René's old blog
Whatever I feel like posting, whenever
This site goes back some twenty-five years, so it is bound to be full of stale links and irrelevant information. It is, at best, updated irregularly.
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There are many rowing regattas in and around Venice during the summer, with various kinds of boats participating. The Regata di Mestre is the first of the season, and it was held last Sunday, May 10th. My initial plans were…
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Justine and Barry around Sardinia
I’ve just heard from Justine than she and Berry have arrived safely in Fertilia, thus finishing their circumnavigation of Sardinia. Not clever finishing on May 1st. May 1st is a holiday in Italy and everything is closed 🙂 Congratulations to…
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St. Mark’s paddle
April 25th is the day of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice since his relics were taken to the city in AD 828. I haven’t heard of any official celebration, maybe because the day coincides with the national celebration…
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At the Pagaia symposium
We’re getting ready for the symposium dinner tonight here in Port de la Selva in Catalonia. The trip down here by motorcycle went well, but took a bit longer than planned. We’ve really enjoyed the first two days of the…
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Installing newer ALSA driver on an Asus Eee Pc 1000H
I have Debian testing on my Asus Eee Pc 1000H with Linux 2.6.26. The ALSA driver therein doesn’t fully support the Eee Pc 1000H (and therefore neither the 901).Sound playback is fine, but the microphone doesn’t work. Installing Linux 2.6.28…
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iPod Classic finally working
A while ago I had the opportunity of swapping my 60Gb iPod (5G) for a 160Gb iPod Classic (6G), and naturally I accepted, only to be bitten by the “No music” bug. The old iPod, and an iPod Nano I…
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Dear Venice, happy 1588th birthday
On Annunciation Day in AD 421, on the 25th of March, three Roman tribunes from the nearby Roman city of Padova participated in the consecration of the St. Giacometo church at Rivus Altus in the Venetian lagoon, thus formally founding…
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Sardinia Circumnavigation
Justine Curgenvan and Barry Shaw are almost on their way to Sardinia for a circumnavigation of the island. They’re in for an extraordinarily beautiful journey. I wouldn’t mind doing it again 🙂 I wish them the best of luck.
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Theme park Venice
Venice used to be a big city. Actually, it used to be a small empire, but that’s a few centuries ago now. Venice grew slowly from 130,000 in 1861 to almost 175,000 persons in 1951, but since then the city…
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Poor gondolieri
The gondolieri of Venice are a poor bunch, working day and night and hardly managing to scrape a living out of their business. There are only about 400 professional gondolieri prowling the canals of the city with tourists. The official…
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III Symposium Internacional de Kayak de Mar
So, now we have signed up for the symposium in Spain – the III Symposium Internacional de Kayak de Mar – held in Llança/Port de la Selva in Catalonia on April 4-5-6 followed by additional activities in the following week,…
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Weekend trip
Its been a rather slow kayaking winter until now, I’ve only been out paddling a handful of times, plus a couple of pool sessions. This weekend I’m going to do a bit about it. My local kayak pusher Kajakhotellet.dk is…