We all know Etsy.com is one of my favorite places to shop – I love buying one-of-a-kind, handmade things. Here are some useful and fun finds to make your office or cubicle feel more homey, or to show off your geek pride. Ain’t no shame in it!

Felt Fabric Storage Bin Made by FreshStudio. She has a bunch of different patterns & styles – how cute would 2 or 3 of these look on a cubicle shelf? They’d brighten the place up & hide the mess. Yeah I’m a packrat, so I live by the “decorative bin” approach to life.	The Freakin Never Ending To Do List Made by FinchAndHawk. This snarky notepad won’t get your list done any faster, but it’ll at least make you laugh.	“A New Day” Photograph Print Made by ZuppaArtista. If you hung this in your office, it would be like taking a little vacation every time you look at it. This fabulous L.A. photographer chick has a great way of capturing a moment so that you feel like you’re there… I can almost smell the salty Pacific air.
Dry Erase Wall Calendar Made by SimpleShapes. Applied directly to the wall, this calendar can be wiped off & reused each month. I can picture this in a home office, or in a cool graphic design studio. Isn’t that the life?!	Rounded Felt Mouse Pad Made by FeltPlanet. No more icky, thin, plastic mousepads.. this is thick and soft Merino wool felt. Pick from 23 colors. Swanky.	Smiley Face Coffee Cup Cozy! Made by MouthyMitts. Okay, it doesn’t GET any cuter than this. Forget the little cardboard sleeves.. get your own reuseable coffee cup cozy with an adorable emoticon smiley face. Freaking cute.
Computer Power Tie Tack Made by CreativeDexterity. For your favorite computer man… because he’s got the power. (Yuk yuk yuk, I know, that was lame).	OMG Necklace Made by JL67. Yeah, this little sterling silver pendant is, like, oh my god, like, way too cute not to post. like, shyeah.	Wood iPhone/iPod Docking Station Made by Woodtec, this docking station is made of real cedar. “Reconnect with nature as you charge your apple devices.” I really want this.
Super Mario Bros hard drive Made by 8BitMemory, this classic video game cartridge contains a 640GB external harddrive! They have different game cases & hard drive sizes available. Old School Geek!	Ima.Mac.Girl Laptop Sticker Decal Made by LanaKole. Your MacBook needs some love, and LanaKole has tons of awesome vinyl decals for ya!	Darth Vader Laptop sticker Decal Made by LanaKole. Your MacBook needs some love, and LanaKole has tons of awesome vinyl decals for ya!
Mini Thank You Card Set Made by MailboxMemories. I had a boss who taught me how much a handwritten thank you note can mean to a client or coworker. There are some things that just don’t translate as well in an email; so keep a little stock of thank you cards in a drawer. You will absolutely make someone’s day! Talk about good office karma.	Live Moss Terrarium with Gnome Made by MissMossy. Do plants die in your care? Are the flourescent lights making you forget about the natural world outside? Get a little moss terrarium! They’re cool, they’ll bring some nature indoors, and they’re pretty much impossible to kill. Really. Spritz it with water once a month. Done. Cool!

I have a folder/file structure I like for organizing my photos. When I import a new batch to LR3, I choose “add” in the import window so that my photos stay where they are & aren’t moved or copied into the LR structure. Everything works fine.

I’d like to move some of my older folders/projects to an external hard drive, but still have them show up in my list of folders/projects. I also believe that the thumbnails of these images should still exist (for catalog purposes) even if the external HD is disconnected.

My question is this: What is the process for moving my photos to an external harddrive, in a folder structure of my choosing, and keeping the “link” to them in my LR catalog?

Can I simply move the folders to my new HD, then go into lightroom & click something to “repoint” to a new source folder?

The develop edits I’ve made to these photos are no doubt stored elsewhere in the “catalog”. How can I ensure these changes follow my photos once they’ve been moved?

This will be my long-term workflow: keeping only the most recent shoots on my mac, and then migrating them all to my external HD for storage. But I’d like to retain links to all of them for catalog reference.

I know this is a very specific question, and I hope it’s not confusing. My googling has come up with very general results, or it is assumed that my photos have been moved into LR (which I haven’t done). ANY ADVICE IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!

You’re just cool like that. Maybe you’ve got a tricked out Mac or Windows 7 at home. You’ve got the slickest smartphone with apps that do everything but make you coffee (although it can probably pre-order you one at Starbucks). And now you’ve got a rockin little netbook everywhere you go, to bridge the gap.

Or maybe you see no reason to pay thousands of dollars for ANY of the above, and you rock your netbook everywhere you go with everything you need at hand. You make the most of your money & just cut to the chase.

Either way, you always get questions and admirations when you pull the little baby out of your bag or purse. But you and your netbook compadre’s know the truth: Netbooks have limitations. So what’s a netbook rockstar like you to do? I’m in the same pickle, and have made some progress on my own. I also just read The Definitive Guide to Making the Most of Your Netbook (by Lifehacker, of course). And decided to run with a blog post, and am trying to keep it in the “layman” category. I leave hardcore, Yoda-style-geekery to my well qualified friends.

For me, it boils down to 3 universal limitations:

Little netbook, little ram, little harddrive: Get your google on. Replacing/upgrading the ram and harddrive in netbooks is often as easy as “unscrew tiny screws, take out old hardware, put in new hardware, screw tiny screws back in.” Well… that’s the gist of it anyway. There are mighty forums for every make & model – do a little googling to find out what type of ram you should use, and some advice from people who have gone before you. I’ve always found great deals on both ram & harddrives at NewEgg and TigerDirect.

Some of the itty-bitty netbooks with “flash” harddrives may only have a few gigs, the equivalent of a USB flash drive, and can be a little trickier. If dealing with computer guts makes you queasy, look into a service like DropBox or JungleDisk (my favorite). You’re used to storing your files on your harddrive, but these services are like having a “harddrive in the sky”. It looks & acts just like a folder, but the files don’t take up your valuable space. Even if you don’t have a netbook, this is a great way to backup your files. Your netbook could fall from your perch atop an elephant ride in Kenya into a muddy lake, but your files are still warm and cozy online.

Applications, Bloatware & Bandwidth-Hogging websites: Bloatware in laymans terms is “All that crap that comes installed on your new computer that you’ll never use or want.” To strip this gunk out, I’ve personally used CCleaner and recommend it, and the Lifehacker article recommends one called “DeCrapifier”, which I’m sure is great as well. Assess EXACTLY what you’ll be using your netbook for, then get rid of the rest. There are even special netbook versions of some applications (like browsers).

“Selecting applications for a netbook is a lot like packing for a camping trip. When you pack for a camping trip you select things for your pack that are efficient and lightweight versions of things you use every day at home, and you also pack things that are distinctly related to camping that you’d never use at home.” (Lifehacker article)

There are also netbook-friendly versions of some websites that are often “heavy” when it comes to bandwidth. YouTube is a huge bandwidth sucker, so they’re starting up “YouTube Feather“.

Battery Life: God I wish I had an answer. I have a Lenovo S-10 and it pulls a whopping 2 1/2 hours of battery life. What’s a girl to do? If you have any advice, please comment!

Just for you! Sites, articles & interesting tech folks I’ve want to share. (Tip: I use Delicious to manage bookmarks and assign a “blogworthy” tag for sites I stumble on. Makes it a snap to write a post like this – get right to the “goodie”!)

• FeedRinse.com – Filter your RSS feeds with FeedRinse. If that “1000+ new posts” stares at you every time you login to Google Reader, this little site can be worthwhile! I subscribe to Apartment Therapy, but they post more than any feed ever it feels like. With this site, I can set filter parameters “Ignore posts with [...] in them”, etc. Process: create an account, export your Google Reader feeds, import that file into FeedRinse, set up filter parameters, export the OPML file, and re-import it to Google Reader. Pretty quick & easy. NOTE: It will add all the feeds in as a duplicate and doesn’t put them back in folders you created (maybe you’re smarter than I though).

• mLearningAfrica.net – mLearning, or Mobile Learning – is a new education initiative in Africa. Why fight the trend? It is a mobile generation now, why not use the technology kids are already hooked on to augment traditional education? Mobile sites to practice algebra, researching projects via google mobile, connecting with other schools and students… it’s all very progressive! Man, would I have loved that in high school!

• TechSoup.org – Bringing technology to non-profits. Impossibly cheap software & licenses, bargains on refurbished computers and servers… just for non-profits. Kudos for helping others & bringing technology to those who really need it!
  
• CompletePlanet – a search engine for “Deep Web” research. Let’s face it: Google doesn’t always do the trick when you need to do some real research, especially for academic purposes. CompletePlanet finds topic-specific databases and search engines from all topics from agriculture to education to politics to science and more. For instance, I went to “education”, then “curricula”, and found links to databases full of curriculum and lesson plans. Fantastic!

• Tweak your way to a better finder – Useful and nifty tweaks for getting the most out of finder in Snow Leopard.

GetDropbox.com – at the risk of sounding cliche – has revolutionized the way I manage my files & documents.

I have a work PC, a window netbook, a Macbook Pro, gmail documents, lists on iPhone “notes” … just all manner of personal and work files spread everywhere. Budgets, resumes, professional photos, personal pictures, guitar tabs, wordpress themes, workout log, french vocab, photo biz documents, family geneaology research, upcoming nepal trek info, grad school pdfs… you KNOW what I mean!  Now, I keep “backups” of my computers and my professional photography on my Windows Homeserver. What I’m talking about here is just the “data of life”.

I needed:

1) A way to centralize all these files, so I could access them from any computer or device. And SUPER SIMPLE EASY to use.

2) Have them integrate natively into my folder structure on all these computers. I don’t want to always go to a website to manage the documents, it’s gets tedious & I quit doing it (eh-hem, like with iDisk, not so native for Windows). I just wanted a folder to show up in “my documents” or on my desktop that I can drag-and-drop the files to. And if I add or change a document in one place, it changes everywhere. But I did want web-access, if I’m on someone else’s computer or am travelling.

3) A way to share documents if need be: send my boyfriend the silly “hurricane drinking game” I wrote, send a family member an old photo I found of a great-grandparent, share a logo pdf file with a co-worker.

4) And the dream was to have an iPhone app for it as well.

BAM! ZAP! PING! ….. enter: DropBox.

It does all of this without blinking. It’s totally secure, and free (or cheap, for more storage options). I put all of these folders/docs/photos in my dropbox and can get them anywhere. Also, I won’t have to sweat it if one of my computers dies, or lets say, if I change jobs and don’t want to have that panic of “wait, did I forget about my personal budget files on that PC?!”.

And now that there’s a slick iPhone app, I can even upload photos I take (or already have in my album). I can send links to documents from within it. I can view all of my MS Office files (yes, even .docx), high-res pdfs, photos. There’s even a way to pick “favorites” – those docs you access all the time.

I think you get the picture, and why I’m so stoked! Check out their website for a demo. Also, pricing: 2G = free, 50G = 9.99/month, 100G = 19.99/month. I got the free option, and within 30 minutes had upgraded to 50G. I’ve nowhere near maxxed it out, but it’s worth the cost to me. Peace of mind that my “life data” is secure & universally accessible ROCK!

Here are some screenshots I made so you can see how it fits into my life. Click the first one & it opens up like a gallery, you can click “next” through them all.

Maybe you have some ideas for me?

I’m looking for an opportunity to volunteer with a technology/computer training program. I’m in the Tampa Bay area, and would love to find an existing program where I could first “shadow” or assist an instructor to learn the ropes, and then foray that into teaching a course with them on my own. If possible, I’d like to work with less-advantaged individuals, like at a center or shelter that provides job-skills training (one targeted to assisting women would be ideal). I feel that my geeky skills don’t mean much if I can’t share them. Helping people develop even basic computer literacy skills, Microsoft office training, and so-on can be such a boost for job opportunities & general confidence building.

I have never taught tech-ed specifically (hence the idea of shadowing first), but I have corporate training experience, have taught kindergarten (in a former life), and am currently Director of Technology with a local start-up.

I’ve done some cursory searches on “find volunteer opportunities in your area” sites, but none of the results have fit the bill.

I know this is a pretty specific request, so even if your ideas are not local to ME, maybe you could help “steer” me… a similar experience in your own life?