Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Parallels WorkStation Tip #1 (CD/DVD)

If you insert a disk into a Mac with Parallels Workstation running, it often thinks the CD or DVD was meant for it, and then the disk doesn't appear on your Mac desktop. To make Parallels give the disk up, go to Devices > CD/DVD-ROM and then choose Disconnect. The disk will quickly appear on your Mac desktop.

The reverse is also true. If the Mac desktop was active when you selected the disk, your Windows machines under Parallels won't see the disk. Go to Devices > CD/DVD-ROM and then choose Connect, and presto changeo, there it is.

3 comments:

Daniel McKenna III said...

I enjoyed your "Blogger" book, and immediately created a blog. Now I am enjoying your HTML book, and want to use all the examples in my blog. Will I be able to delete the whole template, in order to create a "tabula rasa" and build from scratch, or will it conflict with all the database-type stuff and proprietary Blogger formatting. I am sorry that this has nothing to do with Parallels Workstation, but I read that you sometimes respond to questions (some reference to "geekiness").

Liz Castro said...

Well, if you're creating a stylesheet for a blog for Blogger, then you have to use Blogger's template tags if you want any part of your blog to be included... if you know what I mean. I've made a whole table of them so that you can figure out which template tag goes to which pieces of your blog. You can find it on my Blogger VQJ site.

Is that what you meant?

best,
Liz

Liz Castro said...

Possible? Definitely. But perhaps not elementary. The ordering part requires a secure server so you don't have your visitors sending credit card information without some protection. The sign-in part could be as simple as http authentication (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html). Posting pictures is easy and can be done just with HTML (although a more complex system might involve other technologies, like JavaScript, Flash, or whatever).

You don't say if you have any programming expertise, but to set up such a thing yourself, you would need some.

You might also think about taking advantage of a service for viewing photos that already exists (http://www.flickr.com, maybe?) to save yourself some time and not reinvent the wheel.

It's a balance. If you do it all yourself, you get to make it just the way you want, but you get to do all the work. If you use someone else's solution, you save time, but you have to do it partly their way. Both options can be valid, you just have to choose.

Hope that's helpful.

Liz

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