The G1 lives!

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, a while ago my G1 fell under the wheels of a lorry on The Old Kent Road. My first reaction was shock at the loss of my faithful Android powered device. My second reaction was annoyance at the realisation that I had only just started a new 18 month contract. So I resigned myself to a long wait for a replacement. I did look into purchasing a new LCD but at the time replacement screens were going for around £90.

Half a year later I decided to look into the possibility of replacing the screen again. I searched on the Internet and found a replacement LCD on Ebay from these guys for only £35 pounds. What’s more, it also came with free tools to fit it. The good news didn’t stop there. Further research revealed a number of tutorials detailing how to replace the LCD. I used this video tutorial. Handily I also found the HTC service manual.

Armed with the tools, the video tutorial and the manual I started to take the beast apart. I won’t go into how to replace the screen. The steps are detailed well enough in the resources mentioned above. What I will say is to read the relevant sections of the manual and look at the video before you start just to get a feel of the phone internals.

It actually took me three attempts to get the phone back to life. After the first attempt I was left with 3 screws and a small piece of rubber. After attempt number two all the screws were accounted for but the camera didn’t work and the phone kept inexplicably rebooting.

The third attempt was more successful. I found that the cable connecting the camera to the motherboard had come adrift. Upon reassembly the camera worked and no more crashes.

After a day I noticed that the speaker had stopped working. I put up with it for a while then decided to open her up again. This time I found that the two soldered connector springs that mate with the speaker(which is attached to the back cover) had come off. Not having a soldering iron I cut very small pieces of gaffer tape and taped the connectors down. The intention being that once the back cover was screwed into place, the springs would stay in place by pressure. This worked nicely and a week later the phone is as good as new.

Virgin school run

It was a lovely Summer’s morning when I woke so on Jake’s first day of school I decided to take the trailer out for its inaugural run. While Jake was busy playing Lego Star Wars on the ‘GPS’ I got the bike and trailer out of the shed and assembled it in the side passage between ours and Tricia’s house.

I was a little worried about taking the trailer for the following reasons:

1. Amount of traffic
2. Holding up traffic
3. Getting abuseI had little to worry about because most of the trip was in the park and the bits that weren’t were on minor roads. When I did have to cross the busy junction at Ladywell Road I found drivers on the whole to give me a wider berth than usual. I think the trailer feels wider than it is. Looking at it front on it is only marginally wider than the handlebars of the bike itself. On the abuse front I didn’t get any, but give it time…

Jake enjoyed himself bouncing up and down the many speed bumps on the route. After dropping Jake off at school I walked back through Ladywell Fields with Ben chatting about carbon fibre, Moultons, ‘bonking’ and our impending London to Brighton bike ride.

Map of the route to St. Dunstans courtesy of Google Earth

Ash plumes and picnics

I am now back at work after my weeks ‘rest’. Amy should have flown to the USA on Saturday and Lise should have flown home to Denmark last Friday. Mmm, why are they still here I hear you ask? Well, it’s all because of a certain dust cloud or ash plume, as it is also known, blowing into UK airspace and causing all planes to be grounded. Today there have been some European flights. I believe KLM sent a freight plane off to Asia. British airspace is still in lock-down though. Let’s hope that Amy can fly out to see John this week.
Yesterday was very pleasant. The summer has finally arrived and brought with it nice temperatures of 20 degrees, which at one point threatened to get a little too hot. We spent the afternoon in Greenwich Park. The plan was that Amy and Lise took a stroll over there while I went shopping for provisions with Jake and Mia in tow. It didn’t start very well. I arrived at Sainsburg’s only to find that I had left my wallet at home. Then, after driving back and picking up said wallet I got stuck in a nice traffic snarl-up in New Cross. Luckily both Jake and Mia were impeccably behaved. As a treat I bought Jake a water blaster to take to the park.

I dropped the shopping back at home and decided to walk to Greenwich because I didn’t much fancy driving around trying to find a parking spot on such a fine day. Mia at this point was tired and a little cranky. It took until we had scaled the road up to Blackheath for her to calm down and go to sleep. I eventually met up with the girls, sweating and a little achey from carrying the picnic bag, pushing the pram and taking Jake on my shoulders to rest his legs.

We had great fun in the park. Jake ran around soaking the trees with his Barracuda blaster while the grown-ups sipped a nice chilled bottle of rose. Little Mia, our ‘Sweet Mama’ as she is also known sat there chilling out, cooing and smiling at the world.

We had to leave at around 3pm for our next picnic, the one that really marks the start of summer in my mind. the Hilly Fields Neighbours Picnic. The usual suspects were there; Trudi and the boys, Tricia and Keelan. Jake had crashed out in Mia’s pushchair so we left him to sleep while we drank a little more wine. Ahh life is good! Later on Fin, James and little Martha turned up which was a nice addition.

The only thing that marred the evening was that I had to go back to work in the morning. Boo hoo!