Happy Christmas and another lazy blog post

First the old local pictures, click on them to expand them, the lazy approach of just photographing ones near my desk and loading them to the blog.

 This one says C1904 on it

 The Sea Caves were a tourist attraction housed in Pugin's gallery in the cliff by The Grange which collapsed in 1947

 1937 postmark so before then

 Ramsgate old town hall now The Halifax

 1916 postmark so during WW1

 A possible solution to "I want a pony"

 Two halfs of the same postcard

 and here is the back ofit

So why post on Christmas Day? Well partly for the people who can't get out, don't have children who live at home - well that type of kidney. But a lot of it is selfish, if I get to Christmas 2028 I would like to be able to look back on Christmas 2018 and tell the difference from Christmas 2017.

Present wise I suppose the best recent one I have had was the Nikon P610, this is a hand held shot taken today of Deal Pier from Ramsgate.

Like most cameras, the main thing is learning to use it, with this one I still have long way to go. We went for a walk in Ramsgate today

Here are the links to the photos I took.

Link  1

Link  2

The pictures are in the order they were taken along the walk, which helps to understand the story they tell.

I am working up to generating if not New Year resolutions, the tweaks to life's directions for 2019.

I guess my latest change in the way I am going about things is related to the new research into screen use. The latest batch of scientific data published this month, which seemed to be hoping to show that teenagers and young adults should use their phones less. Well the prognosis is not good, it seems to be showing that a lot of screen use, including TVs and and computers, results in a 20% reduction in cognitive ability, curiosity and stuff.

A serious issue for me, as I have to use a computer to price books in the bookshop, the last paper secondhand book trade reference books were replaced with computer files in about 1995, with the new booktrade main reference work Books in Print going onto microfiche in about 1980.

I take there to be a reasonable chance that there is a relationship between watching TV when young and the increase in dementia when old. And while fortunately I have not watched much TV I have certainly used screens a lot.

The main thing I am doing is to turn the screen off while typing and switching to trying to read everything I can on paper.Trying to use mobile phones without the screen active, which is what I am doing now, this Christmas Day is a bit of a tricky business. I think close to writing a letter without l looking at the paper.

The other side of this coin is just as bad or possibly worse, particularly when associated with old people. Having a reasonably good up to date smartphone that you can use fairly well is a considerable aid to getting through disability, especially dementia and time in institutions.