Jeremy Davis - Web Designer, Developer and Blogger

It kinda struck me just now, although I've always known deep down, that I'm not a very balanced person. I'm a to the hilt type of person. When I do something, I becoming fully involved in it.  I learn everything I can about it. It consumes most of my time and energy. For instance, my mother still tells me stories of how when I was a child I had a time when I would wake up on Saturday mornings and spend the entire day in my room playing with K'nex. I didn't care about anything else, except building with my construction toys. And I've had a few people ask when I was going to write more posts for this blog, and my answer has been that I am currently working on another blog project that I was tired of talking about and decided to start. My energy has been completely involved with this new project from brainstorming and general plans for how the blog will go, to custom designing the theme and writing around 15 posts to start the blog off with. So that epiphany got me thinking about which is better to be. Finish Reading »

In case you haven't heard, Microsoft recently started airing a commercial featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The two are supposed to do a series of these commercials. These commercials had a good deal of hype surrounding them because they are supposed to combat the very popular Mac vs. PC ads run by Apple. Finish Reading »

Would you rather have 1000 people that regularly visit your blog, yet never interact with it and share it with others, or only 100 people that love it, comment on every post, give you ideas and tell others of your blog? It's a simple quantity vs. quality dilemma. It's easy to focus on the quantity because it's easily measured. You can see if your RSS subscribers are going up or down, but you can't quantify whether your visitors like your blog more this week than last week. Finish Reading »

I need some help, but you have to be crazy to be able to help. You see, there are tens of thousands of people that are extremely devoted to some team, politician, band or idea. Now my questions to these people is simply, Why?

Why

• do you cancel life when your team is playing?
• do you start fistfights with the other team’s fans when they score a goal?
• do you burn the memorabilia you’ve collected for years when your favorite player switches teams?
• do you wait in line for months to see a movie?
• do you travel across the nation following after your favorite band?
• do you volunteer most of your time and money for your politician or cause?
• do you defend your politician when some crippling news of corruption is leaked?
• do you spend so much of your energy devoted to a group, person or idea that will most likely never know of your existence?

Now just to be clear, I am in no way trying to poke fun of these types of people. I am simply curious because I have never had the passion for something as these people have had. I would just like to know what motivates them to such a degree to give what seems like so much to something that probably isn’t influenced much by their efforts. Finish Reading »

As I am trying to become a designer, I've wonder when it is that I actually am a designer.

When am I allowed to call myself one?

After my first paying client?

Or after my first custom Wordpress theme?

Do I have to attend some formal classes before I can claim designership?

Perhaps after I quit my full-time job and pursue design full-time?

This thought applies to all occupations.

Are you a doctor after you graduate med school or after your first surgery?

A photographer after your first picture is developed or published?

An actor after landing a job as Man Standing #3 or one landing opposite of Brad Pitt?

When did you feel like you became what you were striving to become?

This post in the sixth in a series where I am recording the SEO efforts of my site wiiifit.com. If you’ve missed the previous posts, you should view these first. So apparently I lied about updating this series every 2 weeks. Every two months would have been more accurate. There isn't anything else I want to add to the site and so bi-weekly content updates are about all that is different. Plus the earnings are nothing impressive so I didn't want to keep posting each week how I make 5 cents and bore you. Finish Reading »

Note: I am shameless stealing the Moral of the Story titling for this post from Naomi's post titles of the same format because it just fits.

Who are you writing your posts to?

I know you may say the obvious, "My readers, of course." But what if that post you just hit the publish button for were to be read by 26,638 more people than you expected. And that those people have no idea of who you are other than what you just wrote in that post. That might change a few things wouldn't it. You might want to double check some grammar or clarify some things so that your ideas and thoughts don't get misconstrued. Maybe you would position yourself differently. Place yourself as an expert or show your vulnerabilities. Or maybe you wouldn't even hit publish.

I would just like to reflect on how having my What I Hate About Design post getting dugg to the front page has influenced me and hopefully help you consider some things to improve your post writing in case the Digg monster comes knocking.
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"You must unlearn what you have learned." -Yoda

We've gone search crazy. There was a time when search was a joke. I vaguely remember the time when going through a Yahoo directory was the way to find what you were looking for. Then Google came along and quickly become the poster boy for an utopian society. Now our society is utterly reliant on Google. People even type in full URLs into Google instead of their address bar. With the Internet becoming increasingly more crowded, how much longer can we rely on the top 10 Google search results to be exactly what we're looking for? Use these tips to help make your searching more effective. Finish Reading »

We all have a general idea of what our "dream life" is, but taking the time to write down exactly what your dream is can be a fun and inspiring challenge.

I was recently hit with the challenge from Crystal to complete the Dream Meme.

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It’s been a year since I started to get more into the design aspect of computers but I’d like to share some things that frustrate me as I make this push. Finish Reading »