June 2006 Archives

I've been publishing web pages for over 12 years now and an advocate of the open source movement. A few years ago I started following the OSWD (open source web design) and have found some really great themes and templates there, actually it's largely because of reverse-engineering other designers web pages that I've learned what CSS, HTML and PHP that I know. Recently I came across some designs that are in my opinion a "quantum leap" beyond anything I'd previously seen.

The template design in Gerhard Wolfgang's work is extraordinary, like a perfectly balanced composition. As long as there's incredible programmers him, putting his work into the public domain for others to use and improve, then I'm going to continue taking them up on the offer.

All webmasters who already do, and those who are interested in promoting and affiliating with online casinos will want to attend this free conference at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. The event is September 12 and 13, 2006 and includes a welcome party the evening of the 12th. There is no admission charge whatsoever for webmasters, and Lunch Buffet and drinks on both days are provided free as well! www.gpwa-conference-2006.com/registration.html

THEN:

The Casino Affiliate Convention (Las Vegas 2006) event will focus on global marketing for the Gaming Industry. It will be held on September 14-15, 2006 at the Stardust Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

If discipline and consistency are maintained over a sustained period of time towards a fixed objective, then it stands to reason that a favorable desired outcome would result. Probably one of the hardest things in life is to remain consistent about the things that bring affluence and yet not to lose sight of the day-to-day enjoyment of life and the people in it. There needs to be discipline to keep a good balance but get the work done every day, even when all the things around are extremely distracting. Progress must be made.

We live in a world of compiled ideas, accrued over time, reinvented with applications of old ideas combined with new breakthroughs. Every day pieces of this enormous cosmic jigsaw puzzle fit together, making clear new ideas to manifest into improvements in the things we use to make our lives better, or more comfortable. So many independent minds, adding improvements on so many already effective tools and systems, that we've brought this planet and it's inhabitants to this level of technological sophistication is amazing. Almost every person alive today has the ability latent in them to make the world a better place.

"In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm;
in the real world, all rests on perseverance."

Goethe

My first effort of image development for a web site design started over 10 years ago with the "crown & anchor" which I believe offers image correlation for "invest & offshore". Back in my early days of learning Photoshop this was a good practice subject, one which I've continued to devote time to right up till present day. Now I'm challenged with the task of making all sizes of banners from this icon, and the very difficult small buttons (120x60 pixels). Far from being a graphics wizard, everything comes to me from trial and error.

The Crown & Anchor image featured here, originally started out in the pages of a book about Naval insignia from the library. The symbol from the Dutch Navy is that of an Ensign, was scanned from the book, enlarged and then pixel by pixel transformed to become the icon I've used all these years for Invest Offshore.

My favorite colors to use with the crown & anchor are royal blue, gold and purple. Recently the blues and purple colors I'm fond of were found in an image taken from inside a large and powerful breaking wave, which lends the effect of motion and I find the effect to be very pleasing to the eye - see the design mock-up.

Over 12 years ago I first started reading the book called Urantia and attended several study groups so I could ask questions and attempt to understand where the book came from, why it was written, by whom, and why more people weren't reading it? One of the answers that had meaning to me was that it matters not why or who the book was written by but rather how I felt about reading it? and what impact the message would have on me?

Without having read a single page of the Urantia for over 8 years I can say still that it's amongst the most profoundly effecting things that I've ever read, it's so profound that most people who read it feel no compulsion to promote it afterwards, rather just let new readers find it when they're meant to.

My writing assignment today is to write something suitable for this Blog's category "body" and since I'm not feeling inclined to write about my own body, which is getting fitter but fatter, I'll save that for another article. So I ran a search in Yahoo News of the word "health" and read a round-up of the days news stories related to health. The 2 stories which were news-worthy to me, and relevant to "body" were about Bird-Flu reaching Canada and another article about substance abuse and painkillers in USA.

Rarely I travel in Sao Paulo alone and usually never more than I have to but there's a place about 45 minutes from my home that I thoroughly enjoy visiting. It's a little town called Embu das Artes or just plain Embu. We have some good friends living there and they have a house on a 5 acre lot, both of which are prime but the combination is nothing short of exceptional. Getting to the house is challenging because of the many very poor neighborhoods I need to drive across on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, however the destination is worth the risk.

Today marks the beginning of a new project, as an affiliate to the world's largest Independent Financial Advisory group, specializing in the offshore marketplace and operating in more than 30 countries around the globe. The website Invest Offshore has been slated for a re-design and now with the distinct purpose of promoting information for and about investing offshore with deVere & Partners.

Since the early 90's I've been involved in publishing information about offshore banking and investing. In 1995 I attended my first major conference of offshore service providers, at the El San Juan Hotel in San Juan Puerto Rico. In attendance there were experts from almost every Caribbean Country, as most of these countries offer no-tax, or very low-tax investing and banking to foreigners that use the financial services of these so-called "tax havens".

The Four Agreements:
A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
(A Toltec Wisdom Book)

The four agreements are these:

• Be impeccable with your word.


• Don't take anything personally.


• Don't make assumptions.


• Always do your best.

It's the how and why one should do these things that make The Four Agreements worth reading and remembering.

You can click on the image to enlarge it or buy "The Four Agreements" from Amazon.

Looking for a new design or some great design ideas? check out the largest resource of free, easy to download web design templates on the Net. It's known as OSWD.org, which stands for "Open Source Web Design". Often times the original designer requests that you leave a link back to them when you publish pages using their design, however since these designs are "open source" you're free to modify, edit or improve upon the design but in all fairness it's not a good idea to attempt to sell them to others.

View a collection of my favorite designs by clicking here.

Silicon Palms was incorporated in Florida on 9.9.99 and has always been the culmination of my desire to become financially independent from the proceeds of web design, development, and marketing. My first company OffshoreNet was the precursor of the dream but the company name was misleading and stereotyped me too much. To this day OffshoreNet is one of my favorite projects and a component of the Silicon Palms cyber estate developer network.

Today I came across a brilliant article by a columnist in UPI, about U2 by a writer named Margaret Benefiel. She's promoting a new book called Soul at Work and also has an interesting website called Executive Soul. I'm going to share an excerpt from the article that caught my eye and then I'm going to post a description of her new book and I highly suggest checking out the work of Margaret Benefiel, I know I will.

With only a few days left till the first match of the World Cup the excitement is building and the flags are being hoisted, pasted, adorned and displayed on cars, houses, businesses,buildings and people. Of the previous 2 World Cups, both times I was living in South Florida where there are over 100,000 Brazilians living and making presence known during the largest sporting event in the world but nothing compares to being in the country for this historic event, although the craziest sports fans in the world will be out in force in Germany.

Never thought of myself as a Libertarian or for that matter any other general classification. Growing up in Canada most of my spare time was devoted to sports and the outdoors, then when girls and cars became important almost everything was blown-off in favor of working for, or on, cars and then using them to go find girls. It wasn't until much later in my life that I started to wonder about how I felt towards events that were happening in the world, then I was drawn towards deeper thinkers and embarked on somewhat of a personal quest to seek knowledge.

I'm a sucker for a good conspiracy theory and partly blame a lifetime of conditioning from Hollywood movies. Certainly fact is stranger than fiction, which has made diabolical stories more plausible and the older (hopefully wiser) I get the more cynical I become. The risk however is letting information, whether it be theory, thesis or journalism take total control of how I think about life in general, since I'm too sensitive and impressionable. Over the years I've recognized my own weakness to sensational journalism and conspiracy theories.

The French Open is on and in Brazil the television coverage begins in the morning and continues all through the day and evening. As you may know, there are no night-matches at Roland Garros, the Paris location of the French Open, so live television coverage concludes before dusk and unfinished matches are completed the following day. Tennis is so popular in Brazil that they even play pre-recorded matches all evening for those who weren't fortunate enough to watch during the work day - another benefit of being a web geek.

Artists Rendering of the USS New York

With a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy's amphibious assault ship USS New York has already made history. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center .