The many geeky shirts of Mike

Geek shirt 24: Time Machines. Featuring, clockwise from the top, time travel methods from: Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Prince of Persia, The Time Machine, The Simpsons, Time Bandits, Bill & Ted, Star Trek: TOS, Hot Tub Time Machine, The Time Tunnel, Harry Potter, and Terminator. With a Rocky Horror reference in the middle. Geeky enough for ya? :stuck_out_tongue:


This week Karl knocked together a rather large projection screen for some rather oldschool gaming. Classic Goldeneye on the N64.

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Geek Shirt 25: Mystralia 2006. Yes, a Myst convention specific to Australia. It happened, back in 2006. :smiley: Also, 25 is a very important number in the Myst universe since their numbers are base-25 compared to our base-10, so I waited until the 25th shirt to wear this one.


I’m in the middle of fully stocking up one of our vending machines with cans of soft drink. I won’t be able to do it for a while because I’m going away… to Mysterium 2014, surprise surprise! Perfect shirt combo for today. :wink:

Geek shirts are on pause until I return. See you in a few weeks!

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Mike! Buddy! I need my fix! :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s been a while since I last posted a geeky shirt. I was away at Mysterium 2014, a fan convention at Myst fans… and guess what happened while I was there? Con shirts. They all match, so I’m uploading them as a set! I was hoping someone would notice and say something, but nope. No one commented on the fact that I wore a similar shirt for 5 weeks in a row. :stuck_out_tongue:

Geek Shirt #26 - Mysterium 2014, Jungle Island design, while I’m in our green room. I somehow missed seeing many people this week because I was busy cleaning stuff out back.

Geek Shirt #27 - the back of the Mysterium 2014 shirts (front design is Survey Island). You can see all this year’s 5 designs here.

I’ve been working on my electric vehicle at the space, rebalancing & reordering some of the batteries. In the front is sixteen 90Ah LiFeYPO4 cells, and there’s another forty in the back. For comparison, the average top-of-the-line smartphone has a single ~1.5Ah battery. LOTS of electricity in this car. Don’t ever accidentally short it out, like I did once. :stuck_out_tongue:

Geek Shirt #28 - Mysterium 2014, Prison Island design.

I’m swapping the hubcaps on the EV for something a little bit more aerodynamic. Net result - I now get a 4%-6% increase in fuel economy at high speeds (seriously!). Plus I think the spun Aluminium looks super scifi. Or Captain America, thus the pose.

Also the sword I’m holding was made at the space by our blacksmiths from 100% recycled cans. Our blacksmithing recycling is now pure enough it can be milled on the metalworking equipment!

Geek Shirt #29 - Mysterium 2014, Boiler Island design.

@LuminousElement made some trippy laser projection stuff. We have a re-purposed laptop attached to an old medical swing arm in our new lobby. Trippy AND convenient!

Geek shirt #30 - Mysterium 2014, Temple Island design.

Our finished lobby hangout area. Mad props to @rut4ger for doing this. Speakers are all wired into that computer & the coffee table he welded together looks amazing.

Regular shirt posts will now resume. Well, as regular as I ever do them. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Geek Shirt #31 - SCUMM Bar Grog Pirate Drink, from Monkey Island. On the back is “the SCUMM Bar Grog contains one or more of the following: Kerosene, Propylene Glycol, Artificial Sweeteners, Sulphuric Acid, Rum, Acetone, Red Dye No2, Scumm, Axle Grease, Battery Acid, and/or Pepperoni”. Friday was Talk Like A Pirate Day. I thought I’d wear something fitting.


Also fitting because I’m in the middle of giving a talk on powdered food substitutes aka Soylent! It’s hard for me to gauge how it went since I was presenting, but I hope it was well received. :slight_smile:

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Geek Shirt #32 - Edwardian Roadster ‘Bessie’. The car of choice of the 3rd Doctor from Doctor Who, this shirt was only offered for sale at the Doctor Who Experience gift shop in Cardiff. They actually had Bessie there too! :smiley:


I was doing some work on my EV’s upholstery this week, which required completely removing the rear seats. It’s surprising how much space there is in this car when you fold everything back, almost like it’s… bigger on the inside.

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Geek Shirt #33 - Nickelodeon Crew. Fun fact - Beauty & the Geek wasn’t my first time on TV! Back in the 90s, I was a kid crew member for Nickelodeon. Oh yeah. I was the coolest kid around. This shirt used to be so big on me but nowadays it fits me just fine.

Speaking of Beauty & the Geek, it’s airing again! Thursdays @ 8pm, Channel 7. This year’s Las Vegas.

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Geek Shirt #34 - Adventure Time Travel, a Back to the Future/Adventure Time crossover shirt.

It’s been a while since I took a photo with my DeLorean. Let’s fix that.

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Geek Shirt #35 - Mysterium 2006, an annual Myst fan convention in America. Plus I’m wearing a Myst-related pendant made by a friend of mine.


I was completely exhausted this week and was too tired to go stand somewhere in a silly pose. @Boo took this unstaged photo for me so I didn’t have to move.

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Geek Shirt #36 - a DeLorean sitting between two Portals on some orange Propulsion Gel. If you’ve played Portal 2, you’ll know what’s about to happen. I thought I should wear another DeLorean-themed shirt, since I had my car in the Gold Coast 600 V8 supercars parade on Sunday.


Fun fact - we have a classroom for all your learnding needs! We also have a green-screen for all your fake filming needs! I also have a crazy hat! We’re running a free class this Saturday on wearable tech, where you can make your own “Abraham Blinken” hats, like this one but with more blinken-hatten.

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Geek Shirt #37: Courage, Wisdom, Power. The three triangles that form the Triforce, from the Legend of Zelda games. @rut4ger’s been working with other people to weld us together a little robot… “little” meaning this is one of its legs. :wink:

My computer’s coolant system failed (the CPU waterblock’s coupling split, dripping coolant right onto the die of my video card) so I’ve been without a decent way to edit photos. I’ll catch up on my geek shirt backlog over the next few days! :slight_smile:

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Geek Shirt #38: ‘Murray?’, as is often quoted in the Monkey Island games. Melbourne cup was today so I wore a pirate hat, as you do. Also, only one person recognised this shirt. :frowning: I might start offering rewards to the first person who recognises the more obscure shirts.

The crazy robot is (mostly) done! We officially unveiled this thing during the G20 people’s day parade at South Bank. We had just a few weird glances from people. Check out our video of the day!

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Geek Shirt #39: Doc Brown’s 1955 sketch of his initial idea for a Flux Capacitor to travel through time. I’ve had my car in just a few media things the past month and I can’t wait to share some of them!


Sorry for the poor-quality photo this time. I have a solution to this, which will be revealed in the next geek shirt photo! :smiley:

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Geek Shirt #40: Mystralia 2005, the very first Myst fan convention in Australia… but not the first Myst con in the world, nor the first one I attended. :stuck_out_tongue:


The rumours are true… After over a decade of faithful service, I’m retiring my antique Nokia brick phone (even though it still works). One caveat: I couldn’t be normal and get something running Android, or iOS, or WP8.1, or even BlackBerry 10, oh no. I’m running FirefoxOS. An entire OS written in HTML, CSS & JavaScript… It’s freakin’ amazing how much you can do with a web browser these days! o.o

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Geek Shirt #41: blueprints by Dr. E. Brown Enterprises for a certain “time machine”.

This is the control terminal for our gigantoprinter, our still-under-construction plasma cutter/cnc mill/waterjet cutter/3D printer/whatever head we put on it, with a freakin’ huge bed size (in a past life it was a billboard printer). I just finished clearing out the space directly behind me so I could use one of our other areas…

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Geek Shirt #42: Party like it’s 1985, the year that Super Mario Bros. was released on the NES!


HSBNE has a Grease Pit. It’s not just a hole in the ground, it’s a very handy way to get underneath a car to work on it! There’s lots of lights, movable planks for your tools or to sit on, plus an access tunnel & ladder to the left. I’m frequently in here, working on either my DeLorean or the EV. I prefer using the grease pit over our ramps or jack stands; you get a lot more space to work & the car remains level. It’s been inaccessible for a long time but it’s all usable again.

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Geek Shirt #43: the insignia of the Hylian royal crest, from the Legend of Zelda games.

I was tired from spending a lot of hours doing maintenance stuff around the space, so I’m just chillin’ in our lobby lounge after being interviewed by someone for something I’m not sure what. Don’t ask me, I have no idea. :stuck_out_tongue: My next photo will be cooler, I totally promise.

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Geek Shirt #44: Dashing through the NO. It’s close enough to Christmas, I think I can wear my Grumpy Cat festive shirt. :wink:

The crazy thing on my head’s a Serpent Guard headpiece from Stargate SG-1. Made of fibreglass, this one isn’t screen-used but it was cast from a mould of an original screen-used prop. It belongs to a friend of mine; I was borrowing it so I could wire up the eyes so they glowed. Thanks to @Boo for the help!

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I like the serpent guard headpiece, wish I was there to see it in-person :frowning:

Geek Shirt #45: UnMysterium 2002. The shirt for when you can’t make it to the real convention and just party on the internet instead. The shirt postings stopped because I haven’t been at HSBNE lately due to medical reasons, but I still have a few photos to upload from late last year. You might see me around the space on days other than Tuesday. Don’t worry, I still have dozens of shirts left (yes, plural :wink: ).

This is my favourite room at HSBNE, the boneyard. It’s where we put stuff too good to throw away. The room is always a mess; its contents are constantly changing as we clean it out & get more donations. As a member, you can grab anything you want in here to use in your projects. Power plugs, batteries, chips, cables, fans, heatsinks, magnets, stepper motors, forklift motors, high-voltage transformers, heck to my left is a gigantic laser that is waiting for someone to build the power supply for it. I’ve seen an Amstrad in here, a working vacuum pump, radio equipment, all kinds of other cool things. There’s always something new & interesting in the boneyard every week!

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