Once you discover you can get a 160mmx100mm double sided panel with mask and silk made for $26, *and* they panelize as many designs as will fit for free, making stuff at home gets to sounding very, very silly.
I would say olimex. I'd be best to have a few designs and send them all in (or get with friends) as they will panelized for free, and you pay for the whole panel.
The board above looks different because it isn't a finished board. It looks like normal FR4 to me, with no mask. Mask is that green (or red, or purple, or whatever) stuff that insulates the traces on the board from electrical shorts as well as form corrosion.
It is silver probably because it...
My favorite misperception of relativity (and QM). Both have nothing to do with perception, and by observer, all that is meant is point of reference (in QM, it's particle interaction). Neither theory in any way cares about a conscious observer. You sound like lifegazer...
A computer systems engineer is going to know:
* Programming (especially in C and asm)
* Programmable logic
* Gate delay's
* Operating systems
* Device driver code
* Physics of semiconductors
* Microcomputer design
* Logic design
* High speed digital design
Whereas, a ee would know...