basquille dot net

Yesterday, I made a post regarding a little webapp I developed to send your O2 Ireland webtext messages from your iPhone.

I’ve made some progress since and now have now got it working under all 3 operators (O2, Vodafone and Meteor) to send your webtext messages. And also have a couple of changes since too such as only requiring you to log-in once, validation and I also took out the 3KB images which will eat up your data charges (unless it’s in cache of course).

Anyways.. to summarise (for those who couldn’t be arsed reading my previous post regarding this), I put a very basic page together in which you can send your O2 / Meteor / Vodafone webtexts from your iPhone. I’m a mere designer of the page.. the actual scripting of sending the messages was created by Boards.ie Sam Vimes (and already has a very similar project sitting on another Boards.ie members webpage ’s webspace ).

How to use it:

• Go to iphonetext.basquille.net on your iPhone Mobile Safari browser.
• Login using your mobile number and password (along with selecting your operator) - screenshot.
• Now on the next page, enter the phone number of the person you’re sending to and your message under it (maximum length of 160 characters only supported right now) - screenshot.
• And click the ‘+’ arrow at the bottom of your browser and either add it as a bookmark or better yet, click the ‘Add To Home Screen’ so it’s always accessible from there.
• You shouldn’t need to log-in again but if you ever change your password or phone number, simply go back to and login with your new credentials.

Any suggestions, problems or improvements, please do mention below. It’s probably not gonna be much of an ongoing development as when Apple releases their SDK for the iPhone in the coming weeks, I may develop an app for use on the iPhone which will take into account your contacts etc.

Oh, and cannot finish this post without expressing huge thanks to a couple of the lads over at Boards.ie namely Webmonkey, Sam Vimes and Cabaal for either helping with the development or answering some queries I put forth to them.

If you’re feeling generous and you appreciated the project, please do make a donation to my PayPal by clicking below - a euro or two would even be appreciated. It’ll aid in future development of the project (a few donations will at least show me it’s being used and appreciated) and also, MY CHILDREN NEED WINE!!

Don’t know if anyone noticed but apologies for the downtime earlier today. Have been sorting out some server issues, or more specifically issues with regards to security. All seems to be sorted now so expect regular updates to continue from tomorrow.

And on that note, many apologies for the lack of updates also. I’ve been neglecting my blog as of late - I can’t really make any excuses as it’s just sheer laziness on my own part.

My plan for tomorrow consist mainly of two things:

• Roll back my MacBook to Tiger (from Leopard). Slower start-up times and numerous little bugs are making me grow increasingly frustrated with Leopard.
• And I’ve also purchased an Apple iPhone and plan to write a nice long blog post with a review and an honest opinions on it’s strengths and shortcomings (albeit not a whole lot of ’shortcomings’ right now as we’re still in the ‘Honeymoon’ period! :))

Til then..

I actually recently re-watched The Indiana Jones Trilogy as I hadn’t really sat down and watched them in years - probably since I was a young ‘un. But they’ve actually aged very well - I mainly think it was due to the fact that the Indy Trilogy never really relied on any real special effects (which were always susceptible to looking quite tame and at times cringe-worthy, compared to modern standards anyways).

Anyways, below is the trailer for the much-anticipated next film in the series: ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull‘ (which is being released almost 20 years after the last film in the series: ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‘). It’s worth noting that when the newest film in the series was announced, it’s fair to say there was a lot of reluctance among fans in the film community with the firm focus being on Harrison Ford playing the role again at the impressive age of 65.

But it’s a relief to say that from this trailer, he looks more than capable of playing the role and it all looks very impressive and exciting. It’s actually more or less a teaser trailer as it gives practically no real information on the storyline (and the dialogue is quite sparse). Steven Spielberg seems to be bringing Indy into the era of CGI - not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

It still looks like it could be one of the films of the year though (along with ‘The Dark Knight‘ of course), and I will be one of the first in line at my local cinema to go see it.

Speaking of which, expect it in the UK & Ireland in the Summer (or the 22nd May to be precise).

From the looks of WALL-E, Pixar look like they’re back with a winning formula after the quite un-impressive Cars.

And keeping up Pixar’s tradition of making even the most bland thing adorable, the character of WALL-E is no exception. And no doubt those adorable eyes will result in plenty of kids screaming “I WANT IT, I WANT IT!” to their parents in their local toy store. As well as sending teenage (and older) girls weak at the knees. It will inevitably sell LOADS in merchandise. Alarm clocks, teddy bears, toys, clothes, school-bags etc. You name it - expect it to see it in stores this coming Summer.

Regardless, we have yet another trailer released for WALL-E but this time, it’s an actual trailer with a brief insight into the story (as opposed to the teasers we’ve got from Pixar so far).

But this does look great. Pixar have never fully won me back since 1995’s ‘Toy Story‘. I enjoyed a lot of their films (last year’s ‘Ratatouille‘ being my favourite of their recent efforts) but I think it was the fresh appearance of ‘Toy Story’ that has stuck with me. It was 1995 and we’d seen nothing like it - and everything looked so crisp, professional and fantastic. Now these CG-animated come a dime-a-dozen each year with the majority being utter dreck (’Barnyard‘ anyone?).

WALL-E looks very different.. and definitely the most i’ve been anticipating a Pixar release in a long time.

To summarise ‘Cloverfield‘ - this is a film which will REALLY divide audiences. And I’d probably bet more people will loathe it than love it!

And there’s a good (and by no means) superficial reason for this divide - the stable tool of Hollywood in recent times has been “the shakey cam”. We’ve all seen it used in ‘The Blair Witch Project‘ and to a more professional extent, Paul Greengrass exploited it in ‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ and ‘The Bourne Ultimatum‘.

It has always been a sore point with audiences - it’s never bothered me to be honest. But as it becomes more and more common with portraying action scenes and car chases / crashes (see ‘Bourne’ examples), audiences are becoming more and more peeved with it.

This is where the audience for ‘Cloverfield’ will likely be divided. It takes the idea of “shakey-cam” and spreads it out over 85 minutes. A large percentage of cinema-goer’s will do one (or all) of the following:

• Give up on the film half-way suffering from a case of nausea.
• Give up on the film as they can’t track exactly what’s going on in action scenes
• If you’re in the same cinema I’m in, start giggling / chatting on their mobiles and generally ruin the film for everyone else (note to self: write a blog post complaining about this later).

And unfortunately for them, there’s more than enough innovation in the film than I’ve seen from an action movie (or “monster movie”) in a long long time. The movie (in my eyes anyways) oozed of innovation and something special and different and here’s where I shall start discussing details of the plotline so click ‘Show’ below if you’ve seen the film.

show

It has a very solid crew behind it - it was directed by Matt Reeves (who created the very under-rated TV show ‘Felicity‘), produced by “golden boy” JJ Abrams (co-creator of ‘Lost’, creator of ‘Alias‘ and whose next directorial effort will be ‘Star Trek‘ this coming Christmas) and was written by ‘Angel‘, ‘Alias’ and ‘Lost’ writer Drew Goddard.

The cast are all practically unknowns… and to be perfectly honest, they’re not particularly standout performances either. But running around and acting scared for 85 minutes will never stretch your “acting muscles” - but no doubt, many members will get their chance in more demanding roles after the success of ‘Cloverfield’.

I could talk about the film in detail as it’s quite an interesting film, but as I said at the top of the post, it will really divide audiences and people who enjoy it will discuss elements of it in detail while people who didn’t still suffer motion-sickness. Oh, and by way, I’m joking by “pigeon-holeing” people who didn’t like it exclusively to those who couldn’t bear shakey-cam, the film has more than a fair amount of flaws. But personally weighing the pros and cons up, I enjoyed it a lot (probably more than most action movies of the last year or two). But that doesn’t mean I would like to see a ‘Cloverfield’-esque movie every Summer.. but it’ll no doubt happen now that it’s proved successful.

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