Pictures of Paddle Steamers Click to Enlarge

 I think all of the photos should expand to a decent size with a bit of clicking, tapping or wosisname.

 Royal Sovereign at Margate Jetty 1928

 Queen of Thanet

 Queen of Kent

 Essex Queen

 Southern Belle

 Cynthia

 Talisman

 Royal Sovereign

 Conqueror 1897

This map which should also expand to big enough to read with a bit of clicking, dates from before the arrival of railway trans here in Thanet. Stage coaches travelled at about 5mph and were expensive.

The paddle steamer provided a reliable and fast, about four hours service from London Bridge, back in the day before the train, making Thanet one of the few viable and affordable journeys for most Londoners  

This is a piece from my copy of Richardson's book, Fragments of the History of Ville and Liberty of Ramsgate, about the local paddle steamers.

On to today's pictures

 I am still using the Nikon P610 which I bought secondhand in November

 these first three shots all being taken from Harbour Street

 The camera having put up with being carted around in my pocket for four months. They cost around £150 secondhand.

 As you can see from this series of shots the zoom is pretty good

 Considering the shots are all hand held, that is just holding the camera up to my eye and not using anything to steady it, the image stabilisation is pretty good.

 Of course later on when the Ship had got further away from Wetherspoons here in Ramsgate the distortion caused by moisture in the air becomes a factor.

 Another thing is that a brighter day can give a sharper image.

 The strange orangey red line at the top of the hills on the other side of Pegwell bay was really there, mid afternoon, not a sunset so probably due to air pollution or atmospheric conditions, I tried verious camera settings.

 Light setting wise, you can't reabrightnesslly win all the time with camera's, in this one my watercolour paining is about the right

and this one the view is nearly in the right brightness ballpark.

Old photos, a bit of paining at the Pav, perhaps a bit of a ramble.

Another lazy blog post done by just taking photos of a few old postcards and loading straight from the camera's card.

 Broadstairs in 1969 is a bit of a spot the diffrence

 I think this is late 60s

 and a close up from the same card which shows the glass wind screens on the bandstand

  The Granville before WW2 as the end closest is still there

 I can't make out the date on this one

 Margate before 1912

 Margate jetty before 1907

 A bit more on the sketch in The Royal Victoria Pavilion Ramsgate aka Wetherspoons, over supper this evening, spot the difference link to larger photo

My cheap Chinese phone Oukitel K3 which I got about a year ago has just started to fail after about a year, pretty much as expected. The OTG and OTG charging has stopped working. This means I can't attach a lead with a female USB socket to transfer photos from my camera's SD card, or use it to charge other devices like my sound cancelling headphones and folding bluetooth  keyboard.

The next one will be an Oukitel K8, the issue I have is that I don't want to have an expensive phone, or for that matter anything that costs over about £150 in my pockets, not do I want something that costs over £500 going out of date on me.

Work wise in the bookshop, a busy day

Link to the photos of the books we put out today

I think the slow drip of scientific studies showing that screen use over about 3 to 5 hours a day is bad for our brains is one of the things having an impact on people buying and reading paper books.

here is the link to today's news article

Just putting my sort of mechanic hat on at the moment and once again drawing people's attention to this news article

Link

The implications of being able to send something you can feel by email or on a website combined with the existing technology which can sense movement i.e. feel back are truly mind boggling.

We have been able to send and receive audio and video for over 100 years but touch I really don't think the implications have caught on yet. Perhaps the media are asleep.

Link