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]

Comfy

April 14th and 15th, 2018 @ Philly CodeFest

HTML, CSS, Google Firebase, Google Maps APIs

Winner of the Google Best User Interface Prize. Which is awarded to the most well-designed, most intuitive, and unique mobile interface that focuses on the user experience. [Article]

PhillyCodefest is the annual hackathon Drexel's College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) hosts. The theme in 2018 was "computing for social good". I signed up to attend my freshmen year because I had never done a hackathon before and wanted to try it out. I didn't have a team or an idea until a week before the event. I was out with my friend helping him with an assignment. We decided to go out to dinner at a restaurant he heard was good, so we put in a reservation. When we got there, it was dark, tight, and loud. My friend is autistic and I also have sensory issues. We quickly both checked in with each other to make sure we'd be able to get through dinner. We were both fine, but we wished we had known sooner what the restaurant would be like. In that moment, I had my idea for the hackathon.

The goal behind Comfy was to create a crowd sourced review app focused around accessibility. Users would be able to enter a location and provide information about the general environment. Our goal was a combination between Yelp and www.doesthedogdie.com. We included criteria like "smoker friendly", "wheelchair accessible", "bright lights", and "loud music". We tried to choose common triggers that affect both physical and mental disabilities. When we presented these categories, we framed them in an objective "expect this" or "don't expect this" instead of "this exists and that's a bad thing". For example, Hard Rock Cafe wouldn't make sense if rock music wasn't playing while you're dining. Hard Rock Cafe is an obvious example. Our goal was to provide to provide clear expectations of places and experiences so disabled people can make the best decisions for themselves.

Since we were building a web app centered around accessibility, we needed to make sure our app was accessible too. We spent a large portion of the hackathon researching how to make sites more accessible. We found dyslexia friendly fonts, chose colors that were colorblind friendly, and added proper image alt text for screen readers. It was for this initiative we won our award. [DevPost for Comfy] [Panel About the Event]