Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous topics.

Miscellaneous

Clempinch v2.0 – Parisian release

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Admittedly, when I started this blog, I did not plan to tell about my life here. I wanted to write about technical subjects: that was the purpose… That is why I will make this update short to keep this bifurcation as insignificant as possible in the consistence of my editorial content I almost signed with my blood.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I have changed job about two weeks ago. I indeed moved to Paris to work for Criteo.
That is quite a lot of changes for me personally (I have now to get used to my new Parisian life) and professionally. Compared to Amadeus, Criteo is quite smaller and a more recent company. And also, I am completely new to the online advertisement world, I have a new vocabulary to learn, new way to work to get used to and new colleagues to talk to…
Technically, I am also shifting to the Microsoft universe (C#, SQL server…) and I am deep diving into the ocean of NoSQL technologies… And much more is coming ! So probably the future posts on this blog will reflect my new programming adventures!

Paris

Miscellaneous

Writing numbers in French

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Numbers in French are difficult.
As a native French speaker, I did not realized that at once. But when talking to foreign friends who were trying to learn French, I figured out how illogical and tricky is our way to numerate things.
Why do we say “four twenty eleven” for 91? Why 70 is said “sixty ten”? It can look quite weird…
This video from Numberphile (what a great website) is self-explanatory about how confusing French numbers are. It seems our weird way to count comes from ancient time when we used base 20.
Note that the way to count in Belgium or Switzerland seems to be far more logical since they get rid of the 70s and 90s with “septante” and “nonante” (vs “soixante-dix”=sixty-ten and “quatre-vingt-dix”=four-twenty-ten in France).

Even French are confused, especially when we need to write them down. It does not happen much, but when I do for writing checks, it is sometimes a bit painful. I often forget the rules and always go to this Wikipedia article. Should I put an “s”, should I put a dash…? I always need a refresh…

That is why I did this small application on Google app engine to help you writing French numbers. It is available in English and in French.

Screenshot French number webapp

Update from June 9 2013
Following cyChop valid comment, I updated the webapp with a radio button to enable switching between the traditional and modern spelling of numbers (following the reform of 1990).

Miscellaneous

Welcome to my blog!

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Hello traveler from the World Wide Web!

Welcome to my blog! Here you can rest after your long journey full of clicks from hyperlinks to hyperlinks.

But yes, I see you blinking and I guess you are asking yourself: “Yet another blog! On which damned hyperlink did I click to end up there?”. So let me answer your questions straight to the point…

Where you are

You are visiting my personal blog. Welcome! (hmm… am I repeating myself?)

What is this blog about?

In this blog, I will write about programming, mostly about Java which is the language I use almost everyday. But I will also speak about other programming languages I use on my spare time (and even at work, believe me), and I may also blog about more general computer science subjects and even about maths. So be prepared!
Don’t worry, there are quite many other things I like in my life. But I will keep this blog focused on these subjects.

Why such a blog?

I have been programming for quite a long time, solving puzzles and surfing on the technology… And if you are a programmer you also face this thing: quite a big part of our time is to end up browsing Google results to find answers to problems with hard-to-understand deployment error stack traces, dark-and-hard-to-debug framework issues or pretty-complicated-problematic libraries… Often, the Web has the answer: a forum, a blog, and even the official documentation!
But sometimes, in spite of the zillions storage units connected together on the Internet, I find no answer at all! So I hack, getting my hand dirty, fighting with the technology and sometimes I find something useful. So why not sharing with the world and contributing to the Web and maybe help programmers like me in the future?

Who I am

My name is Clément Pinchedez, I am a human being from planet Earth and I am a software engineer. I am currently working for Amadeus, a worldwide company developing software for the travel industry. I live in the South of France, quite a nice area admittedly.

When?

I have started this blog in April 2012. This is my second blog (I did one in my youth about my student life in Sweden).
I will try to keep a relative regular pace for posting.

How?

I will post in English because I think it is the best language to target the largest audience. I am a French native speaker and I hope my English will not be too bad.

To conclude

Hope I have answered your questions or maybe you have already clicked on an hyperlink and just left this website… “Live long and prosper!”

(image from MassassiUK)