It’s all about him.

Thanks to ITV and the BBC, I’ve had the World Cup on in the background.

Unfortunately the ITV page is full of stuff I just don’t want to see – all I’m interested in is occasionally glancing at the video and seeing the score.

To fix this I did the following:

• Installed this extension for Chrome
• Added a new rule
• Set the regular expression for matching the URL to ^http://live.itv.com/*
• Added some CSS

The CSS:

/* Remove the main background image */
body.tipsy { 
    background-image: none !important; 
    background-color: black;
}
.applicationArea { 
    background: none !important;
}

/* Hide the view buttons we don't want to use */
.game_menu h4,
.views_comments,
.views_grid,
.views_big-screen,
.views_video-highlights,
.share_button {
    display: none !important;
}

/* Clear out some backgrounds */
#game_menu_bar,
#alert_bar,
.open_block {
    background: none !important;
    background-color: none !important;
}

/* Remove the border from the video */
.video_container {
    border: 0 !important;
}

/* Hide other misc crap */
.comment_container,
#header_bar,
.footer,
#time_line,
#main_grid_panel {
    display: none !important;
}

This basically turns this:

Into a big black screen that looks like this:

Much nicer.

The boy and I are happily playing cricket inside. I bowl the ball at his bat and then he whacks it back to me.

“Galen, could I please just watch this on TV for a bit?”

starts watching tv

THWACK – the ball hits my nose.

“OW!”

LAUGHTER

“OK, I can play cricket again now.”

“No, watch TV.”

And just like that, the boy spent the next 10 minutes throwing a cricket ball at the side of my head.

The little man runs ahead – glancing sideways, staring down alleys.
Walls and ceilings and darkness close together.
Eeuuughhhhh he grunts.
Eeuuughhhhh he grunts again.
He turns around. Eyes searching.
Ladies loo. Hmm, ha!
Glint in the eye!
EEUUUGHHHHH he grunts again.
eeuuughhhhh the loo responds.
Echo found.

Me and the boy. With many thanks to Alex Makeyev for the photos.