Last night we watched the Last ever Nicholas Cage movie I’ll ever see. I’m so sick of wasting my life on that guy’s movies. People always recommend them to me, claiming that this one is different, and I’ll love it even though I hate him, but they’re always wrong. Please, no-one recommend me any more movies starring Nicholas Cage; you’re likely to get ranted at.

Being as I have an awesome new distraction, Charlotte and I decided to break out the cool new Penultimate app and do some sketches inspired by the movie (interwoven with pure id). I can’t draw with a pen, let alone my finger, so most are shit but it’s an esoteric look into how we experienced the movie “Knowing”.

Amelie told me (through the medium of being a cat slag) that she’s sick of all these little cats and dogs having their photo taken. Why not her?! She can be just as cute as any of those other things (her words, not mine).

Yes, I am one of those people who talks to animals. And plants. And computers. And furniture. And food. Working from home can be lonely.

Artie, Benjie and Jem’s kittens are around 3 weeks old now. There’s loads of images, so hit the drop for more. They’re very cute, but not very willing to have a photo taken!

…

Lightboxes are really irritating. No users I ever speak to like them, but all website owners love them – communication problems there, maybe?

Here’s why I don’t like lightboxes:

• They usually override keyboard functionality. I use my escape key to clear fields and I use my arrow keys to navigate pages – don’t overwrite that. I know best, not you.
• They’re unnecessarily schmancy and animated – if I opened a lightbox, chances are I want to look at a picture and nothing else. Leave me alone otherwise. I don’t want to see your great “close” icon or any of that crap so just drop it!
• Some are nearly impossible to close

There are probably a bunch more reasons, but you get the idea.

My lightbox stays out of your way. It doesn’t override any standard keyboard behaviour and it doesn’t use visual fluff to irritate you. What it does do is open a big version of the picture you clicked on so you can see it in more detail. When you’re done, it closes. Here’s how you use it:

• Click a flickr image to open the lightbox (this might be the last time you need your mouse/trackpad)
• j = next
• k = previous
• o = open the flickr page for this image
• q = close the lightbox
• You can also click anywhere to close the light when it’s open

If you’re wondering why j,k,q; use Vim for a day. I would’ve used e to open, but who’s going to remember that?

I’m probably going to implement a resizing thing for people with small monitors so that screens don’t get flooded – if this affects you, please tell me whether you’d like the process to automatically detect your browser size, or whether you’d prefer to handle it yourself. I’m aware that this will affect basically all portrait images – this will probably make me make it automatic. Pictures are pretty pointless if you have to scroll, but I’m tired now and can’t be bothered.

If you want the code for this, view source and find the javascript yourself. There’s a PHP file to make Flickr API calls, but that encapsulates my API credentials. If you can’t figure out what to do here, holla so we can all have a good laugh.

So much better than the crap you get in sweaty, sludgey bags at Sainsbury’s.