A couple of other fire starter tips:
Get you some of those trick can't-blow-'em-out birthday candles. They are great in the wind. Even in the wind, a wooden match head will usually burn long enough to get one of those candles lit, if you're quick and have everything ready in advance. The matches themselves are pretty useless for starting a fire in the wind, but you can use them to light your fail-safe mega-match ... the can't-blow-'em-out candle! Then the wind can blow like crazy, and those silly candles just keep re-lighting themselves. They are great for getting a fire started in adverse conditions.
Another good thing to have is a simple pencil sharpener. Those little rectangular things you see in school kids supply containers with their pencils. In the wild, find yourself a stick about the diameter of a pencil and "sharpen it". The shavings that come off are great tinder. Plus, if the stick is wet from the rain, you can sharpen off the outer wet wood and get to the center dry wood, unless the stick is totally saturated.
And I do use those cotton balls with vaseline on them. I take jumbo diameter plastic drinking straws and cut them to a length that will fit into whatever container I want my fire starting supplies to be in. I pinch one end of the straw closed with a pair of hemostats, and use a BIC lighter to melt the end together, sealing it. Then I roll my vasoline cotton balls into long thin strings and shove as many as I can into the straw. Then I clamp and melt the other end. I end up with a handy waterproof way to carry emergency fire starter (use your pocket knife to cut it open for use - you have to fluff the cotton balls).
Grab some of the polysporin/neosporin ointment from your first aid kit if you don't have vasoline handy. It works just like vasoline for fire starting. And it obviously doubles as a first aid item as well.
.
