I have been learning Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as I go while working on this site. They have saved me much time and grief; I can't believe that I ever did any design without them! While learning, I have run into a number of helpful resources scattered across the net. Here they are, in no order whatsoever:

• CSS Cheat Sheet - available as a downloadable .png or .pdf, this cheatsheet lists all selectors, pseudo-selectors, properties, etc. and presents just about everything you'll need to know on a single page.
• CSS Layout Techniques - A great compilation of tips and tricks for creating cross-browser supported CSS style sheets.
  
• CSS Templates - Free-to-use CSS templates that can be tweaked and extended to meet your needs.
• CSS Zen Garden - Beautiful examples of CSS in action with viewable style sheets and HTML.
• Holy CSS Zeldman! - An authoritative collection of links to CSS resources.
  
• Squeaky Clean CSS - a blog entry written by Lokesh Dhaka that offers some great pointers on making sure that your CSS stays organized and useable.
• The Layout Reservoir - More simple and extendable CSS templates.
  

Overall, I have learned that it is best to modify CSS templates a step at a time. After each modification, I view the results of the change and further tweak my modifications, if necessary. This allows me to learn step-by-step and see the direct consequences of the changes that I make to the CSS.

Learning from someone else's style sheets also helps, as you almost always pick up at least one new design tip in the process.

I am about to begin learning C# and am looking for some general self-help books. I can, of course, go onto Amazon and look for the O'Reilly books, but I was hoping to get a little help with making the decision. I know that an organized, thorough, and well thought-out book can make learning anything a lot easier. Any suggestions? I will, of course, post all that I learn here on the good 'ole blog for others to learn from.

Follow up: I chose to start the learning process with Jesse Liberty and Brian MacDonald's book, Learning C# 2005: Get Started with C# 2.0 and .NET Programming (2nd Edition). It was the only book that I could find that really starts at the basics and builds.

Listening to Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood...

Thanks to Omar Shahine's great explanation, I was able to get rid of the standard HTML/CSS pages that I had set up for the site. Using dasBlog's FormatPage macro made this simple, as I simply created an HTML page named XXXXX.format.html and the page displayed with the default layout specified in the theme template page. It's very simple, but works perfectly! Now I don't have to worry about maintaining separate CSS stylesheets or keeping multiple templates in sync.

Because of this newfound simplicity (as you can tell, I think this is really going to make my life easier), I should be adding more content and features to the site over the next few weeks.

Listening to Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On...

I apologize for the issues that I'm having with my feed. My recent blogs haven't parsed correctly at Feed Validator, and they are missing most of the text at my Feedburner feed.  RSS readers, however, seem to be displaying the feed correctly. I am working on the issue and hope to get it resolved quickly. Any tips/suggestions would be appreciated!

Just testing a new - at least for me - WYSIWYG blog posting tool, w.bloggar. The interface is nice and simple, and I can post to multiple blogs through a single interface. I can also use the editor offline and then post to the blog whenever I want. And it seems to work well with dasBlog, at least so far. It connected without any problems and grabbed my existing categories. Here's a link to instructions on connecting w.bloggar to dasBlog.

Listening to The David Grisman Quintet - DGQ-20...

This may be obvious to most, but being new to ASP.NET - and relatively new to programming in general - I found it difficult to connect my ASP.NET application to a SQL Server instance. Looking at the available documentation, connecting should be easy. You simply create a connectionStrings element in your application's web.config file and point it to the right server and database, right?

Well, yeah, but only after clearing out the default inherited connection settings. Out of the box, ASP.NET points to a SQL Server 2005 instance named, of course, SQLEXPRESS. If you don't have a SQLEXPRESS instance running on your server, you have to either change the machine.config file located at

SystemDrive\WINDOWS\MICROSOFT.NET\FrameworkXX\vX.X.XXXXX\CONFIG

or clear out the inherited connection settings using the clear element and then add in your own connection settings to the web.config file in your web application. Here's the code to clear out the inherited connection settings and connect your application to another - local - SQL Server database:

  <connectionStrings>
    <clear/>
    <add
       name="LocalSqlServer"
       connectionString="data source=.\YourSQLServerInstance;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|YourDatabase.mdf;User Instance=true"
       providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"
   />
  </connectionStrings>

After you specify the correct connection settings, you should be able to use your SQL Server database to store your application's data.

Well, the people of France have apparently forgiven Zidane for his loss of control in the World Cup final this past Sunday. He, of course, headbutted Italian defender Marco Materazzi 20 minutes into the first overtime period and rumors are flying around as to what Materazzi said to Zidane to set him off.

One statement that really caught my eye was that of Franz Beckenbauer, former German great. He defended Zidane's actions almost immediately after the incident, saying, "Something must have been said to Zidane. He is actually a reserved and inoffensive person." While this statement is not entirely true - Zidane has lost his temper in much the same way several times in the past - it still means a lot.

The best summary that I have found of the incident and the circumstances surrounding it is on wikipedia. You can also click on the image of the headbutt above to view video.

Update: FIFA has called an investigation of the incident, and is expected to release their decision on the 20th. They have said that Zidane's World Cup Golden Ball could possibly be taken away. I'll let you all know what happens with the investigation.