Sunday, May 29, 2016

Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016


The month of May has seen some tremendous Photoshop tutorials some great techniques for really refining you photo manipulation skills, alongside some great illustrator text effects. We have included some good articles we have been reading through the month from CSS coding technique to 17 things people hate about your website. If your a Front End Developer or Designer this is perfect read to catch up on the month of May from the online design and web development community.

Photoshop

How to Create a Layered Floral Typography Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

floral Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016Floral typography is a design trend that combines nice floral elements with bold typography, to create some elegant designs. This tutorial will show you how to use a flower stock image, with a simple text, and a couple of layer styles, filters, textures, and adjustments to create your own floral typography design.

Create a Set of Hand Drawn Icons Using Adobe Photoshop

handdrawn icons Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016In this tutorial I will show you how to create a set of hand drawn icons using only Adobe Photoshop.

Create a Wild Looking Colored Face in Photoshop

dark Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016In this tutorial I will show you how to create a set of hand drawn icons using only Adobe Photoshop.

How to Create a Floral Portrait Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

flower bg Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016

Floral typography is a design trend that combines nice floral elements with bold typography, to create some elegant designs. Illustrator

Illustrator

How to Create a Blueprint Text Effect in Adobe Illustratorblueprint Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016

In the following steps you will learn how to create a blueprint text effect in Adobe Illustrator.

Create an Ice Cream Cart

ice cream Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016In this tutorial, we’ll be creating a detailed illustration of an ice cream cart using Adobe Illustrator. One of the things that you will learn is how to create the main shape using several tools with the basic vector shape building techniques, some masking techniques as well as other simple effects. Also, applying different shadows and highlight effects will be learned so that our cart will look more glossy and three-dimensional.

How To Create a Decorative Drop Cap in Adobe Illustrator

drop cap Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016A fun personal project designers and illustrators often take part in is ’36 Days of Type’, or equivalent challenges like ‘Daily Drop Cap’ where artists express their style on a new letter or number every day. Initials have received decorative treatment throughout history, with examples dating as far back as early biblical texts. In today’s tutorial I’ll take you through the process of decorating a letter in Adobe Illustrator with a range of vector embellishments. We’ll make use of some really useful techniques that you’ll be able to make use of in all kinds of illustration projects in the future.

Draw a Realistic Coffee Cup Background

coffe Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016This Illustrator tutorial go through some really basic and important Illustrator techniques while showing you how to create a realistic cup of coffee from scratch. You will learn interesting techniques on how to use the Appearance Panel in Illustrator CS6 with its very useful features. Using various techniques, we can create really realistic water effects.

 

Web and Design articles

17 Things People Absolutely Hate About Your Website

hate Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016a list of the 17 most annoying things we’ve seen on websites to act as a sort of guide for what not to do when designing your website. Let’s take a look at the worst offenders!

Creating A Living Style Guide: A Case Study

styleguide Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016a Living style guides are an important tool for web development today, especially in large, complex web applications. They help document styles and patterns, keep designers and developers in sync, and greatly help to organize and distill complex interfaces. Indeed, living style guides remain one of the best ways to communicate design standards to an organization.

Split Testing Titles and H1s: Do They Still have an SEO Impact?

split testing Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016Let’s start by going back to 1998, back before anyone knew what Google was and the likes of Tom Anthony and Will Critchlow had just begun to build websites from their bedrooms. It was important to repeat your keywords keywords keywords across the site so that AltaVista & co. would know your keywords were very important, as keywords were how you ranked. You wanted to make sure your keywords were in your title, and that your keywords were in H1 tags, and that your keywords were just about everywhere else. (Ok, I can’t keep this up any longer, but you get the point).

CSS coding techniquescss Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016

In this article you will see some tips and recommendation to write better,easier-to-maintain CSS code, so your stylesheets are shorter and have fewer rules. CSS can feel like a handy tool instead of a burden.

How to start a WordPress theme business w/ Mike McAlister

wordpress Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016With so many WordPress themes available on the market, it might sound crazy to even try and start a business selling your own. There are super-huge, multi-purpose themes selling $100k worth a week with option panels the size of their revenue charts, others with big passionate communities supporting them, and countless other shops just as successful in their own right. How can you compete?

What the designer of the old Instagram icon thinks of the new oneicon designer Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016

Plenty of people are complaining about the new Instagram logo and want it changed back to the “original.” But wrap your mind around this little-known fact: The old Instagram logo — the square instant camera with the tiny rainbow — was actually not the original.

The 8 Principles for Success – Whiteboard Friday

whitboard Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2016On-page SEO is no longer a simple matter of checking things off a list. There’s more complexity to this process in 2016 than ever before, and the idea of “optimization” both includes and builds upon traditional page elements. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores the eight principles you’ll need for on-page SEO success going forward.




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Saturday, May 28, 2016

Disruption ≠ Strategy

The real estate industry sees its fair share of startups looking to “disrupt” the real estate industry.

That sounds great, but it’s not a strategy.

Here’s a good read on the subject.

The post Disruption ≠ Strategy appeared first on GeekEstate Blog.



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Josh Donaldson is back in the Gentleman’s Game Good Graces

jason-blake-quote-its-nice-to-get-the-monkey-off-my-back

I tried something new in the Gentleman’s game this week; choosing to give Coors Field the old ‘F-U’ other than using perennial 5000+ disappointment Buster Posey. I also decided instead of looking at the pricing and player lists on Thursday night when our Gentleman’s Game Ombudsman DStars45 sends out the invite, I was going to do things the old fashioned way and look at and set my lineup just an hour or two before the contest so I stop second guessing anything. Let’s face it, nothing else was working.

And this week, Cactus Jack returned to bring out his trusty trashcan full of junk in this hardcore DFS streetfight.

Somehow, every player Diamondhoggers used was the only invite that player received to the elegant Gentleman’s cocktail party. Josh Donaldson was finally exceptional against the likes of whore Joe Kelly. Melky Cabrera hit a grand slam. Jacob deGrom was far too cheap for his upside in his own home park. A few things worked that should have worked (finally), but lets be honest here: in DFS the things that should work almost never work. So I sprinkled in some aforementioned trash like Ichiro Suzuki who is cheap and almost never zeroes, Whit “Stump” Merrifield who has no business being anyone’s DFS first basemen ever; just a garbage ass play, and Melky Cabrera seems to murder the Royals and he hit a grand slam. King Felix at home against the Twins was a total bust, of course. Just to remind us that up is down and down is up in this twisted world of DFS.

This week’s results did not do much to change the yearly standings. In fact there was no movement other than JSquad34 and Swindaman3 moving into a toilet-tie for third place. DStars45 put a bit of a gap between himself and our own t3bird04 by getting second place and t3bird finishing an uncharacteristic last. We excused him earlier from the gents Memorial Day bash because he was heading south for the holiday (with his wife). If you looked at t3bird’s lineup, he mostly brought his wife to this week’s cocktail party and they did not deliver. I was proud of him for bringing a whore like Chris Carter as his first basemen but like most whores do to you; they burn you. Carter zeroed and Mike Fiers who you couldn’t trust as far as you can spit got the Bird Man -9.75.

Screen Shot 2016-05-28 at 12.42.31 PM

Here’s a look at the yearly Gents standings.

Yearly Standings:
DStars45 – 34 points
t3bird04 – 29 points
Jsquad34 – 24 points
Swindaman3 – 24 points
Diamondhoggers – 23 points

Before we get a look at the weekly winning lineup presented by Wal-Mart and Mountain Dew, we must list our weekly “Fantasy Players to Kill”. 

First, to honor tradition; the yearly league shitheads:

  • Justin Upton (you’re not going anywhere, pal)
  • Jason Heyward (Disabled list, hurts when he swings)
  • Sonny Gray (Disabled list, yeah right, erectile dysfunction)
  • Prince Fielder
  • Matt Harvey (at least he’s not hiding on the DL like these other pussies)
  • Dallas Keuchel (I will hold you all year on my bench, you will never again see the light of day you bearded dickhead)
  • Byung-Ho Park
  • Brian Dozier (if you have him, please cut him today).
  • Yasiel Puig (I love you man, but I’m sorry; you’re here for now).
  • Giancarlo Stanton (oh, now his side hurts. My self-esteem hurts for all those years I believed he was a 50-homer talent).
  • Carlos Gomez (DL’d for sucking)
  • Carlos Santana (He’s just so awful to own, honestly).
  • Carlos Correa (hitting .200 over the last month, looks like shit on meaty pitches)
  • Yan Gomes (this isn’t really fair, because all catchers are awful)
  • Corey Dickerson
  • Michael Pineda
  • Patrick Corbin
  • Billy Hamilton (Never hits of course, but not even really stealing bases)

And now for the weekly DFS players who shit the bed with cunning regularity:

  • King Felix (What the Hell was that?)
  • Jordy Mercer
  • Devon Travis
  • Wellington Castillo
  • Nelson Cruz
  • Adam Conley (three Gents fell for this trick, and almost a fourth)
  • Paul Goldschmidt (so what else is new)
  • Robbie Ray
  • Eugenino Suarez
  • Rickie Weeks (this is the only place he could ever be isn’t it)
  • Jose Altuve
  • Brian McCann (maybe the biggest loser in the history of me playing DFS. I hate this guy.)
  • Julio Urias
  • Mookie Betts
  • Jurickson Profar!
  • Edwin Encarnacion
  • Salvador Perez (another guy who will only homer when you don’t use him)
  • Mike Fiers
  • Chris Carter

Alright, that about covers it for this week. Here’s a copy of the winning lineup from Diamondhoggers:

Screen Shot 2016-05-28 at 12.42.44 PM

So what’s going to happen next week? Can Diamondhoggers finally climb out of the basement in the standings? Will they win a second straight week so we can get this post on a Saturday? Will our own t3bird04 return from the South with a Southern Bride to return him to the pinnacle of gentleman’s game glory? Can anyone stop the dominant run DStars45 is on? Will Jsquad34 get one more Friday to bring his prized whore Jurickson Profar as a date? Will Swindaman3’s lineup (and bowells) roll in at 8:30 AM or 8:40 AM Friday morning? Will Draftkings ever add more single-entry tournaments to make it an experience I actually enjoy? You must take hold of your overwhelming suspense and tune in next week to find out.



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Your Saturday Baseball Post

williams

When I get up and the sun is shining on a Saturday like this one and the AC is on; it reminds me of Saturday mornings when I was a kid and I would grab the sports page out of the stack off my parents table. I would take the box scores and find all my favorite guys. If they did something worthwhile, I circled them and then cut out the box score and pinned it on my bulletin board. That’s back when there was no ESPN.com or MLB.com, so you had to get the paper to see what the out of town guys did. And if it was a ‘late’ game you had to wait TWO days to see what guys on the west coast did. And then you ran the risk of someone throwing the damn paper away when it came.

As always, full slate of games on tap today for people who love baseball; you’ll likely do something else fun today on this Memorial Day weekend but baseball will be there waiting for when you’re bored. And that’s why it’s great.

Your song of the week that should be played on a loudspeaker near you is a good one. This one is straight out of Boyz N’ the Hood/Grand Theft Auto V.

Enjoy your Saturday everyone. Thank you for your continued support of Diamond Hoggers. Don’t be that guy in your fantasy league who neglects his lineup!



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Carlos Correa is bailing on pitches down the middle far too often

Every time Carlos Correa gets fooled by a pitch that bends right back over the middle of the plate, it’s going right here. If you watch him with any regularity, it’s his approach that is hurting him. He’s far too content to try to hit everything to right field. Often on the first pitch down the middle you see him almost bail out of the box on a breaking ball and take the first strike down the heart of the plate or takes a first pitch down the middle and shoots it into the stands in right. One of the few guys in baseball we would like to see become more pull-happy. And this isn’t something where you can really stat a guy, you just see it. So when we see it, it’s going here.



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Miguel Sano killed a King Felix pitch on Friday night in Seattle

Since the Pelotero days, we have really loved Miguel Sano. Just now scratching the surface on his talent in just his 126th big league game, he hit his 27th career home run off a guy he probably considers a legend in Felix Hernandez.

And the thing about Sano is he absolutely doesn’t get any cheapies. I know this because; I sat and watched this video one night.

So add this one to the list. As it left the park I found myself thinking that King Felix’s star is starting to flicker out while Sano’s is shining a bit brighter by the day. Baseball is funny like that.



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The Best Moments of Darryl Strawberry’s Career

While watching the Mets on Friday night, I noticed they were wearing their 1986 World Championship uniforms. And any time I think of those 1986 Mets, I think of Darryl Strawberry.

Man, this guy was fun to watch. Look at those home runs that just look like loopy fly balls. Loopy fly balls that traveled 430 feet.

I just felt like this had to go on the blog.



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