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   Repair
   October 15, 2022
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   Written on my laptop
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  Last weekend I repaired my iPhone.
  
  Well the story is a bit longer, but I will try to summarize it:
  
  - about one year ago I broke the screen of my iPhone X
  
  - in a very theatrical way, I cursed my clumsiness and vowed
    that if I could not repair it, I deserved to live with 
    a broken one forever
  
  - after a couple of days I had already gotten accustomed to
    living with a broken screen, and basically forgot about it
  
  
  Fast forward until the end of September, I was watching a cool
  talk [1] by Fraxinas (@repairfox on Twitter) and learning about
  different projects and associations around the world which 
  promote hardware repair. Among them, The Restart Project [2]
  which is located in London but maintains a list of "Restart
  Parties" which take place all around the world. Needless to 
  say, I was quite fascinated by this: not the repairing thing 
  per se, but how it has been spread and made scalable in a way 
  which I was not expecting (yay for finding a new community of 
  practice!)

  
  And now comes the boring part: I went to iFixit's website,
  bought a kit to repair my iPhone screen, and repaired it by
  following the amazing step-by-step instructions.

  
  Now, one can argue about how sustainable it was to order a kit
  when I could have just walked to Edgware Road to buy one. One
  could say I probably spent more that way than joining a Restart
  Party. I agree this might not be the best solution (sorry
  iFixit, nothing personal!), but I think it was definitely good
  for me, and better than either getting a new phone or going on
  with a broken one. The only thing I am missing is the chance
  to meet people who are probably quite awesome, but my next vow
  is to try and fix this.
  
  Why? Because repairing is one of those activities that can 
  greatly benefit from the existence of a community of practice,
  one that can share both the knowledge and the tools to fix
  things (just to give you an example, I now have everything 
  one needs to fix an iPhone screen and no more screens to fix,
  hopefully for a very long time... isn't this a huge waste?)
  
  
  By the way, today it is 15 October and it is International
  Repair Day! Following the motto "Repair Everywhere", The 
  Restart Project published a few useful tutorials [3] from
  which I learned that Sugru has published a 3D-printable mould
  for Lightening cables on Thingiverse. Enjoy and celebrate,
  repairing something of your own!
  
  
  
  
  [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/mch2022-301-repair-for-future
  [2] https://therestartproject.org/
  [3] https://therestartproject.org/news/repair-everywhere/