Marc Giombetti » news

Spring in Munich (Part II)

marc — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:45:44 +0000

In the last weeks I got visit from Christophe and Michel in Munich. They took a lot of pictures of beautiful Munich. Additionally there are some pictures of the Deutsches Museum and the BMW Welt.

At the end of this entry you will also find a video of people surfing on the Eisbachwelle in the English Garden.

Picture Galleries:

Munich - Spring 2008

74 Photos

Deutsches Museum - München

25 Photos

BMW Welt - München

BMW Welt in München

15 Photos

Video:

People surfing on the Eisbachwell e in the English Garden:

Spellchecker.lu – Relaunch

marc — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:15:39 +0000

In this blog post I will make some publicity for Michel´s project of a spellchecker for the luxembourgish language. This project now also contains a thesaurus database which you should extend by new words, if you find something missing (which you probably will, because the project is in an early stage )

But before I will try to formulate which improvements have been made and why it is better than before I just cite Michel’s blog post:

The new version of spellchecker.lu is online. After almost exactly two years after the initial release, the free spellchecker for Luxembourgish now has a new website, a nicer logo, an improved online checker as well as a thesaurus (synonym dictionary).

The online checker features the following improvements:

A more intuitive interface

A wordlist (also called ”dictionary”) of almost 500′000 words and word forms

Improved correction of common mistakes (found in instant messaging)

Improved correction of the so-called “Eifeler Regel” which is unique to Luxembourgish

Easy-to-use feedback form

Visit spellchchecker.lu for more information.

Spring in Munich

marc — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:04:09 +0000

I am not going to blog about how amazing Munich is (not yet, but I will do so in the next weeks). I just want to share some tunes with you. I captured them this afternoon in the English Garden. The musicians are a band somehow and they were playing some kind of jam session. The music itself was not that great, but the mood of the musicians as well as the listeners was wanton.

Ecocho – You search, they grow trees

marc — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:21:42 +0000

While surfing through the web, instead of writing some assignments for university, I just discovered a new search engine: the eco friendly search engine.

According to the Ecocho website:

Ecocho is a new search engine trying to make a difference for climate change.
For every 1000 searches users make on Ecocho we’ll counter balances or “offset” up to a ton of greenhouse gases. We do this by sponsoring two trees via advertising on the site.

The Ecocho engineers did not implement a search engine at their own, but they are forwarding your search results to Google or Yahoo. They use 70% of the money they make by taking part in Googles and Yahoos affiliate program to actually plant trees. The Ecocho end users get the same search results as if they were directly searching at Google or Yahoo. I think this idea is great even though I am convinced that it will not make a “that” big difference in climate change. It will primarily silence the bad conscience of people. The only drawback I see at the moment, is that Ecocho seems to be a bit slower than the direct search at Google or Yahoo. Nevertheless I think that the guys at Ecocho will solve the performance issues, maybe adding some new servers or improving the software.

Have a try

Links

Back in Munich again

marc — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:07:08 +0000

Today I traveled from Luxembourg back to Munich because I have to do some stuff before the lectures at university re-begin in two weeks. I was happy to see that my flat was still standing after a month of absence, but I was very surprised that some old warehouses on the other side of the street were torn down, thus giving me a new balcony view on the Olympiaturm and one some “unrevealed” surroundings.

I am also already looking forward on Sunday, where I will attend a soccer game of the FC Bayern against VfL Bochum in the Allianz Arena. Even though I am not such a big soccer fan and I do not have a favorite team on Sunday, I am eager to see a hopefully nice game of excellent soccer in an awesome stadium. I will let you know how it wasls and provide you with some pictures.

UPDATE: Here´s the new balcony view:

New website, new design, new content…

marc — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:09:22 +0000

After several months of very few updates on Giombetti.com, I have decided to give my website a revival and a new touch. The website changed from a rather static page to a blog, and I will update it regularly (Or at least, I’ll give it a try) by writing what I am concerned about at that moment. But first I give you some information of what I have done so far and what you can expect to read on this website in the future.

To begin with: Which language will I be blogging in? As you might already have expected, I will mainly be blogging in English; not at least to have a bigger audience. Nevertheless some articles might be in German, or even in my native language Luxemburgish, too.

What will I write about? I will write about software development, my studies of computer science at the TU Munich, travelling, music, lifestyle and fun. To start with, I have already posted some pictures of my trips to Paris and Vienna. Furthermore I updated my Curriculum Vitae and I adopted content from the previous version of this website: mainly articles and pieces of software I have written and I want to share with you. I will also write about my new home Munich, and supply you with pictures of springtime in this awesome city.

Further new features of this website allow it to comment every blog entry and you can stay informed on new posts by subscribing to an RSS-Feed.