3-column backgrounds with CSS

In a recent redesign of my other web site, Jedi.com, I wanted to use a three-column layout with one fixed-width column along each side (containing navigation links and ads) and a variable-width column filling the center (containing the actual page content).  That's simple enough... until you try to use a different background image for the two side columns than is used for the center column.  CSS makes it harder than you'd expect to create multiple columns of equal (but variable) height on a single web page.  After a little searching, I finally found a great method for doing this.

Photo editing software for Linux

I recently wrote an article on the Prairie Rim Images blog that talks about the software I currently use to postprocess photos for the events that I shoot.  Although I do all my processing on Linux, the applications discussed also run on Windows and MacOS.  I debated whether to put that article in the Images or Tech blog, and Images won.  This is just a brief summary and a pointer to the article on that blog.  In short, I've switched from digiKam to Corel AfterShot Pro for all but the most involved photo editing.  The remaining edits get performed in the GIMP.  I briefly compared AfterShot Pro to Adobe Lightroom.  Lightroom is better, but not enough to make me switch from Linux to Windows.  You can read the full article here.