Stranger Studios has recently launched several great new websites. Check them out!

ComiteSkin.com
Philadelphia-area Dermatologist, Harriet Comite, came to us for a total revamp of her growing practice’s (Advanced Skin Care) existing website. The site is balanced in its appeal to masculine and feminine audiences and conveys loads and loads of information in an easy-to-digest format.
Learn more about this project »

Garrett-Olsen.com
Up-and-coming Kart racer Garrett Olsen needed a web home-base for his growing stardom. The site is built on the Wordpress CMS to allow easy updating by the client and his web team. The site is also enhanced by the use of third party sites like Viddler and YouTube, and Flickr.
Learn more about this project »

LuxuryBabyBlog.com
A blog for hip parents to keep track of all that’s cool and “luxurious” for their growing families. The project includes our proprietary mailing list application (that we will hopefully make available as a Wordpress plugin shortly), as well as integration with Feedburner for email delivery of blog updates.
Learn more about this project »

VanessaPeanFoundation.org
Stranger Studios has a heart! We helped develop a web presence for the Vanessa Péan Foundation to serve as a hub for all of the foundation’s many meaningful efforts.
Learn more about this project »

Way back, I wrote the tutorial on how to create a pagination scheme similar to the one that Digg uses. The code in the tutorial was meant to educate readers on how the algorithm works.

Meanwhile, I was using completely different code for my own projects. Typically I put all of the pagination code into a function (or PHP class), which makes it much easier to use in practice. Now I’ve made available a version of this function, which people should look to first if they want a quick implementation.

• Download the PHP code for the function here: diggstyle_function.txt.
• To use it make a function call like getPaginationString($page, $totalitems, $limit, $adjacents, $targetpage, $pagestring);.
• $page is the current page number
• $totalitems is the total number of items in the set. You usually get this from a SQL query.
• $adjacents is the number of page links to put adjacent to the current page.
• $targetpage is the URL you want to point to. e.g. index.php
• $pagetext is the string used to append the page variable to the URL. e.g. ?page= or &p=
• Use this style sheet.

Read the tutorial for more help and to see an example. For a real-live example, check out my Wine Log.

Also, Mis Algoritmos is at it again with a digg-style pagination plugin for Wordpress based on this code.

Earlier in the year, I wrote a tutorial on how to create pagination similar to Digg’s. The article focused on the basic algorithm for displaying the pagination, and there was definitely some opportunity for improvement in its implementation.

Well, the improvements are in. We have a modularized PHP version and a Perl version. See the updated pagination demo page for details.

I like this. Done in Photoshop. I traced a picture Kim took of me last month and did some simple coloring. I may add a little more detail to this yet. The face could use some work, and the shirt I’m wearing has this cool picnic-table-plaid that would look good in the picture. This is also a good candidate to turn into buddy icons, etc.

I’ve been doing some illustration work for a client who is self-publishing a book. I am doing the drawings completely in Photoshop with my handy Intuit Wacom Tablet (I have an older series 2 tablet) (thanks, Dad! - that was a great Christmas).

I’ve probably watched this video below at least 5 times since I started this work. Mike Krahulik, from Penny-Arcade, has mad skills with the pen. It’s a great inspiration, something to aspire to. I learn something every time I watch it. And the music isn’t too bad either (kuh-kuh-kuh Q-Unit!).

The video was first posted at Penny-Arcade on October 11th, 2006. In the blog post, Mike shares some pointers about his brush sizes (all defaults) and techniques. It’s good stuff.

If you thought the heart was eye-catching, check out these screenshots of the Netflix homepage. That black arrow pointing at the previews tab blinks when you load the page. The gift box in the upper right has a cool animated glow/glitter effect on it. Nice stuff. Is it too much?

Michael Coffey, of Inertia Beverage Group, posted in November about the benefits of tricking your website out for the holidays. People are already in the shopping/spending mood, a little encouragment wouldn’t hurt.

It’s not too late. What changes can you make to your site? Will updating the Stranger Studios website help us get some new work?