These are things that work for me. Nothing for sale here, just ideas for useful stargazing.  If you have one or can give me a link to one that you know of, I will post it here.
5.  The 'holey' Telescope (2010-1214) This seems to be a good idea, at least for this telescope. I would say 'follow me' at your own risk on this one.   I have had this scope for years and it has always performed great when used visually, but I have never gotten decent lunar or planetary images.  After I got such good images from the 10" Orion a couple of months ago, I decided that the metal tube cooled faster and minimized tube currents.  This 8" has a sonotube with a couple of coats of paint and I decided it needed ventilation.  Thus the 'holey' scope was born.   This 8" scope has a 1/10 wave University Optics mirror (F/6) with a 1/10 wave secondary.  I re-equipped it with a 2" Orion Crayford focuser with electric motor focusing.  I added an inside/outside thermometer to the tube to compare external and mirror temperatures.  A fan was added to cool the back of the mirror quickly.  Even with all this I could see that I had tube currents and that the sonotube was causing the system problems.  Below is a view of the main mirror.  It now has four 4" holes around it for ventilation and to allow tube currents out. This is similar to the set up for side mounted fan cooling, but without the fan.  Since the scope is bound for NM and it is often breezy, this may well be front cooled by passing breezes. It is interesting to note that the holes are big enough to allow dust removal without moving the main mirror.  If moisture condenses on it, a heat gun can be used to remove it.  That usually isn't a problem in the desert.  No matter what direction the scope is pointing, there should be a hole available for rising heat to leave the tube.  Goodbye, tube currents!
So it met its new 'first light last night (12/13/2010) with the Canon T1i attached.  I had purposely adjusted the new focuser so that it would at prime focus with the camera.  Unfortunately it then turned out that when a barlow is used one needs an extender. (You just cannot win).  So how did it perform?   I have a  pic posted from the session below to the right. It was taken with a 2x 2" powermate (barlow) When I went out last night from an unheated garage at about 40 deg to the 16 degree outdoor temperature, I turned on the rear fan.  The temperature gauge showed the outside and mirror temperature were within 2 degrees Celsius within 20 minutes and I began to take pictures.	First light for the 'holey' scope.  The pictures I got (with the camera discussed below) are the best I have seen from any of the 8" scopes I have owned.  Sea of Nectar is shown.
5.  Canon "Live View Cameras" (2010-0827)	I recently purchased a Canon "Liveview" camera (X1i).  I bought it because it would do HD video and I thought that I could use that to photograph the moon and planets.  It produces highly compressed MOVs that can be converted to avis in the included Canon software. It turns out it doesn't work well in the video mode because it it automated and there is no way I could find to adjust the ISO or exposure.  The moon was a white orb with 3 craters at the terminator.  I was complaining to a friend and he pointed out an interesting piece of Russian software by Aleksey Chernov on sourceforge.net.  It is free, and runs in several modes on the camera.  It is called Canon EOS Movie Record. I have found I like TV mode.  It runs on your windows computer and records a compressed AVI directly to your computer.  Initially it shows the whole chip binned 5x so that on my camera I get a 940x630 (approx) video display.  I can click on a 5x electronic zoom which gives you a 1x1 binned 940x630 view of any part of the chip. (You can use this as a finder scope of sorts.).  I get about 14 fps if I leave the display on. That jumps to about 22 fps if I turn the display off as I record.  You can adjust the ISO, exposure.  I have been taking the pics at 1/500 sec which really freezes the atmosphere. To the left is a picture I took this month using this method and a Meade 5" achromatic refractor using a green filter.  I found the green filter helped bring out shade variations on the maria.  The AVI was adjusted to grayscale.  The only requirement to make your Canon camera a great planetary shooter is that it have "LiveView" as it uses that to make this work.  The AVI produced is compressed and cannot be directly read by AVIstack or Registax.  If you run it through Virtual Dub (another free program)  It will be decompressed and run fine in either.
4. Wooden Piers - 2010-0809 This is pier #2 in its latest modification.  I had one tall pier and one short one and decided the short one was too short.  I took a 12" piece of 6"x6" and mounted it on top of the pier with straps.  I made sure there was ~1/4 gap or more and that the new top was level and drilled screw holes.  I then removed the screws and filled the gap with construction grade liquid nails.  Remounted the top section and wiped off the excess liquid nails and allowed it to dry.  Now the mount is 12.25" inches higher with still no vibrations.  Try that with a metal pier.  The tool box mounted on the "computer shed and warm room" opens to allow cables to pass through to the mount.  There is a second pier and toolbox on the other side of the shed to capture the parts of sky blocked by the shed.  Yeah we are scraping the shed and getting ready to repaint.  It needs it.  The GM8 currently is holding a Canon camera, but can hold whatever one wants.  I keep the mount covered with a weather proof cover, and only need to polar align once each time I come out to the place.  The dog is my astro-companion 'Vega'  Green grass is courtesy of the 2010 Monsoon season.	I have been using wooden piers for 3 years now out at my place in N.M.  and have now put one in in St. Louis.  They are sturdy, steady, and cheap.  What got me started was reading on line about piers and several folks had made "temporary" piers of wood to hold their mounts.  I also read about guy who put his metal pier (~$2000) in with 80 bags of concrete to be be sure it didn't move (btw 1/2 bag of concrete will do that too, unless of course there is an earth quake in which case the earth will move whether you have 300 bags of concrete).   Anyway, metal piers sometimes show resonance (ring like a bell) and there are all sorts of ways to dampen that.  Wood is not homogenous and resonance is not an issue.  It is an awfully good value at $23.  ($20 for the wood, $3 for the concrete).	The real trick to a wooden pier is that it be dimensionally stable.  Since I am out in south central NM where humidities go from 0-100%, but are mostly near 0% I was worried about this.  Still I am a chemist and I know the new latex paints are more like a plastic coating than paint. (just take the quarter round out on a latex painted room and watch how the paint separates --it separates like a sheet of plastic.  Anyway I determined the length I wanted, bought a 6"x6" 8 foot long post for outdoor use ($20) and cut it and then painted it with primer and a good quality latex.  The post was essentially sealed from the environment.  I dug a post hole and put the post in with 1/2 bag of concrete.  (about 40" deep); It was a 6" posthole digger and there was very little room around the post so it only took a little concrete to fill it.  I put rocks and gravel at the bottom to promote drainage as is normal. Since I have a GM8 mount, Losmandy sells a GM8/GM11 adapter for a Meade tripod for about $90-$100 depending on where you buy it.  I bought mine at OptCorp.com.  This device looks like a GM8/GM11 mounting on top, but has holes in the bottom.  One large central bolt and 3 non center bolts in bolt this onto the top of the pier.  Since I made sure the pier was level, so is the mount.  I can now just drop the GM8 on this and go.  The piers are already 3 years old and I see no reason they won't have a life of at least 15 years at this point.
3. Cheap SCT electric focuser: (04/30/09)	This started out as a project to reproduce a cheap SCT focuser from an article on the internet:  http://emediadesigns.com/focuser/    I substituted a DC motor purchased at allelectronics.com.   After building it, I found I had a problem.  While the motor would run slow or fast, once it stopped while running slow it would not restart.  Not good for final focusing.  After talking with a friend who know more about this than I, I found that it is a common problem.  DC motors require more power to start than to run.  Special circuitry is required to avoid that.
	I had purchased an Orion electric focuser for my ED-80, then one for my Dynascope 6".  I really liked them, but they don't have an adapter for SCTs.  I had taken it apart ;-), and knew it used a DC motor.  I tried plugging it into my already made SCT focuser and it worked fine!  Below are pics and info on parts.
Parts:	The pulley came from the hardware store and is one of those from the bottom of a sliding door.  The foam cylinder that enlarges the focuser came from a blank 50 CD disk container. It was grooved slightly with a dremel tool.	This is a ~2 hour project.  I used 5 minute epoxy to fill in the pulley center.  I drilled a small hole in the center and epoxied it to the motor shaft.  I epoxied the motor into place, and the 4 pin adapter into place.  I love epoxy.
All electronics: (allelectronics.com) I have built two of these now, and they both work great.	12 VDC 58 RPM MINI-MOTOR CAT# DCM-318 O-RING/ BELT, 2.5" DIA. CAT# FT-3	ABS PROJECT BOX, 2.51" X 1.73" X 1.25" CAT# MB-131
I also needed a couple of wires and a 4 pin female phone connector to match the Orion controller.    These are hard to find.  However, phone handsets are connected to the main body of the phone with a 4 pin cable.  I went to a second hand store and got an old phone for $1.  It provided 2 of these connectors.	I have since located a $15 motor controller kit at Surplus Shed which works fine. I did replace the forward-off-reverse switch with a intermittent forward-off-reverse switch from allelectronics which automatically turns off when you let go.  That gives finer control when focusing.	Either the Surplus shed or the Orion controller work with the motor setup.
2.  Want a  cheap quantitative clear sky meter? (04/13/07) IR thermometers make a great clear sky meter. I just purchased a Cen-Tech non-contact pocket thermometer for $9.99 (normally $19.99) at Harbor Freight. Its range is -27 to 230 F and it also has a clock and stopwatch for the money. If you point it at external objects you get the temperature of the object. Point it at clouds and you get the temp of the cloud bottoms. (last few days here have had the clouds at around 32 deg while the temp of objects is around 45-55. This morning I pointed it a clear sky and got a reading of -26 deg. there were a few very thin clouds and I pointed at them and got +1 degrees. So here is a temperature sensor that allows you to quantitatively determine sky clearness. All for $10.
1 Portable Observing Drawers. I made these so I don't have to make a lot of trips out when I want to observe.  The keys are that it is portable, mobile, and the drawers "lock" closed for moving. Notice the rod in back.
It runs through eyeholes on the back of each drawer to lock them for transport.  The two wooden "skis" are bolted the bottom of the truckto support the drawers.  Attachment to the top of the truck are by nylon ties. 04/13/07  Since the pics have been taken I have added some red leds to the top of the truck to illuminate the top so it serves as a small desk once out in position.