Good idea to link the default photo back to gravatar.com. 

Hey Carl In my templates, I changed this:    <div class="commentgravatar">         $_gravatar    </div> ...to this:    <div class="commentgravatar">     <a ...

Glad you like them.  And yes, tweaking can and will occur because templates are rarely tested against each and every feature and enhancement.  I can see you like tweaking!   I'm glad to see you sharing your insights in this forum.  

Hey Carl Gravatars are cool! And it's great that VineType supports them. I had to tweak my XHTML template (add the $_gravatar variable) to get them to show up, but I like tweaking anyhow.