She married a geek: My binary wedding ring

Now that the honeymoon's over - literally, not figuratively - I should share one of my favorite parts of the wedding: my custom-made binary wedding ring:

Wedding ring

I knew that I wanted something unique to Selina and I, rather than the typical gold band. I'm not sure when the idea of a binary ring came, but Google reports that I have pretty much the only one. There is this one, but any ring that requires a manual to decode doesn't count. Selina was wonderful about me getting it.
The inscription reads: 01001010 01010011. Should be easy to decode.

We had the ring custom made at Cascadia Design Studio, which happened to be just about an hour north of us. It was a great experience. We had originally ordered the ring with the digits anodized black, but Ed from Cascadia called to suggest that would make the ring too dark and suggested that if we decide we did want it, the anodization could be done later. Ed was right - the ring is perfectly subtle without the dark lettering.

The ring is made of titanium, which has its positives and negatives. On the good side, titanium is a very geeky metal. If it's good enough for the space shuttle, and all that. It's also amazingly light, I can barely feel it when I'm holding it my hand. Negatives: Titanium rings basically cannot be resized. If needed, they can be hollowed out a little bit, but not made smaller. If I lose 10-15 pounds, I may have to have another made. But if I did lose that much, I could just look at it as a reward to myself for the weight loss. Also, titanium is a relatively soft metal and it picked up a few small, barely noticable scratches during the hiking and rock-scurrying of the honeymoon. Cascadia provides regular free cleaning, so I'm hoping those won't be an issue.

People's reactions to the ring are a good way to see how enlightened they are to the geek way of life. You can tell some people instantly think it's some type of sacrilage to the sanctity of marriage. The rest realize how important it is to express one's self. It's a quick way to see whether a person will be interesting to talk to.