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Workaround: Parallels Desktop is not seeing my DVD Drive in Mountain Lion

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Today I wanted to install Windows 7 using Parallels Desktop 7 on my Mac, but sadly I always got an error message every time I tried. It was saying it could not connect to my DVD drive – which clearly my Mac could.

Doing some research it turns out that several people had this problem, however I didn’t understand the instructions given by Parallels very well. Getting frustrated I decided to write my own, and give you some pointers where else to look for help.

For this scenario I’m using a DVD copy of Windows 7 Home Premium and the latest version of Parallels Desktop 7.0.15107. Parallels Desktop 8 is already out but I’ve decided not to upgrade at this point.

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How to create an NSString from an NSDate

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NSDate *date = [NSDate date]; NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc]init]; [dateFormatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle]; [dateFormatter setTimeStyle:NSDateFormatterLongStyle]; NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:date]; First we’ll create a date object. Next we’ll create an NSDateFormatter and set how we’d like for display our date (and optionally our time). Then we’ll call the magical stringFromDate method which will create our string.

Where is the recurring payments dashboard in PayPal

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I keep forgetting where to find what used to be known as the Recurring Payments Dashboard in PayPal. They’ve removed this when they restructured their menus a while back, and since then I’m lost when I need to find and change a subscription payment that’s coming in. This option is now hidden in something rather … Read more

How to retrieve the current User Locale

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The following method will return a two letter code of which language is set on the iOS device in question: NSString *myLanguage = [[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]; There’s a list of language codes on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes Note that to compare the current value against a list of languages you support we need use the isEqualToString method. Here’s […]

How to bring back Scheduled Backups in Plesk 11

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For those of you who hadn’t noticed, automatic scheduled backups are no longer working in Plesk 11 with some distributions. It’s not just you, and it’s not just your configuration. It’s a known issue according to this forum thread.

Lucky for us there’s a simple script which can bring this ever so important functionality back. Why Parallels is not addressing this with a Micro Update is beyond me (we’re already at 11.0.9 MU15 and it’s September 2012 at the time of writing).

In this article I’ll show you how to install the script step by step. I assume you’re logged onto your system as root and know your way around the command line.

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How to move very large MySQL Databases

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I’ve been shifting some things around and came across several very large WordPress databases for a few projects I was hosting. The largest was 1.3GB or 317MB compressed (!) which obviously poses a problem. Most sites – even those of frequent bloggers – amount to well under 2MB when compressed, but Multi Site or BuddyPress databases can get large quick.

To extract a database from a WordPress site, I’ve always relied on the superb WP DB Backup by Austin Matzko but even that timed out after 170MB.

In this article I’ll talk you through how we can handle this. I’m assuming here that a simple phpMyAdmin export/import isn’t working for you anymore. This is by all means not the only way to go about this task.

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DNS Servers from OpenDNS

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I was on the phone to Apple Support the other day. Among many other things they suggested that I use the OpenDNS servers for local DNS queries on my system rather than mu router’s. An what do you know – they work faster indeed. Here they are – in case I forget: 208.67.220.220 208.67.222.222 To … Read more

How to fix Duplicate Counter Error in OSSEC

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You may come across a duplicated counter / duplicate error in OSSEC. This can happen when you try to add an agent to the server again which was previously added (say when you had to rebuild the OSSEC Server).

The agent is basically saying “hey I’ve got some data here which doesn’t line up with what I should be getting from the server”.

This problem can be resolved easily – let me show you how.

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