[Clear/Painted Jewel]

Label remover is my go to choice to get the Jewels off spray it on till it pools in the jewels recess leave for a bit, it  makes the sticky useless and you can then ping out the Jewel with zero fuss. Another dosing usually makes very short work of any black sticky that resisted on the Jewel or recess. 

You can buy label remover from the likes of Maplin, RS, CPC/Farnells and Radio Shak etc for a few pounds, 

[Hard Drive Indicator Led Video Install]

Great informative video.

 

on the subject of painting the controller numbers, Gundam markers may be to your liking, think felt tip pen but with model paint,they come in different nib sizes and more colours than you'll likely need.

Been using them for years.

[Portable Xbox + VGA - SSD vs HDD Comparison]

Certainly shows that SSD has the edge with certain data transfer intensive activities. Even going through an SATA to ide converter which strips some potential speed off, it still rocks. 

An SSD is a great choice for sim xboxs due to size heat and noise, still a bit pricey but they are comming down.

[Led Controller Port Install]

There are quite a few resistor calculators on the internet so, you can work out what resistor you need to add to the LEDs you buy. They can have different voltage tolerances depending on output and size etc. 

In some cases just adding all four of the ports in series can drop the volts enough not to need resistors.

[XBox 360 D-Pad Mod.]

Simple but effective. Great 

[Cleared, Masked, Painted and Mounted. It Came Out Pretty Good.]

A good way is to use Mr Muscle over cleaner spray. You have to be careful not to get it into the logo but it has the desired effect on loosing the green.

Dont laugh but you can polish them with toothpate also.