After a lot of work and tweaking, I managed to finish writing my slideshow function. An example of the slideshow function (along with pictures from my trip to Santa Cruz, California) is shown below:

The slideshow function uses a combination of existing lightbox and cyclic apis plus my own custom javascript enhancements. I wanted a slideshow feature that would integrate well with the aesthetics of the page and be unobtrusive. None of the existing slideshows that I could find really appealed to me and were either too gaudy and cumbersome or visually too unique for my taste.. So I put together something of my own. Enjoy!