With so many people out there calling themselves web designers these days, it’s important to stand out from the crowd. Creating unique and effective websites requires not just an eye for design but a knack for choosing compelling photography and images as well. Potential clients will be most impressed if you can demonstrate a range of looks, laid out in a variety of interesting and creative ways. While stock photography is an easy method for accessing such imagery, it’s crucial to mix things up so that your work doesn’t wind up being a carbon copy of every other website out [...]

Gene Haas is an entrepreneur and philanthropist that operates his automation business – Haas Automation, Inc. out of Oxnard, California. He has many other enterprises, including his own NASCAR team and makes many charitable contributions to his community as well as interstate and overseas.

Something completely off topic but should make you smile. The following have been culled from real church bulletins. Thank the Lord for typos and best intentions. Enjoy.

You may have noticed that one of my favorite online activities is buying and selling websites. Pretty much everyday I start out my day by quickly scouting Flippa and Digitalpoint to see if I can find a bargain or a site that complements my current portfolio. Anyway I thought I would share some of this hard work with my loyal readers and as such, I have decided to post the best sites I could find for sale (at reasonable prices). If you are thinking of buying an established website check out these listings first:

Just before Christmas I was doing a blog design for a client. The client was a difficult one who seemingly hated to divulge any information. Anyway my fiance went into early labor (6 weeks early) and my son was in intensive care for an indefinite period (turned out to be 2 weeks). As a result of the news I simply couldn’t deal with the client or the project, even if I chose to delay the project I just did not want to think about work at that time. I set up another designer to take over the job and then explained to the client why I couldn’t deliver. When I did this it got me thinking about all the excuses I have been told by designers, programmers and freelancers over the years. Whilst I will concede every now and then

Normally my post do not include my personal life. For one its not that interesting, but for the most part it is irrelevant to the central themes of this blog. However seeming as though this latest issue includes the death of my computer, the very platform from which this blog comes to life I wanted to get your opinions on this most heinous crime.

I have been working towards starting a list for this blog and developing some long term relationships with its readers via newsletters, and twitter. Because of time contraints I have yet to put this into fruition but am currently developing some excellent products to use as bait to get people to sign up. However today I found an excellent subscription bait which you can find at Habitation of Justice. I am not going to show you what they have done, you will have to visit the site to see but it is very funny and effective.