365 T-shirts - the reasoning

This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.

I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.

I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.

When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.

The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.

I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.

Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)

Sunday, January 5, 2014

T-shirt 290 - Plain White - A Year of T-shirts

T-shirt 290 - Plain White - A Year of T-shirts

Greetings. Happy Sunday. Welcome to a collection of my shirts so far. I thought that the end of the year would be a good time to recap visually. I considered creating a video, but I wanted the visual impact of the grid. But before I explored how to make a photo grid (more on this in a minute), I had to decide what shirt to feature as today's shirt. Since I did not own any plain white t-shirts, I thought this would make a good choice for today's blog. And since I bought a pack of three, I have two more plain T-shirts to fill in when I need an any subject shirt.

As for the photo grid, I tried collage sites online, but did not find what I was looking for. Then I stumbled on a tutorial video for making contact sheets in Photoshop. This way you get to see my file names! I am bit pleased with the naming conventions I use with the exception of one shirt that snuck through as "picture091.jpg." I have rectified this oversight since.

Because of the way Photoshop makes the contact sheets, the easiest thing was to arrange the files alphabetically by file name. Given that I did not use a naming convention that would order and number them, re-organizing them in ORDER is a much bigger project, but it is possible project. Obviously, you can see where this is going. By the end of my blog year, I may assemble a set of contact sheets with the pictures arranged in order of appearance. Then again, given the scope of such a project, I may not.

Another problem I encountered is the original file I assembled contained 280 files out of 289 shirts published thus far (actually looking ahead a few days), and when I made the file, I included 11 doubles (or in some cases 3-4 images of the same shirt as you see with this first contact sheet). As I write this, as I am working ahead, I am in the process of looking for the nineteen (19) shirts I missed in my original assembly. I have found seven of these shirts so far, but it's a time-consuming, cross checking process. By the time, you read this, I am hoping to include a final contact sheet, making a total of fifteen (at twenty images per sheet that's 300 shirts, which is just right as I posted 289 yesterday and used 11 doubles/triples/quads in my original set).

One drawback to the alphabetical arrangement is the shirts often group together by type based on my naming conventions. There's a great deal of variety, but all the KUDL shirts will be found with the Ks and all the pajama shirts will be found among the Ss for "sleep." Feel free to explore how the naming conventions group some shirts and not others. Then again, this may be one of those things that is only fascinating to me because I am over-enamored of my own process.

Given that I am still playing D&D with my best friend who is visiting, we which means less time to write the blog, I have not finished my exploration of the blog's history and found all the missing t-shirts.

FUN GAME FOR MY READERS: How about this? If you are a faithful reader and interested in spending a snowy day exploring my blog, feel free to participate in a game of What T-shirts are Missing? By my estimation, as explained, NINETEEN (19) shirts are missing from the sets of photos presented below. How many missing shirts can you name? Leave me a comment if you play and we shall see what happens. I do not expect a huge turnout, so if anyone plays at all I may award prizes.

A GALLERY OF SHIRTS FROM THE 365 T-SHIRTS BLOG

SHIRTS 1-289















COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 75 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1401.05 - 19:29