Converting your old PC into something useful again!

What are you talking about? I hear you ask.

 

My personal example is a Dell Inspiron N5050-5436 from about 2012. It happens to have belonged to my mother-in-law.

 

She told me, do something with the Dell, “before I kill it, or someone!” and being the kind and considerate gentleman that I am, I sat down and thought, hmm, what can I do to get this ole Dell productive again?

 

I thought:

• I can go retro and install XP on it, but, hmm, viruses; spyware, malware etc., nope; very, very bad plan, ole boy.
• I can go with a linux distro! But then again, I know very little about linux, and I cannot be bothered to go and do the research, so again, nope.
• My last idea was to install Chromium on it, and I thought, how would you do such a thing?

 

So, how do you install Chromium on a laptop, and what do you have?

 

So after I decided to install Chromium on the Dell, I was wondering how to go about this thing. I decided to employ my best friend Google and search for “How to install chromium on pc”.

 

Unsurprisingly, results were plentiful! I looked at quite a few, and in many of them the name Cloudready popped up, over, and over again.

 

Thus, I decided to go take a look at the Cloudready website and thought, hmm, let’s give this a go.

 

Instructions on the website is about as clear as you can get, and also very easy to follow. Thus, the Dell Inspiron Chromebook was born.

 

As a blind individual you will find very limited info on Chrome OS, and this is for a very simple reason. It is the simplest usable system I’ve ever worked with. I would go so far as to say it is beautiful in its simplicity.

 

In years passed, Chrome OS was basically a glorified, bootable web browser, but those days are gone. There are very few things I haven’t found a way to do, the most notable, playing audio games, but that is not really my interest anyway, so I can’t really give a damn.

 

So, what is the old PC good fore now?

 

I think the most important thing to the blind community is communication, and one of the most important tools for this is Skype.

 

There is actually an extension which would launch the Skype Web App, and, yes, this is fully accessible. It does not quite work in the way you may be used to, but if you have used the new Windows 10 version, you would be okay.

 

Google Docs, Googles word processor reminds me in form very much of Word 2003, no ribbon menus!!! It is easy to use. In Chrome OS you use it like you would’ve done Word 2003, Alt to get to the menus and all.

 

I would expect Sheets and Slides to be similar in function to their Office counterparts.

 

Chromevox as a screen reader in Chrome, the browser comes up short, but in Chrome OS where it is the only option, it shines. It does exactly what you need it to do, exactly when you need it.

 

My conclusions?

 

I will not do this, but if I have to, I could quite happily do everything I need to in Chrome OS.

 

It is something I would recommend you give a shot if you are tired of antiVirus software, Windows updating your computer when you don’t want it to, overly expensive screen readers not doing the job any more, or even if you just have a bloody old Computer, and, yes, this will work on a Mac to.

Returning from a reborn MacBook pro

After an unbelievably long absence, I would suppose, mostly caused by laziness, but also in part by a very slow and sluggish MacBook; I have returned.

Now you may ask, how? The answer is actually rather simple. A bit of money and elbow grease.

 

If you read the Apple support pages, you will find that the mid 2012 MacBook Pro that I own, is user upgradable.

 

They claim that users should only upgrade the RAM. However, once you open the unit, what lies before your eyes? Why! The hard drive; and what do we do with slow hard drives? Rather obvious, we replace them.

Now, you may ask, why are you so gleeful? I suspect, the answer to that is rather obvious in retrospect.

 

I took my stock standard mid 2012 MacBook Pro with 4 GB ram and 5400 RPM HD, and revived it with 16 GB of RAM, even though Apple claim only up to eight will work and eight 240 GB SSD drive.

 

Now before you think, hey! Let's go to the shop, get ram an SSD and do it, be aware of several factors.

 

1. , The newest MacBook Pro that can be easily upgraded in this fashion is the mid 2012 MacBook Pro. None of the retina models is very user upgradable, in fact, you can only upgrade the storage as far as I can tell. What you buy, is mostly what you are stuck with. Why do you think, Apple still sells the mid 2012 MacBook Pro?

 

2. Different models of MacBook Pro uses different frequencies DDR3 ram. An example of this, the mid 2012 MacBook Pro uses 1600 MHz DDR3 ram. Other models uses different frequencies. I do not know these off the top of my head though. There are several excellent references online regarding this matter.

 

3. Do not try and replace only one of your ram sticks!!! If you do, you may have more trouble than you had before the "upgrade." There are technical reasons for this, which I will not go into at this point. If you wish to know more, look it up. Also, do not mix and match RAM brands. If you wish to do so, make sure the timing on both RAM sticks are the same, for if they are not, nothing good will happen.

 

4. Make sure you have a back up of your Mac available!!! This is critical!!!

I would personally make a clone using something like carbon copy cloner because that clone is bootable. Very useful in later stages of your upgrade.

 

Okay smarty-pants, what do I need to do this?

 

To open the unit, you need a 00 Philips screwdriver. There are 10 screws around the edge of the bottom plate of your MacBook Pro. These are the smallest screws I have personally ever dealt with. Please make sure that you have a place two keep these safe. Three of them are longer than the others, those are the three from the back right corner of your Mac, working along the back edge.

To replace the ram once inside the unit, you do not need any tools.

 

There are several excellent videos on YouTube demonstrating the procedure.

 

To replace the hard drive, you need an extra tool, which is a T6 screwdriver. I will not attempt to explain how this is done, go see on YouTube. Once again, they are excellent videos on the topic.

 

So, what now? Now, I hope you did the sensible thing, and used an app such as carbon copy cloner to create a bootable back up of your Mac. If you didn't, this is going to become very tedious very quickly. If, however you did, this is going to be a snap.

 

Once you've booted into your backup drive, go and format your new SSD drive in the disk utility. The defaults should work, I named my new drive Macintosh SSD, the format should be "Mac OS X extended journal" with the partition scheam GUID.

 

Now, clone your backup to your new SSD and shut down your mac.

Remove the external drive and hit the power button. It should be about 45 seconds, and voilà, you basically have a brand-new Mac. Mine was slow and noticeably old before the upgrade, now it is snappier than it was when I bought it in early 2013.

If you decide to go ahead, please do your research, a Mac is expensive, and the parts you will need is not cheap either.

Transfering files from a Mac to your android device: Here's how if you are using Voiceover

Hi there everybody.

 

I was sitting here bored, and decided to take a gander at an old problem many people have been facing over the years.

 

I saw that many of the Mac using folks on the Eyes-free mailing list for Android suggest using Windows for transferring files between a mac and android device. , If you are like me, and hate Windows with a passion, then you would go, no way, no how.

 

I did everything in my power to avoid this torture, up to and including using dropbox. This became a slight problem when I wanted to transfer an audiobook of almost a gig in size. I played with the problem for a few days and here is a reliable step by step. It works, believe me, I tested it thoroughly.

 

1Go download Android File Transfer.

2Copy the Android File Transfer.app file from the .dmg called the same, which should now be in your downloads folder.

3Open this app after plugging your phone or tablet in to your mac using the appropriate USB cable. The app may launch automatically the first time, it definitely will on subsequent connections of the Android device to the Mac. The first time you open the app you will get an alert from your mac, just hit Ok, it won't break your machine, and if it does, reinstall your OS, it's not that hard.

4You will now be in a window named the same as your device, for example, GT-N7100, in this example, a Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

 

In this window, you will find a table, if you are using Voiceover. Obviously, being blind myself, I do not know what this might look like for the cited user. This is where you will see all of the files you have access to. I do not have a Micro SD Card in this phone, so am not sure how to get to it, but I suppose it would be quite obvious, though irrelevant at this point.

 

If you are a Voiceover user, do not bother trying to drop a file or folder in a particular location. It will not drop, or should I say, after about 250 attempts, I have not gotten it to work yet.

 

Now for the part most of us blinks  complain about. How the hell do you fix it so the finder and Android File Transfer is visible at the same time? Especially when you can't see the screen yourself. , Ok, here we go, it is really not that hard, give it a shot. If you can't do it, you can ask for your money back. ... Oh yes, I forgot, I did this for free.

 

First find the file/s you wish to copy to your android device in the finder, then make sure when you hit CMD tab from either the finder or "android file transfer", you reach the other.

Now, go to "android file transfer" and press CTRL+Option+Shift+`(Accent), on most keyboards, this can be found just below the escape key and to the left of 1. This should bring up a window resize menu. The last option in this menu, is "resize and move to section". This is the option that you are looking for. When you press the right arrow on this option, you will find several options. I personally prefer to split the screen down the middle, in other words, use "resize and move to left half section", press CMD+Tab, you should now be back in the Finder "resize and move to write half section" by following the steps above.

 

What you have done in the steps above, is make both the Finder and "android file transfer" apps visible at the same time. This is required to drag-and-drop.

 

See? It is really not that hard. Now, here comes the nerve wrecking part.

 

It is not dangerous or difficult, it just sounds weird.

 

Now, in the Finder, find the file or folder you wish to drag. Market for drag-and-drop by using CTRL+Option+,(Comma). Voiceover Will say, marked for drag-and-drop.

 

Switch back to "Android file transfer" using CMD+Tab. Do not worry about your position in the window, it does not matter. Drop your file or folder by using CTRL+Option+.(Full stop, period for you Americans). Your Mac should now be making weird sounds. This is quite normal, you do not have a snake in the room, unless it is your pet, I hope.

 

This generally takes somewhere between 30 and 45 seconds, maybe a little bit more for a large file.

 

From here everything is done on your android device.

 

Use your file explorer of choice, mine is ES File Explorer, and place the file where you want it to be.

 

I hope this has been useful to somebody. Please let me know.

iBooks with voiceover: how to.

Dear reader,

 

I know that we all have heard lots of horror stories about iBooks for Mavericks, I might even have spread a few.

 

I have done some investigation in the meantime, and have found an efficient way to make use of this app.

 

The first problem you will usually find, is difficulty with reading book titles, authors etc. 

 

This is easily fixed by selecting the list radio button.

 

Another common problem is not being able to open a book. This can be also fixed by selecting the list radio button, interacting with the table with the books, and using command oh to open the book.

 

Reading books is a bit more complex, but each chapter has its own HTML content area within the scroll area. I usually read my books in iOS, thus have not really read using iBooks for the Mac. Will post a second blog on iBooks at a later date.

 

More from me soon.

Some of the quirks of Mac OS X Mavericks

Hi there,

 

For those of you who have updated to Mac OS  Mavericks, you might have noticed A few quirks. One of the most interesting of these, is noncontiguous selection.

 

In Mountain lion, if used to be VO command space, but that keystroke has now changed to show an actions menu. The keystroke has now changed to VO command return. In the past, you had to hit the VO command space twice to start the selection process and once for every item you wanted to select. This is not true anymore. You can now use VO command return on the first item you want to select. This will immediately start the selection process.

 

Being that I only have the one working hand, IAM not sure if this will work with quicknav turned on.

 

There are still a few quirks that needs sorting out, but I will get to those in due time.

 

Please leave a comment if you have any more information on any quirks of Mac OS Mavericks.

 

I hope you found this useful,

 

More from me soon.

BBM and some of its inadequacies

Dear reader,

 

This post is regarding a relatively new release on the iOS app store, namely BBM, (BlackBerry messenger)."

 

I will say upfront, what I have to say is not necessarily very nice.

 

First, the setup. Obviously, installing the app is as simple as they usually are, in other words, extremely so. The issues begin with creating your own BlackBerry ID. the sheer amount of information required strongly and not pleasantly remind me of South African bureaucracy.

 

Okay, now we have the setup done. Annoying yes, but not completely undoable. 

 

The problem comes when excepting invitations from people, or rather, trying to do so. When catching an invitation from the lock screen on your phone, it is no problem whatsoever. If, however you missed the invitation, you will have to wait for the next invitation to come through and hope you catch that one on the lock screen. If not, the cycle starts all over again.

 

That is not the only issue however, if and/or when you are trying to communicate with someone, you cannot send any media using voiceover. Thus, no photos, videos or voice notes.

 

With all the other messaging apps out there, I can honestly and with a clear conscience say, this app is totally redundant, unnecessary, and unnecessarily inaccessible.

 

If you like redundant, incredibly difficult to use and just plain pointless apps, feel free to go ahead and get it, I will start praying for you.

Have updated my contact details

Hi there folks,

 

For those of you who would like to lay your grubby paws upon me, I have added a list of ways for you to contact me by editing  my first blog post, "introducing myself". 

 

I think I did quite the job on this.

 

You can get a hold of me via, Skype, email, twitter and Facebook.

 

Feel free to do so. No, really! I am not shy