This site is some twenty-five years old, and it contains lots of ancient stuff, much of it utterly dated and useless.
Sorry about that.
If anything, I post very unevenly, and about whatever occupies me.
Some featured posts
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De-googling
I have tried for ages to de-google. Not just from Google itself, but all the big ones — Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon. However, de-googling is not easy.
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Koha Library Software
Setting up a library management system like Koha is not easy, but once it’s done, registering and cataloguing your books is very easy.
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Across the river, into the trees
I spent a good deal of January and February 2021 on a movie set, but it wasn’t a very positive experience
See all featured posts.
Most recent posts
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Venetian Truck Drivers
This boat is a “topo”, a Venetian truck, with a crew of two. One is steering, almost with the rudder up his behind, the other is sleeping soundly on the fore deck, while they pass a 14th century monastery building and a 17th century church.
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The Naviglio di Brenta
The Naviglio di Brenta is the old part of the river Brenta, which had its estuary in the Lagoon of Venice close to Fusina. After the demise of the city of Torcello in the 11th adn 12th century, the Venetian understood the cause. The river Sile had made a vast delta behind Torcello, causing the…
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À faire en Italie – Canadian TV
Somehow myself, Steve Lutsch from Canada and my friend Loretta from Venice, end up in a Canadian-French TV programme, called “À faire en Italie – La liste de François-Etienne”. I’ve only seen this little bit, so I have no idea what kind of figure I cut in the rest of the show. Dec 2019: the…
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Launching from a beach
For almost four years I’ve been doing my kayaking tours of Venice from a camp site on the Lido di Venezia. It has been, and is, in many ways a good launch spot close to Venice, but it is not without its drawbacks. The shore there is a road which is 1-2m over the water…
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UFO – Unidentified Floating Object
When paddling around Venice we often see slightly weird boats around — different shapes, odd names, alternative behaviour — but the other day I encountered something in a category of its own. I tried to get a good photo of it, but waterproof point-and-shoot cameras aren’t always that great for taking photographs, so this was…
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Paddling Planet errors
There are a lot of errors on Paddling Planet recently, mostly HTTP errors 404 (Not Found) and 409 (Conflict), but they all relate to Blogger and change all the time, so I assume the fault is at Blogger.
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Reflections
At the end of the year we’re supposed to reflect on the year that passed. I have found that a bit hard this year, so I’ve decided to leave the reflections to the vaporetto (water bus) platforms of Venice. They do a good job at reflecting 🙂Santa Maria della Salute Santa Maria della Salute from…
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Circumnavigation of Sicily
The circumnavigation of Sicily won’t be this time. Progress has been much too slow, and the time I have will not allow us to recover the delay. We’ve done about 125km in a week, and we’ve only just made it to the north side of the island. Another purpose of the journey, for me, was…