Happy Thought for 1 September 2023

Have a Happy Thought: 

Ok maybe more of a useful thought or Public Service Announcement this week. While many of us have a drawer or filing cabinet with old user guides and manuals, you likely have at least one appliance or gadget in your home for which you don’t know where the user manual is.

 

Never fear, the interwebs have you covered! This archival website has gathered together 3 million user manuals (and counting!) for all sorts of gear, appliances, even crafts!

https://archive.org/details/manuals

 

Maybe you’ve always wondered what the inside of a vending machine is really like:

 https://archive.org/details/necta_Smart_service_manual/page/n9/mode/2up

 

Or maybe you have an old Lego set, but have lost the instructions to put it together?

https://archive.org/details/lego-6270-forbidden-island/page/13/mode/2up

 

Or maybe you’ve just bought a new-to-you camera and need to figure out all of the buttons (and bells and whistles):

https://archive.org/details/manuallib-id-2622677

 

 

The Manual Archive is just a small part of the overall Internet Archive, which also has free (and out-of- or non-copywrited) books, movies, music and more; and also, of course, is the home of the Wayback Machine, so you can see what a website used to look like… maybe interesting to remind yourself what web pages were like, back in the days of dial-up? (check out that second headline!!!)

https://web.archive.org/web/20000815230848/http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,,FF.html

 

Finally, if the user manual tells you that it’s not user error this time, the machine/appliance/whatever is actually broken, I also just learned about, and therefore had to share, this New Zealand-based website that can help you find those hard-to-replace bits and pieces of appliances, so you can repair rather than replace: https://www.needapart.co.nz/

 

Happy fixing & reminiscing!

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