Sites to learn from

There are so many great resources on the web, but a couple that I checked out recently:

http://dtnguyen.blogspot.com/

super.nova.org/DPR/Canon/

http://georgebarr.blogspot.com/

The first I found clicking through the latest Strobist favourites, the other reading through some Flickr groups: Canon Speedlite. Finally, George Barr is a fellow Calgarian, so I've been following his blog for a while. Lots of discussion on the process of taking photos in the first place, and the things that run through a photographer's mind. He has just released a book on improving the WAY you think about taking photos that is refreshing (finally, a photo book without a section on equipment).

I also got a couple of books for Christmas. I'll be posting some workflow tips sooner or later. My current assignment is to improve the color of skin in my photos. I'm missing something on the white balance thing. One thing I found out from the 'Skin' book is that the grey card I have is not neutral for white balance, but for exposure. Didn't occur to me that the two were different. I suspect that it isn't THAT off (more me than the grey card), but for the cost of a new grey card I'm going to replace it. The new one will be waterproof as well, which is nice. I tend to avoid getting out the grey card I have now in rainy conditions.

One aspect of white balance I don't quite get is that everywhere you set white balance there are two dimensions - color temp. and tint. But on my 20D you only set color temp in the Kelvin preset. My question is twofold:

1. Is tint in the camera accessible through the crazy, joystick controller color adjustment thingy - or not at all?
2. When I use the built in white balance feature to set a custom white balance is it just picking up color temp, or tint as well?

In auto, as reported in Camera RAW or Capture One I see a different tint and color temp from shot to shot. I need to shoot a couple of pictures to convince myself that tint is or is not picked up in the custom white balance modes.