Katgal.com: New and Improved

This is the Readers' Digest version of all my favorite stumbles! Mostly design- related, but some other stuff, too.

Color Wheel
Need help picking a color scheme? This nifty little tool will help you find unexpected and unique color combinations.
Color Lovers
If the idea of picking your own color scheme is too overwhelming, check out this site. There you'll find hundreds of five-color palettes from which to choose.
Color Blender
Another neat little tool to help you come up with new color schemes.

1001 Free Fonts
It is what it is.
Fontz
Another free font resource.
Better Fonts
Another free font resource. You can never have too many fonts, right?
Identifont
Ever seen a font and wanted to know the name? Just scan it or grab a screen shot and upload it and Identifont will tell you.
What the Font?
Another font-identifying website.

Graphic Makeovers
Graphic design is a hobby of mine. I love learning by seeing what other designers have done. Great site.
HOW Design Forum
Watch graphic designers eat their young! This forum is brutally honest when it comes to critiques. But for the most part, they do know what they're talking about.
Graphic Design Forum
A much milder mannered group, for those of you who don't have the nerve to post your stuff to the HOW Design Forum.

Brands of the World
Looking for logo-design inspiration? This site has thousands of logos from well-known and not-so-well-known companies available for download in vector format.
The Good: Advertising/Design Goodness
The Bad and the Ugly: Web Pages that Suck
Ironic that the "Web Pages that Suck" site itself kind of sucks. Design-wise, I mean. The content's great.

iStockphoto
"The Designers Dirty Little Secret." Hundreds of thousands of high-quality stock photos and illustrations for as little as $1. That's where I got the lovely background image I used for this site. While you're there, check out my portfolio of stock photography. If you want to sign up, let me know and I'll send you a "welcome" e-mail that will entitle you to three free credits.

Lorem Ipsum Generator
Need dummy text. Just enter the number of characters and hit enter, and voila. Even lets you select from a number of different starting phrases, so your paragraphs don't all look the same.
The Group Art Project
Go sign up and submit your own 600x600 pixel art cell and become part of the worlds largest collaborative art piece.
Shrink Pictures
Not sure this belongs in "design resources" since it's more of a "for dummies" tool... How many times does someone send you a gigantic photo attached to an email, when really what they just want to do is say "looky here at my cute kid/dog/whatever." It's usually because they have no idea how to resize a photo. Send them this link.
Online Favicon Generator
Generates favicon images for browser address bars, favorites and tabs, from pictures, logos and other graphics. Seems like a simple enough task, but the catch is the file needs to be an "ico" file, and most graphics software don't support ico files. That's where this site comes in. Upload a png, gif, or jpg, and it will automatically resize and produce an ico file for your site. (Don't have one for my site yet. Yeah, I should get on that.)

Free Online Project Management Tool
This web-based job tracking, invoicing, reporting, and project management software is specificaly designed for the part-time independent contractor.
What Should I Charge? Calculate Your Hourly Rate
Ever dreamed about working for yourself, but had no idea what to charge? This explains how to calculate your hourly bill rate, and even (at the bottom of the page) includes a handy spread sheet that will do the calculations for you.
Metal Business Cards
Wow, these are so cool. You can even die cut your logo out of the metal. And they're not that expensive.
PDF Online
How many times has someone sent you a file that you couldn't open because you didn't have the program that created it? Use this online PDF'ing tool and you'll be able to see what's in that damn file!

Pink Is the New Blog
My daily gossip fix.
Yahoo! News
I don't know how or why it happened, but I'm addicted to Yahoo! News.
ASCII-O-Matic
Convert your photos into ASCII art. Check out my photo at right. The original is in my photo gallery.
StumbleUpon
Let's you randomly surf the web with the click of the button. It's surprisingly addictive!
Awful Plastic Surgery
Not updated all that often, but there's a ton of archives for new visitors to peruse.
The Cool Hunter
Most of this stuff is WAY out of my price range, but like the site's name says, it's all pretty damn cool stuff.
Pandora
Internet radio that adapts to your taste! Tell the site what kind of music you like, and it will help you find new music to suit your tastes.
Energi to Go
I'm surprised it took so long for someone to come up with a product like this. With just two AA batteries, this gadget can completely charge a dead cell phone battery or provide you with up to 9 hours of talk time. No more freaking out if your cell phone dies and you forgot to pack your charger. Just run to the store an pick up one of these nifty little chargers from Energizer.
Make Your Own Virtual Snowflake
Getting into the holiday spirit already?

I'm a huge Sacramento Kings fan! I can't wait for the season to start.

Click on the links below to see the sites and sounds of some of my favorite people in the world.

Bryan Boroski (www.boroski.com)
My protégé (at least when it comes to web design) and the love of my life.
Krista Anderson (www.kodakgallery.com/andersonsrus)
My sister Krista and her family.
The Cullo Family (http://cullofamily.blogspot.com)
Meet one of my best friends, Dawn, and her brood. (Well, they just have one kid, but they hope to someday have a brood!)
Photography by Mary Ann Honcharik
Beautiful photography by my aunt Mary.