"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. " ~ James 1:2-3

Nerd Rage

I read this newspost today, from Tim, the creater of the comic Ctrl-Alt-Del (linked in my sidebar). It's a comic whose central theme is gaming, but is still non-specific enough that I can appreciate it's humor. (Note: If you go to check it out, be forewarned that some of the comics do have vulgar language)
Here is what Tim wrote:
So you may have heard about the global Playstation 3 meltdown (or 'ApocalyPS3') earlier this week when a small error in the system's internal clock as it relates (I assume) to leap years rendered many systems unplayable for a whopping 24 hours.
I imagine I don't need to tell you, some people flipped.
 
The conspiracy theories flew, and the fury and threats boiled over, and it was quite the spectacle to behold if you cruised by some gaming forums in the heat of it. I'll admit, I was personally thankful that I'd finished Heavy Rain the night before. I'd have probably been a little irritated to find that I couldn't sit down to play it after work. But man oh man... forget corn, we need to get our scientists working on a way to harness nerd-rage as a renewable energy source.
 
Hook one of these angsty geeks up to some machines, tell him his favorite game service is down on his day off, or that Michael Bay is directing a Thundercats movie, and power New York City for a month straight. It'll work I tell you. The science is out there.
 
You know, this could work. In fact, there are several ways I could see using human emotion/energy as a power source. You wouldn't want your life support systems to be powered that way, but hey, your toaster is a pretty safe bet. The question is, how to harness this energy using less energy that it produces... I wonder if people are looking into this sort of thing.
Wow, a quick Yahoo search is all it takes to discover:


  • The California Fitness health club in Hong Kong has connected car batteries to exercise machines so that they can harness human energy to reduce their electricity bills.
  • There are shoes that convert walking into electricity and can generate around six watts, enough to power a mobile phone and dance floors that turn vibrations into energy.

  • The Ridgefield Fitness Club (in Ridgefield, CT) cycling studio, comprised of 17 indoor cycles, is connected to the club’s electrical grid through an inverter, so that human electricity can be used to power all aspects of the facility. This maximization of electricity helps reduce carbon emissions and lowers the community’s demand for fossil fuel based-energy. Any excess electricity generated from the club has the potential to return to the power grid for others in the community to use.

And this is the website of a workshop that focuses on how to add the human powered element back into things we do in everyday life anyways:
It's times like these you really do think that humans aren't going to kill themselves off the way the naysayers predict.

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