Today, July 19, 2026, is our 20th Blogoversary! It’s hard to believe that we’ve done this for 20 years now, but time doesn’t lie, and so we shall celebrate this milestone.

The CatSynth blog started on July 19, 2006, with this photo of Luna and a Novation keyboard.

And this was the banner on the original incarnation of the blog.

Things certainly have changed a lot since then! Consider this banner compared to the current blog design, for example. Luna, sadly, left us almost ten years ago, though she lives on as the logo of all things CatSynth, including the blog and CatSynth TV. Sam Sam and Big Merp have joined us. Life has taken a variety of twists and turns, adventures and directions that 20 years ago I wouldn’t have imagined, and this site has come along for the ride.

Over 20 years, we’ve logged:

• 5240 published posts (including this one)
• 18,289 published comments (not including any on this post)

From the beginning, I envisioned it not as exclusively about cats and synthesizers, but rather more of a series of articles anchored by them. It wasn’t long before I started featuring “Fun with Highways” – initially interesting interchanges on maps and highway photos, later on full-fledged essays and articles. We joined a couple of cross-blog weekly events such as Weekend Cat Blogging and Wordless Wednesday, the latter continues to this day. I started writing about my own live shows, then other live shows I went to, then art shows, and the blog sort of became a place for reviews. And of course, all sorts of other things, like mathematics posts and random thoughts.

What sustained it then and now was an endless supply of ideas (not to mention cat and synth pictures online) and seeing how others enjoyed and were touched by the things I share. The process of creating continues to be its is its own reward. And keeping things loose and open, not sticking to a rigid formula but allowing curiosity and ideas to go in any and all directions, is also an important part of what makes it rewarding.

By around 2016 or so, I started to notice a decline in readership, especially for the long-form reviews. This led to the launching of CatSynth TV in 2017. It was originally a “companion vlog” that chronicled live shows and other items of interest in video form rather than written form. Synth demos were just a small part of it, but it didn’t take long before those became the most popular posts and the primary focus of the channel. Our “fun with highways” also migrated to the blog, with written articles morphing into wordless music videos. Math, science, and the strange and weird random thoughts and curiosities have largely migrated to the video domain as well.

In many ways, the video channel has largely eclipsed the blog, but the blog continues, sharing cat-and-synthesizers every week, and a “Wordless Wednesday” photo most weeks. As long as people enjoy these posts, I will keep doing them.

It’s amusing to think if we will be back here in 10 years celebrating the 30th anniversary…