GIZMODO: In honor of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, British engineer Iain Sharp built a mechanical version of the Atari classic: Lunar Lander. Oh. And it’s awesome. Check out the full store here.

Many of us have discussed the gamer auction site chasethechuckwagon.com.  On several occassions I’ve heard people say they can never remember the name of the site.  Since the site’s name is based on an obscure Atari 2600 title exclusively released by Purina back in the 80s–this is no surprise.  Apparently, this wasn’t an uncommon deterrent.  It would appear that with the latest upgrade to the site’s look & feel, a name change has accompanied the new look.  Behold the GameGavel:

The site still has a long way to go to be the next ebay, but they continually strive to make improvements.  Along with these enhancements comes a few little mistakes–like the poorly executed logo on the main page.  Don’t get me wrong! I like the simplicity but its jagged edges and somewhat unpolished glow clearly indicate it was designed on a small scale and blown up.  The immediate elimination of the animated gif or png for sharing auctions would be a good improvement as well.

All that aside, I like the new site name.  The word “gavel” invokes the imagination as you envision it smacking down to declare a winning bid.  The alliteration is perfectly executed to create a catchy and easily remembered name.  With more than 3,000 members and climbing, I think they’re taking the right steps to draw larger audiences into the fold.

Go chase the chuckwagon at GameGavel.com!

The shot you see above, is from my recently modded Game Boy… model DMG-01.  For those of you who don’t know, the modding community refers to their Game Boy machines not as a “Game Boy” but rather a “DMG.”   I guess it’s sorta like calling your Atari Computer an “A8” or only referring to your Atari 2600 as a “VCS.”  In any case, DMG stands for Dot Matrix Game.  All original Game Boy machines were black and white dot matrix graphics–no fancy back-lighting, just good solid games on a portable platform.

I purchased my kit from Nonfinite Electronics for less than $15.  I chose green because I thought it would make the black DMG look a little more retro.

The screens consist of 4 parts:

• 2 pieces of glass with the dot matrix film smashed between them and (3)
• A polarized reflective sticker on the back of the glass (1)

The reflective sticker allows natural light to penetrate the glass and reflect back the dot matrix graphics.  It’s effective in well lit rooms but a little disappointing in the dark. 😉

After removing the back of the unit with a tri-wing screwdriver and a dozen or more internal screws of the Phillips-head variety, de-soldering, soldering and hot-gluing, I came up with the beautifully bright screen you see in the photo.   By the by, don’t bother asking for a tri-wing screwdriver at your local hardware store… they’re kinda dense when it’s not a philips or a flat head.

I used the following turorials:

• http://nonelectronics.com/pbtutorial.html
• http://www.tweak3d.net/forums/gaming/gameboy-dmg-backlight-mod-how-43036/

For a few more details about my mod, you can follow this link to my flickr set.

Total time to mod:  3.5-4 hours  — This was by far my most complicated modification to any electronic device to date.  It requires a lot of patience your first time out.  I would say that now that I’ve performed the procedure and learned what NOT to do, with 10-15 minutes of prep time–I could probably accomplish the same mod in about an hour.  It is a real treat to rediscover the Game Boy after this modification.

This is a test entry. I’ve created a button in the HTML editor that will allow you to center pretty much anything. If you’re creating a new entry with a video in it, highlight all of the code and click the “center” button. It will add a div class to the entry: div class="ctrany".

The video will then be centered as seen below:

I’m still working on a way to produce a button in the wysiwyg/tinymce/visual editor but that appears to be very difficult. In my research I’ve also discovered there are many native buttons that are not displayed by default in the visual editor. I’ve considered turning them on. There is also a pretty cool plugin called WP Super Edit that allows for more control too… Though I’m not sure about how it will work over time when they update tinymce in wordpress… Let me know what you think…

P.S. Switching between editors does not strip this code out so you can switch freely between editors as you wish.