Giant Squid Industries | We make the internet all wet and squiggly.

Reid just took the ‘How much do you hate silly quizzes’ quiz and scored a 99%

I installed the Facebook Connect plugin the other day, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it works. After adding a function to my comments.php file, users can now click a button and login to their Facebook account. Then upon adding a comment to a post it will display their Facebook user image, and information. It adds functionality to repost the comment back on their facebook wall which is fantastic for giving users easy ways to promote your writing – all their friends will see that comment in their feed. This seems like a great win for a lot of business looking to get some extra social media traction.

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The Polaroid gallery is one of my favorite features of this new website. It has exactly jack squat to do with my business goals, and it doesn’t contribute to my bottom line, and I should have been outside enjoying the sun or exercising instead of building it – but it looks pimp and it makes me happy. I should note – there’s a dozen other ways of achieving this effect – some utilizing out of the box Wordpress gallery functionality. Leave notes in the comments if you have better approaches.

Here was the spec I made for myself. (I should note – by “spec” I mean the 15 seconds I thought about this before I starting writing code). Each post would have a title and an image. It would appear in the loop so concieveably, someone could comment on it. The nature of my working environment is me surrounded by adorable kittens, and a puppy, and a pretty wife, so I take a lot of pictures that could iliciit an ‘awwww’ response and I wanted an outlet for people to do that. But I also wanted a page that would fill with a beautiful grid of pictures. I don’t know what it is, but I love big grids of images. Even spacing between them all, bright colors and different shapes, the collecting of the images onto one page is an act of creation in itself.

I’m done waxing poetic. Here’s the code breakdown.

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I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.
~ Billy Joel

Before we start – Yes I did just quote Billy Joel. You want to make something of it?

There’s a fine line that designers and working creative types everyone needs to walk. How much or how little of yourself to invest in your work. Invest too little of yourself and obviously your work will suck. That’s true of designers, developers, accountants, circus jugglers who ever. It takes a certain amount of personal investment to do any job well. But… what about being to personally invested?

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I’m making the pilgrimage to the west cost for Wordcamp 2009 San Francisco. There’s a couple speakers that I’m excited about hearing. Foremost Tara Hunt from Citizen Agency. They’re a totally cool consulting firm in S.F and I think she’ll have a lot of interesting things to say. There are some panelists speaking that I’m curious but not optimistic about. I’m sure they’re all successful, and have been able to use Wordpress to leverage a readership – but I’m just not sure what I can learn from LOLCats in business terms. BUT I’m prepared to eat my words.

I will be holding down one of the spots at the Genius Bar for an hour. I plan to be humbled quickly – but hopefully I might learn a few things and pick up some new tricks.

Post Wordcamp I’ll be spending a few days in sunny Santa Cruz, hopefully get a chance to drown myself on a trainer surfboard and eat some good food.

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GiantSquid was responsible for the front end implementation of this urban gossip celeb hip hop magazine esque site. It picked up a Webby Honoree. That’s not quite the same as getting nominated, or winning an Webby outright – but it’s pretty friggin cool none the less. It was an intense build out with a ton of talented people working on it. Shane & Peter ran the crew, working along side the internal team at iOne, and managed to orchestrate the madness and get us launched and running. It’s a wordpress buildout, with 4 other sister sites. They’re all running similar installs with different theme implementations. Check them out at

http://theurbandaily.blackplanet.com
http://newsone.blackplanet.com
http://giant.blackplanet.com
http://hellobeautiful.blackplanet.com

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I thought I might write a couple articles explaining the technology behind the ole Giant Squid website. It feels a little self serving, basking in my own brilliance and all, but maybe someone will find a tip here that helps them out. Or better yet – someone smarter than me might have a better way to do things. That’d be great. Ok smarties – unleash your brilliance unto us.

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See The Polaroid Gallery »

“However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day.”
~ Jacques Yves Cousteau

It was a long time a coming, but the new site is up and running. It’s been totally rebuilt on Wordpress. I’m really excited for this next step. It’s more indicative of the kind of work that I’m doing these days. The old site was fun, and I dug the underwater floating seaweed business, but it’s time for some change. This new structure will allow me to update new projects with more views and more details. It’s also allowing me to roll my blog and writing into the same environment which is cool.

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