Cătălin Frâncu
cata@francu.com (GPG key: 22020DE9)
résumé |
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blog
(Romanian)
dexonline
dexonline is the online Romanian dictionary. I launched
the project in August 2001 and, with the help of an amazing team
of volunteers, it grew to 400,000 definitions. It runs
exclusively on free software and its database is freely
available under the GNU General Public License.
The entire page and links are in Romanian only.
Links:
Civvic.ro
Civvic.ro aims to offer a free, searchable, versioned archive of Romanian laws, bills, decrees and government ordinances. One
particular interest is to allow the user to browse all the versions of a legal act, including all its ammendments, and to
highlight the differences between consecutive versions. Civvic.ro is in its infancy, but we are beginning to
pick up speed. The entire page is in Romanian.
Links:
Nilatac
Nilatac is a suicide chess engine I wrote back when "free time"
had a meaning. It is active 24/7 on FICS, where it is one of the
better suicide programs, and its opening book is available
online. Suicide chess, despite its morbid name, is a fascinating
game; some say it rivals classical chess in complexity. It is
played on a standard chess board, but the aim is to lose all
your pieces (and captures are mandatory). I haven't worked on
Nilatac for a while, save for minor opening research. But I
dream of the day when I will. Nilatac is free software.
Links:
Music
In my spare time I typeset some Romanian choral scores. I used
Lilypond,
the music
notation software. All the resulting scores are free for you to
copy, modify and/or redistribute. They include Christmas carols,
folklore, and a complete score for the Orthodox liturgy in
Romanian.
Links:
Toy Projects
These are random things that I've worked on.
Links:
Cityo, a restaurant review site
for Bucharest. Currently in Beta.
Yams, a dice game I wrote to learn
GTK. Also available
via
svn.
Family
Naturally, I have more family members than these (in fact I have
a large and vivid family), but here are the ones with web pages:
Links:
Romania
That is where I'm from. I'm glad to have seen the world, but
I'm even gladder whenever I go back there. Romania is a
22,000,000-people country in Eastern Europe, bordering the
Black Sea, slightly smaller than the UK. Pope John Paul II
once called it Garden of Virgin Mary. We love soccer,
alcohol and good jokes and we know the meaning of
dolce far niente better than most. But we've been
known to work occasionally and accomplished many good
things. There are many superb corners in this
country; the following links are to places that I happen to
love.
Links:
Academics
I'm a proud MIT nerd. Before that, I was a mediocre
student at the Politehnica University of
Bucharest, where I failed five classes in three years. I
decided that I would rather transfer to MIT and leave the
country than retake those exams. Before that, I went to the
High-School of Computer Science in Bucharest, during some of its
best years. I also taught there for one year, which I greatly
enjoyed.
Links:
Free software
To put it plainly, none of my computer science work could exist
without free software. My main accomplishments so far, DEX
online and Nilatac, rely completely on free software. Even
this web page is created and served using dozens of free
programs. I have profited a lot from free software and I tried
to give something back. I believe that software should be free
and that our understanding of copyright and software patents
should change. So, like, bow down to free software, or
something.
Links: