Dad called last night because his Time Machine was not backing up. So tonight we had another mac session. Here is what we went covered:
- Time Machine: To check the status of time machine you can open ‘System Preferences’ and click on Time Machine in the ‘System’ row, second row from the bottom. Or, if you have the circular arrow with either the clock or the ! in it in the top bar of the screen you can just click that. Then I showed him how to make sure his Time Machine hard drive was mounted on his file system and if not, how to connect to it. Pretty easy,, we started a back up going and moved onto other things.
- Dad wanted the pictures from the Cool Hannah Pics web page the we keep with mobile me. He had figured out how to download them one at a time by going to each picture, clicking the download link and then, after it downloaded, in the downloads window he would click the magnifying glass to ‘Open in Finder.’ Then from finder he could drag it into iPhoto. “Very good!” I was proud of him and congratulated him for his investigative efforts. Then I told him that there is an easier way. we copied the link to the rss feed on the page and then went to iPhoto. Use the menu at the top and click: File>Subscribe to Photo Feed. That gives you a text field that you can paste the link to the feed in and then his subscribe. Voila, Under Subscriptions a new entry appeared called ‘Recent Updates …” I think the to Cool Hanah Pics gets ct off. then I showed him how to click the little circlular arrow button nect to the subscription to update it with the latest photos. Now he will always be able to get the latest, coolest Hannah pictures in iPhoto.
- Then Dad said he had one more question. And he suprised me with what he showed me next! Really surprised me, I was so proud of him! he went to the apple logo in the top left of the screen and clicked on clicked Recent Items. Then he asked whats this … pointing to the Shared drives of my moms computer. I totally forgot that I hardwired her computer to the Time Machine router because it does not have a wireless card in it. He was digging around and found her shared folders where mom keeps some folders and other documents. He asked if he could drag any of that onto him computer. Of course I said, “yes, you can even drag the images directly into iPhoto.”
It was a good session. I am glad he is chipping away at it. A couple hours a day and figuring out new things for himself. Not bad for having it less than six months. I think learning to compute is kinda like working on a car … you just need some patience, perserverence and critical thinking ability to help you figure out what you want to do. Then its just a matter of trying different things until you get the results you want. Whether its finding a networked drive, figuring out how to curl xml and parse the results (what I was doing today in php land) or changing the drum brakes on my truck. Somthing My dad taught me how to do when I was a child. I don’t think he realizes it but he gave me many different ‘sessions’ when I was little and and thats why I can do things like minor maintanence on my cars and also why I don’t mind at all when he calls up and says, “Hey Matthew, I have a question for you …”
