v1.4: the paper comes off our own press

Another week with my head down, and a fresh stack went live. Here is the whole list, plain.

The paper

Dispatches from the Deep End is a tabloid now. Black and white, ink-smudge headlines screaming across the top, a fact box, classifieds running down the side. The kind of paper you grab off the rack at two in the morning and can’t put down.

It used to be a newsletter. Now it reads like the thing got printed on cheap stock and tossed by the register.

And it comes off our own press. Straight from the building to your inbox, nobody standing in the middle deciding whether the issue reaches you.

The newsstand

Every back issue lives at /dispatches/ now. The paper calls that room the Morgue. That’s what an old print shop called the place it kept dead issues, so the name stuck.

New ones hit the wall the same morning they hit your inbox. Each issue has a next arrow and a back arrow, so you can walk the whole run without hunting.

Two new departments

The paper runs two standing columns now, same spot every week.

The Build Report is what got built and why. Short, honest, the same plain talk I put in this feed.

The Solo Desk is four working tips for anybody running a one-person shop. No theory. Stuff I do at my own desk before I’d tell you to do it at yours.

The site got easier on the eyes

Spent a day on readability.

The motion toggle remembers what you picked, so it stops fighting you every time you come back. The logo recolors to match whichever of the six themes you’re running. Tap targets got fatter so your thumb stops missing. There’s a floor on text size now, no label squints small. The front page packs tighter, like a magazine page. Room headers shrank so the work sits higher.

Under the hood

Scrubbed and hardened the back end, tightened the copy across the rooms. Quiet work nobody sees. The kind that keeps the lights on while you’re not looking.

That’s v1.4. The paper’s on the stand.