If you’re in Cape Town and live within the city limits (see the map) you can pay your car license online using an EFT payment.

Head over to the Cape Town government site and fill in the online form. After a few days they will send you the amount, a reference number and their banking details.

After making the payment, I received my license in the post within a week!

Awesome. Now how about credit card payment facilities, please?

Saturday afternoon, I was quite surprised to see a rather large snake slither into my house from my back yard.

I grabbed my camera and took some rather close-up shots of it hiding behind a cooler box.

Thinking it was a rather harmless mole-snake, I moved the cooler box in an attempt to scare the animal back where it came from, but to my surprise, this rather non-docile snake reared up its hooded head, ready to strike. I have never moved so fast!

Considering my options, I phoned 10111 for some “advice”. The lady on the other end, amidst muted laughter, assured me that the she’ll send the police. Not even 2 minutes later, the police arrived. After a quick search, it turns out the snake had gone into hiding.

Unable to assist any further, the police called in a snake expert to assist.  After tearing up my garage and kitchen, he found it hiding in my kitchen cupboard.

One deadly Cape Cobra, ready to strike.

The snake was stuffed into a bag for transport - hopefully to a place far, far away from me!

E.T. Systems seems to have quickly taken over the garage door and gate automation market in Cape Town - every second person has one of those ugly, blue remotes - some with up to six buttons on them - attached to their key rings.

I recently had 2 of my remotes fail within the space  of a month and was off to E.T. Systems to acquire a new one (at a whopping R125 mind you!)

Here’s the simple procedure to sync your new remote to your E.T. Systems garage door:

The E.T. Systems remotes work by implementing some sort of patented rolling code transmitted by the remote and identified by the receiver. Without digging into details, this rolling code necessitates syncing your remote to your garage door.

To start, pop open the plastic cover of your garage door. Next, search for 3 pins labeled “BT LT” (bottom right of the circuit board in this picture):

The idea is to short the pin on the “BT” side with the middle pin - press the button on the remote that you wish to use to open the garage door and at the same time use something metal to “short” the pin labeled “BT” and the middle pin. You should hear a beeping sound which indicates that the operation was successful.