The many geeky shirts of Mike

Geek Shirt #12. A dozen different shirts! I’m not even a quarter of the way through yet. :wink:

Don’t make me go Zelda on you, with icons from the NES version of The Legend of Zelda. @LuminousElement wore a Zelda shirt too. I almost went Zelda on him.

One of my projects, an LED panel lightbulb, is sitting on the electronics bench between us too (1600 lumens, man it’s bright)

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Geek shirt #13: a depiction of a Type 40 TARDIS control console from Doctor Who, specifically the design used by the 5th, 6th & 7th doctors (who were all really nice when I had lunch with them last year). 13 shirts, 13 lives of a Time Lord - there’s method to my madness. What’s more, this shirt is only available from the Doctor Who Experience gift shop in Cardiff, UK - because sometimes I’m so geeky with my shirts I’m almost hipster.

We have a new laser cutter at the space, yaaay! It cuts & engraves things. I’m getting sick of normal faces so this one is silly.

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Geek Shirt 14: a classic scene from Day of the Tentacle, one of the best 90s Lucasarts adventure games. “I feel like I could… take on the world!” Fits my mad scientist persona pretty well.

The thing I’m holding is my ground station receiver I built for picking up satellites. This picks up a 1-watt radio travelling at 7.5km/s from 600km away. And it’s held together with scrap wood & no-name-brand packing tape. Yes really. Science & Maths is awesome. :stuck_out_tongue:

Photo taken after my satellite signal receiving demonstration with my own camera. I know lots of other people took photos during that event but I didn’t take any because I was too busy trying to receive signals, people should totally post them on here for everyone to see!

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Geek shirt 15: Mysterium 2009, designed by the incredibly-more-talented-than-I Claire Hummel. Spot the Myst references in this shirt - they’re all throughout the ink blot!

It’s been a while since I uploaded a new photo. That’s because the person who originally took this shot fell ill & I couldn’t get a copy, so I re-created this photo today. I’ve still been wearing new geeky shirts & I’ll post the rest later this week.

We have a laser. We get silly. We can use it to cut and engrave our own windows. We make no apologies.

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Geek Shirt 16: Back to the TARDIS. Because a shirt referencing only one time travel show isn’t enough references.

I’ve acquired a gigantic new broom for the space to help encourage cleanliness. Sweeping is now so much quicker! :smile: I’ve been using this to sweep up the huge quantities of broken glass, rusty nails & metal filings in our quad. This should prevent any more flat tyres.

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Geek Shirt 17: CERN. Birthplace of web browsers, the World Wide Web, plus the Large Hadron Collider. Which accelerate particles at speeds so fast they stop measuring by km/s & instead count how many electron-Volts of momentum they have, so they can smash them together & look at the pretty explosions. I picked up this shirt at their gift shop a few years ago, when I managed to organise a private behind-the-scenes tour of the LHC.

I also did a show & tell of my electric vehicle this week, explaining how they work & offering rides/torque demonstrations for donations. I raised a decent amount too! :smiley:

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Geek Shirt 18: Nintendo. While I play the original Duck Hunt on an actual NES with an old CRT. The Hackerspace has some cool retro gaming systems. :smiley:

I’m now officially a third of the way through this challenge. I think I’m gonna start wearing some of my “different” (but still geeky) shirts.

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Hey Mike when is the next shirts coming?

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I’m a combination of busy and lazy (don’t ask me how this works). I shouldn’t get too far behind though. So let’s fix this right now!

Geek shirt #19 - look closely and you’ll see a TARDIS in the stars. And even our organising whiteboard is meta.

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Geek shirt 20: Mysterium 2007, also designed by the uber-talented Claire Hummel. Yes Myst fan conventions have been around this long, and this certainly isn’t my oldest Mysterium shirt. :stuck_out_tongue:


20 shirts, another milestone! Meanwhile I’m trying to fix a broken UPS on our electronics bench (it was unsalvageable, the charging circuitry had died which also killed the battery). I also now have shorter hair than I’ve ever had for over a decade. It feels weird.

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Geek shirt 21: due to reasons, I couldn’t make it to HSBNE today. I thought this might happen, so here’s a photo I took on Saturday during the Mouse Trap Racers Challenge in our warehouse in front of the gigantoprinter!


“At first I was like… And then I LOL’d”. In LOLcat style.

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Geek Shirt 22: I’m sick as a dog & almost didn’t show up to the space today. I need to stay rugged up warm. So I compromised & dressed in my serious-looking retro 70s jacket & aviators. Bending the rules, but it was this or no photo this week.


We’re renovating the space’s entryway so it looks better. I thought the perspectives looked cool!

I was half expecting you to walk away from explosions and not look at them
all night.

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Geek Shirt 23: Back to the Island. Did you know that both LOST & Back to the Future featured a blue & white VW van? Makes you wonder if there were some time-travelling Libyans in the Dharma Initiative.


Entryway renovations are well underway. Here’s a preview of one of our new walls & the aesthetic we’re going for. Mad props to Karl for his work doing this.

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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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