available from CoffeeCup is a good place to start, your next best resource is here, these forums are choc'o'block with people who have crawled through the mine fields of HTML, CSS, and others.
As for being flamed, I can't recall ever seeing a flame go by in here, the occasional waffle of smoke does crop up around CoffeeCup firestarter, but those folks are always BBQing up something.
Your origional code has a few problems with it, but nothing insurmountable, here it is with a few changes and comments by me.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<!-- It is very important to start off the page with a doctype declaration so browsers know how to render the page on the users computer -->
<!-- <html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> -->
<!-- your old declaration -->
<head>
<title></title>
<!-- <meta content="text/html; charset=unicode" http-equiv="Content-Type"/> -->
<!-- I comented out your old content declaration, possibly you are using an older version of the editor, free update is avalible

-->
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="CoffeeCup HTML Editor (
www.coffeecup.com)"/>
<meta name="created" content="Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:06:39 GMT"/>
<meta name="description"/>
<meta name="keywords"/>
<style type="text/css">
html {background-color:#C0C0C0; }
#container {width:800px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; background-color:#FFFFFF; border:4px; border-color:#000000; border-style:double; padding:2px 10px; }
/* this creates a box 760px wide, with equal space on the left and right side, white background and two lines around as a border in black*/
#banner {margin-left:31px;}
/* this creates an ID called banner to force your banner to move to the right 32px, which is 1/2 the difference between the width of your banner and the width of the container */
h2 {text-align:center; font-variant:small-caps; font-size:24px; }
/* sets h2 tags to be centered, and transforms the text to small-caps sized 24px */
h3 {text-align:center; font-style:italic; font-weight:600; font-size:14px;}
.title {text-align:center; font-style:italic; color:#800040; font-size:24px; font-weight:bold; }
/* creates a class called title, and centers the text inside that class, transforms it to italic, and color to dark blue */
.article {text-align:left; text-indent:12px; font-size:14px; line-height:1.25em; letter-spacing:.05em; }
/* creates a class called article, aligns the text to the left, indents the first line 12px, increases the line height and space between the letters to be easier to read */
.article a {font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; border-bottom:dotted 2px; color:inherit; }
/* anchor links inside if article classes will be bolded, with a dotted underline, and the same color as the article text */
.quote {display:block; font-style:italic; font-weight:bold; background-color:#C0C0C0; margin:5px; padding:5px; }
/* sets quotations apart from the regular text by breaking them out of the paragraph flow, making italic, bolded, grey background, and adjusting the margins and pading*/
</style>
</head>
<body>
<!--
<p align="center">
<img style="Z-INDEX: 100; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 0px; LEFT: 469px" border="0" src="images/pc-tweak.gif" width="728" height="90"/> </p>
-->
<div id="container"> <!-- opens the container -->
<img id="banner" src="blank_banner.jpg" width="728" height="90"/>
<!-- <p style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px" dir="ltr" align="center">
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>Welcome to my new tweaking site.<br/><br/>-->
<h2>Welcome to my new tweaking site</h2>
<!-- Hopefully, this site will grow enough to show that all my hours messing with computers and the internet have not been wasted.<br/><br/><br/><font size="5" face="Arial"> -->
<h3>Hopefully, this site will grow enough to show that all my hours messing with computers and the internet have not been wasted.</h3>
<!-- <strong>VPNs</strong> </font><br/><br/> -->
<p class="title">VPNs</p>
<!-- The first topic is VPNs. I spent an age finding suitable companies to fit my requirements. It came dowm to 2, <a href="" target="_parent"></a><a href="" target="_blank"></a><a href="" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.hidemyass.com/" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.hidemyass.com/">HideMyAss!</a><a></a><a></a><a></a> and <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel</a>. HideMyAss has very good support, nodes in several countries, excellent software and does not block incoming P2P connections. They do block all SMTP (email traffic) - changing ports does not even help. VPNtunnel seems to be a smaller operation and only has nodes in Sweden - not a biggie as looking at geographically restrictive sites is not a priority for me. I initially joined HMA, but did not stay with them for long, <24 hours in fact. They also have a forum which is very helpful and having a forum that uis reasonably busy is hard for a rouge seller to 'bluff'. It was this forum, or a moderator in particular that turned me. I contributed to a thread where ideas for locations for other nodes were being bandied about, I suggest Israel as a high tech country as well as it having somewhat relaxed laws in the copywrite depatment. The mod responded with "Israel? I wouldn't deliberately allow my traffic through that country even if I lived there. They do not care about rights and privacy at all and hell they run every major data gathering company in the US. They have no regard for human life or respect as I saw when they actually steal organs out of foreign soldiers during battle. Mossad caught on a rooftop cheering while the twin towers burned before they came down, they were arrested but released, and now they have the US posturing to attack yet another middle eastern country Iran. I think not. They are probably working on how to make Intel processors send personal information of the user straight to Mossad as we speak." I shall come clean here and as well as being Jewish, I have >95% of my family being Isarelis and I have served for three years in the Israeli Armed forces. I do not agree with everything that Israel does, but anybody who believes in the stealing organs stuff needs some meds. They do not know anything about how organs have to be harvested or tissue typed or they would see that this is not possible. I responded with,"Don't talk shite. If you knew how difficult it is to tissue-type organs, you would know that you cannot just steal one and use it.You have some serious conspiracty and mental issues. Keep your rabid filth away from me and never contact me again, schmuck." Not my nest response, but at nearly 52 years of age, it is the first time I have come across such rubbish. The thread exchange is <a href="http://forum.hidemyass.com/showthread.php?tid=1474&page=2">here</a>. Basically, HMA would not do anything as, "<span style="FONT-FAMILY: ">We are not banning a moderator who does do a good job at helping users and writing tutorials just because one Jewish person gets offended with one single forum post and then raises the antisemitism card as usual. I agree politics and religion should not be expressed and should stay neutral, but we are certainly not going to ban him because of this isolated incident". I suggest you visit the <a href="http://cryptome.org/">mod's site</a>. Makes him look a brick short of a load. I left and got a complete refund and am now with the second company, <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break"/></a><br style="mso-special-character: line-break"/></span> <br/><br/></p>-->
<p class="article">The first topic is VPNs. I spent an age finding suitable companies to fit my requirements. It came dowm to 2, <a href="http://www.hidemyass.com/">HideMyAss! </a>and <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel</a>.</p>
<p class="article">HideMyAss has very good support, nodes in several countries, excellent software and does not block incoming P2P connections. They do block all SMTP (email traffic) - changing ports does not even help.</p>
<p class="article">VPNtunnel seems to be a smaller operation and only has nodes in Sweden - not a biggie as looking at geographically restrictive sites is not a priority for me. I initially joined HMA, but did not stay with them for long, <24 hours in fact. They also have a forum which is very helpful and having a forum that uis reasonably busy is hard for a rouge seller to 'bluff'.</p>
<p class="article">It was this forum, or a moderator in particular that turned me. I contributed to a thread where ideas for locations for other nodes were being bandied about, I suggest Israel as a high tech country as well as it having somewhat relaxed laws in the copywrite depatment. The mod responded with <span class="quote">"Israel? I wouldn't deliberately allow my traffic through that country even if I lived there. They do not care about rights and privacy at all and hell they run every major data gathering company in the US. They have no regard for human life or respect as I saw when they actually steal organs out of foreign soldiers during battle. Mossad caught on a rooftop cheering while the twin towers burned before they came down, they were arrested but released, and now they have the US posturing to attack yet another middle eastern country Iran. I think not. They are probably working on how to make Intel processors send personal information of the user straight to Mossad as we speak."</span></p>
<p class="article">I shall come clean here and as well as being Jewish, I have >95% of my family being Isarelis and I have served for three years in the Israeli Armed forces. I do not agree with everything that Israel does, but anybody who believes in the stealing organs stuff needs some meds. They do not know anything about how organs have to be harvested or tissue typed or they would see that this is not possible. I responded with,<span class="quote" >"Don't talk shite. If you knew how difficult it is to tissue-type organs, you would know that you cannot just steal one and use it. You have some serious conspiracty and mental issues. Keep your rabid filth away from me and never contact me again, schmuck."</span> Not my nest response, but at nearly 52 years of age, it is the first time I have come across such rubbish. The thread exchange is <a href="http://forum.hidemyass.com/showthread.php?tid=1474&page=2">here</a>. </p>
<p class="article">Basically, HMA would not do anything as, <span class="quote">"We are not banning a moderator who does do a good job at helping users and writing tutorials just because one Jewish person gets offended with one single forum post and then raises the antisemitism card as usual I agree politics and religion should not be expressed and should stay neutral, but we are certainly not going to ban him because of this isolated incident".</span></p>
<p class="article">I suggest you visit the <a href="http://cryptome.org/">mod's site</a>. Makes him look a brick short of a load. I left and got a complete refund and am now with the second company, <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel.</a></p>
</div> <!-- closes the container -->
</body>
</html>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="CoffeeCup HTML Editor (
www.coffeecup.com)"/>
<meta name="created" content="Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:06:39 GMT"/>
<meta name="description"/>
<meta name="keywords"/>
<style type="text/css">
html {background-color:#C0C0C0; }
#container {width:800px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; background-color:#FFFFFF; border:4px; border-color:#000000; border-style:double; padding:2px 10px; }
#banner {margin-left:31px;}
h2 {text-align:center; font-variant:small-caps; font-size:24px; }
h3 {text-align:center; font-style:italic; font-weight:600; font-size:14px;}
.title {text-align:center; font-style:italic; color:#800040; font-size:24px; font-weight:bold; }
.article {text-align:left; text-indent:12px; font-size:14px; line-height:1.25em; letter-spacing:.05em; }
.article a {font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; border-bottom:dotted 2px; color:inherit; }
.quote {display:block; font-style:italic; font-weight:bold; background-color:#C0C0C0; margin:5px; padding:5px; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container"> <!-- opens the container -->
<img id="banner" src="blank_banner.jpg" width="728" height="90"/>
<h2>Welcome to my new tweaking site</h2>
<h3>Hopefully, this site will grow enough to show that all my hours messing with computers and the internet have not been wasted.</h3>
<p class="title">VPNs</p>
<p class="article">The first topic is VPNs. I spent an age finding suitable companies to fit my requirements. It came dowm to 2, <a href="http://www.hidemyass.com/">HideMyAss! </a>and <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel</a>.</p>
<p class="article">HideMyAss has very good support, nodes in several countries, excellent software and does not block incoming P2P connections. They do block all SMTP (email traffic) - changing ports does not even help.</p>
<p class="article">VPNtunnel seems to be a smaller operation and only has nodes in Sweden - not a biggie as looking at geographically restrictive sites is not a priority for me. I initially joined HMA, but did not stay with them for long, <24 hours in fact. They also have a forum which is very helpful and having a forum that uis reasonably busy is hard for a rouge seller to 'bluff'.</p>
<p class="article">It was this forum, or a moderator in particular that turned me. I contributed to a thread where ideas for locations for other nodes were being bandied about, I suggest Israel as a high tech country as well as it having somewhat relaxed laws in the copywrite depatment. The mod responded with <span class="quote">"Israel? I wouldn't deliberately allow my traffic through that country even if I lived there. They do not care about rights and privacy at all and hell they run every major data gathering company in the US. They have no regard for human life or respect as I saw when they actually steal organs out of foreign soldiers during battle. Mossad caught on a rooftop cheering while the twin towers burned before they came down, they were arrested but released, and now they have the US posturing to attack yet another middle eastern country Iran. I think not. They are probably working on how to make Intel processors send personal information of the user straight to Mossad as we speak."</span></p>
<p class="article">I shall come clean here and as well as being Jewish, I have >95% of my family being Isarelis and I have served for three years in the Israeli Armed forces. I do not agree with everything that Israel does, but anybody who believes in the stealing organs stuff needs some meds. They do not know anything about how organs have to be harvested or tissue typed or they would see that this is not possible. I responded with,<span class="quote" >"Don't talk shite. If you knew how difficult it is to tissue-type organs, you would know that you cannot just steal one and use it. You have some serious conspiracty and mental issues. Keep your rabid filth away from me and never contact me again, schmuck."</span> Not my nest response, but at nearly 52 years of age, it is the first time I have come across such rubbish. The thread exchange is <a href="http://forum.hidemyass.com/showthread.php?tid=1474&page=2">here</a>. </p>
<p class="article">Basically, HMA would not do anything as, <span class="quote">"We are not banning a moderator who does do a good job at helping users and writing tutorials just because one Jewish person gets offended with one single forum post and then raises the antisemitism card as usual I agree politics and religion should not be expressed and should stay neutral, but we are certainly not going to ban him because of this isolated incident".</span></p>
<p class="article">I suggest you visit the <a href="http://cryptome.org/">mod's site</a>. Makes him look a brick short of a load. I left and got a complete refund and am now with the second company, <a href="https://www.vpntunnel.se/en/">VPNtunnel.</a></p>
</div> <!-- closes the container -->
</body>
</html>
hopefully it will tweak your curiosity on how HTML & CSS can work together.