OctoPress is embraced for its simplicity: write blog posts, save them, generate HTML pages and move those upon a web server. As no code is executed server-side every page can be cached and security risks are low. So far I’m hosting my blog on a rented hetzner root-server in Germany. While there’s no server-side security problem I’m still using a full blown server which imposes maintenance overhead on me. No peace of mind. An alternative would be moving to the cloud (Amazon’s S3 storage in my case), but is it worth it? ...

After three or four years it became time to replce my Desktop Computer with newer technology. I’ve got a first generation Intel Core i7-920 Octo-core processor: it still packs more than enough power but sadly gets too hot and thus the cooling system got too loud for my taste. So time for a new Desktop! I decided to go the miniITX route. The main idea was to pack as much power-efficient technology in an as-small-as-possible case. This post describes my hardware experiences.. ...

Recently I’ve switched my working day to a more enjoyable pace – and noticed that my productivity rose too. Too many friends claimed that I’m just plain lazily so this post tries to clarify my mode of operation. The basic idea is to reduce procrastination and improve my attention span through voluntary self-censorship. Some caveat beforehands: I am working as self-employed independent software contractor, thus my work has some unique properties: ...

Ruby on Rails is perfect for creating web applications but sometimes you just need to create some documents which can be stored or send through email. While printing is no problem with CSS not all users are able to “save/print page as pdf”. The ubiquitous Adobe PDF file format seems to be a perfect solution for this problem. The common solution for this is Prawn (also see the RailsCast about it). Alas prawn uses a custom DSL for defining and styling the document and I would rather prefer to reuse existing view partials. princeXML seems to solve this: it transforms existing HTML/CSS into pdf. This allows to reuse existing views and partials but comes with a hefty price-tag of $3500+. ...