But I was recently put in a unique situation when I received correspondence from Pierrick in reference to the photo gallery software we’re using over at Strahotski.com.

Never before had I been asked to provide a testimonial for anything.

Running a fansite about an attractive actress pretty much requires a healthy batch of photos and we had been limping along with the NextGen plugin for Wordpress since the inception of the site.

One of the reasons we went with NextGen originally was our lack of enthusiasm for some of the big players out there.  Both Gallery and Coppermine seemed clunky and overly complicated, as well as a little bit more difficult to modify than we would have liked.

Fast Forward two years and 2000 pictures later and we found ourself at an impasse.  NextGen was getting too hard to navigate, and we still didn’t like Gallery and Coppermine.

This led me to start researching lesser known alternatives in the field until I happened upon Piwigo.

Piwigo is a French-based open source project.  Aside from a couple of French classes in high school, I really wasn’t equipped to handle the language barrier.

Luckily for me, the folks at Piwigo have spent a fair amount of time on translations to English and it was more than enough to get me going.

Piwigo was immediately easier to configure and lighter-weight than the gallery software we had tried before.  It lets you easily mirror a directory structure of images into a browsable, rateable, commentable web-based gallery of photos.

The feature list for Piwigo is quite strong with the ability to support registered users, uploading of photos, and complete management of the whole thing.

For our needs, we actually ended up stripping out a fair amount of features.  Strahotski.com need only support public users who want to peruse the hotness of Yvonne Strahovski, afterall.

Piwigo’s ability to support permalinks for both the galleries and photos was a huge plus.  For the purposes of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), human readable links is one of the most important things a site can have.

The package also has a nice extension feature where you can download a number of extensions to give even more flexibility to an already flexible system.  These proved to be the hardest to use, however, because a large number of them have not had their readmes translated to English.

As a native English speaker (and only an English speaker) there are some strange choices of wording in the admin interface, and the color scheme of said interface is a bit gawdy at first (black and hot pink ftw!).

These are minor quibbles, however, with an otherwise well-oiled software package that does what you want it to do in the simplest way possible.  It is fast, responsive, and easy to configure.

If you find yourself in the same boat that we were in where you don’t like your choices, check out Piwigo.  It may be just what you’re looking for!

– Check out the Strahotski.com Gallery for a look at Piwigo in action! –

The country is a huge system.  Balance is key.  Regardless of personal motivation or ideals, the country has swung a certain direction in the last eight years and it needs to swing back.  It’s imperative that it does.

And even though I had a clear history of support for the Republican party, I conceded to many at that time that it may be necessary to vote for a Democrat for the good of the country.  Not for the good of me, but the country.

I lost sight of that somewhere along the way.  Somewhere between the primaries and the election, I stopped thinking about the country and I started thinking about me.  I started worrying about my pocketbook as so many Americans did after September 15.

The fact is that I fall into a situation between those who would be financially rewarded by Barack Obama and those by John McCain.  I’m on the cusp of having to worry that I will be labeled ‘rich’ when I do not feel rich by any means.

And that made me seriously consider what the candidates would do for me and my checking account.  It was easy to get behind John McCain for me, because despite that fact that he was horribly re-branded for this election, I believe him to be a true and honorable man.

That was squelched through much of the campaign, but he had his moments.  He repeatedly refused to go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright, even when so much of the GOP brought it up incessantly.

But he proved his mettle most of all when he conceded to President-Elect Barack Obama last night.  The real John McCain came through in that speech, and he said exactly the sort of things that I’ve come to expect from John McCain.

Watching John McCain quietly chide his audience for trying to boo Barack Obama is exactly the John McCain that has gained the respect of so many Americans.

Now is not the time to reflect on who supported whom.  Now is the time to look forward and recognize the tremendous opportunity we have before us and embrace the new America that Barack Obama has promised to usher in.

The election of Barack Obama may have made a statement about race relations in America, but it is our ability as a nation to support him that will test whether we are truly ready to ignore the color of a person’s skin.

Obama ran his campaign on the premise that race is of no consequence.  I earnestly pray that we, as a nation, prove him right.

I don’t know if I will fare better financially under Barack Obama, but after being reminded by a overwhelming majority of Americans, I do know that America will fare better under Barack Obama.

The morale of this nation is on an Obama-induced high.  Let’s not let that fade away.  Let’s support this great man in fulfilling the vision he has set forth.

Whether you supported him or not, America has spoken and America has clearly chosen correctly for herself.  That historic mandate is more important than anyone’s pocketbook.

Those who know me know that I’m not neutral.  Heck, I’d seriously scrutinize anyone who said they were neutral.

So it is with that disclaimer that I write this post.  Could it be that I am biased in what I say?  Maybe.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not applying logic to the situation.

Last night at 8pm I watched as Barack Obama flexed his million dollar muscles to disrupt the prime-time television schedule in an attempt to tighten his strangle-hold on the Presidential race.

To be frank, it was self-aggrandizing silliness.  It wasn’t about America.  It was about Barack Obama.

It was one of the most self-indulgent displays of pageantry I’ve ever seen.  Sarah Palin may be a former beauty queen, but Barack Obama acts as if he’s running for Mr. Universe.

It was designed to push buttons, stir emotions, and ultimately entice people to make decisions devoid of logic.  It was obviously meant to be propaganda, but it was the worst kind; it was intended to manipulate people’s sense of honor.

Some will say, “Well, McCain would have done it if he had the money.”

And honestly I can’t argue with that because I’m not John McCain and even if I was, I wouldn’t have Barack Obama’s money.  I don’t personally believe that John McCain would have done something that audacious, but who knows.

The fact is that no other presidential candidate in history has had Barack Obama’s money, influence, or power.  It’s really quite impossible to determine how out-of-line his infomercial really was.

The report is that it cost Obama $5 million to take over television.  That’s a lot of money, but if I were a self-respecting broadcast company I think I’d require more.  They were being asked to completely change the layout of their television season for it, afterall.

To allow Obama to buy airtime in that fashion was not neutral.  I find myself wondering whether or not McCain’s price would have also been $5 million if he had approached the broadcast studios.  Something tells me his price might have been a little bit higher.

I don’t know that Barack Obama happy hour will have an effect on the polls, but it certainly turned me off.

EDIT: Apparently, McCain would have gotten the same price.  The price is dictated by mandate as pointed out by Kerry — check the link for more information.

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill in a ‘fair’ way so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savi ngs).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20′, declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’

‘Yeah, that’s right’, exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’

‘That’s true!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’

‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

It’s hard for a single person to understand what trillions of dollars worth of debt means.  It’s hard for a single person to understand that a relatively small percentage of Americans make up the bulk of the tax burden for the entire country.

People freak out about things like shark attacks.  They make sure to go inside in a lightning storm.  Their hands get sweaty when they’re about to board an airplane.

But all of those things are not very likely to get you killed.  If you get killed by a shark, lightning, or a plane crash then you should be proud.  You beat odds that even a lottery winner would be envious of.

Parents watch their children like a hawk; waiting for that predator lurking around every corner.  They limit internet usage; positive that an online personality will steal their child’s innocence.

But even those things are rare.  Crazy rare, in fact.  There are  over 300 million people in the US.  Less than 2% of violent crimes are kidnapping of juveniles.

And it’s all because we, as humans, can’t really fathom the idea of relative magnitude. All we can do is internalize things and make them personal even if they aren’t likely to ever personally affect us.

I read this article this morning about the dangerous sport of ‘car surfing.’ No doubt popularized by Styles and Teen Wolf, it seems that 58 people have died from it in the last 18 years.

58 people?  That’s not even worth mentioning.  While most will read that article and think to themselves, “Oooh, that’s dangerous.  I better not do that,” I instead think, “That low?  Sounds like a reasonably safe sport to take up.”

I suppose part of it is that it’s easy to control things like whether we get hit by lightning, eaten by a shark, or thrown from the top of a moving car.  In a world where nearly everything is out of our control, we might as well cling to the things that we can control.

It may only increase our safety by fractions of a percent, but the peace of mind that it brings may be worth all of the unreasonable worrying.

Is it really that we can’t fathom magnitude, or is it rather that we refuse to fathom magnitude because doing so would mean acceptance of a huge system that we’ve lost control of?

So I was reading an article that stated a fact about taxes in the US:

70% of taxes are paid by the top 10% of Americans

That’s a pretty staggering statistic.  The imbalance of wealth is so out of whack in the US that the bottom 90% of people are almost trivial in terms of taxes; and in essence, the economy.

But that doesn’t mean the bottom 90% aren’t important to the economy — it just means their wealth isn’t their most important contribution to it.

The truth is that for the US economy to prosper, that top 10% have to be happy campers.  They have to be starting businesses, investing money, and buying yachts.

The orders of magnitude in difference between the wealthiest and poorest is so great that a wealthy person spending 10% of their income could be more impactful to the economy than a poor person spending 100% of theirs.

That being said, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the only viable option is to cater to the wealthy.  Before we talk economic theories, we have to first identify the goal.

Despite your leanings, it’s a mathematical fact that in order to get money into our economy we have to get the top 10% spending more money. 

Right or wrong, the top 10% simply have too much money to ignore.  The bottom 90% can spend all of their income and still not equal what just a few percentage points of wealthy spending could contribute.

I think both political parties have potentially viable ways of meeting this goal.

On one side, the concept is to give the wealthy tax breaks that would, in theory, convince them to spend and invest more money; ultimately releasing more funds into the economy and helping it gain ground.

That is a direct approach, but not necessarily any more successful than the less obvious approach; give the bottom 90% more money and let them spend it.

Although the amount the bottom 90% funnel into the economy is almost trivial, they offer something more intangible — opportunity.

The wealthy mostly got wealthy either directly or indirectly through providing services or goods for that bottom 90%.  If that bottom 90% starts to look like a potential cash cow, then the top 10% jump into action to get a piece of the pie.

Even if that pie is tiny in terms of total wealth in the US, it is a perfectly filling pie for an individual company or person.  Capitalism kicks into play as the top 10% try to get the money the bottom 90% are now willing to shell out.

Either way, if the theories work out to perfection, the top 10% is spending its money vigorously and the economy thrives.  That helps every American from the top to the bottom.

The top 10% make more money, so they pay more to their employees, who then spend more money to benefit the top 10% who pay more to their employees.

I don’t know which theory will yield the best results in today’s economic environment, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the goal is an undeniable effort to get the top 10% to spend more money.

Accomplish that, and things will start to improve for every single American.

Unless my blog is the first thing you’ve read since you came out of your nuclear bunker, you already know that.

I’m not here to express my opinion one way or another on the bailout and whether it’s a good idea.  I’m not an economist, and although I have a house horribly depreciated in value, I don’t feel that my opinion really means much on this subject.

Instead, I think it’s a time to celebrate.  Celebrate what, you ask?

It is a time to celebrate the government instituted 200+ years ago by our forefathers; a group of brilliant men who understood all too well how a government must be controlled by the people.

A group of men who had lived under the rule of tyranny for far too long and would have no part of a government which would give absolute power to a given person.

It is a time to celebrate George Washington who, upon being offered Kingship of these United States, refused to do so because he understood what the Revolution had really been about.

This week, the Executive Branch of the United States requested more power, and the Legislative branch — through the opinions of congressman and their constituencies — denied that request.

That is why they are there.  That is why they exist.

Whether you agree with the bailout or don’t, the fact is that the United States government has operated in one of its finest forms in my lifetime by rejecting the bailout bill.

The system has worked.  Now we must accept the consequences of our actions and weather the storm.  Sometimes the only way out is through.

No matter how you look at it, this is unacceptable garbage journalism.  If CNN wrote an article titled “How to duck the cops while running a prostitution ring out of your basement” I’m pretty sure they’d receive a little bit of flak.

Speeding is illegal.  Publishing, writing, or endorsing an article on a professional level which discusses effective ways to safely break the law is downright absurd.

Someone should seriously be fired for that.  Anyone with half a brain should know not to publish that.  Would that same person publish an article about the most effective way to dispose of a dead body?  I bet not.

I’m not trying to be a hypocrite here.  I know we all speed.  I speed, you speed, your mom speeds, and my cats would speed if they could drive — but that’s not the point.

We’re all breaking the law when we’re speeding and whatever clever contraptions we may use to try avoid getting caught doesn’t make the act any less illegal.

I especially like this tip from the article: “If it’s ok legally, get a radar dector.”

If we’re going to promote criminal behavior, I say let’s go all out.  Couldn’t they spare a few words on how to hide a radar detector from the police?

I don’t know why I even read CNN anymore.  They post sensationalist headlines that are oftentimes outright lies, and now they are promoting the breaking of laws by their readership.  The whole organization has descended into unprofessional madness.

But this article titled “What’s right with America? Plenty” really hits home.

It’s not about politics, but rather looking at what America has going for it rather than spending time on what’s wrong, as we more commonly do these days.

An excerpt:

Our economy is almost as big as the next four largest economies on Earth (Japan, Germany, China and Great Britain) combined. The state of California alone has an economy as large as the entire country of France. Illinois has the same GDP as all of Mexico. New York matches the entire GDP of Brazil. Florida’s economy is as large as South Korea’s. Texas has a GDP roughly equal to Canada’s. Michigan’s economy is as large as the entire country of Argentina.

And that’s just about the economy. It’s a good read, and refreshing outlook on the state of affairs in the US.

Slightly worse than awesome isn’t as bad as we make it out to be.

Perhaps it is inevitable in the history of any nation that things will dilute over time. It has happened to countless nations and countries over the centuries. Things don’t always go out with a bang; sometimes it is with just whimper.

With the world in the state that it is in, it sometimes confounds me the things that people fixate on.  Issues become issues that shouldn’t be issues at all.

Some things in life are not black & white.  Some things dance in the gray, never really becoming clear no matter how much science, thought, or philosophy is put into it.

But some things are black & white.  Some things are clear.  Some things are not up for debate.  Freedom is one of those things.

When I was in high school, a very wise and very old government teacher once said to me, “Your rights end where your fist ends and another’s face begins.”

You never appreciate such teachers enough at the time.  Our rights end only when they infringe on others’ rights.  Not before, not after.

We don’t get to pass laws that infringe on others’ personal choices just because we have moral objections to them.  That is a dangerous, horrible web to start weaving.

That is a web that we have been entrapped in before, yet never seem to learn as a nation how to avoid.  It was wrong when we did it to Native Americans, it was wrong when we did it to African Americans, it was wrong when we did it to Japanese Americans, and it was wrong when we did it to women.

Freedom is choice.  We have no right whatsoever to even consider laws which would forbid people to make personal choices that do not affect anyone else.  No right.

It is one thing to have a personal objection to an action; it is quite another to enforce those objections on others.  There is a difference between what is good for the country and what is good for an individual’s soul.

Freedom must be preserved.  It must be maintained.  It doesn’t matter if actions are morally right or wrong; it matters whether they infringe on the Freedom of others.  It is a very simple litmus test.  Very simple.

On this 4th of July, we should all remember what Freedom really is.  With an election coming up, we would do well to sort out the issues appropriately and understand what is an issue of morals and what is an issue of Freedom.

This is our country, and its strength was built upon Freedom.  Don’t let personal judgement get in the way of doing the right thing, championing the right cause, or making the right decision.

As a nation, we are better than that.