Oliver Jobson

Category: Technology

  • Guide: Converting MP4 to WMV video files on a Mac (for free)

    The free and quick way to convert MP4 to WMV (or MP4 to WMV) video files on a mac ffmpeg will be your friend here. It’s a command line tool, but don’t be scared – just follow these steps: Install Macports by downloading the OS X Package Install file and following the instructions from the…

  • Fix: Windows iTunes Audio Config error: no sound-card, Server

    TLDR – no sound card on my windows 10 media server stops iTunes loading properly with windows because of an error message. Here, I show how installing a simple virtual sound card/device gets around this problem. The problem: I run a virtualised, ‘headless’ server environment at home. Because it is headless there is no local…

  • Shortcut: how to zoom in and out in Excel, Word 2016 for Mac

    Shortcut: how to zoom in and out in Excel, Word 2016 for Mac

    I used to be able to quickly zoom in and out in Excel 2012 for mac. I think I created a custom keyboard shortcut to do this in the old version of excel by using the ‘cmd’ and ‘+’/’-‘ keys ( setup in the OS X Keyboard preference panel), but after upgrading to Office 2016 this…

  • How to: VNC to Ubuntu from Mac client over SSH Tunnel

    How to: VNC to Ubuntu from Mac client over SSH Tunnel

    I’ve configured VNC for ubuntu on a couple of occasions and it’s always taken me far longer than necessary. This time, after having a server compromised recently I wanted a more secure way of connecting to VNC from remote locations so here I will also explain how to setup an SSH tunnel for the VNC…

  • OS X Mavericks & Vodafone Mobile Connect k3565 rev. 2

    After updating my mac to mavericks I had an issue with my Vodafone mobile connect K3565 (rev.2) usb dongle not working. It wasn’t straight forward to get it up and running either, so I thought I’d share. I ran the uninstaller and installed the latest version of the software which *should* support the K3565 –…

  • 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.