Almost a year ago, after an enjoyable Christmas party, I dropped my 16GB iPhone 3G.

It was a sad day.

I got a new phone earlier this year, put the old 3G in a box, and then forgot about it. A few weeks ago when I was moving things around I re-discovered it and decided I should have a go at fixing the screen.

I looked around for information about replacing the screen, and the best how-to articles I could find were the ones at TidBITS and wikiHow.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10389
http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-an-iPhone-3G-Screen

These sites told me that I needed to buy a new digitizer and screen kit (fortunately the LCD hadn’t been damaged when I dropped the phone), so I hopped over to eBay and bought one of these for £13, which duly arrived a couple of days later.

I followed the instructions and after a minor issue removing one of the screws that attaches the screen frame to the LCD (be careful with the tiny little things), I had the broken glass removed, the new screen attached, and the iPhone back together and working.

Once I’d made sure that everything was working perfectly, I decided that I wanted to get rid of the phone rather than keep it. I was directed to Mobile Valuer (a MoneySavingExpert site), plugged in the details of the phone, and was shown who would give me money for it.

I chose to go with Royal Mail’s Simply Drop.

I filled out their form online, received a valuation (£155) and a unique code, and was then sent a special envelope so that I could send the phone to them (after removing all my old data).

On Saturday morning I wandered in to town, wrote my unique code on the envelope and then paid for registered mail. This cost me £5.50 but meant the phone was fully insured for the £155 I was hoping to get back.

Two mornings later I got an email and an SMS message from Simply Drop telling me that they’d inspected the phone, were happy that it was in fully working order, and that £155 would be transferred to my Paypal account (Simply Drop provides a number of payment options, including donating the payment to charity). The next day the money arrived, and by this morning (just 5 days after sending my phone in) the money was already in my bank account.

If you have a go:

• Make sure to get the right digitizer/LCD (and get it from a reputable dealer)
• Be very careful that you don’t strip the screws when removing the screen frame from the LCD
• Be very careful when removing the screen glass (lots of little tiny shards)
• Send your phone to a company that you feel confident about

We have a book of “Big Machines” that Galen loves. He can now recognise and name the following both in the book and when we’re out. He has a bit of a thing for tractors.

• Bulldozer
• Excavator
• Backhoe Loader
• Crane
• Tower crane
• Dump truck
• Grader (used when building a road)
• Roller
• Paver
• Concrete Mixer
• Concrete Pump
• Tunnel Digger
• Tractor
• Plough
• Harrow
• Roller
• Seed drill
• Muckspreader
• Sprayer
• Combine harvester
• Mower
• Swath Turner
• Baler
• Grab
• Bale Fork
• Tractor loader
• Hedge-trimmer
• Post driver
• Giant tractor
• Potato planter
• Tow truck
• Snow blower

When Galen and I were driving to swimming this morning he saw a tractor, after which he then said:

"Might see a combine harvester. Keep eyes peeled."

You could say that his vocabulary is coming along.

Using the electric mixer. Just a little bit pleased with himself.

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.