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Fujifilm FinePix A205 - Great for Auction Photos!

This may not be the best camera for family photos, but it is an excellent camera for eBay photography and website images. I bought this camera in 2004 to review for my friends on the eBay Photos/HTML help board, where we were discussing the best-for-the-buck cameras for eBay product photos. It's still my eBay camera in 2010. It has all the features you will need at a great price point. eBay auction photos are a mere 1/4 to 1/2 MP, so I use this camera at its LOWEST setting for eBay product photos (1/3 MP or 0.3MP) and they are then downsized for auctions. The important thing to look for in an eBay camera is Macro (closeup) focus. Zoom is not important for product photography and MEGApixels are a waste of disk space for eBay photos. High megapixels are only important if you want quality prints on large sheets of photo paper. You will need to learn 4 things to use this camera for eBay photos: * disable the flash (a lightning bolt with a circle-slash over it.) * closeup macro setting (the little tulip flower symbol) * white balance (a Lightbulb symbol for those yellowish indoor shots, or Sun symbol for the bluish outdoor photos) * EV - exposure compensation (plus and minus numbers to lighten or darken the scene, if your camera's automatic-exposure looks too dark or light.) Armed with those settings, I have taken great photos with this camera in very poor lighting situations. No more worries about those indoor winter shots! Of course, you can set the camera on full auto to get great daylight photos. The downside to this camera is that (1500ma) grocery store batteries won't cut it. You will need higher-amperage (2200ma) alkaline batteries - or better yet, do as I have done and purchase a $20 battery charger and a couple of sets of NiMH rechargeable AA batteries. With two pairs of rechargeables, I can always be charging one set while using the other. You'll save on battery costs in the long run. The camera should come with a memory card, a USB cable, and a CD. You will not need any of the other accessories that are available for the camera. At the camera's lowest setting, you'll get 119 photos on that standard memory card before it's time to download to your computer. If you have a card reader, you won't need the USB cable, and because I have an XP machine, I did not need to install the CD. I could simply plug the camera cable into the USB jack and turn on the camera. Then I could look in MyComputer for the camera drive in the same fashion as looking for a CD drive or floppy drive. After opening the folders in the camera, I am able to highlight the whole group and drag the camera photos to my desktop or MyPictures folder on my computer. The CD also included the Fuji FinePix Viewer software, so I gave it a try. While that software allowed me to rename, rotate, crop, resize, watermark, and compress my photos, I found the software a little odd and foreign to use (maybe it was written for Mac users). Since I already had other image editing software on my computer, I decided not to install it when I moved to a new computer. Instead I use free www.irfanview.com software to edit my images. If you want to see some photos I took, take a look at the review and Quick Start that I wrote years ago for my eBay friends: www.isdntek.com/demo/camera_a205.htm www.isdntek.com/demo/camera_a205_settings.htm If you are buying a camera for eBay photos, you can't go wrong with this camera or any of its upgraded versions (A210 and A330).

Scruffy Utility towels

These thin scruffy towels are exactly what I need for drying my animals and lining pet beds. Importantly, they absorb quickly and dry quickly, and I don't worry about abusing the towels. I've also purchased the hand-towel size as mud towels for shoes and dog feet. The washcloths are ideal as general cleaning rags. I keep a couple in each bath. The scruffy nap is perfect for cleaning sinks, faucets, tubs, kitchen appliances, cars, and more.

The low-cost Atmel 8052 microcontroller is a reprogrammable solution for many types of projects

The Atmel AT89C52 is a workhorse microcontroller based on the ubiquitous 8051 family of processors. Because of its popularity, a multitude of development tools, tutorials, and premade codes are readily available. This makes the device an excellent entry-level IC for those just getting into the field. The Atmel product contains flash memory that holds its program when the power is off and that can be reprogrammed many times over. This extremely versatile general-purpose controller fits many different task-specific functions. The Atmel AT89C52 is available in a number of different package styles (40-pin DIP, 44-pin PLCC, and 44-pin QFP) with commercial or industrial temperature tolerances. The DIP package is the easiest to work into breadboarding applications. Remember to add pullup resistors to the databus lines (many neglect to do this). The AT89C52 can be substituted wherever an AT89C51 was used, as the main difference is that the AT89C52 offers increased memory. A higher clock-rate device can be substituted for a lower-clock device, as the rated clock speed is just the ability, not the requirement, so the same crystal will work. And the industrial temperature tolerance can be used instead of commercial. Thus, parts with better specs can be substituted for parts with lower specs and will run the same code in the same hardware. The downside is that the AT89C52 version of the device is non-ROHS and was discontinued several years ago. Finding these devices is a boon to hobbyists and repair outfits who want an exact replacement or easy soldering. But don't fret that your application will become obsolete due to using discontinued parts. The AT89C52 parts have been replaced by drop-in ROHS AT89S52 chips that are currently available from Atmel (recently acquired by and relabeled as Microchip). Unfortunately, the new ROHS parts require higher soldering temperatures, so the older parts are still ideal for hand repairs and breadboarding. In using these devices over the past two decades, I have been happy with the low failure rate, the very long shelf life, and the ease of reprogramming.