Kaenneth's Journal: Self teaching web development

I'm working on learning CSS, C#, ASP.net, and SQL by creating this site: http://freeduiconsultations.com/

This I'm using as an index of sites: http://portal2portal.com/

I bought these for no good reason, if anyone wants them, I'll consider selling them for a reasonable price for non-profit use.
http://toham.com/
http://themoist.com/
http://mushystuff.com/
http://mippo.com/
http://ibfun.com/
http://gamingshops.com/

and yes, I'm hoping Slashdot will indirectly help my search engine rankings =)

One thing I'm curious about, is do the big search engines adjust the value of a link based upon the subject of the site?, for example, does a link from a minor law site (like mine) to another law site (an attorneys) have more value than a link from a major technical site (like slashdot) to a law site (an attorneys)?