So I’m doing about seventeen things at once this month, including learning (again) about selling and buying houses, learning more 3Dsmax, putting fence up in the backyard of my house, freelancing, and living life. As if that isn’t enough, I’ve been considering a redesign of my site using CSS and XML. To that end, I’m looking for the best book to use as a guide on this quest (My site is as simple as I can make it, but I’m a holdover from the days of hand-coding with nested tables and invisible pixels.) My two finalists are

Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman, and

Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design, by Eric Meyer.

From what I’ve read, the Meyer book is better at acually getting you through the guts of the project, while the Zeldman book makes a strong argument to take to your clients before it’s started. I think in my case I’d rather pick up the Meyer book and try the thing out myself, but I’m soliciting opinions: Who has both books, what did you think about them, and what are your opinions? (additionally, did you use them to create a CSS-based site?) I’d like to hear about your experience.

I spent a good portion of my time last night in the basement, where it was cool and dry, waiting for the thunderstorm to blow through town and cool things off. I have a call through to my HVAC guy to come replace the compressor in the backyard (finally) now that I have some cash. Did I mention how much Baltimore sucks without A/C? Bored, I spent some more time learning about my camera, especially the aperture and shutter settings, as well as the time-delay feature (gotta try that out on a sunset in the backyard.)

Somebody is selling the URL www.marthastewartinjail.com on eBay, starting at $500. That’s funny.