Edit: Even More Synths! 🥳

https://matthiasott.com/notes/best-free-synthesizer-vst-plugins-in-2025

Or maybe option D – titles with a short summary ?

When you are visiting a personal #website or #blog: do you enjoy reading all the latest blog posts / journal entries / notes *in full* on the home page or do you prefer a list of headings for the latest entries?

Show me all the content!
I love clicking on links in lists!
I don’t really mind…

I just love this section at the end of your journal entries, @adactio! 🤩

If you’re thinking about buying #audio #plugins to improve the sound of your voice recordings or music, don’t make the same mistake I made – don’t buy Waves. Buy Toneboosters, Kiive, Klanghelm, Tokyo Dawn Labs, Fuse Audio Labs, Kazrog, Noiseash, et al.
And, of course, try out all the fantastic free plugins out there first! You might not need to spend any (or at least very little) money on plugins at all… 😉

Maybe I should write a few blog posts about the best free and paid plugins 🤔

… aaaand two months after the warranty expired, the Bosch CityMower is dead. 😔 I had mustered all the choice-supportive bias that’s in me to make me believe for a little while that although the thing felt like plastic trash, it is “lightweight” and that “it’s a Bosch.” I should have known better … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

✍️ New post: Best Free Syn­the­siz­er Plu­g­ins in 2025

Not your usual web design or development-related post. But that's what personal websites are for, right? 😉🎶🎹

#synth #plugins #music

https://matthiasott.com/notes/best-free-synthesizer-vst-plugins-in-2025

It sparkles on my machine. 😁🪄✨

CC @flogehring 😉

It’s alive! 🧟‍♂️🎉😍 (kinda)

It's a Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not day over here … 🎶🥁🎸

I can’t wait to bring this thing to life! 😁✨

Any ideas for what else I should add? (I already know this will get out of hand quickly … 😂)

I’m writing again… it’s been a while.
My favourite sentence of the post so far:

“And naturally, you also want to avoid FART.” ☺️

In case you missed it: This September will be … smashing! 😻💚

@smashingconf is coming back to Freiburg on September 8–11, and I’m thrilled and honoured (and a bit baffled) to be part of this incredible lineup! Get your tickets, friends! 🔥😁

https://smashingconf.com/freiburg-2025/speakers/matthias-ott

Ha! 😁🎚️☀️

Lovely. First task of the day: doing “just” a few small CSS changes in a client project I haven't touched in about 5 years.

Alright…

➜ nvm use

Found '.nvmrc' with version <8.6.0>
N/A: version "v8.6.0" is not yet installed.

I already know where this is going …… 🫠😂

➜ npm install

gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!
gyp ERR!

🤘

Howdy! 🤓 How do you all handle native #CSS Nesting at the moment? Are you using it already? And if so, are you just targeting newer browsers that support it? Or are you using PostCSS, for example?

Asking for a friend who has reduced his build process to the max (nothing but a little esbuild script) and is now hesitating to add PostCSS again… 😉

Watched a few highlight videos from the Women’s EURO with my daughter.

“They’re actually playing better than the men.”

🥰

I’m trying to help a client pick a good UI framework they can start their product with, but ultimately grow into their own design system and component library. They have started development with React, which isn’t surprising, but they are also open to using a more framework-agnostic approach in the future.

Any suggestions for a really mature and solid, themeable framework as a starting point? Chakra UI? Ark UI? Radix?

“I don’t think there’s anything in principle, that stops machines from being conscious. […] I don’t see why they shouldn’t have emotions. […]
I think they really are thinking. And I think as soon as you make AI agents, they will have concerns.”

A wild interview with Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize winner and “the Godfather of AI”, especially towards the end…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giT0ytynSqg

A gate can be really useful for live sound (e.g. when you’re doing a live stream) to cut out unwanted background noise or hum with low latency when you're not speaking. Boz Digital’s “Big Beautiful Door 2” even combines this with a four-band EQ for the closed and open sections and is currently on sale ($49 - 50% with BOZ-JULY-4). I just couldn’t resist… 😅
https://www.bozdigitallabs.com/big-beautiful-door-2/

Berliners: “Sorry, cache only.”

Move fast an cache things.

Cache it till you make it.

The early bird caches the worm.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got caching.

Cache me if you can.

Cache Royale.