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Suggestions for Functional Jewelry?
szyzyg asks: "I'm getting married and my girlfriend and I have been looking around at rings and not really getting anywhere. I have all sorts of high concepts about what this should represent and I keep coming back to the thought 'nothing which is useless can be truly beautiful'. So I've been fighting with the idea of how to make a ring which has some use beyond simple symbolism... concepts like using magnetic minerals to turn it into a compass, or engraving some sort of measuring mechanism into it. So here's the challenge I'm putting to the Slashdot bright idea machine: How do I make a simple piece of jewelry useful? Someone out there must have better ideas."
For those who are not socially inept the wedding ring serves as a very simple communication device. It informs people as to who is 'off the market'. This same type of communication has been acheived by other cultures in different forms, eg a red dot on the forehead or a basil plant in the window.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
that when put into the hearth, shows funny-looking script characters on the inside, resizes itself to fit the wearer's finger, and answers to the name of "Precious."
Eventually after lots of pain she came to appreciate her original ring more than the regular engagement ring, but it took many months and quite a few girlfriends to say "wow that is a nice stone".
Now about the use of the ring, it sends a message to her: I love you so much that I'm happy to waste a few grand on you.
Lastly, sometimes the most beautiful objects are those with no use at all. The caves of Lascaux painted 15,000 years ago are one of the most beautiful sights you could ever see.
** Try to argue that M$ is other than absolute evil or that Linux could be improved here, and you'll see what I mean
My wedding ring is pretty geeky -- it's titanium with engraving -- dots and vertical lines representing 0's and 1's, which spell out my wife's initials in binary (in 5-bit letters). I got it here; the guy that runs the place is very open into making custom-made designs.
;-) Now only if I could find a titanium hat -- the tin ones are so 20th century.
I had thought about actually using it for something, like an encryption key -- for example if I started at a certain place on the ring, went a certain direction and counted up 7 or 8 bit ascii words, I could get a passphrase after a while, a pretty strong one. At this point all I would need to memorize for a theoretically very long passphrase would be the starting location, direction, and number of letters.
Even if the men in black kidnapped me and found my ring, they would still have a hard time figuring it out
A lot of people really detest the diamond industry. I for one hate DeBeers, even more than I dislike Microsoft. At least Microsoft doesn't use slave labour, murder people, and abuse their workers. It's hard to justify a shiny peice of carbon with an artifically high price on it when you look at all the human rights violations the companies that mine them cause.
I know there's sociatal pressures that say you need to have a diamond. And why? Because DeBeers invented it!
http://www.africanfront.com/diamondboycott.php
There's one link, I'm sure you can find more with a quick google.
Rings with compartments were very common durring the late 70's and the 80's. They were used for storing cocaine.