Oliver Jobson

Author: Oliver Jobson

  • Easily convert MKV to MP4 (or M4V) for Apple TV

    I have posted about this before here but I have recently found a better way to do this involving a little mac application called ‘subler’. It doesn’t convert the mkv, but just converts non-standard audio (DTS/AC-3 etc) and then recombines (muxes) the original video with the converted audio and places it in an m4v (or…

  • Building a Wake On LAN REST service in PHP to remotely start machines on your network.

    Building a Wake On LAN REST service in PHP to remotely start machines on your network.

    Newer update: a much better script over at GitHub can be used on a local web server, such as a Raspberry Pi. It uses a local file as simple storage so that you can add a list of local machines. Then, when you run the script, you can just select the machine you want to…

  • Contact Form Spam

    Not seen that before: This morning I received some spam through a web page. However, this was contact form spam that was promoting software to spam contact forms. ffs… I suppose at least I’m convinced the product works, unlike most of the contact form spam I receive. Not sure I’ll be following it up though.

  • Mobile Friendly Sites = User Unfriendly?

    Many agencies love mobile ‘friendly’ sites because it’s another item to bill a client for. Personally, I can’t stand mobile versions of websites. Very few are done well and consumers don’t buy modern smartphones (with fully capable browsers) just to be redirected to a crippled, impotent, information-shy version of the web.

  • Muxing MKV to MP4 file container without converting the video (for Apple / Samsung TV)

    I was trying to find a way to easily get MKV’s on to my TV, either by converting them to MP4/M4v and putting them in iTunes and out via the Apple TV or by streaming them directly to my Samsung TV. I did find a pretty good solution to this… but I recently wrote a…

  • Mod Rewrite – Redirect a request URI from subfolder to a higher folder on the webserver

    I googled this for ages but I could not find the answer – all the posts I found were about how to just re-write how urls were displayed, because you would usually use the redirect command in .htaccess in order to redirect the browser request to a different resource on the server. You wouldn’t usually…

  • Configuring SSL in MAMP 2.0.5 (the free version)

    I’ve been trying to configure my MAMP installation (NOT the paid version) to accept SSL for a recent project that I am working on. A lot of MAMP SSL tutorials are out dated and do not work for MAMP v2+ (2.0.5) and some just don’t seem to work so I had to do a lot…

  • SalesForce.com web-to-lead: Filtering out SPAM

    SalesForce.com web-to-lead: Filtering out SPAM

    Having no in-built method for filtering out SPAM in the SalesForce.com Web-To-Lead form is a real pain and a popular subject in the forums and something that many will find to be enough of an issue to go back to doing it the old fashioned way and inputting leads manually – this is a waste…

  • Recording visitor source / search term in web contact form

    Recording visitor source / search term in web contact form

    This post is now an archive and the information may no longer be accurate / relevant. Ever wanted to know where your valuable website leads were coming from so you can identify your most profitable sources of web traffic and direct your online marketing spend accordingly? Well I just figured out how and I thought…