’s anything for people to worry about, perhaps just to keep in mind.

To activate the custom tracking method, you must have locked signal and be looking at the map. Click “Menu”, then “Tools”, then “Where am I?”. Click once on the writing under “Nearest Address” then twice on the text under “My Location” then once again on the text under “Nearest Address”. This should bring up another menu with the options “Start Playback” and “Start Recording”. Click start recording. Two things you will notice. The screenshot button automatically turns itself on (you can turn it off in the menu if you want) and there is a large stop button at the top of the screen. Click that when you want to stop recording your moves. You may notice that there is a timer, it doesn’t tick every second, so if you’re unsure whether it’s working or not, you just have to wait a bit till it ticks over, often jumping several seconds at a time.

To get your data you need to plug your GPS into a PC and go on to the Garmin nuvi drive. Open the Garmin folder and then the Logs folder. Here you will find dated folders with all your logs. The gps.bin file is the one that contains your data.

To convert this into something a bit more usable you are going to need to download a program called Nutrak. This program will generate a GPX file for you which can be opened with Google Earth and various other programs.

Note: I believe by recording your moves once, it activates the automatic recording of every journey you ever take, ever.
Note2: I managed to find the post where I originally discovered this, he also gives nice pictured instructions, you can check it out here. Fairly old hack.