Jan 29, 2012 3
A SOPA you can get behind
Introducing a useful SOPA- The Stop Online Productivity Avoidance box.
After having an extremely productive day on January 18th, I had a thought: What if every day were January 18th? Well, at the push of a button, now it can!
The button, switch, and display are wired to an Arduino. The Arduino communicates with a python script running on the router, which controls a Squid3 proxy blacklist. In SOPA mode, the whole of the internet is my oyster. In NOPA mode, however, distracting websites like reddit, hacker news, and hackaday are blocked. This isn’t very useful without a great deal of self control, however. In weaker instances, nuclear mode must be employed. Turn the key switch and press the button and all distracting sites are blocked for one hour. The only recourse is to restart the router, but the router requires 15 minutes to restart, blocking the entirety of the web for the duration. Overriding nuclear mode is not appealing.
All code is posted online at https://github.com/Zuph/SOPA-Box
A video demonstration and more pictures of construction lie below the break.
