The holy grail of CSS layouts has apparently been located by one Matthew Levine. Although I personally had never been searching for it, I was aware that people were. A number of potential grail candidates had apparently surfaced over time, but none have been as simple and elegant as the one found most recently.

This finding illustrates one of the main problems with CSS: columns. Placing content into columns is tough to begin with (even if we make use of illegitimate table layouts). Fortunately, CSS3 plans to add native column support. Unfortunately, support for that is still years down the road. And Microsoft is likely to never support it; they only support the "standards" for which they are sole author. Regardless, a tip of the hat to Matthew for sharing this gem with us. The world will never be the same.

In these days of modern web design, it shocks me to see professional websites still using design techniques from the 1990s. One notable example is the use of text like "click here" to create a hyperlink. As the title of this post suggests, your site's users are not complete morons. We all learned about hyperlinks in the 1990s, so the helpful instruction that you are trying to provide your users is simply redundant (we already know where or where not to click).

For example, take this eWeek article on Google's Big Daddy overhaul. There are two places in the article where the aforementioned error occurs. Both instances, interestingly enough, are the only underlined links in the entire article. This fact points out one area where this "error" as I've called it is actually acceptable (although the underlying problem is one that is still frowned upon).

Many websites style their hyperlinks as regular text; that is, the links don't appear underlined. There are two methods that such sites employ to help users identify these plain text links: either the link is rendered using a different color, or the link is rendered with a bold font weight. Both ways, I would argue, are inaccessible. That argument aside, however, the text "click here" can actually become useful for color blind or low vision users. It provides some sort of clue as to where the user should click to proceed.

I offer you then two suggestions for your own website. First, style your links using something that's plainly obvious to see (underlines work great). And second, don't feel the need to use "click here" as the text for a hyperlink. If your links are styled correctly, you shouldn't need such redundancy.

Can Google be losing it? Not only have they signed a deal with the devil (by buying a stake in AOL), but now their folding under pressure to China. What happened to Do No Evil? Apparently that mantra has been thrown out the window.

Agreeing to censor search results is cowardice; there's no other way to put it. Excuses like "well, it's the law in China" or "it's all about the money we're making" are weak. You aren't a Chinese company (hence you don't need to bow to their laws) and there's plenty of money to be made in all of the other countries of the world.

I once had a great faith in Google. I was certain that they would be the ones to bring down Microsoft. And they still may. But the course they're on now appears to be leading towards bad things. Now that Google has fallen, who's left to look up to?

Not too long ago, I purchased Rick Wakeman's phenomenal album Journey to the Centre of the Earth. And it has spurred within me an interest to re-read the masterpiece by Jules Verne. It has been quite some time since I read a novel (I believe the seven Chronicles of Narnia books were the last ones I read), and I feel it's about time to pick up another one. I've always been a fan of Jules Verne works, and A Journey to the Center of the Earth is particularly excellent.

I'm slowly making my way through The Mythical Man Month, and so far it has been most excellent. The points that Dr. Brooks makes throughout the book are incredibly insightful. How sad that practically no one makes use of the suggestions he puts forth!

Does anyone have suggestions for books worth reading? Feel free to let me know what you like.

A new, major release of Adblock Plus was made available recently. It appears that development of this extension has changed hands (yet again), and that the extension is undergoing a major rewrite. Version 0.6 is incredibly fast and responsive, and the new user interface is light years better than any previous implementation.

What I dislike is the apparent change of the extension GUID. When I installed 0.6, it did not install on top of my existing version. Instead, it showed up as another extension. However, it conveniently alerted me that an old version of Adblock was installed and, after asking me, automatically removed the old release. Awesome!

Since its inception, the Amazon Prime service has been quite intriguing to me. My disdain for actual store shopping has only grown in recent years: I dislike standing in line to check out of a store, said establishment never has what I want, and if they do have it, the price is far more than it should be. So online shopping provides me a means of escaping these hassles.

While browsing Amazon recently, I noticed that I had been selected for a free 3-month trial of their Prime service (though I suspect that this "selection" process applies to nearly everyone who visits the Amazon website). So I eagerly signed up and purchased a few items that I had my eye on. Wow! Two-day shipping has never been better. I can get what I want, when I want, and have it shipped to me in two days for no charge (no shipping charge that is ... they aren't giving away merchandise). And I can do it from the comfort of my own home. How great is that?

This convenience has prompted me to do more business with Amazon, fulfilling the company's precise goal ("give them free, two-day shipping for $79 a year, and they'll do more business with us"). Amazon often has the lowest prices around, and they stock nearly everything. Finding that rare CD I've been wanting is now a pleasure, rather than a burden. Too many times I have been disappointed with Best Buy, Target, et al. in regards to their music and movie selections. I guess my tastes aren't "mainstream" enough. Oh well ... I guess it's too bad for them. My new shopping outlet is Amazon.com; and I couldn't be happier.

Due to increasing activity at work, I have only just now updated Thunderbird to the latest release, version 1.5. There's a laundry list of new items in this release, so be sure to update your copy if you happen to use Thunderbird as your mail client. And if you don't use it, what are you waiting for?

In other software update news, I understand that version 2.0.1 of WordPress is coming along, as I predicted it might. I've put off upgrading this blog to version 2.0 for the simple reason that major version changes usually have a number of uncaught bugs. And that's something I'd rather not deal with at the moment. I do hope to upgrade before too much longer. The changes offered are quite enticing.

My CoLT extension for Firefox just got accepted over at addons.mozzila.org, so perhaps it will get a little more exposure as a result. I'd like to add a few more features to the tool; perhaps I can do that in the near future.

My web host, DreamHost, has apparently gone nuts. They recently quadrupled my disk space, and octupled my bandwidth ... all free of charge! I now have over 21 GB of disk space available (growing monthly) and over 1061 GB (yes ... gigabytes) of bandwidth. Is that totally insane, or what? And this is all in addition to an unlimited number of MySQL databases, 600 email accounts, unlimited domains hosted, and more! All for as little as $7.95 a month.

My one year anniversary with DreamHost passed last month (December 24) and to celebrate, I'm offering a new discount code for folks who'd like to sign up with any DreamHost hosting plan. When you sign up with DreamHost, simply use the discount code borngeektwo to save money. This discount code will save you $65.00 on any plan you choose, excepting the monthly L1, monthly L2, and monthly L3 plans (on which you will save $35, $45, and $55 respectively). I can only say good things about DreamHost (as I mentioned once before). As such, it's my pleasure to share this discount with you. Just make sure you use the discount code borngeektwo when you sign up!

I just recently obtained my 100th feedback rating at eBay, entitling me to the turquoise star! The next star color change won't happen until my 500th positive feedback rating, and that will likely be a long time from now; especially seeing as I registered in 1999 and have now only hit 100.

Surprisingly, I've only recently had my first truly negative experience on eBay. I listed an old hard drive in early December and a person with no feedback won the auction. But I have still not received payment! I plan on placing the drive up for auction again tomorrow night, and will leave the user negative feedback. I'm thinking about adding a requirement that users with less than 10 positive feedback ratings must use PayPal as the payment method. This would prevent situations like I'm in now (where the person wanted to pay via a money order).

My dad pointed me to an excellent article entitled The Perils of JavaSchools. Although it's a little lengthy, the article is an incredibly worthwhile read on why schools that teach Java as the primary programming language are, to some degree, dumbing down the future generation of computer programmers. My alma mater took this route, but I was fortunate enough to be in the class before this change was made. I picked up C++ first: both on my own (by learning Visual C++ and MFC) and in school (my first programming courses were all taught using C++). After learning the intracacies of C++, learning Java was incredibly simple (almost too simple, in fact). I believe I passed my "Java for C Programmers" course with an A+; a feat that required very little effort on my part.

Once one knows about pointers, objects in Java become rediculously easy to discuss. As does the entire programming language itself. Java is a fine programming language (it fixes a lot of the brokenness in C++), but to know C++ is to feel enabled. I can wield the mighty sword of pointers and memory management; something that many Java programmers do not, and quite possible can not, ever do. I'm not saying that Java programmers cannot become successful C++ programmers; I'm simply making the point that there are more Java programmers who cannot pick up C++ than there are C++ programmers who cannot pick up Java.

Again, I highly recommend the article. The author also has an incredibly enticing reading list, which he uses to train managers in his company. There are a number of books there that look really great. I hope to begin reading The Mythical Man Month, the masterpiece written by Fred Brooks. It's one that I've been meaning to read for a long, long time.

One of the greatest Firefox extensions of all time, Web Developer, has recently released version 1.0! We're talking good times people. Just check out this change log. The number of updates is incredible. A definite must have for any web developer.

Tomorrow I head back to work after an incredibly pleasant Christmas break. The only programming I did over the entire break was work related, and only a small amount at that. Not writing code allowed me to do all kinds of things I've been meaning to do, and it really let my brain take a breather. Now that I'll be getting back into a more normal routine, perhaps I can make some headway at Born Geek.

One of the benefits of living in the country is the ability one has to burn yard waste (doing so in the land of cul-de-sacs not only provokes complaints from the neighbors; it's against the law in many places). I have always enjoyed having a fire outside, and now that my family lives out in the country, we can do just that. My father and I recently built a pit out in our back yard, using some decorative bricks we brought over from our previous house. And today we got a chance to have our very first fire! We had a significant pile of sticks (and even some giant logs) that had collected in our front yard, and today we got rid of the entire pile. Not to mention the thousands of leaves we cleaned up. Excitingly enough, there's still a ton of stuff lying around for us to have another fire (or three). But we thoroughly enjoyed our time today, taking part in a simple country pleasure.

In a completely unrelated topic, I completed Chaos Theory this evening. The game is excellent and I plan to play through it again, this time using a little more care in each mission. Upon completing the game, I was instantly shown the credits (no end movie). Thinking this strange, I took a look at some stuff on the web that indicated that and ending movie was indeed supposed to play. It turns out that I accidentally pressed the mouse button the instant the movie started playing, skipping through the movie to the end. Games should be smarter than that. Cut-scenes should have a short delay before the player can skip by them, preventing accidental clicks or key presses from skipping over the content. One or two seconds should suffice. Regardless, I really enjoyed the game and I highly recommend it to any Splinter Cell (or stealth based game) fans.

I bit the bullet and bought Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which was only $19.99 at my local Best Buy (much to my delight). So far, I haven't seen any tell-tale signs of the StarForce copy protection system, and I hope things remain that way.

The game itself is phenomenal. It came loaded on a single DVD (as all games should) and included an automatic updater, which patched me to the latest release. Chaos Theory is leaps and bounds ahead of the original Splinter Cell and its sequel Pandora Tomorrow, both graphically and in terms of game play. The movement mechanics have been greatly improved, especially in terms of sneaking through crawlspaces (such a great visual effect). As with most Tom Clancy titles I've played, the story is unnecessarily complex, and seems rather uninspired. But the game itself more than makes up for this rather lean narrative. I'm only about half-way through it, but I've enjoyed every minute so far. Oh, and the game is way less buggy than the second title. Which makes it all the more enjoyable.

I've made progress on two fronts today:

• Googlebar Lite now sports an auto-complete search box, just like the URL bar in Firefox. Although it's still a prototype, I have a good feeling that this is what I'll be going to in the future. The new interface should also allow for some interesting new options.
• Only 10 books remain unpurchased in my Prince Valiant collection. I hope to update the corresponding page sometime soon, providing more information on each volume. I'd also like to track how much I've been spending on these, just for kicks. It will most likely be a shocking amount in the end.

I'm off to my grandparent's house in Georgia tomorrow, but I'm taking my work laptop. Perhaps I can make some progress on non-work related stuff. I definitely plan to do so later this week, when I return.

This Christmas season is the first one in my life that hasn't felt like Christmas at all. I've just had the most difficult time this year actually believing that it is December, and that the holiday season draws nearer and nearer. Most of this is due to the lack of a winter break. Every year for as long as I can remember, December has meant time off from the daily grind (which, for the most part, was school). But this year, I didn't get to take any time off, mostly because I didn't have any time to take. Today was my first day 'off' from work, which says absolutely nothing, seeing as it's a Saturday. Thankfully, I'll be taking all of next week off, but this break is coming a little late for me.

Moving into our new home is also partially responsible for my lack of any Christmas spirit. We have done a ton of stuff to the house since we moved in (it seems everything needs fixing), and I still have a number of unpacked boxes in my room. Maybe this week I can recharge myself enough to actually get some stuff done. Unfortunately, I brought some of my work home with me (deadlines are looming) and that might take some of the restfulness out of this break. We'll see how things progress over the coming few weeks ... hopefully I can get back to a more normal routine soon.

Out of what was mostly boredom, I recently loaded up two of my games from years ago: No One Lives Forever 2 (NOLF 2) and Quake (that's Quake 1 for you kids out there). And I have to say that I've had a tremendous amount of fun running through them again. I had forgotten how nice the NOLF 2 engine looked (especially at a high resolution), but I did have it crash on me a number of times. I'm not sure what that was all about, but I got through those hiccups and finished the game just a few days ago. The game combines two playing style genres: sneaker style (like Thief or Splinter Cell) and full fledged action. Both styles complement one another nicely, and make for an incredible experience. And I had forgotten how hilarious the dialogue is throughout the game; clearly this game has one of the best scripts of all time.

Quake is what I'm plowing through at the moment. So many wonderful memories are flooding back to me as I make my way through each of the four episodes. QuakeWorld was my first experience with online game play, and I got pretty hardcore for a while. Every level I pass through brings back fond memories of late-night capture the flag tournaments. And oh the fun I had with Creeper CTF! For those who don't know, Creeper was a capture the flag variant that added a number of new runes to the game. And each rune gave you a different power: some runes altered the way weapons worked, others altered the amount of health or damage you could take, and yet others would give you new objects (a grappling hook for example). And it was an incredibly fun and addictive mod to play. One particular moment has always stuck out in my mind:

I was playing Creeper CTF and had obtained the Sun rune (which makes the nail-gun ammo super-hot, doing more damage). I also had the double-damage rune (players could carry two runes at once, if I remember correctly) and had loaded up my super-nailgun. With both the double-damage and Sun runes, my nails did four times the damage of the normal nailgun! I then picked up the quad damage in the map we were playing, raising my damage to an incredible 16 times the normal level. Needless to say, in the span of about a minute I scored somewhere from 40 to 60 frags and captured the other team's flag in the process. It was the single greatest online gaming moment I think I've ever had. Wow ... what great times!

There are a couple of exciting new software releases that I am anticipating:

• Thunderbird 1.5: Firefox's little brother is finally getting some major updates, some of which have been sorely needed from the beginning. The brand new software updating system introduced with Firefox 1.5 is coming to Thunderbird, which should be a great way to stay on top of critical security updates. Inline spell checking is also coming to town. Other great features include: auto-complete ordering based on address usage, built-in phishing detector, deleting attachments from messages, auto-save email drafts, and more! I'm really looking forward to this release. Thunderbird is an awesome client, and these updates should make it even better.
• WordPress 2.0: A major update to an excellent blog publishing system is coming soon, and it's going to make some great changes to the way things are handled. This feature list highlights the best parts of this upcoming release. Of interest to me: the improved post-preview, the theme previewer, and a built-in plugin for backing up your database. I'm going to give this a few weeks for any major bugs to shake out, but I'll eventually update this site to 2.0. It should be well worth it!

I feel like there was something else on the horizon that looked great, but at the moment I can't remember what it was. Anyways, with an exciting lineup like this already forming, 2006 should be a great year!

Tonight I bid on 4 hard to find volumes in the Fantagraphics Prince Valiant book series: volumes 34, 35, 38, and 40. And I lost every single auction. What's interesting is that, if I had won all of the auctions at the prices I was willing to pay, I would have spent $958.50 … for four books! That's an average of nearly $240 per book; books which cost a mere $16.95 when they were published. It's hard for me to justify paying such a hefty sum for a single volume, but I am simply smitten with the Prince Valiant comic. And to have come this far in completing my collection dictates that I go all the way. Perhaps I just need to become bolder in my bidding. There are clearly people out there who want them more than I. And at these prices, they must want them pretty bad.

An interesting article on games that use the StarForce copy protection scheme showed up on Digg the other day, and it got me thinking about the topic. I'm all for copy protection schemes, but this particular one seems a little fishy to me. All of the negative press behind it has to have some grain of truth, right?

From what little I know about it, StarForce is apparently a low-level driver that gets installed alongside some of today's games (and even game demos!) to prevent software piracy. And a number of complaints about it indicate that said driver can cause a number of problems: from blue screens to disappearing CD or DVD drives. And what's more, StarForce software doesn't get uninstalled when you uninstall the product it came with (sounds a little like spyware to me). So, I was fairly disappointed when I learned that several games I was looking forward to playing (Splinter Cell 3, Silent Hunter 3, and F.E.A.R.) all made use of this new copy protection scheme. But are these rumors of system crashes and instability fact or fiction?

Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to tell. The vast majority of comments in the Digg article were people voicing their disgust against this scheme. And interestingly enough, most of these posts were laden with vulgar language, egregious misuse of the English language, and the occasional bit of l33t speak. These facts incline me to believe that a number of "kids" were posting their disgust about the system; kids who most likely spend their time downloading cracked versions of games. Since this particular system is turning out to be difficult for hackers to bypass, fewer games that use the system are available as downloads. So, are these people angry at StarForce's questionable install practices, or are they simply frustrated that they'll have to start actually paying for the software they buy? I'm not sure anyone can provide an honest answer to that question.

I have yet to purchase a StarForce protected game, so I don't yet know if it really causes problems or not. Splinter Cell 3 is high up on my list of games to play, so I might bite the bullet and get it - if only to see if these complaints are valid or not. I'd like to believe that this cacophony of opinions is similar to those voiced when Valve's Steam system was introduced. As an owner of Half-Life 2, I only have good things to say about the Steam platform; so might I not be just as pleased with the performance of StarForce? We can certainly hope.