About

Hi, my name is Ralph. I live in Bonn, Germany, with my family and work as a Site Reliability Engineer at CrowdStrike.

I studied computer science and wrote my diploma thesis at the Institute for Numerical Simulation, Bonn. I then worked as a scientific assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) in the Virtual Material Design department for eleven years, including three years as deputy head of IT. After that, I left public service and research to work as a Site Reliability Engineer in the private sector.

Outside of work, I’m into photography (see nachtling.com), basketball, scuba diving, cooking and sometimes role-playing (Shadowrun, GURPS and DnD5E).

I develop and maintain An Otter Wiki, a minimalistic wiki powered by python, markdown and git. The design goals? Light and minimalist, but functional.

Although I don’t play the game anymore, I maintain some services for the Mechwarrior Online community:

• https://maps.mwocomp.com - Tactical maps; github.
• https://mwo.t3m4.net - Match statistics.

I used to play in the competitive Team of the “31st Hussar Regiment”.

Technical stuff

This blog is running on Hugo, the template is based upon Hyde.

Legal stuff

The legal disclosure “Impressum” can be found here.

Copyright © 2017-2026 Ralph Thesen. All rights reserved.