watch out for using '&' in the names of any of your albums or photos as you'll get an XML error. just edit the abumdata.xml file to hunt it down and change it to something else. I opened iphoto and renamed the offending keyword 'hotos & Art' but that didn't change the line in albundata.xml so I ended up editiing it in vi from a terminal window. opened iphoto but somehow that put the '&' back in even after I'd renamed the keyword to remove the character.
I also had to find an old smart album that had the original keyword as one of it's selectors. once that was gone this issue went away.
now to find out why my photos don't show, some kind of permissions issue.
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special knowledge can be a terrible disadvantage if it leads you too far along a path that you cannot explain anymore.