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Home→Categories Tech Stuff & Internet  
 

Category Archives: Tech Stuff & Internet

This category covers topics related to the internet, such as website reviews, what to do if your email gets hacked or you encounter malware,  and book reviews on topics of this nature. The websites I review here can be on any number of topics so long as they relate in some way to simple green living.

This section also has articles and reviews about technology. For example, here’s how to easily password-protect a USB flash drive. You’ll find my favorite mp3 player, my favorite cheap LED flashlights, and more. Solar backpacks, for example.

Tech stuff and the internet… love it! 

Cherish the Ladies: Enjoy Their Celtic Music Online

Simple Green Living

We went to a delightful Sunday afternoon community concert this week. Cherish the Ladies is a longstanding Celtic group of women musicians. They had two really good male dancers with them as well. At least the one named Gary was superb, but Jason had an injury and just made a cameo appearing, walking stiffly. “He’s only eye candy today,” cracked Joanie Madden when she introduced him. They have already left Silver City for another town in their peripatetic life on the road,  and I can’t go back in time to the magical moments they created. So I have found some … Continue reading →

What Are the Best Flashlight Gift Ideas?

Simple Green Living
flashlights make great gifts

Flashlights make great gifts… for children and adults, for birthdays and holidays.  So I’ll provide you with a selection of flashlight gift ideas… I’m following Amazon’s categorization of household flashlights as handheld, keychain, lantern, and headlamps, and I’ll recommend some of each.  If you are in a hurry, . When I wrote a rather long article about the best cheap LED flashlights, I realized that we didn’t ourselves really have enough flashlights, and I got some more. I would say that for most people, a Christmas gift of a flashlight would be appreciated. For example, it’s great for all tool lovers, men and … Continue reading →

How to Convert Old CDs to MP3 for Free

Simple Green Living

If you have a lot of old music CDs around, wouldn’t it be nice to condense them all into something you could put on an MP3 player? It’s easy and free. I did it on my Windows 8.1 laptop using Windows Media Player. It can be done with other versions of Windows and with Macs, and there are other programs you can use. But Windows Media Player is free and works great. I got started with this when I wanted to give some of my old CDs to a friend. Once I discovered how easy it was to do, I … Continue reading →

How to Set Up a Renogy Solar Starter Kit

Simple Green Living

We were chatting with friends the other day about solar panels for RVs and cabins. I suggested they consider RV solar panel kits and offered to do some research. I like the idea of kits for most people because you don’t have to be particularly knowledgeable. Typically you get a better deal on a kit too. With our U.S. power grid in not-such-good shape (link to my article about this), getting a small, inexpensive solar kit offers a significant level of versatility. So I went looking for solar panel kits. When I sat down at my computer, I soon discovered the immensely popular . That … Continue reading →

How to Password Protect a USB Flash Drive Easily

Simple Green Living

Have you ever put important information on a USB drive, also known as a flash drive or thumb drive? It’s a really good way to keep a backup of information you might need handy, from passwords to family contact information to financial or insurance data. Lots of people use their USB drives for these purposes, carrying them around without password protection, like in the old days of floppy disks.  I did that for quite a while with a flash drive on my key ring, I admit it! Really, Why Bother to Safeguard Your USB Drive? The little drive can fall out of a … Continue reading →

The Best Cheap LED Flashlights: Affordable and Effective

Simple Green Living

Interested in cheap LED flashlights? How cheap? I was surprised to discover that there are flashlights that cost several hundred dollars, used in law enforcement and for tactical applications particularly. But since I was thinking of getting a few LED flashlights of various types that would be reliable, sturdy, and pretty bright,  my needs fell in the cheap flashlights category. So I’ve been researching… Five of the Best Cheap LED Flashlights Want to cut to the chase? Here are five that are very popular, well-regarded, and of course inexpensive. They all had thousands of reviews! Click on the image or the title link to find … Continue reading →

The Sandisk Sansa: The Best Portable MP3 Player?

Simple Green Living

When I began using my little Sandisk Sansa Clip Disk in 2013, I was convinced that it was the best portable MP3 player out there.  Why? It plays a variety of file types, it’s easy to operate, easy to find files, easy to carry around, and on top of all that, it’s economical. It may not be as stylish as an iPod, but I was getting a device for listening to music and I cared about value, not looks. I’m still using it regularly, but I want to get another portable player as well, as I’m going to be copying my favorite CDs over to something I can … Continue reading →

Solar Panel Backpacks Charge You Up

Simple Green Living
woman holding a backpack with a solar panel

Solar panel backpacks are a great way to keep your electronics charged, whether you are out and about around town, on a hike, or perhaps coping with the electricity being off.  The backpacks vary in how much space they have for holding things and in what they are capable of charging. For example, a laptop will require a much larger solar panel (and more sunshine) than a cellphone, digital camera, or GPS device. The more solar power you require, the heavier the batteries are likely to be, but they will also give you more power after the sun goes down. On cloudy … Continue reading →

A Cappella Christmas Carols

Simple Green Living

I keep running across a cappella Christmas songs and carols, and loving them, so I’m just going to collect some here to share.  The beauty of the voices can be stunning! Pentatonix: The Little Drummer Boy This is the video that inspired me to write about a cappella Christmas carols. I knew about this group because Kelly and I had just watched Pentatonix: On My Way Home, a delightful documentary about them and their a cappella singing… the link is to that program on Netflix, where we watched it. Then bingo! I was delighted to find their collection  at Amazon, where … Continue reading →

A Dread Encounter with Malware

Simple Green Living

When Kelly got a big mess of malware on his computer this past Friday afternoon from an innocent-appearing download, he could think of nothing else. He ran a full anti-virus scan, and that did catch one of the several programs, but it must not have known how to handle it as it kept asking Kelly what to do. Just what he was asking too. He commented on how hard it was to separate his computer from his own mind and thus how hard it was not to take it personally. He couldn’t use any of the three browsers he had on his … Continue reading →

Some Favorite Inspiring Quotes

Simple Green Living

I love inspiring quotes. When I read one on Pinterest, or Facebook, or anywhere else, I love the quick little moment of uplift that I get. Sometimes the humor is stronger than the uplift, but that’s fine with me too. Here on this page I’ll put some of my favorites. You may also enjoy reading about how I make Pinterest pins, another article on this site. Here are some of my favorite quotes… This Mexican proverb, “Conversation is good for the soul,” goes well in my mind with the image which shows the results of our shopping trip to the weekly … Continue reading →

How I Make My Pinterest Pins

Simple Green Living

Here’s how I make the pins I put up on Pinterest. Maybe this will be helpful to you. There are a lot of different ways to do it, of course, but since I’ve had Photoshop Elements for years, I use it. Some notes on the steps: 1.  I like to use 600 pixels wide, 800 tall, and 72 pixels per inch for the resolution. I could go taller for infographics. You can use different dimensions if you wish. 2. I find a picture or texture that I want to use for the background. Since my husband Kelly has taken thousands of … Continue reading →

Make a Free Website: How and Why

Simple Green Living

If you are starting out to build an online presence, you may want to make a free website to get going. WordPress.com and Weebly.com are my two favorite places to do this.   Both of them offer you a lot of options in terms of design and features. You may eventually outgrow them, but I will describe ways you can upgrade, and when you should. What is a WordPress.com Website Good For? It’s great for a personal website or blog. People who have other websites sometimes create a free website to be a sort of feeder to their main site. … Continue reading →

If Your Email Gets Hacked

Simple Green Living

Yesterday a friend of mine had his email hacked. I knew it when I got an email from him that began “Hey check this out!” as he doesn’t write like that. (I like the feature in gmail and maybe in other email companies now, where I can see the first line of an email.) It was a rough day for him as he dealt with the ramifications, changing passwords on other accounts he has, worrying about his online life, and so on. The One Thing You Can Do Right Now to Diminish Your Chances of Getting Hacked Change your password, … Continue reading →

Hamlet’s Blackberry

Simple Green Living

is a book by William Powers which has a lot to say about simple living. It talks about how hard it can be to be away from your online connections, through cellphones and computers both. And how easy it is for us to skip from one thing to another so quickly that we never have time to concentrate. I didn’t realize how bad it can be out there in the big world! Living in a remote small town and having a home business that rarely involves any kind of clients, Kelly and I are pretty insulated. Powers begins with a section … Continue reading →

Approaching the Limits to Growth: The Footprints of Consumption

Simple Green Living

A friend recently sent me the link to Paul Chefurka’s thoughtful website called Approaching the Limits to Growth. He writes long articles and I was pleased to see the small print at the bottom which said, “This article may be reproduced in whole or in part , in any manner and for any purpose whatsoever, with no restrictions..” So I tried to copy one article completely, but I wasn’t able to cut and paste the illustrations. Still, here is the start to his thoughts about consumption, overpopulation, and the planet. There’s a link at the end of the excerpt right … Continue reading →

A Huichol Encounter

Simple Green Living

At the annual Feria del Arte by Lake Chapala, Mexico (near where we lived for five years), I was at a booth featuring Huichol art. I started chatting in Spanish with some of the Huichol people there. One woman answered me in English that I immediately recognized had to be her native tongue, and it was. Susana Valadez is an anthropologist who went to the Huichol region to do fieldwork. She ended up falling in love with one of the Huichol men she met. They married in 1978 and have three children. As Susana discovered over time, the traditional ways … Continue reading →

Zen Habits: Website Review

Simple Green Living

Recently I found myself at Zen Habits because I had come across a link to an excellent article on the site,  Simple Living  Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life. It’s a guide to getting rid of what is less important to you in your life, so you can concentrate on what you really care about. That could be anything… the article is full of suggestions like decluttering, simplifying work and home tasks, eliminating the clothes you don’t wear, and so on. There are actually 72 ideas on the list, and many of them have links to other articles of … Continue reading →

Make It and Mend It: Website Review

Simple Green Living

“Because life’s too good to throw away” is the tagline for www.makeitandmendit.com and I’ve just been having fun meandering around the site.  Their main categories are Food Garden Interiors DIY Household Fashion and they also have tabs for stories, events, resources, and a forum. You can sign up to be a member and if you do, you get a useful free ebook on how to remove stains from everything. (Wish I’d had that quite a few times in my life!) The site is run by four energetic women. How do I know that, since I haven’t met them? Well one … Continue reading →

A Couple of Natural Building Websites

Simple Green Living

  Here are some of the sites of my husband, Kelly Hart. He is passionate about natural building. [1] Greenhomebuilding.com This is Kelly’s largest site. It’s got hundreds of pages on all aspects of green home building. The easiest way to find something specific is the search box in the upper right of the home page or on the bottom of most other pages. The table across the top is on every page, and will take you to the various categories of the website. That “Ask the Experts” section draws on commentary from some three dozen experts. Readers send in questions, … Continue reading →

How to Use Twitter for Greening the Earth

Simple Green Living

Want to do something to help the earth? Try Twitter! It’s a social networking website which anyone can join for free, and many thousands of people and businesses have. You can find people who share your interests and communicate with them via 140-character posts. You wouldn’t think you could say much in a tweet, as these posts are called, but you really can, by shortening urls and writing succinctly. Still, I was on Twitter for over a year, just tweeting now and then, before I realized its power.  I just used it casually, in connection with my interest in dog … Continue reading →

About 12-Volt Portable Solar Panel Systems

Simple Green Living

A very popular type of  system is the 12 volt one, often written as 12v.  You might wonder how much energy 12 volts can really provide.  Such a system would be inadequate for heating your house, but you could run some  portable devices, or you could recharge their batteries, assuming they were the rechargeable kind! Keeping car, RV, boat, and cabin batteries charged is one of their main uses. The portable panels for a 12 volt system operate in the same way that large solar panels do, but naturally since they are smaller, they generate less electricity. Like larger ones, … Continue reading →

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