Beyond Typography:

A quick one today as I've got a load of stuff to do before attending day two of an Advanced Flash Course. Yesterday was day one and we covered a lot of ground. I hope to make use of a lot of it.

I downloaded the new Firefox on Tuesday night. Seems slicker than the previous version – although I had to change the browser theme from the default hideous Firelight.

But what is even better is the PicLens add-on from CoolIris and is available for most browsers. When you look at Flickr or YouTube, or search Google, Yahoo, etc, instead of displaying the results as thumbnails on pages, it displays them in a 3D wall (this feature doesn't work in Safari!). Makes searching so much quicker.

Also, Portsmouth is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century (architecturally speaking, anyway) with the announcement of the new stadium for Portsmouth Football Club. So what? It's been designed by Herzog and de Meuron and looks fantastic. This adds to the already iconic Spinnaker Tower. I hope it gets the required planning permission. Portsmouth had some really nice architecture before being flattened during WW2, or demolished in an attempt to modernise during the 1960s and 70s. One really bold move was to commission the Tricorn Centre, which, when opened won an international design award. The problem was, the local council didn't have the courage of their convictions and the moaners started to knock it until it was voted ugliest building before being torn down to be replaced by an impersonal, identikit shopping mall with no character. The past few years has seen a resurrection of good design in Portsmouth.

And finally, this. Country tourism brands. S'funny how most adopt a "hand-painted" feel...