If you think I should have your e-mail address

[kestrell]

you should send me an e-mail. Galatea, my little laptop which went with me to MIT and upon which I composed my thesis, finally gave up the ghost. She was noble enough to give signs of failure, so I had enough time to back up my files, but not my address book.

Now I am trying to learn how to use Hypatia, my Mac Air, which looks like even more of a "Death Sliver" than Galatea did. Progress is slow, because most of the how to books only describe how to do things using a mouse and graphics, so I'm still trying to figure out how to get files from a USB onto the Mac Air using keyboard commands.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Aieeee.

Although it can be done in the Finder, it will be easier done from within an application.

The Address Book system utility can grok (import) contact information that you have saved or exported from other applications in vCard, LDAP Interchange Format (LDIF), tab-delimited, and comma-separated value (CSV) formats.

If you have enough access to turn that data into one of those files, then start Address Book. Command-0 starts an import, and you can open the file anywhere on your hard drive. The upper right hand text box provides string search for your HD.

[kestrell]

The task which I am currently trying to figure out is, once I have plugged in the USB with files on it, how do I move the files from the USB to the Mac Air? In Windows, as soon as the drive recognizes the USB, it asks what sort of files you wish to use and prompts you with the appropriate app, such as "Open folders with Windows Explorer." When I plug the USB into the Mac Air, I don't get a prompt like that, and I can't find my way to a directory tree to use copy and paste. I asked Alexx to look at the screen to find out if there was a visual message I wasn't hearing, but there wasn't.

Do you know how to do this using the keyboard? I figure once I figure out how to get ebooks on it, I will be motivated to learn how to read, write, and edit text, which is the main task for which I use the laptop.

[jesse_the_k]

In my experience the Mac Finder (parallel to Explorer but without web connections) is grumpily visually oriented. As I was typing this comment, my trackpad fell apart. While I know lots of keyboard shortcuts, I can't navigate the interface entirely with the keyboard, so I am gonna bow out until my fuckin' machine gets fixed.

You might want to check out Pathfinder, at this website. It's a single-window, keyboard-oriented alternative to Finder. It also offers tons of power user features, and I don't know how well it hides them. On the other hand, access to the Unix command line might actually be helpful in terms of file manipulations.

Here's a roundup of Finder alternatives — end users are sighted; I hope there's a Blind-Mac-Group to advise you as well.

[kestrell]

Thanks for the resources! Bookshare does have a book on using the UNIX command line in Lion, so perhaps I will try to read that one.

There is at least one Mac list for blind users, but it is very high in snark, flames, complaining, mocking Windows users, and long rambles about the iPhone, not to mention *too many people who don't bother using their spellcheckers!* so I have subbed and unsubbed a number of times and mostly come to the conclusion that the signal is not worth the noise. Users also typically fail to give their posts useful subject lines, so attempting to do Web searches of the archive has a high failure rate, also. Someone wrote a guide for blind Mac users, but it costs $78, so I'm being stubborn about buying it.