Sunday, July 27, 2008
Libori 2008
Its the best time of the year in Paderborn again. The Librori festival started and for nine days the city center will be packed with people.
For people in Paderborn, the Libori festival is the biggest event in the year and even people from the surrounding cities come to see the festival.
The origin of the festival can be traced to St. Liborius who is the patron saint of Paderborn and whose relics are stored in a golden shrine in the city museum. At the beginning of the festival the shrine is solemnly carried to the cathedral and is displayed there for the duration of the festival.
For those that are not too keen about the spiritual aspect there is still all the food stalls, the beer stalls, music and performances and the big fair with ferries wheel and bumper cars etc.
But the best thing about Libori is surely that you can just meet so many people in town that you haven't seen in years. For me, this is particularly true, because I have been away since Abitur and when I run into people from my school days, I often have no idea what they have been doing in all these years (the same holds the other way round as well). "How are you doing?" easily means "Please summarize your life during the last seven years in two or three sentences" :)
For people in Paderborn, the Libori festival is the biggest event in the year and even people from the surrounding cities come to see the festival.
The origin of the festival can be traced to St. Liborius who is the patron saint of Paderborn and whose relics are stored in a golden shrine in the city museum. At the beginning of the festival the shrine is solemnly carried to the cathedral and is displayed there for the duration of the festival.
For those that are not too keen about the spiritual aspect there is still all the food stalls, the beer stalls, music and performances and the big fair with ferries wheel and bumper cars etc.
But the best thing about Libori is surely that you can just meet so many people in town that you haven't seen in years. For me, this is particularly true, because I have been away since Abitur and when I run into people from my school days, I often have no idea what they have been doing in all these years (the same holds the other way round as well). "How are you doing?" easily means "Please summarize your life during the last seven years in two or three sentences" :)
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Impressions from the KIT
Really strange to leave the university after 6 years. The place feels so at home already. Here are some last impressions of the campus during the last day in university. I never felt that our campus was particularly beautiful but in summer it looks not too bad.
Labels: Karlsruhe, University
Sunday, July 20, 2008
So Long and Thanks for the Diploma
I haven't written here in a long time, but now there is actually something that is worth posting: I have graduated from university!! I submitted my diploma thesis and now I can officially call myself a "Diplom-Informatiker", short form "Dipl.-Inf.".
The thesis title is "Investigations into the Use of Preposition Sense in Semantic Argument Classification". The question that I tried to answer was whether the meaning of prepositions can be used to correctly classify semantic roles in English sentences. For example the semantics of "in the kitchen" and "in the morning" are quite different and the preposition "in" has two different meanings. One problem in natural language processing (NLP) is to find the correct meaning of words. In my case the correct meaning of prepositions. Another problem is to find and classify semantic roles, that is finding the constituents that tell us Who is doing What to Whom and Where and When?
Let's consider the following example:
Daniel ate a sandwich in the kitchen.
The correct meaning or sense of "in" would be "being or appearing enclosed in something else". The semantics of the constituent "in the kitchen" would be a locative adjunctive (ARGM-LOC). The semantics of the preposition is related to the semantics of the dominating phrase. In my thesis, I investigated whether disambiguating the preposition can help to find the correct semantics of the dominating phrase.
Anyway, I submitted my thesis, held my defense and after 6 years ex matriculated myself from the University of Karlsruhe (TH).
So long and thanks for the diploma :)
The thesis title is "Investigations into the Use of Preposition Sense in Semantic Argument Classification". The question that I tried to answer was whether the meaning of prepositions can be used to correctly classify semantic roles in English sentences. For example the semantics of "in the kitchen" and "in the morning" are quite different and the preposition "in" has two different meanings. One problem in natural language processing (NLP) is to find the correct meaning of words. In my case the correct meaning of prepositions. Another problem is to find and classify semantic roles, that is finding the constituents that tell us Who is doing What to Whom and Where and When?
Let's consider the following example:
Daniel ate a sandwich in the kitchen.
The correct meaning or sense of "in" would be "being or appearing enclosed in something else". The semantics of the constituent "in the kitchen" would be a locative adjunctive (ARGM-LOC). The semantics of the preposition is related to the semantics of the dominating phrase. In my thesis, I investigated whether disambiguating the preposition can help to find the correct semantics of the dominating phrase.
Anyway, I submitted my thesis, held my defense and after 6 years ex matriculated myself from the University of Karlsruhe (TH).
So long and thanks for the diploma :)
Labels: DA, University
