Personal Techology Project Funding?

[Theory5]

Hi everyone, Its your friendly Internet college geek! I haven't been on in a while due to school work. Which is actually kind of ironic because I am supposed to be working on a speech that I have to give tomorrow :-P

Anyways I am bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. BORED. We've all been there at one time or another. So I want to do something interesting. I TRIED dual booting slackware, and its fun, except my wireless card is a BROADCOM and if anyone has ever tried to use a broadcom P.O.S. with linux, its annoying. So I came up with a new idea. I want to design, build, and implement technology, or find fun things to do with existing products. By design I dont mean electrical engineering, I mean doing things with computers, hardware, software, etc. And then blog about it. What gave me the idea was the Ikea Helmer cluster. Unfortunately I don't have any new technology to blog about, or money for new technology, since I am in college. This is where you say "get a job!" and where I rebut with "I dont have enough time for a job that pays minimum wage to get the type of cash I need! Nobody is hiring part time, internship or non-profit! and The economy is still recovering, so no small businesses are hiring that I asked. Plus there are only two fast food places in providence and I think they are using kids from the highschool!"(pick one).

So I was wondering if anybody knew of any sites that give funding for personal (and maybe someday profitable) projects. I can think of many ways this would help me, a few being that I learn more about my chosen field. I finally have some quality time with linux. And when nobody is around I can tinker instead of sitting on my but watching TV!

I heard about these e-begging sites but they all want me to pay 50 bucks to sign up then 9 bucks a month! So does anybody know of any legitimate websites that fund small personal projects?

Thanks,

Theory

[Theory5]

actually I just found a good one called Kickstarter

[Tormod]

Hey there old friend! The Ikea cluster is a really cool idea. Making things and blogging about them is interesting - what sort of things have you thought of doing?

[Theory5]

Nothing that I have really fleshed out yet. I was thinking of building a tiny storage server to start off with, or another computer that i could integrate into other projects, a liquid cooled computer that doesnt use hoses etc etc. I don't have many objects to cram computer parts into at the moment, but if I manage to get funding I will have a brainstorming session :-) Oh, and I am going to build my own computer cases.

I have found a website that sells motherboards for very little cash, I think the cheapest one is around $18 dollars at geeks.com So I will want to learn how to cluster. Those are just a few ideas off the top of my head. Ill probably think of more tomorrow.

[Theory5]

And I found another site called IndieGoGo which doesn't have quite as strict policies for creating a project. In Kickstarter my project was turned down.

here it is at the IndieGoGo site http://www.indiegogo.com/Custom-Computer-Designs#share