A particularly large selection of links this week:

• Gmail Skinning – Through a mixture of Firefox extensions and the browser’s support for user CSS, Gmail is now skinnable. I can see this becoming a very big thing.
• Zip Decode – A demo of zoomable maps, using postcodes to target areas. Takes an age to load but does the job.
• Min-height: fixed – Someone has finally sorted out the problems with minimum height across browsers. Another handy CSS tip.
• Currency And Legal Tender – Some interesting points about how legal tender works in Scotland, and how non-legal tender is still valid currency.
• Darque Dungeon – Amusing reworked comic strip. Very funny stuff. Search around on the site for another similar piece.
• Creating A Mozilla Extension – Something that I want to learn but have never had the time. Another example for writing extensions for mozilla is right there. Not sure if these are new enough to take into account the changes made to Firefox extensions recently but are bound to be decent starting points either way.
• More On The Underground Cinema – In one of the recent links posts there was an article on a secret underground cinema in Paris. This article talks to someone who claims to know the group responsible.
• How To Fold A T-Shirt – Wow. That is an impressive piece of folding.
• Warioware 2 – After the brilliance of the original, I can’t wait for this tilting based sequel (although I wonder how multiplayer games will fit into this new way of working).
• Google Aptitude Test – Google do recruiting in an unconventional way. Some great questions in there, particularly 19.
• Struggling With The Web – The web is easy to use, it just doesn’t hand hold you through every detail.
• Gmail Drive – Set up your Gmail account as a drive in Windows. Absolutely fantastic stuff.
• Zoom – Shockwave zoomed image that goes on for… well, a long time.
• Transformers History – The complete Transformers backstory, from billions of years before the original series to the end of the beast wars. A great deal of information. Read only if you have hours to spare.
• Not Just Usability – Joel argues that usability is not the most important thing in an application. A good idea will win out over bad design.
• BBC News Online Wikiproxy – News Online wired up to wikipedia. Simple but great idea. The BBC should incorporate this into their basic system.
• Understanding Base64 Data – A quick overview of how base64 works and how to implement it in Java.
• Tiny Plaid Ninjas – And finally, tiny plaid ninjas. Aha.

Still a lot more to clear out, but they will have to wait for now since I can’t be bothered compiling the rest of this list today.

Although it is being sold as a spiritual successor to films like Lock Stock and Snatch, Layer Cake is noticeably different. Sure it’s another gangster film set in London with some quirky characters and the odd painful accent, but it plays it all a little differently. Rather than the super-stylised cinematics of the other films, Layer Cake is decidely less brash, eschewing huge amounts of flair for a supposedly more realistic feel (without going for the more gritty styling of American gangster films).

It doesn’t really matter though, as nothing of any great interest happens. The film plods along amiably and never really picks up. Worse, the last third is full of glaring holes, cliched dialogue (“The king is dead…”), an atrocious ending (enough to make people in the cinema laugh out loud at how bad it was – something I haven’t seen since the piss poor Jeepers Creepers), and a twists that are completely pointless. Why, for instance, did the main character have no name? There was a point to that device being used in Fight Club and Hero, but here it just seems to be because the author saw it used in screenwriting 101; it offers no extra value.

Poor.

The lack of updates around here are largely due to a very busy week for me. I’m not going to say too much about why it was busy (as is my tendency to minimise the amount of personal stuff on this site), but I am going to give nods to some of the bands I’ve seen this week (10 in total).

Sparta put in an interesting performance, showing the more balanced side of former band At The Drive-in (while The Mars Volta pushed forward with the more esoteric side). Catchy lyrics meant I had songs stuck in my head days later and had to buy their second album to get them out.

yourcodenameis:milo put on the best visual show, mixing up modern rock with a video show that illustrates the style of all their video and artwork thus far perfectly. Very clean, minimalist artwork that must be a marketer’s dream; pulled off well. Black and white is the new black (not, as some might say, orange jumpsuits).

Who else? Degrassi showed signs of things to come. If they get signed soon, they will be the next big thing in rock. Although there were some technical difficulties, they made an astounding performance look effortless.

Finally, Seafood put together the best musical show, going straight from a lengthy piece of intro music into the first song proper seamlessly. The mini-acoustic set in the middle was superb (featuring an acoustic version of normally bass-heavy, chunky propaganda track, Cloaking), and the extended set was appreciated by all.

There were, of course, 6 other bands but they didn’t come close to these 4. All worth a listen if you like various facets of modern rock and indie.

You may remember that I rather liked Japanese ultra-violent flick Versus. For the benefit of anyone in the UK with access to cable, satellite or pay-to-view TV, FilmFour are showing it at midnight tonight (or first thing tomorrow morning for those pedants out there). It’s also Freeview weekend on FilmFour, so you don’t have to be a subscriber. Excellent!

Worth watching.

Having installed Firefox 1.0 PR recently on Windows and Linux, I have to say how much I’m impressed by it. I think it’s finally ready for the masses. It automatically, and sensibly, imports various pieces of data from existing browsers (history, bookmarks, etc), and has a completely uncluttered interface.

The sensible approach to updates surprised even me. Firefox checks whether it or any extensions have been updated in the background, and displays a small icon next to the throbber when changes have been made. The actual updating process is a simple click-through dialogue, making having the newest versions of everything trivially easy.

Then there are the extensions themselves. Old favourites like Mouse Gestures and tab browser extensions still appear, while new extensions like FoxyTunes are proving to be very handy.

Let me just emphasise that: FoxyTunes is incredibly handy! It integrates with most music players (Winamp and iTunes included) to provide controls inside the browser. I can’t imagine being without it in a browser now.

Finally a release to recommend to non-technical friends.