The Polaroid PDC 3050 Camera (and maybe the web doesn't know everything!)
I'm selling a digital camera and laptop [1] on ebay. I've had the camera for a while, when I bought it 3.8 Mega-pixels was a fairly high resolution for a digital camera.
When I came to get the technical specs for this camera there was almost nothing on the web about it, even on the Polaroid website! I was surprised, I always assume that the internet knows everything...
We bought the camera originally from Argos, so perhaps it was only ever sold through them, and not generally available. (Although there are plenty of references to the PDC 3080, which must be in the same series.)
One thing I did find, was a gallery showing various pictures taken with the PDC3050:
Anyway, for the sake of posterity, what follows are the bare details that I do know about the camera.
It is a 3.8 Mega-pixel camera, with 3x digital-Zoom.
- 16MB Internal Memory
- Takes SD (Secure-Digital) memory cards
- 3x Digital Zoom
- 1.5" Color LCD Display
- VGA Video Camera (640x480 pixel video and sound recording)
- 2272x1704 Pixel Maximum Resolution (3.8 Mega Pixel) (down to 640x480 minimum)
- TV-out
Other specs include:
- f=6.21mm, F/3.3, F/8
- Close-up mode
- Takes two AA batteries.
- Many display mode, including slideshow.
Now hopefully that will be useful to someone, somewhere, sometime. 
| [1] | Nice laptop by the way, loads of extra goodies; you should buy it.  By the way, I'm convinced that the secret of success for selling on ebay is all about the description. Include real images, be enthusiastic, and include all the details about the object you are selling. This may sound obvious, but I see a lot of poorly described items that sell for less than they could do. |
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-05-14 21:16:08 | |
Categories:
Technology
The Ending Counts
I've been busy recently writing a book. Yes, really. 
I am only a third of the way through it and it will be a long time until it is complete. I like to have a film or TV series on in the background whilst I write. That means I've been burnt my way through quite a lot in the last few months. My personal preference is for sci-fi / cyberpunk, which isn't too complicated. I can watch most things with only half an eye, so long as they don't get too involved.
This is good news for this blog, which is supposed to be about cyberpunk. The problem with cyberpunk is that most of its predictions seem to be horrifyingly accurate, so there isn't much to write about on the subject. Science fiction has moved on, and this is the first blog entry for quite some time which is even mentions it. Anyway, I'm drifting even further from what I intended to write about...
A good ending (by which I don't necessarily mean a happy ending) can make an enormous difference to a film. Two films with classically superb endings are:
TV series are a bit different. Looked at as a single body of work (posh hey!), they are much longer than a film, and so have to be more about the journey than the destination. This means that characters and sub-plots are all much more important than for a film. Every episode must have a story of its own, but the episodes must fit together into a coherent whole - which means that the series as a whole must have a point.
Series deal with this in different ways. Some have a single underlying story that the individual episodes explore, others series just have a background story that sets the scene for the sub-plots.
What is annoying, is when a series becomes successful, so the TV companies delay resolving the main story line in order to prolong the number of episodes they can make. After a while the series loses its point, and can fizzle out without ever resolving the plot. Even worse, some series get cancelled before they come to an end. You lose the opportunity for closure dammit.
My favourite example this is the television series Lost. The first series was mysterious, innovative and a great watch. It was also wildly successful, and in the second series (which I stopped watching), you got the feeling that they were introducing random and bizarre new elements into the main plot just to drag out the storyline. After a while you got the feeling that there was no answer, and no sensible resolution was ever going to be possible. Despite the clever sub-plots, for me the whole thing kind of 'lost' its point.
Series I've been watching more recently:
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An NBC TV series about genetic manipulation and sea monsters. A great series, if wildly unbelievable, with good characterisation. Unfortunately, it got cancelled after the first fifteen episodes and ends on a cliff-hanger. Most frustrating.
-
Ah, this one is cyberpunk. A genetically enhanced (do we spot a theme here?) 'soldier', escapes her barracks and tries to make a life for herself in post-apocalyptic (post-pulse) America.
Definitely good fun. The first series does tie up the major plot themes, but there is still no proper resolution. The second series leads towards a grand climax, and then ends... There is no third series, but it isn't an impossibility that one will be made.
-
A British drama series (actually two series), that has nothing to do with cyberpunk. I really liked the way they brought this to a close. Despite being successful, to have drawn it out beyond two series wouldn't have made sense. Knowing when to stop is a great skill. Highly recommended by the way.
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Not as exciting as the background story would suggest. The premise on which the series is based is: "a former cop who left the force to become a private investigator after beginning to lose her eyesight. Through her work she teams up with a 450-year-old vampire, who happens to be the illegitimate son of Henry the VIII". This just provides a stage for the individual episodes. OK I suppose. Not as good as the "Dresden Files" which occupies the same story space.
-
A powerful wizard called Harry, makes his way in two worlds. The world of the ordinary people and the world of wizards. No, nothing to do with Harry Potter.
Again, there is no single story line explored through the series, but its definitely enjoyable. Kind of a Psych that isn't crap.
-
There is a single story line moving through all six series, will the feds manage to arrest Tony Soprano the mafia boss. This story line moves very slowly, and barely surfaces in many of the episodes. The other sub-plots, which often span several episodes, are so good that this doesn't seem to matter. Having said that, they still need to bring the Sopranos to a decent close before it Jumps the Shark.
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Pure science fiction. Each series does introduce a major storyline, which does get resolved. The first few series are great, but by series five it has just got ridiculous.
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Intriguing series on a Canadian bio-tech lab. More 'science-faction' than science fiction. Another series that has sub-plots that span multiple episodes without having a single main theme. They're on series three, which I've just started. They could end this at any point without needing to bring things to a close (other than the perpetual 'will-he-get-the-girl' of course).
-
Aargh... This is the worst. A great start, novel story. Then they go and cancel it after four episodes. I feel cheated.
-
Now this is fantastic. I don't normally dig the super-hero thing, but this is awesome. How they end the first season will be very important though, I hope they don't screw it up.
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Another show that I really enjoy. This is another series which is wildly unbelievable, but it doesn't seem to matter. They've managed to draw out a 'simple' prison escape into two whole seasons so far, and have tied up around two-thirds of the plot elements. They've left the hero stuck in a different prison at the end of season two, and you wonder how much further it can go. It's possible that the third series could be terrible as the only plot left is the far-out conspiracy one. We'll have to see.
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This series isn't about genetically modified soldiers, its about an alien invasion that causes genetic modifications.
Another show that had promise, and then got cancelled before the end. Gahh. 13 episodes, so almost worth watching.
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I'm just starting with this one. It is based on a comic book character, and has several similarities with "Dark Angel". A genetically 'different' superwoman who works in a secret government team tracking other 'genetically different' people through various adventures.
There are a few more, but this was a brief tour through some of my mental junk food. I hope you enjoyed it. For the next third of the book, I intend to work my way through the Top 100 Movies Based on Comic Books. There are a few surprises in there, more films than you expect originated in comic books. 
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Posted by Fuzzyman on 2007-05-13 16:01:21 | |
Categories:
Cyberpunk, Life
Archives
The Old Blog Archives
There was so much ancient wisdom distilled into my old blog, that I couldn't let it just creep ignominiously into the pages of cyber-history. More to the point I'm still getting some hits from google with the old entries. Here are the archives of my previous Blogger based blog.
