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.
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
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…
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.
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. My next photo will be cooler, I totally promise.
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!
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 ).
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!
Geek shirt #47 - My other shirt is clean. I do actually wash this shirt but there’s purposeful paint marks on it, I never iron it & it gets stored in my drawer all scrunched up. One of those few shirts that looks better when it’s messier. Apologies for the low resolution; due to technical reasons I completely lost this photo BUT with my leet skillz using a hex editor & knowing the jpeg format pretty well, I managed to extract just the thumbnail from another location.
This week I helped @Nadine & @Svenska finish off some letters for our big front HSBNE sign. H is by the Electronics cause, N is by the Woodworking cause!
Geek shirt #48 - * “a plain white shirt? wtf that’s not geeky!” * you say. Thanks to tropical Cyclone Marcia we had buckets of rain here, plus I’m pouring a cup of water on my shirt… But my shirt’s completely dry as the water just bounces off. This is one of my superhydrophobic, superoleophobic shirts. They literally and physically cannot get wet because water just doesn’t stick to them, yet they feel just like any ordinary cotton shirt.
Geek shirt #49 - A Link to the Future. Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was just released for the 3DS! I drove my DeLorean to the space for the relaunch party! Yes I own that many geeky shirts I can do crossovers that specific.
With all the effort of preparing for then enjoying HSBNE’s relaunch party, somehow I forgot to take a shirt photo! So here’s a screengrab from our security cameras, courtesy of Wizard @Thermoelectric. Unfortunately you can’t see my ultra-cool name badge which was a tiny screen showing my name & trippy animation videos all night long. But just pretend it was the coolest name badge you’ve ever seen and that’s about right.
Geek shirt #50: Myst. Fifty geeky shirts is an achievement worthy of a classic, one of the very first Myst shirts Cyan knocked out over 20 years ago. What with 5 being an important number in the games and all that.
I’m in the Creatatorium this week, building some artsy stuff. I cut the shield/glasses on my face on our laser cutter out of scrap Acrylic, heated them up in a toaster oven then bent them to shape. A lot more work was done on them after this photo was taken; they’re only ~40% complete here and not even the final shape. And yes that is a Gir costume in the background.
Geek shirt #51: On the weekend I presented a talk at Barcamp 2015 Gold Coast. I’ve been on my powdered meal replacements for 8 months now, I thought I should share what I’ve learned. However for doing this, I acquired another shirt. Ugh.
If you recognise this shirt, you’re instantly awesome. Alley Cat is one of my favourite games, released for IBM PC-DOS 2.0 in 1984. And because it was coded properly, the original 56,448-byte game still runs these days on the latest versions of 32-bit Windows (!). If that’s not good enough for you, you can actually play it for free in your browser. Oh yeah, and this week I finished the roof box console for a DeLorean Time Machine conversion.
I may have done my full year of geeky shirts, but I’m not done yet… time to start the bonus round. First person at the space who recognises some of my upcoming obscure ones gets a free drink!
One of our members, @Bean_flickers, has built a coffee cart at the space from scratch for his own business! Solar panel on the roof, electric motor in the bottom, it serves up delicious hand-made brew. You might see him around Brisbane selling coffees. You can create crazy stuff at HSBNE.
In my hand is the old water filter that I changed because the old one was pretty grody. Given how dirty it looked inside, I wouldn’t be surprised if the last time it was changed was when people still used the word “grody”.
Geek Shirt #54: another one of my superhydrophobic shirts that cannot get dirty or wet, this one a branded SILIC shirt! Yes you could argue it’s similar to a past shirt I wore, but this is a different compound on the fabric by a different manufacturer & a different colour, plus most importantly not many people at HSBNE saw my shirt last time because I wore it on a Saturday.
Somehow I went 52 weeks without taking a single photo in the machine shop. This is our gigantic mill. So many degrees of freedom, I’ve been told it has the capability and the accuracy to mill a whole model RC engine block.
Also yes, my hair is a little lighter than usual… I’ll be at Supanova Gold Coast on Saturday, come say hi! Booth #1, highlight L on the map, by the DeLorean I’ve been working on.
Geek shirt #55 - an exact replica of Doc Brown’s 2015 train shirt from the movie Back to the Future. I wore this outfit to Supanova Gold Coast 2015, and Christopher Lloyd joked he could sue me for copying his likeness so well! The glasses were also something I made at the hackerspace and you can actually see through them. They’re the first pair Christopher Lloyd’s seen that he could actually see through that still looked like solid metal from the outside. It’s a really impressive trick.
Geek shirt #57: A DeLorean flying through two portals in space, from the video game Portal. No this isn’t the same as geek shirt #36, I just have two shirts with very similar designs!
@Hally built some really cool chairs for our hangout lounge. They’re made out of old cable spools, recycled foam blocks and hessian bags. And pay no attention to the pulse jet sitting behind me.
Geek shirt #58: “I found the Treasure of Mêlée Island™ and all I got was this stupid T-shirt”. You may think this means I’m disappointed to own this shirt, but at least it’s better than a shirt saying “I beat the Sword Master”. If you don’t get this reference then you really need to play Monkey Island.
I’ve been cleaning and sorting Member’s Storage out the last few weeks so I thought I should get a photo in here! And apparently my previous shirt photo pose looked a little sleazy. To that, I say: “…llllllllladies”. Thanks, @Stevie and @Boo !
! CHALLENGE COMPLETE! I’ve made it a full calendar year. 
Maybe now people will believe me when I say I have too many geeky shirts. 
