In the last episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, there was a scene between Jordan (a high-powered TV exec, recently pregnant) and a new, attractive female employee.  The scene began with Jordan insulting the woman and ended with the new employee replying, “There’s a new pretty girl in town, and she’s not pregnant.”

The scene was an unusually quick and lively break in a show that’s gotten steadily more unfunny and somewhat boring.  The romantic entanglements are convoluted and bizarre (Danny’s stalking of Jordan is more creepy than touching) and the actual skits are, if possible, much less funny than most SNL skits.

It occurred to me that Sorkin (creator and writer of Studio 60) writes best when he writes about power struggles – whether it’s a hotshot lawyer taking down a high-powered general, the machinations of life in the Oval Office, or the backstage bickerings of a television show.  His writing is snappiest when it involves verbal sparring.

When Studio 60 began I was hoping to see more of television’s backstage politics, but I think the last few episodes have been full of the kind of bizarre romantic entanglements that bogged down Sports Night.  And, while Ed Asner’s rumbling proclamations about MacAOWWW sound weighty, they don’t have the same weight as the presidential speechifying of President Bartlett.

Here’s hoping Sorkin gets more power struggles into Studio 60, and leaves the comedy and love triangles to other shows.

Late on Saturday night, my mom told me about an issue with the public photo gallery I’d set up at www.kerryandwillie.com/gallery/.  The basic problem was that when you viewed the image, you only saw a small cropped thumbnail instead of seeing the full image.

When she first told me, I immediately felt the familiar clutching fear that I always used to get when someone brought up an technology issue that I didn’t know how to solve.  Despite over 7 years of experience solving technical problems and developing a reputation for providing answers, I still get a sense of dread that I wouldn’t be able to solve the latest problem in time.

But, in the last few weeks I’ve gained a new sense of peace in my life (possibly through a strengthened prayer life) and a newfound sense of confidence.  And so, I told myself to solve the problem, and was able to solve it in about 20 minutes.

Instead of stressing out about it or dismissing it as something that wasn’t that big in the grand scheme of things, I felt confidence in my own problem solving abilities.  It felt good to solve the problem, but it felt even better to feel good while solving the problem. 

As some people may know, I created an online photo gallery at www.kerryandwillie.com/gallery/ for my sister’s upcoming wedding. 

Late this evening my mom pointed out that you could only see a small square image if you clicked on a photo.  So instead of seeing the big photo (shown at bottom), you’d see the small photo (shown below).

  

Not good, and Gallery offers little support for small problems like this.  I found a solution so I figured I’d share it here.

I began by Googling “gallery menalto thumbnail” and came up with this page:

Not sure if this is a feature or a bug, so I’m posting here

If you set the permissions on a gallery such that guests can only see the resized images, and the original image is smaller than the resize limit, then when the guest clicks on the thumbnail, they only get to see the thumbnail again, rather than the larger image. E.g. if the resized file is max 800 x 800, and the original image is 640 x 480, then the 640×480 image can never be seen by the guest – only the thumbnail.

http://gallery.menalto.com/node/42042

So, I knew it had to do something with the “resized images.”  I now thought, “WTF are resized images???”  There’s little to no documentation on what they are, but playing around with the Gallery admin form showed that you could see the original image was still there, but “guests” (i.e. people not logged in) could only see the thumbnail view.  So clearly there had to be some setting that would let guests see the original image.

With Gallery, you can set permissions on individual images or on an album.  As it turns out, you need to follow a ridiculously non-intuitive series of clicks to fix the problem.  The steps I took were:

1. Log in and go to the album with the “thumbnail” issue.
2. Click on “Edit Permissions.”
3. Click on “Remove” to the right of “View resized version(s).”
4. Scroll down below ‘New Group Permissions.”  Click in the text box, type “Everybody,” and select “[core] View original version”.  Click “Add Permission” to add this permission to the album

Basically what this does is let “Everyone” (i.e. all guests, who aren’t logged in) to view the original image.  For some reason, this fixes the problem.

I’ve whittled down the categories on my blog.  There used to be 27 categories, which looked like this:

However, I imagine that I don’t need to divide things that finely – people who want to find stuff on Photoshop can search the site for the word “Photoshop” and find the one post under that category.  In the meantime, the post on Photoshop can be listed under the more all-purpose “Technology” heading, and my Technorati tagging system should help attract readers without the need for mutliple categories on my blog.

I like the way Chris Glass uses categories on – a single listing on the right, with icons next to each one.  24 categories, all worth reading.  Each one is distinct, with standard categories (books, music, technology) mixed with a few odd ones (bears?  pondersome?).  Draws you into the site and keeps you reading.It’s nice to see the taxonomy of my own site develop, as I try to make the blog more useful. 

Due to the ice storms surrounding Dallas, I’m waiting in the Tucson, Arizona airport for a flight to Atlanta and then Boston. 

I have an undercooked pizza sitting in my stomach, 800 pages to read in Colleen McCollough’s Ceasar, and about 2 and a half hours to go before my flight leaves.  Even then there are apparently ice storms in Boston so it’s possible I’ll be sleeping in Atlanta.

On the plus side, it’s nice to have a chance to sit down and plow through a thick book, and since I’m flying with my parents it’s a nice chance to spend time with them.  As long as I can get back for work tomorrow I should be good to go.