We all knew that raising a generation of American kids on violent video games would pay off at some point for the military industrial complex:

The U.S. Army has discovered a remote control gun turret that works, and cannot get enough of them. The army wants over 9,000 CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations), but is only getting 15 a month. There should be about a thousand CROWS in service by the end of the year.

...But there's another reason, not often talked about, for the success of CROWS. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements, and any firepower the enemy sends your way. But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger. Iraqis are amazed at how observant CROWS is. Iraqis tend to just wrote this off as another example of American 'magic.' But the troops know better. Video games can save your life.

God bless our Master Chief-loving troops and their mad fragging skills. It turns out splattering Iraqi insurgents from the comfort of your Humvee is that much easier thanks to countless hours spent blasting Covenant Elites. Maybe this means some defense contractor will sponsor a free weekend of Xbox Live.

(Via Xbox 360 Fanboy.)

I have been a Halo 2 addict since then, even frequently going to Halo 2 LAN parties on Friday nights where ten or so hard-core gamers get to use me as cannon fodder. It's always fun though, even if I can never finish higher than the middle of the pack (which is a good night).

Aside from that, my interest in the XBox 360 was kind of weak until I played a demo of Call of Duty 2. Then I was sold. I actually waited in line at Walmart for 15 hours to get a system the day they game out. Here's a picture of my chair that day:

Now before you accuse me of being crazy, realize that I am a freelance developer and I was able to take my PowerBook to Walmart with me and get some work done. It was still a long day though. The best experience I can compare it to is a flight across the ocean - sitting in the same place for that many hours is draining. At least I was inside and warm. Some of my friends had to camp outside at Best Buy.

So at the end of the night, I had a Premium system, 4 wireless controllers, and 2 games. It's an amazing system. I can't stop playing (and neither can my wife). Scoble, the XBox 360 is going to destroy the Playstation 3. And not just because of the games, but because of the XBox Live! service. The Live! service and its community make the 360 the best console gaming platform there is. Period. I would not even consider a system like the PS3 that does not have a service like Live!

And the Live! Arcade is perfect. My wife is hooked on Hexic, and I have played Geometry Wars more than Call of Duty 2 and Perfect Dark Zero combined. By the time it is said and done, and the XBox 720 comes out, I will probably have spent hundreds of dollars on the Live! Arcade. I guess that's what Microsoft wants. And I have no problem paying for great games.

Scoble, I think the 360 is the best thing Microsoft has going for it right now. But Microsoft is stagnant when it comes to web development technology.

I have spent the last few years working with C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, SharePoint, and BizTalk. I even spent two weeks at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston. I have invested heavily in learning Microsoft's web development technology over the last few years.

And I'm walking away from it.

Scoble, as a web developer who is now doing freelance work for a living, my framework of choice is Ruby on Rails. Mostly for the reasons listed here. And also because Microsoft's web development technologies have lost their appeal. I can remember being blown away by ASP.NET when I first saw it. I now feel even more strongly about Rails. And when I talk to businesses and friends who are developers, I make sure they know about Rails.

Sure, I know about the new Visual Studio, ASP.NET 2.0, the new SharePoint, and the new SQL Server. And I just don't care. Microsoft needs to capture some of the 360 magic and use it on their web development technology or they will continue to lose developers like me.

I think iMixes are pretty cool. If you are not aware of what they are, and iMix is a user-submitted "mix" of songs that resides locally in their iTunes. I may have a playlist of songs I use for background music while I write code, and I could submit it as an iMix entitled "The Best Coding Music in the World." Users of the iTunes Music Store could then vote on the iMix and buy the songs listed in the iMix.

As of this writing, there are currently 332,560 iMixes, and over 1.3 million votes cast on those iMixes.

How does RSS fit into this? Well, Apple was an early adopter of RSS, and they have a page on their site dedicated to RSS, which is far more than most companies today. But since introducing RSS support a few years ago, Apple has done little to expand their offerings of content available via RSS.

A little over a year ago, while writing for Lockergnome, I wrote a piece asking Apple to make more iTunes content available via RSS.

As you can guess, not much happened. So what does any self-respecting hacker with free time do? Working with another developer, we hacked together a Perl script that gets the iMix information from the iTunes Music Store and reformats it as RSS.

I've had this code sitting around for a while now, and finally decided to make it public. So without further ado, here are the links:

Most Recent iMixes -

Featured iMixes -

Top Rated iMixes -

*Disclosure* - these feeds include my iTunes affiliate information in them, so if you use them to buy a song, I will get a cut of the sale - very similar to the Amazon affiliate program. Hey - I'm unemployed and doing freelance work. I can use all the cash I can get.

These feeds are updated every 15 minutes, and are actually only a subset of the iMix data. I found that the three main iMix lists are too big for RSS. For example, the Most Recent lists the 100 most recently submitted iMixes. If all this information is parsed into RSS, the resulting RSS file is at least 1.5 MB! Way too big for RSS. And way too costly for my bandwidth. And, in what was the deciding factor to limit the number of new items, FeedBurner does not allow a feed to be more than 250 KB.

So each feed updates every 15 minutes with the 9 most recent iMixes as RSS items. The Most Recent feed updates the most often, followed by the Top Rated feed, and the Featured feed updates far less frequently. I think Apple must manually update that one.

If there is enough interest, I will post the code and make it freely available. Just let me know. And I will probably put up links that do not include the affiliate information. Or you can just use my code to make your own. Just give me some time to clean the scripts up a little.

(Via Seth's Blog.)

I knew extending our wireless network to a house 100 feet away was possible, but I was not sure what equipment we would need. I did some research and found the Cantenna. From reviews I found, I knew it should easily be able to focus the wireless signal and transmit it to the house. I also knew I wanted to use a Linksys WRT54G with custom Sveasoft firmware. Sveasoft firmware allows you to boost the signal strength on the router, something you cannot do with the factory firmware. Would it work? Would we need more equipment, like a router on the other end? Only one way to find out.

Once I had everything setup on the router, we did a test from our second story porch. It worked perfectly. I plan on moving the router and cantenna inside our garage, which has a window with clear line of sight to the house. For now though, here is a shot of the setup on our porch.

"Mikhail's analysis of the brain signals associated with use of the robotic and animals' actual arms revealed that the animal was simultaneously doing one thing with its own arm and something else with the robotic arm," (Nicolelis) said. "So, our hypothesis is that the adaptation of brain structures allows the expansion of capability to use an artificial appendage with no loss of function, because the animal can flip back and forth between using the two. Depending on the goal, the animal could use its own arm or the robotic arm, and in some cases both.

"This finding supports our theory that the brain has extraordinary abilities to adapt to incorporate artificial tools, whether directly controlled by the brain or through the appendages" said Nicolelis. "Our brain representations of the body are adaptable enough to incorporate any tools that we create to interact with the environment. This may include a robot appendage, but it may also include using a computer keyboard or a tennis racket. In any such case, the properties of this tool become incorporated into our neuronal 'space'," he said...


"From a philosophical point of view, we're saying that the sense of self is not limited to our capability for introspection, our sense of our body limits, and to the experiences we've accumulated," Nicolelis said. "It really incorporates every external device that we use to deal with the environment."

(Via Boing Boing Blog.)

Iowa Unwires Rest Stops: "Iowa joins a growing trend of states with large empty stretches: For traffic safety purposes, the more frequently people stop, stretch, and take their eyes off the road, the better. Adding Wi-Fi at rest stops is just one tool in that arsenal, but it's also a nice idea for tourists, truckers, and business travelers. Iowa will equip a total of 40 locations by July; 20 of them by mid-March. A trial set of eight locations had 111,000 access over seven months. Several stops are active on Interstates 35 and 80. Service will be free and operated by I-Spot...."

(Via Wi-Fi Networking News.)

Allie's Exercise (42 MB MPG)