When I was young (sometime toward the end of the last ice age) braces were the kiss of death. The only thing worse than wearing them to school would've been to have your grandmother give you a big slobbery kiss in front of all your friends. Amazing what a few years of creative marketing can accomplish. My daughter begged to wear braces. She shrieked with delight when told she would be getting them. She was up at 7 this morning (unheard of on a school day) and picked out her colors (blue with red in front) before we even stepped into the orthodontist's office. When we got home, she couldn't wait to show and tell all of her friends. 

Standing at the crossroads. The website software has evolved a bit more. Photo albums are necessary so that I can pull in what remains of macgirvin.com - which does little more these days than house my photo collection and collect my email archives.

Soon I'll be shutting down the aging Linux box in my garage and moving everything that's left onto hosted websites such as the one you are getting this post from.  

The photo archives use group permissions. This way if a new family member of friend registers I only have to add them to one list to let them see the entire private photo collection. It is also a departure from the simple permissions I originally baked into the site - registered or not, admin or not.

It provides full control of who can access what. The basic permissions structure was fine for getting something working quickly. Now it's time to move on. You want something only accessible to family? To males over 35 that are into scuba diving? You need a little better permission control. 

This in turn opens the possibility of group permissions for forums, weblogs, or just about anything else. That's what I mean about standing at the crossroads.

This is where everything changes.