Hackerspaces

Pretty good amount of chatter out there on Hacker Spaces. These are collectives where fellow DIY enthusiasts can get together and share ideas, equipment and know-how. Here are a few essential links.

Wired Blog article on the rise of Hackerspaces
Hackerspace.org
Wikipedia Entry on Hackerspaces
NYCResistor

DIY Washing Machine Repair

In this new era of austerity, it's pretty hard to bite the bullet on a new washing machine when the old one breaks. Mine went down a few weeks ago and was able to fix it for about $60 bucks.

I have a Kenmore 110.49722990 (what product manager came up with that?). I was unable to find an online manual, but did, somehow, mange to find mine. I guess I can't upload that file to blogger, but will find another way to publish it for others. (post a comment if you are interested)

Mine was unable to go into the drain and spin cycle, so I guessed correctly that the pump was not working. When I took it out, I discovered it was full of nails! Whoops.

Here's a few useful links:

E-how: How to diagnose washing machine problems
Appliance and Air
Fixya.com

Parts:
Partstap

Open Source, Hacking Economics

As a regular listener of Econtalk, I'm excited to see a show dedicated to open source, hacking, and FOSS economics with Eric Raymond.

I took a few econ courses in college and find economics interesting and ridiculous in the same breath. One joke describes economics as the "painful elaboration of the obvious"." Well, real economics is anything but obvious and open source software/hardware challenges many of the established assumptions in economics, so this should be interesting.

Here's the link: Econtalk

First Post

Just started this blog. My DSL is down (using my phone right now), so that's it for now.