We have a zine library!

Yes, yesterday we collected zines from many of the folks who frequent our meetings. We have over 100 zines on topics ranging from Poetry, Feminism, Anarchism, Queer, DIY, Prisons and Criminalization, and a whole bunch more. If you have zines you wanna give to us to photocopy, we can return them after we're done, so come to a meeting or get in touch with us.

We also have a Yard Sale/ Bake Sale coming up on March 27th. All the proceeds go to the Infoshop. We're gonna have clothes, books, records, vegan donuts and other baked goods. So come and hang out with us, grab some stuff, and eat some donuts. We'll also be having our next meeting after the event, so if you stick around you can help us continue to push for this space to become a reality. Here's a flier, post it far and wide.

Putting together a Hacklab...

Being sort of the unofficial techie of the group so far, I'm putting together some info on what we need to build a decent lab when space becomes available. Our best hope at the moment is to put together as many donated machines and spare parts as we can so that the cost can be kept under control, we'll have enough to worry about when paying for some of the network and server side of things.

So here's what we need, any computer parts or entire machines made in the last 6 years. This includes:

• processors, and motherboards which support them, of chip-sets Pentium 4 and better. P3's are just not up to the task I'm afraid. I haven't worked much with AMD processors, but if that's what you've got then we'll do our best to see if we can make it work too.

• Memory, DDR2, any clock speed.. faster is better, but we aren't worried about bleeding edge.

• Hard drives aren't crucial, we actually don't need much storage to start, but they'd be nice. SATA will be more useful that PATA.

• Cases/Power supplies, as many as we can get, any quality.

• Monitors, dido, though Id like to avoid CRTs.. we'll take what we can get.

• Keyboards/mice are cheap, if we get them donated its great, but buying them isn't going to hurt us.

We really don't need cd/dvd/floppy drives, these days usb drives are cheap and effective. If anyone wants to donate usb drives, we would be more than happy to put them to good use.

Obviously, any fully working tower is amazingly appreciated since we don't have to resort to building a Frankenstein machine. However, building machines from spare parts is an awesome way for people to learn about how computers work and to get familiar with the components.

The network side of the lab is going to need lots of Ethernet Cables, or Wireless Cards. We plan on having both a Wired and Wireless network so either option will help keep everything connected. We'll also need a few small routers/switches.. the cheapo netgear/linksys variety will do nicely.

The core/border router, wireless AP, and the server(s) will be the larger price-tag items, and we'll worry about those once there is location to start setting up at.

So, If you have machines, parts, or anything you'd like to donate. Toss an email to the Google group and we'll see about getting a place to start putting everything together and testing equipment.

We have a wish!

Or a wishlist, plenty of wishes aside yes, but if you are looking for a way to help out the project, especially as we get nearer to opening consider donating good books to our lending library, or buy us one of your or our favorites from Amazon. We have a wishlist up that will grow, and if you'd like to purchase one of the books (or better yet, purchase it from an independent bookseller and donate it), it will be a great help to us.

http://amzn.com/w/2NZHZS4TBT6R7

We have a number of great events coming up, at least 4 in the next month that will help us to raise funds for opening the space. Movement is steady and energy is high. We've also added some additional authors to keep everyone up to date on what they've been doing to help the space open. So keep your ears pricked for more news from us.