René’s old blog

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.

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Most recent posts

  • Pool sessions

    Pool sessions

    Yesterday I practised rolling in a pool for the first time in over two years. Its the first time for a long while I get some good rolling practise. My focus has been elsewhere, on touring in Sardinia, setting up a business in Venice, getting to know people and places in Venice, in general with…

  • Future plans and wishes

    Future plans and wishes

    Venice Kayak Naturally, my future plans mostly revolve around Venice Kayak, which is after all a ‘strategic’ choice I have made. Currently I work closely with a camp site on the Lido di Venezia, where I have all gear and equipment, and I have to follow their season. They open on April 24 and close…

  • Retrospective

    Retrospective

    A few weeks ago it was the season of looking back, and being a bit slow on the uptake, I’m just about arriving there now. These last two years have seen quite a turn in my life. Two years ago I had a day job, a fairly ‘normal’ life, and just paddled for fun, and…

  • Exceptional high tide in Venice

    Exceptional high tide in Venice

    The high tide in Venice today was even higher than forecast, reaching a level of 156cm above the historical average. This is the fourth highest level in the last 135 years. In 1966 the tide reached 194cm, 166cm in 1979 and 159cm in 1986. About two thirds of the city has been under water, with…

  • High tide in Venice

    High tide in Venice

    Tomorrow the tide in Venice will be exceptionally high, what they call the acqua alta. Normal high tides are about 80-90cm above the historical average, but a combination of rain and wind will push the tide higher tomorrow, up to around 120cm above the historical average, which means that about one third of the city…

  • Personality disorder?

    Personality disorder?

    I played a bit with Typealizer which I found at Bonnie’s blog, who had it from Michael Bradley, only the result is a bit ambiguous. I ran the test on the two sites I put the most effort into, and got rather different results.

  • Homosexual necrophilia in the mallard

    This is so weird, some would probably say disturbing, but nature is a weird and sometimes disturbing place. On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. (source: “the duck”…

  • No more war!

    No more war!

    The armistice which became the end to the Great War, the first world war, took effect at 11:11 o’clock on November 11, 1918, exact 90 years ago today. It was the most horrible war the world had ever seen, with carnage on an industrial scale, taking tens of millions of lifes over a period of…

  • The Gondola Blog

    The Gondola Blog

    By chance one day I stumbled over the Gondola Blog by Greg Mohr, who nurtures a burning passion for gondolas. He is, as he states on his blogger profile, a gondola fanatic. There are quite a few gondolas in the USA. One day I visited the Squero Tramontin in Venice, Roberto Tramontin told that there…