Archive for June, 2006
Really cool and inspiring website
The CSS Zen Garden is a basic site. There’s not really any content on it from a words or articles perspective. So what is it? It’s the same site, redesigned by graphics professionals hundreds of times.
Here are a few examples:
Example #1 | Example #2 | Example #3
As you can see, it’s the same website, it just looks different. What’s happening is the site relies on two main files, the index.html document and the CSS (cascading style sheet) document. If you click on the links in “select a design” you’ll be able to see the site in hundreds of different styles (click here to see all styles).
This is what the site looks like without an associated style sheet: plain site. Then a web designer can come along and make a CSS file, which defines how everything looks. This is what a CSS file looks like: CSS file. Don’t be overwhelmed. All it’s saying is that something defined as “body” in the html file is going to have this type of font, with this size, etc.
For example:
body {
font: 8pt/16pt georgia; // font size and face
color: #555753; // font color … all colors have a corresponding number (see here for colors and #s)
background: #fff url(blossoms.jpg) no-repeat bottom right; // this is the background picture for the body, along with “fff”, which defines a color. It’s also saying to align the picture to the bottom right, and don’t repeat it all over the page
margin: 0px; // this defines the margin of the text
}
So as you can see, this is relatively simple stuff. It’s basically like formatting a MS Word .doc file, but using words instead. The key is to learn how to define things in CSS. Here are some good CSS resources:
1. CSS validator
2. W3 CSS page
And the best one that I’ve found:
You can learn about the different things that you can do with CSS in those pages and play around with the Zen Garden CSS file/index.html file. Basically, you’re skinning a website. It’s object-oriented web-design at its best in my opinion.
PS – Please don’t ask me to help you with this stuff, I’ve given you all of the resources that I used to learn basic CSS. I really don’t know anything beyond what’s in the links in this post. So please take some time, read up and learn it.
PPS – I’m going to redesign thepokerdb as a CSS-based site. Then we’ll be able to have templates for the site, which the user can choose. So go practice your CSS skills so you’ll be able to contribute a sick template when we start accepting them.
TV
I usually only watch a few hours of TV a week and because I have TiVo, that time is always spent watching something that I want to watch. I never sit down in front of the TV and flip around. But I face a problem when all of the shows end for the summer as I do like to occasionally just be an idiot in front of the TV, so what should I watch? One show that I picked up a few weeks ago on my TiVo is called Deal or No Deal. And despite it’s simple format, I think it’s a very entertaining show. Here’s how it works:
A contestant is put in front of an audience and 26 briefcases, held by the obligatory hot women. Each case holds a certain amount of money, from .01 to $1 million. The contestant chooses one case, which then becomes his or her case. At that point, the contestant has to start choosing cases to open. And once a case is opened, it’s no longer in play. So opening the $1 million case is definitely a bad thing as having it out of play drops your equity precipitously. But what’s the game? If the person just has to open the remaining 25 cases, then it’s just a dumb drawn-out reveal show to see what they picked at the beginning.
The game is that they get offered deals at set points throughout the show. First, they have to pick 6 cases, so they get offered their first deal with 20 unopened cases. Their next deal is offered after another 5 cases with 15 left. That continues until, eventually, they just open one case at a time before being offered a new deal. The great part about the show is that they don’t even give intelligent people a real choice. For instance, in last night’s show (the season finale), they had some bulked up prize money. After the first 6 cases, there was roughly $10 million in play. So the contestant’s equity was around $500,000. What did the show offer her to pack it up and take the $? $37,000. So only a moron would take that offer considering what was still left on the table. As the show goes on, they offer progressively better and better deals for the contestant. Eventually, the woman last night accepted a deal for $196,000 with four cases left. How much money was in play? Just about $750,000, almost all of it contained in one case. And yes, if you’re wondering, they did offer her MORE than her equity (about 187,500) in the four cases, so it was an easy decision, in my opinion, to accept that deal. After all, you get more than your equity and you have no variance. Variance, of course, will kill a lot of people in this game as it’s not like you can ever play again.
The network basically forces these poor school teachers and other randoms to gamble for huge amounts of money because they don’t offer good deals until there are only a few cases left. The show resembles a huge craps game. Everyone cheering on every low $ pick like there’s a lot of skill involved. All sorts of superstitions about various numbers. The host and contestant basically demanding that the hot girl holding the case reveal a small number whenever her case is picked. It’s a lot of ridiculousness and a lot of result-oriented thinking… “OMG, why did I pick that case!! I KNEW it was unlucky!!” <– Only AFTER picking the million dollar case. And then they show the contestant how “bad” or “good” their decision was by revealing all of the cases at the end of the show. Of course, it doesn’t matter what the result is, but people love that kind of thinking. As it turns out, the woman in the season finale had the $750,000 in her briefcase, so she would have won that amount had she kept picking cases and gambling. But she got a deal for more than her equity, so IMO, she made a good decision. As a professional gambler, I obviously like watching this show and I highly recommend the re-runs this summer and the new season in the fall (or are they running new episodes over the summer? I’m not sure).
Just a heads up on this…
MrSmokey1 and Premier are each putting up $25K each in a heads up TLB battle for the month of June on PokerStars. The rules are simple:
1. Total of best 20 tlb scores for the month wins
2. Must be the only person playing the account
As both players are top online poker players and both are only 20 years old, this should be fun. I will be following it closely and I’ll try to keep people informed as to what the standings are, but it will be tough because I don’t follow the 20+2 180 person SNGs — those are 300 TLB points to first place, so they can add up.
Anyway, keep an eye out for these two, it’s going to be a fun month to watch the TLB.