!dev !rant

So I'm thinking of buying a treadmill and I was wondering, might it be possible to build something that locks my computer from gaming until I have walked / ran X km on it.

Does anyone know / anyone know an existing app like that?

Yes, it's called 'determination'.

Buy a smart watch with step counter and API access.

write something that can block access to the games exe's (or even encrypt them) so you can't run them until you hit n+1 steps at which point a decrypt is triggered. :)

@C0D4 good idea, now to first get the treadmill tho

@LastDigitOfPi i guess it's not good point

@LastDigitOfPi fuck if only i had thought of that

If it's to get back in shape, I highly suggest looking into an elliptical bike instead of a treadmill.

Treadmills suck, they are the carrousel equivalent of all sportclub machinery

@RicoNijeboer unnecessarily complicated solution:

If the treadmill has a significantly uneven surface (as it should) you can set up a simple mechanism:
Shine a thin diode laser or a focused LED beam on the surface.
As the surface moves, the reflected radiance in a particular direction will change because of the roughness of the surface. The frequency of this change will be positively correlated with the speed of the surface (linear up to sampling frequency of your sensor, probably). Use it to determine velocity. From that get distance via integration. Use an Arduino to run this whole thing and have it communicate with an app on your PC through serial. Bam.

Interestingly, this is how optical tachometers work, to make it better you could put a strip of white paper/plastic on the surface and measure the number of times it crosses the LED/laser beam, this would be easier because you'll have a spike in reflected radiance.

Hire an old Italian mother to judge you for not completing your task if you start gaming early

"YER NEVER GONNA AMOUNT TA NOTHIN STEWART"

is this just another way of putting off doing any exercise on the treadmill?