Clippy, Glenda and Go-Gopher Earrings

January 13th, 2022

I mentioned with the CARDIAC earrings that I make so many earrings, that it's not worth my time to post all of them. These are more computer themed earrings though, so I figured I should.

Originally, I was just going to make Clippy earrings, since it would just be a paperclip glued to paper. Then my friend suggested I also make Glenda and the Go Gopher in honor of my research on Plan 9. I also adore all of Renee French's art, so I'm happy to make a pair of earrings featuring her characters.

Apparently people don't like Clippy too much, but I find him quite charming. It's a similar type of nostalgic charm that the Windows XP Hills Wallpaper minesweeper, MS Paint, and the cascading cards in solitaire have. I wanna do more projects incorporating these. The Clippy earrings were fun and easy to make. It's just a [bent paperclip] glued to a piece of paper with googley eyes. They look absolutely adorable.

[Clippy Earrings]

[Glenda] and the [Gopher] required a bit more work. They were both made out of [polymer clay]. The required sculpting and baking and I accidentally [burnt] them. This means I had to spend even more time [painting] them to cover up the burn marks. Getting an even textureless paint job requires many watered down layers of acrylic paint. So it took a solid day of waiting for paint to dry to cover the burns completely. I was able to assemble Glenda before painting since she's much more uniformly colored than the Gopher. I baked the extremities separately, then used failed Clippys broken paperclips to [connect] the pieces. So far, they've held together.

Glenda and the Go Gopher Earrings: [A] [B]

CARDIAC Earrings

December 8th, 2021

On the 7th, my 360 freshmen took their final exam. We then spent a little over 12 hours the next day grading the exams. On my way to exam grading I thought about how I wish I had a pair of earrings for CS-164. During a 30 minute break, I printed out the CARDIAC and made a pair of earrings. I normally wouldn't post such a quick earrings project, but these are really cute.

I got the graphics for the computer from this Instructables post by megardi. I got the image for the manual from the CS-164 material Dr. Stuart uses. The manual has three pages in it, the first is the assembly code for a running sum and count. The second is the machine code for the same program. This is the the code for the fifth lab in CS-164. The last page of the manual is just the CPU diagram for the CARDIAC we teach in CS-164. This was a fun quick pair of earrings that turned out absolutely adorable. I made a pair for myself and the other TA who's graduating this year.

CARDIAC: [Cover] [Interior]

Manual: [Cover] [Page 1 : Assembly] [Page 2 : Machine] [Page 3 : CPU]