rocu.de

I started building websites back in 2001—using HTML, PHP, image buttons (because web fonts weren’t a thing yet), and cutting-edge table-and-iframe layouts 🙈.

The web has come a long way since then—and so have I.

For the past 17 years, I’ve been building complex web applications for a living, mostly with PHP and Ruby on Rails.

These days, I mostly blog about daily life, my bike tours, and occasionally some technical insights.

Blogposts

🧑🏻‍🏭

A few weeks ago, I resigned from my current job. I am delighted about it! I finally will being an independent programmer again. The pay-check will not be safe – but I will have a lot more freedom to write great software.

March 03, 2023
📕

Finished reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

I really enjoyed reading this very creative book. It involves a public library, the love for ancient Greece and nature, some science fiction and a hand full of great protagonists.

March 01, 2023
Useless thinking
🧠
Most thoughts are pointless. In the past, I thought, that I think my thoughts. But this is obviously untrue. Can you really stop thinking? Do you really have control over your thoughts? Or do thoughts just come and go, and you jump to the conclusion, that you are the thinker. Is the feeling of be...
November 13, 2022
Our Virtual Office
🧙‍♂️
The last Corona-dominated years have had their unique challenges. First transitioning to remote work, was a non-brainer for our cooperative, TechGenossen. We never had a physical office before – so I barely noticed this aspect of Corona during the first few months. But as the month went by, ...
June 20, 2022
Host your emails with Mail-in-a-Box
🏤
At our cooperative (TechGenossen) we used Gmail as our Email-Provider at first. But we found Gmail to be too expensive for our many members. So, we decided to self-host our emails. Setting up your email server can be quite hard and involves many moving parts. Fortunately, we found Mail-in-a-...
November 22, 2017
Success in life
🍂
To laugh often and love much;to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;to earn the approbation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends;to appreciate beauty;to find the best in others;to give of oneself;to leave the world a bit better, whether by...
November 18, 2017
Strangers in strange lands
🌸
We can remember between 5 and 9 digits. So, why do we value our thoughts so much? Gaze at a flower and it is marvelous. — Look with a mental projection in your head, and you only see a representation. You look at the thought of a flower. You could not accurately describe how a flower looks. How i...
October 26, 2017
How to install your SSH key on a remote server
🔐
1. Nice way You can install an SSH key by executing Now you can log in to the remote server with your password and ssh-copy-id will do the rest. 2. Manual way Append your public ssh key to the authorized_key file on the server. As a one-liner: Conclusion Both commands pretty much do the...
October 26, 2017
Exploring tig: A Command-Line Git Browser
🕵
A colleague recently recommended tig to me, and I must say, it has quickly become a favorite tool in my Git workflow. Installing tig You can easily install tig using your preferred package manager. For instance, on Ubuntu, you can use: Once installed, simply navigate to your project directory and...
October 21, 2017
The rule of 72
💶
The rule of 72 is a rule that can answer you the question: How many years will my money need to double for a given interest rate? It closes the gap between an interest rate and what it means in real life. Here is the rule of 72: t = 72 / Interest Rate in percent So how long would your money need ...
April 22, 2015
Happiness comes first
☘️
Sometimes, when I think about my bright financial future, something bad happens. I want to be financial independent so badly, that I do not respect the present. The foundation of greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment, instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. The problem w...
April 20, 2015
A world without time
🕰️
Imagine there were no days, no hours and no seconds. And no time. How would you feel about problems in the future? How would you feel about the past? What would be your story without a past? Would there be a story? Who would be you without time? Would you even be? What would be true? What would b...
November 13, 2014
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
📖
I just finished reading Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin 📚. The book really strikes a chord with me. Essentially it tells you why its a good idea to not only do your “job”. Why you should care to be an artist and why you should engage much more. It suggests that you have m...
January 28, 2013
How to manage your dotfiles with homesick
🏯
Since quite a while, I try to find a good solution for sharing my dotfiles between my different computers. I started with chef — Unfortunately, this did not work so well. Especially if you also want to use your dotfiles on a server. Also, it felt a little complicated. The next approach I too...
January 22, 2013
Reading set.rb - tipps for working with Ruby sets.
💾
I like to read code. Often I take notes and it’s a shame that I did never share them. But it’s never to late to start. So here are some notes on Ruby’s set.rb. I hope you in turn share an interesting read with the world ;) How to initialize a set Ok much to notice here: Some examples what this me...
October 13, 2012
Script to disable internet connectivity for Mac OS
🚫
 💡 Little update (18.09.21): I do use Freedom now. It got even more expensive - but it syncs between all my devices and changed from a simple internet kill-switch to something even more useful. I found it great to disable news sites and other addictive sites during the corona ...
September 30, 2012
Ruby Tapas
🍳
I am quite excited about Avdi Grimm’s new project Ruby Tapas. Three times a week, Avdi post short videos about different concepts and techniques in Ruby. The first 3 episodes were short, but I already learned some obscure details of Ruby that I didn’t know about I think that over many weeks,...
September 29, 2012
Lessons from the prime factorization dojo
🧮
Last week, my colleagues at Gutefrage.net, and I had our second Coding Dojo. I learned an important lesson — even though this wasn’t the first time I practiced the kata. The kata The task was to create a class that decomposes natural numbers into its prime factors. Additionally, the factors ...
September 29, 2012