As I wrote late last year, software is never quite done. And so goes yet another year tweaking the presentation layer on this very site. Back in 2014 I’ve switched to using 2x / retina images on modern screens, going back to the archives and resourcing all the images in the interviews that have been published until then. From that point on, all the interviews published here showed higher-resolution images when appropriate. And yet, that wasn’t enough.

The film medium is by its very nature a visual one. Stills from film productions, be they movies or TV shows, demand the same full-width treatment as the production itself. I’ve spent most of my summer going back to older interviews and resourcing all the images (yet again) to even higher resolution. Now those stills are displayed in full-width, edge-to-edge format no matter what device you’re viewing them on. In addition, I’ve started to switch all the interviews to use the leading hero image that is displayed before the title block. Here is how it looks like on smaller, phone-sized screens:

And this is how it looks like on larger, laptop / desktop sized screens:

This is probably it for the 2019 edition of tending this little web garden of mine. What will the year 2020 bring?

Stay tuned for a more technical overview of how this can be achieved in WordPress.

As usual, DragonCon comes to Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend. These are my personal highlights from the opening parade this year.

I don’t do this often, but I simply can’t let this pass without sharing. No idea how this car looks like in real life without all the color post-processing, but this (presumably light green) Rolls Royce is a magnificent creature.

I’ve been fascinated by this story ever since John Carreyrou started untangling its web of lies a few years ago. His book “Bad Blood” came out last year. ABC’s multi-part “The Dropout” podcast was released earlier this year. A new documentary airs on HBO tonight. And at some point in 2020 there’s a movie with Jennifer Lawrence playing Elizabeth Holmes.

You can see it as a story about a misunderstood genius who, against all odds that the heavily regulated environment threw at her, tried to push for a tremendous innovation in the field of blood testing. You can also see it as a story about a misguided idealist who was willing to lie through her teeth as her carefully crafted house of cards started collapsing with absolutely nothing she could show the world – or even her investors – that could back up her crazy dream.

We need the crazy innovators who are not willing to play by the rules of old industries. But we also need some educated adults in the room that should provide guidance on why those, perhaps outdated rules, are there to begin with.