Yea, Layer Masks are quite efficient in terms of how to do it.
I personally think that a "matte" look is quite cool atm, but that may just be me. (If you're wondering what I mean by matte, it means "not shiny", so few colors, and no glow, or shiny effects.)
Well, at least that is the design style that works for me, I tried to make redrasor.com based on those principles, however, the logo is kinda shiny
I don't have much graphicks excellence, but another way (If you wanted to have it wrapped around the text but no transparency... for some strange reason) is to do what you did in your first tutorial, but then right click on the IMAGE of the reflected layer and choose "select pixels", then go to the select layer, press inverse, and then select the layer with the gradient. press delete, and it is all gone
now, if you change the background, it is still a gradient to white, but you can see that the gradient is not overflowing out of the letters.
This is useful for other stuff as well.
I guess this would be a whole lot easier to explain with a movie... oh well...
If you see an effect on redrasor.com or agenosworld.com that you want to know more about, just let me know.
Oh, and if you like the style of webpage that I am using on both of those sites, its really easy to make, so just let me know.
Mist
PS. Someone else who calls it web two point oh! sweet!, I have heard so many people call it web two, and web two-oh, and web twenty (I know, weird).
PPS. I love your accent, I had forgoten how awesome irish people sound
