Hi there 👋🏻
I am Rico Trebeljahr. A programmer, traveler, photographer, writer and fellow human. This is my personal website. It's where I write, publish my newsletter, collect booknotes, quotes, traveling stories, and photography.New here? Start here for a guided tour of the best stuff on this site.
Wanna know what I like on the internet? I have a /needlestack page.
Wanna know what makes me tick? I have a /principles page.
Wanna know what I am up to? I have a /now page.
Writing 📝
Writing, to me, is a way to think more clearly about something. In the process I gain a better understanding and I aim to share this understanding with you. This is why this blog exists. I write about a wide wide list of things, among them philosophy, programming, AI and productivity—all topics that interest me, deeply.
In my writing, I strive to be deep instead of shallow. Exhaustive, instead of brief. I want to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of a topic, not just a superficial overview.
How to Create an Interactive Shader Editor
Using React Three Fiber, ThreeJS, and Codemirror
My Productivity Systems
How I manage to do so many things, My Habits, Tricks, and Systems
The Answer to AI's 600 Billion Dollar Question
Why AI companies are building out massive datacenters
The People I have Learned from the Most
Listing the content creators that have shaped my life for the better
The Best Yellow
Testing All The Acrylic Colors I could find on Amazon
Diatom Arrangements
The Hidden Beauty of Microscopic Single Cell Algae Art
Traveling Stories 🌍
Traveling, to me, is about storytelling and learning how different places feel. Photography is an integral part of that and I love to capture the moments I experience and combine them with words so that I can inspire others to travel, too.
My unwritten rule is to have an adventure a year: going around in a Tuk Tuk in India, crossing the Atlantic by sailboat, hiking across the whole Alps, or cycling across South America, I've done those!
Live and Learn Newsletter 💌
Live and Learn is a digital postcard I send out every couple of weeks. Part travel diary, part essay — think slightly-too-long Sunday read from a friend who's somewhere between cycling across South America and losing his mind about a new fractal.
Each edition is a small bundle: a few photos from wherever I currently am, a short essay about something I've been thinking about, and a handful of links to things I found worth sharing — books, ideas, music, weird corners of the internet, tiny useful tools.
It's not optimized for anything. No funnel, no growth hacking, no lead magnet. Just a postcard in your inbox that you can read with a cup of coffee on a slow morning. If that sounds like your kind of thing, I'd love to have you along.
The Sadness After Good Days
Building Faster than I can Live
On Reciprocity and Pho
Unlearning Minimalism and Leaving Pai
Notes on Art and Magic
Assembling a Collection of Beauty
Subscribe to Live and Learn 🌱
Join the Live and Learn Newsletter to receive digital postcards filled with beauty, travel stories and links to nice things I have found, once or twice a month. No spam, ever. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Booknotes 📚
I read a lot and usually take notes because this is one of the best ways to learn information and remember it. My goal is to read 1000 books in my lifetime, then pick the best 50 and read them over and over again. Reading has taught me so so much already and I am sharing my notes here because I hope you can learn from them too.
These booknotes can help you choose which books you might want to read, too.
Photography 📸
Trips through Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and South America, told in pictures. Six of my favourite collections below — see all trips for the rest.
Browse All Trips
Creative Coding 🎨
Three.js / R3F experiments — shaders, oceans, generative terrain, particle systems. These are the standouts; the full playground has dozens more.
Open the Playground
