creating a photo a day page type

I'm trying to create a photo a day look as part of my drupal website similar to that done by pixelpost code. I've created a Photo a day content type with an image. I've created a view so if you go to the Photo a Day menu link all you will see are the photos uploaded under the Photo a day content with 1 photo being displayed per page. That seems to work fine although not 100% as desired.

I'm stuck on trying to figure out a few niggling little desires and I'm starting to think that maybe using Views wasn't the best way to achieve what I'm trying to do. Perhaps I should be delving into altering a node_photo_a_day.tpl.php page instead and create some custom php code to achieve what I'm trying to do. I'm not sure though.

1. I'd like the primary menu link to always point the the most recent photo a day node. Views does this nicely by placing a menu item and a link to the page view I've created of the photo a day nodes, but the url displayed to the user is to the photo a day view and not the actual photo a day node being seen. Minor annoyance but if someone copies the url and passes it on they won't be pointing to the correct photo a day node. They woulld see www.example.com/photo_a_day instead of www.example.com/photo_a_day/2009/02/04 The second url points the the specific node where the first one only points to the View's page displaying the photo a day nodes.

2. I want to present to the user a previous and next button. Views allows me to add a pager system which works but isn't elegant. Plus the pager system disappears when you tell the view to allow comments to displayed on the node. This is why I've started thinking I shouldn't be using views to do what I'm trying to do.

3. I want a view of thumbnails below the displayed image that shows off the 3 or so photos before the image being displayed and 3 or so photos after the image being displayed. I can get a list of thumbnails using Views but I haven't figured out a way to make them change based on what main photo is being displayed on the page, or basically what node the viewer is seeing. This seems like it should be possible in views but I haven't figured out how if it is. And if it cannot be done using Views module it is one more reason for me to look at doing it in the default node page and using some custom php to create the look I'm going for.

Any comments or suggestions about how to go about doing this? I'm not looking for a solution, more of a push in the right direction from those more seasoned drupal themers on how they would tackle this. As I mentioned, I'm leaning toward moving away from using Views to get my content and instead altering the node_photo_a_day.tpl.php and creating some custom php code to get the results I'd want, but I'm not sure if this is the best solution to the output I want. I'm also not sure how I would get a thumbnail photo displayed using imagecache module within custom php. That alone seems like a mental nightmare.

Thanks for your thoughts in advance!