About Me
I’m Ottmar Klaas, a mason, turned civil engineer, turned software engineer. Originally from Germany, I settled down in upstate New York, working for a small software company.
Much of my day job is related to developing software to solve problems in applied mechanics and mathematics, often in collaboration with a University. If you are so inclined, you can get more information about the kind of projects I’m working on here and here.
Why this Website Exists
Several reasons prompted me to create this website. For one, there is the software engineering aspect. Creating a website felt like an interesting software related project to get into. Web applications—even non-interactive content delivery over the web—face a different set of limitations compared to my daily work where hardware resources are of secondary concern. That spells potential for learning new methodologies, which typically spark new ideas in my day job.
Second, this website is an attempt to give back and provide content that I hope will be helpful to others. I have often searched for and found solutions to various—at times esoteric—questions on small sites like this. As the web provides a publishing platform incurring only marginal costs, it is feasible to disseminate what I have learned even though it might only be of interest to a small group of people.
Technical Details about this Blog
This website is edited with BBEdit and uses hexo as the site generator. git is my preferred revision control system to keep track of changes made to the site (content as well as modifications to the layout). The web server where the site is hosted is a virtual private server from RamNode.
The website is secured through a certificate obtained from Let’s Encrypt, an open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit. The service is free of charge!
Affiliate Links
There are some services that I use myself and can recommend. For those, I have placed affiliate links in the sidebar and other places on this website. If you plan on signing up for any of those services I would appreciate it if you use my affiliate links. Some of them will also give you a discount when you sign up through my links.