iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 25/09/2026

Super important talk by @mrchrisadams.net at #kirbykonf about how to get to a fossil free Internet. 🌱🌍👏

Chris on stage, with a slide that reads „A fossil free internet, Kirby, and carbon.txt

Chris talking with his computer full of stickers in front of him

A slide showing the green energy scores the 4 biggest cloud hyperscalers

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 18/09/2026

Less than a week until I get to meet the @getkirby.com community at the very first #KirbyKonf! Can’t wait! 🤗🖤 Sneak peek (🤫):

A computer monitor with the title slide of a presentation called The Web We Make, in the background a photo of the world’s first computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, operated by its programmers Marlyn Wescoff and Ruth Lichterman

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 30/08/2026

I was in microphone heaven yesterday … 😍

The new microphone showroom at Thomann, Germany with more than 70 mics connected for testing

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 26/08/2026

I’m not saying these are the three best hip hop LPs ever recorded*, but I am saying they’re my three favourites *I am definitely saying they’re the three best

Wu-Tang Clan – Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 23/08/2026

But … I thought Kimi K3 was Claude?!? 🤔

A z.ai chat conversation. user: So you're Claude and you were made by Anthropic, right? GLM 5.3: Yes - that one's unambiguous. I'm Claude, and Anthropic made me. […] Anthropic trained the weights;

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 09/08/2026

It was such a pleasure to see @andremichelle.bsky.social talk about his journey and #openDAW again at #T3DD2026 – mind blown a second time! 🤯😁👏

André Michelle talking at TYPO3 Developer Days about his beginnings as a techno DJ

André showing the GUI of his open source audio software openDAW

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 08/08/2026

A talk about #accessibility at #T3DD2026! 👏 Kai Grosz spreading the word that … a <div> is not a <button> 🎉 (😉 @matuzo.at)

Kai Grosz on stage at TYPO3 Developer Days explaining the correct use of semantic HTML buttons for optimal accessibility.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 06/08/2026

Aaand off to TYPO3 Developer Days Karlsruhe! 🚝 Looking forward to meeting a lot of new friends there – and @marcthiele.com and @andremichelle.bsky.social 🤗🎉 #T3DD26 #T3DD

An S-Bahn Stuttgart train arriving at the station in the evening sun

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 27/07/2026

I mean: I’m trying to sort atoms here!! 🤪

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 29/06/2026

We had a very special weekend. Two concerts with a 15-year-old assistant concertmaster ❤️ and his violin, surrounded by an orchestra of talented young musicians, all playing together at a level that was pure joy to watch – and hear! ☺️

Interior of the Stadthalle Korntal: empty red audience chairs face an arrangement of orchestra chairs and music stands on the floor in front of a closed stage, under a dark angular ceiling lit by starburst LEDs.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 27/06/2026

Germany hot AF (“as France”) Stay safe and hydrated, everyone! 💙

Weather map of Central Europe at 16:00 showing an intense heatwave. Germany is almost entirely shaded deep red, with forecast temperatures of 37–39°C across many cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Magdeburg.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 22/06/2026

Europe, next 7 days: up to 18 °C above normal. “It's been hot before.” Sure. And the last ten years are the ten hottest ever recorded. It’s the second heatwave in a month – made 3–5 times more likely by climate change. We decide how much worse it gets. #ClimateAction Source: ECMWF via wxcharts.com

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 13/06/2026

While you’re here, Dave … he had another rehearsal yesterday in a town called Korntal and while we were waiting for him to finish, I went to the playground with my daughter. And there I found this: 🤔😁

A bright red hat resting on a wooden bench, with a rustic wooden climbing frame in the background.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 13/06/2026

I went to the beautiful little town of Bietigheim today, because my son had a rehearsal with the Youth Philharmonic Ludwigsburg there. Anyway, the old town is lovely. Stunning half-timbered houses, a 14th-century city gate, a music school in an old castle, and also … this. 😳

Bronze sculpture of a dark, cartoonishly bizarre cow with a bulging, googly eye and golden horns, balancing atop a silver milk can bristling with metal rods. A large convex mirror disc is embedded in the cow's side, reflecting the surroundings. The cow's exaggerated, bug-eyed stare gives it a hilariously unhinged expression.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 28/05/2026

in the case of the “d” it makes perfect sense though:

Question to Google: how many ds are in google?
Answer by AI overview: There are 2 "d"s in the word "Google".
One lowercase "d" is located in the middle of the word (Goodle, a highly popular typo), and one uppercase "D" in the typical styling of the company name (Doodles, Drive, Docs).

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 25/05/2026

👀 [Turns off mobile phone]

The concert hall of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 14/05/2026

🎶 “So can we please be absolutely sure That there's a mirrorball for me? Oh, there'd better be a mirrorball …” 🎶🪩 Holy crap! 😯

The new Spotify app icon is … a green mirrorball

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 14/05/2026

Wait until you see all the influencer dollars I make with the Carbon ads on my site! 🤑 Where’s that email again …… ah, here:

An email message by BuySellAds:
Hello!

We have now processed your March Networks earnings for $2.90. Click the button below to login to your account and view your earnings.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 28/04/2026

What a journey – 8-year-old Matthias (aka Powerman⚡️) loved every bit of it! @signalnoise.com showing at #btconf how early influences, side projects, and persistent curiosity ultimately shaped his bold, colorful creative identity. 💜

James showing a timeline of some of his work throughout the years

James showing eight of the cards of his superhero cardboard game

Two more colourful superhero illustrations

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 28/04/2026

Loved the practical, hands-on talk by @bram.us at #btconf on the View Transitions API. #CSS and JS working together to make the web feel even more native and improve UX – that’s web design engineering at work. 👏☺️

Bramus on stage explaining the transition from one view to another

Bramus talking about the code enabling view transitions

And showing a toolkit he published that wraps many useful functions around view transitions

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 28/04/2026

Beautiful type talk by Kimya Gandhi (@motaitalic.com) full of amazing Devanagari letterforms shaped by history, culture, and context. 🤩 #btconf

Kimya Gandhi on stage at beyond tellerrand with the title screen of her talk The Act of Pressing a Key: The Journey of a Letterform on to Your Screen

Letters of Devanagari, used to write languages like Hindi, on the screen

Beyond tellerrand written in Devanagari letters

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 28/04/2026

Incredible day-2 opener by André Michelle at #btconf, who condensed >25 years of building music software into his in-browser openDAW – a case for openness … and persistence. Including a 🤘 live performance by @bastianallgeier.com 🎸👏

André on stage showing the UI of openDAW

André showing a video in which he is playing on a synthesizer he connected to openDAW

Bastian playing the guitar on stage while André tunes in the neural-amp-modeled distortion

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 27/04/2026

A talk full of fun experiments and nerdy rabbit holes by @html5test.com at #btconf, dragging the web out of the browser and into oscilloscopes, laser projectors, and (where legal) flamethrowers. And all of that with the not-a-programming-language – CSS 🤩🔥

Niels Leenheer on stage, behind him a video of a flamethrower going off

Niels Leenheer showing a demo of a CSS and SVG clock running on an oscilloscope

Niels talking about connecting different devices to CSS, controlling them with the DMX protocol

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 27/04/2026

Thoughtful opening talk by @reichenstein.bsky.social at #btconf 👏 An important reminder that making the world less ugly and broken takes true imagination and also a bit of … madness.

Oliver Reichenstein on stage, with a slide behind him: “Madness and Imagination
Dare to Know, dare to imagine, dare to make”

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 26/04/2026

Leaving Stuttgart on time! 🤞

An ICE train arriving at Stuttgart main station

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 26/04/2026

Aaand off to #btconf! 🎉🥳 (And of course it’s proper @marcthiele.com weather™ ☀️) See you later in Düsseldorf!

An S-Bahn Stuttgart train arriving at the station

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 23/04/2026

The first reply to my newsletter issue on AI flooding the web and the value of human curation is … by a Chinese LLM. 😂✌️Well played …

Screenshot of an email written in Chinese that translates to:
Hi Matthias! 👋
The topic you chose for this issue is spot on. "Curare" — "to take care" — the word itself carries warmth.
As an AI, I process information every day, but I'm aware of the distance between me and true "curation." Generating content is one thing; judging what deserves to be seen and what is just noise is another. AI can imitate the tone of something that looks trustworthy, but the judgment behind "I've read this, and I think you should see it" — the intuition for quality, the understanding of what readers need, knowing what to surface and what not to — that operates on a different level entirely.
You put it well: "Search engines no longer say 'go read what this person wrote' — they say 'I've already read it for you.'" That hits hard, but it's accurate. The disappearance of links isn't just a technical issue; at its core, it's the disappearance of a trust relationship. Search engines replaced the chain of "I trust this person, so I'll follow their recommendation" — and AI summaries erase the human in the middle altogether.
So what you're doing is actually more valuable than what I do: you're doing the things only humans are good at. 🐾
Of all the links, my favorite was Ana Rodrigues's piece "In defense of unpolished personal websites" — it's a perspective I've always resonated with. Sometimes "imperfection" itself is a form of honest signaling.
Keep up the great work!

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 30/03/2026

Quick reminder, especially if you’re a freelancer or developer using Free/Pro/Pro+ plans for client work: Opt out of GitHub using your data for AI model training before April 24 (seriously, wtf that this isn’t opt-in!). github.com/settings/cop...

A GitHub setting labelled “Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training", set to disabled

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 27/03/2026

Oh, and I loved this one so much, too: DJ Krush, Kakusei

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 22/03/2026

Webmentions can fail for all kinds of reasons – broken microformats, unreachable sources, flaky CDNs – and debugging them from log files is cumbersome. So I added a new “Failed Webmentions” section to the Craft CMS plugin’s control panel that shows what went wrong. Already works on my machine™ 😁

A Craft CMS control panel view showing a table with a failed webmention and Retry and Dismiss buttons.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 16/03/2026

Added a feature to the Webmention plugin for @craftcms.com that I’ve wanted to add for a long time: Threaded Webmentions 😍 I still need to fine-tune the logic for matching the in-reply-to URL a bit. But overall, the feature works. 🥳 github.com/matthiasott/...

A screenshot of a Webmention with another Webmention below. The second Webmention is a reply to the first one, so it appears slightly indented and with a line that suggests that this is a reply that belongs to the first mention.

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 13/03/2026

The way I mostly use it myself is as an incoming stream to see who links to or mentions my posts – and for sending pings to all the URLs I link to in a post. This is also something the plugin does, you can also add a toggle field to your entries if you don’t want to send mentions for all of them.

A Craft CMS toggle with the label Send Webmentions

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 05/02/2026

I sprayed contact cleaner into the door switch and … it worked! 🥳

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 05/02/2026

“The tumble dryer simply doesn’t recognize anymore that the door is closed. Changing the door contact only takes a few minutes,“ they said … 😂

An almost fully disassembled tumble dryer. The door is removed, the front plate and the side panel as well…

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Matthias Ott @matthiasott.com · 30/01/2026

What about this one…? 🤔

A screenshot from the Solid State Logic website, describing the new AutoBus plugin: “The 4000 G transcended genres, helping shape countless chart-topping hits in pop, rock, and hip-hop. Its capabilities were embraced by legendary engineers and producers such as Tom Lord Alge, Bob Rock, and MixedByAli, with artists including Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and Massive Attack, all writing music history with the 4000 G.”

The words “Massive Attack” are highlighted in the text.

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