We spend too much time on the internet. It's a known fact. Most of the time spent is not doing anything productive. There's been a few ideas in the past to remedy this procrastination, such as the Pavlov Poke that electrocutes you when you spend too much time on Facebook. Brian Peiris has created a nifty device that forces you to exercise if you want to browse the web.
The treadmill's sensor uses a magnet that is attached to a flywheel, and triggers every time the magnet passes the sensor. Brian has hacked this up to an Arduino to read these impulses, and send the speed over the USB port to his computer. In the first version, the data was picked up by a Python script that turns the data into a simulated mouse-wheel movement. This meant that to scroll down the page required a walk on the treadmill.
Brian took this one step further, and used the Throxy Python library to throttle the internet connection. This is a pretty cool idea, and could be used to encourage your kids (or your unhealthy self) to actually do a bit of exercise! Want to watch some video? You better get running!