René’s old blog
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Paddling Planet
We’ve had Paddling Planet running for over a month now, and it seems to be reasonably popular and well used.
The site has about 100 visitors each day, which hopefully translates to well over 100 visits to the blogs on the planet. Few people linger on Paddling Planet, the average visit is less than 3 minutes, which is by design. Visitors are supposed to continue to one or more of the featured blogs, not hang around on the planet. It is supposed to be a place of transit, not sojourn.
About 45% come directly, that is from a bookmark or by typing in the address www.paddlingplanet.com. Some 51% come in via links from other sites, which I would consider the preferred way. Very few come via search engines, only 3,5%, which is acceptable since the site has no original content.
The Paddling Planet is most frequented from N.Europe (GB,Scandiavia,Baltic) 41%, N.America 31%, W.Europe (Germany,France,Benelux) 12%, S.Europe 7% and Australia/NZ 6%.
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What kind of argument is this?
From Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format. “They have made this a religious and highly political debate,” Tsilas said. “They are doing this because it is advancing their business model. Over 50 percent of IBM’s revenues come from consulting services.”
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Parcel update
I have finally received an answer from the Poste Italiane (the usual word document attached to an empty email):
In riferimento alla sua e-mail del “07/01/2008” con Oggetto: «pacco estero», Le comunichiamo che per richieste di informazioni sull’esito di spedizioni inviate e/o in attesa, riguardanti il prodotto dei pacchi internazionali, si dovrà recare esclusivamente presso l’Ufficio Postale per la compilazione dell’apposito modello CN08 ( modello di reclamo internazionale) in quanto attualmente, per tali spedizioni, non è previsto alcun servizio di T. & T. e nessuna assistenza telefonica.
which is (more or less) in English:
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A Parcel’s Odyssey
I sent a parcel from Sardinia last October. I sent it to Palermo where it arrived after two weeks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t picked up by the recipient, so it was returned, but returned to where? I’ve been hunting this parcel for over three months now, and I’m still none the wiser. The kayak journey in […]
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Unlikely Emergency Chargers
I’ve always liked toys, and with a background in IT many of my toys are electronic.
In Sardinia I had brought a mobile phone, a Nokia N800 tablet computer, a GPS receiver and a camera, and all required power, which regularly proved to be a problem. Even though I had brought solar panels as well, solar power is not always available, and we often had to rely on bars and restaurants for charging.
At times we had no opportunities for charging and as a consequence were without a usable mobile phone for periods, which is bad as the mobile phone is an essential security item.
Recently, while shopping for other stuff, I stumbled over two unrelated gadgets that can also be used as emergency chargers for other things.
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Never ending misfortune
The list of misfortunes during my journey in Italy last year keeps growing, even more than a month after my return to Denmark. Today a Danish police officer called me at home to ask if I had been driving in Switzerland last autumn, as a fine for speeding down there had ended on his table. […]
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Happy New Year
Happy New Year to everybody but especially to Freya who are almost all the way in New Zealand. Very impressive.
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Skim Kayaks
In spite of the journey being put on hold until April or May, Skim Kayaks has generously offered to continue to sponsor me for the remainder of the journey.
I’ve paddled the Skim Distance in Sardinia for four weeks in different conditions, and it is a brilliant expedition kayak. It is stable, fast and spacious. I consider myself lucky to be able to finish my journey in such a boat.
Weather conditions in Sardinia are very changeable, and in a couple of occasions I paddled in winds up to force 6 and waves of several meters, which is more than I have tried before, but I never felt unsafe or unstable in the Skim Distance.
The speed of the Skim Distance is incredible. I’m not the racing type, and I was astonished to discover that I could get a fully loaded Skim Distance to go at 10-11 km/h, and at 7-8 km/h sustained. It would be very interesting to see what a competitive and dedicated race paddler could get out of a Skim Distance.
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Santa Lucia
Each year Kajakhotellet.dk organises a Santa Lucia procession in kayak to collect funds for Amnesty International. Besides having a charitable purpose—each paddler paid €15 to AI to participate—its also a good excuse to get to paddle a bit off season. We were around 100 paddlers today. I saw one or two television crew on land, so we might have made the local news. The Santa Lucia procession is a celebration for the return of light, so we put lights on our kayaks and paddle through the canals of inner Copenhagen after dark. At times the children on the quays spontaneously sang the Santa Lucia carol as we passed, and people shouted comments and salutations. Most people found it very beautiful with a hundred illuminated kayaks in the canals. At a canal side café we all had gløgg and æbleskiver, served in the boats 🙂 Pavia Lumholt participated too, and he promptly capsized. Good thing he knows who to roll 🙂
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The Most Beautiful Kayak in the World
Today I unwrapped the most beautiful kayak in the world. It is a Rockpool Menai 18 and Mike Webb has outdone himself. Many Rockpool kayaks are spectacular, but none is as beautiful as mine 🙂 I ordered the Menai 18 last summer, and it was my intention to use it for the journey in Sardinia […]
