Thursday, 27 November 2008

Top Selling Cambridge T-Shirts

At Christmas all right thinking peoples thoughts turn to the Top of the Pops, the hits of the year, the very toppermost of the poppermost if you will. An event as much a fundamental part of the quintessential Yuletide experience as receiving unwanted presents, over eating, watching the great escape and falling asleep in front of the queen's speech after perhaps just one too many sherries before dinner.

Unfortunately we don't have the budget to bring you a televised Christmas countdown of the years biggest hits presented by our dream team of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, with their special guest Pete Doherty, his hat at a jaunty angle as he incoherently burbles his way through Mull of Kintyre and dribbles down his own chin.

So in it's place we are proud to present the Cambridge T-Shirts Christmas top five count down, a seasonal chart of the most popular shirts we sell:

Number 5.

In with a bullet at number 5 a cheeky homage to the the 70's with the look that is all the rage on the throbbing metropolitan streets of Cambridge's fashion quarter. Sought after from Great Eastern Street to Brookfields, Romsey Girl, the only label to be seen wearing as you try to dodge the scary drunk bloke hanging around the bus stop at the far end of Mill Road. If you've got it, flaunt it! If it's clean wear it!


Number 4.

Exotic, enigmatic, intoxicating, but surprisingly easy to spell, Cherry Hinton is a not just for Christmas, it is a perennial favourite. A visit there is as magical as winning the lottery or finding something that still looks vaguely edible in the vegetable draw at the bottom of an otherwise barren student refrigerator. You know when you have hit the jackpot, so do not be afraid to share it with the world.


Number 3.

Impossible to avoid as you travel around Cambridge, the king sized "My Day in the City" adverts that encrust our local transport are nuggets of arsepirational 'lifestyle' ordure that are celebrated throughout Cambridge for their nauseating, shallow, tacky and intelligence insulting content. Our Day in The City T-Shirts on the other hand are actually quite popular as they let you choose the words and get your own back with something that is actually relevant to your life!


Number 2.

Cambridge is cycle city, the flatness of the fens, the gridlocked traffic, the students on a budget and the environmentally aware all combine to give a higher than normal percentage of pedal powered people. I assume it's them who are buying this shirt... otherwise it means there's a fairly weird set of cycle wannabes out there... still I guess it would not be the strangest thing on the internet.



Number 1.

Still at number one the Reality checkpoint shirt is an all time favourite on the site. So popular in fact we made a couple of different versions like this one and this one, which are deeply, deeply unpopular. This makes them feel sad and lonely, like a puppy abandoned on boxing day, how could you, it's heartless! Don't let the poor lonely T-Shirts go without care and affection for another Christmas get yourself over to the Cambridge T-Shirts web site and give them a loving and caring home.

Sunday, 16 November 2008

The only way is up Castle Hill....

Cambridge, for those of you unfamiliar with local geography, is flat, like pancake flat, flatest, flatmost, flatfull in fact. This is great for cycling and I'm sure part of what makes Cambridge such a cycle city. Once in a while though you can have enough flat and start to crave lumpiness, bumpiness and all things upwards pointing. Pretty much your only choice for what passes for a vertiginous ascent in these parts is the Castle Hill. It's called Castle hill because it used to have a Castle on it, though these days you would be hard pressed to really notice any crenellated evidence to prove it.


In Anglo Saxon times there was apparently a settlement on Castle Hill. As the high ground around these parts you could see anyone coming from miles away and then do whatever Castley things were on your mind, shout insults, throw stuff, you know.

When the Normans turned up around 1068 they built their own castle there, apparently if you go North in a straight line there is no higher ground until you reach the North pole! Though how anyone knows this stuff you do have to wonder, every time I watch that Tony Robinson and his time team I'm torn between thinking it's pretty cool and the fact they could tell me anything and thanks to my pitiful lack of knowledge I wouldn't be able to disagree. You could tell me the King of Sandwich build a magnificent bready castle from loaves, cheese and ham to protect the magical celery forest and, while I may think you are talking toilet, I would actually be fairly hard pressed to disagree on any kind of factual basis.


When I get right down to it there are only three facts I can quote with relative certainty:

1) There is a hill.
2) There is no Castle.
3) It is called Castle Hill.

Still several historically accurate and vital facts short of a prize winning round on Mastermind I tend to think. Though possibly enough riveting facts to get me a guest spot on breakfast television.

Which is quite shameful, a all time low to match Cambridge's all time high. In celebration of reaching not only the very literal peak of Cambridge but also this metaphorical peak of ignorance join us at Cambridge T-Shirts with this special T-Shirt to celebrate our conquest of these great heights.

Go on reach for the stars!

I love the smell of Milton in the morning....

Smell that? You smell that?
What?
Milton, son. Nothing in the world smells like that.
[kneels]
I love the smell of Milton in the morning.


I was cycling to the stinkiest place in town and I didn't even know it yet. Minutes away and fractions of miles up a river that snaked through the city like a main circuit cable - plugged straight into Milton.....

As I sedately pedalled my way up to the North side of the city this week through the wafting malodorous mist that marks the boundaries of that part of town on a bad day the horror stuck me... Milton sits on the North side of Cambridge, slap bang in the center of an olfactory perfect storm.

To one side the Cambridge sewage works to the other the land fill site, on a bad day the stench can be truly nose wateringly staggering. Now it's not like the people who live there are not trying to do something about it, but dear god, the horror... the horror... I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words.

Sunday, 9 November 2008

The Early Bird catches the Christmas savings..

December is rolling nearer and our thoughts turn to traditionally the least financially prudent of all holidays, the birthday of the little baby Jesus and the requisite presents it's traditional to buy for your nearest, dearest and relatedest.

So as the financial weather worsens, the credit is crunching under foot and with only 6 Weeks until Christmas anyone who orders from the Cambridge T-Shirts website from the 1st to the 20th of November can save 15% on all purchases. All you have to do is to enter the discount voucher code:

"EARLYSHOPPING"

while in the shopping basket. The usual terms and conditions apply this offer cannot be combined with other discounts, it doesn't guarantee that too many mince pies won't make you sick and it doesn't mean that just because you buy people one of our cool t-shirts you are not going to get a custom knitted nose warmer in return from your mad Auntie Maude. It may not be guaranteed to improve your chances under the mistletoe, but take a chance, buy them something different this year, remember not only can you can pick one our designs you can also design your own and make sure your present is one of a kind!

Just think the more you spend the more you will be saving.... and if you save enough you might even be able to buy yourself something you actually want this year... and a merry bah humbug to you all!

Sunday, 2 November 2008

The Cambridge Dark Arts......

Imagine my suprise on reading a survey by Varsity which reveals that 49% per cent of Cambridge students in their own words have committed "some form of plagiaristic act" whilst at the University and they are not just talking about the derth of new material in recent years footlights reviews! Boom, Boom! I thank you!

"Sometimes when I am really fed up, I Google the essay title, copy everything onto a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit" a Cambridge student explains in the article that I have copied directly and jiggled about a bit.

It would appear the University is full of cheaters! The most shocking discovery for me was that the department with the highest percentage of cheaters was Law with 62% of them admitting to breaking the university rules! 62%! Sixty-two! SIXTY TWO PERCENT! That means there are actually 38% of lawyers who are honest! Or alternatively not confident enough of their own ability to believe they could get away with it......

Still, every cloud has a silver lining and while this sounds like particularly bad news for Cambridge University, it sounds like great news for Cambridge T-Shirts! If the statistics are right this means there is a much larger market for our cheery pirate of academia T-Shirts than we previously thought.... that is assuming they don't just copy them....

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

Look out honey, cause I'm using technology....

Those of you who subscribe to this blog may remember us talking about new print technology back in July. The people who print the shirts for the Cambridge T-Shirts site are introducing something called Digital Direct which allows printing straight onto shirts.

This allows us to put more colour and detail onto the shirt while still giving you a hard wearing and long lasting design.

Unfortunately the technology is currently still being tested so we can't put it in the main shop yet, but we have just taken delivery of a sample shirt printed to test the colours and print quality and we got sooooo excited we thought we would share.

So here are some pictures of the first sample for your perusal, check out the lovely crispy colours on a fresh October day in Cambridge :)

If you can't wait to get you hands on some Cambridge based produce you can always check out the Cambridge T-Shirts site and see what products and designs we have available right now.

A fresh dose of reality...

We last featured a Reality Checkpoint T-Shirt from Cambridge T-Shirts on this blog back in May. Since then it has become one one of the best selling designs on the site.

Reality Checkpoint is the name given to a large lamp-post in the middle of Cambridge, England. The name comes from an unofficial inscription which has been painted on it since the early 1970s. It is also believed to be the oldest electrical lamp-post in Cambridge.

Marking the mid-point between town and gown the Reality Checkpoint stands proud in the middle of Parker's Piece. It's been a Cambridge landmark since the early 1970s. The name comes from an unofficial inscription which first painted on the lamp post (allegedly) by students from CCAT (now Anglia Ruskin University) under the guidance of one of their teachers.

It has been repeatedly re-painted since then in response to removal by the council or obliteration by graffiti. For the first half of 1998 the lamp-post carried an unofficial plaque bearing its name.

Whether it really marks the boundary between the 'reality bubble' and the 'real world' or just because it forms a useful landmark for drunk, befuddled or fog bound, whether it is a beacon for the bewildered because anyone walking whilst not tuned in to "reality" will likely collide with the lamp-post, it does not matter which side you are on, it is the only light for hundreds of yards and makes me smile every time I pass on my way home!

If you know which side of the Reality Checkpoint you are you can check out the full range of Reality Checkpoint T-Shirts on the Cambridge T-Shirts site here.

Monday, 22 September 2008

One for the Histon village people...

Say this very, very quietly but I have friends in Histon, as wikipedia describes it "the farmstead of the young warriors", though I think I like the alternate meaning of the name, the "landing place", better, makes it sound all close encounters of the third kind.....

So how do I end up spending time in the village? Easy, that's where the job that pays my way is based, right next to the last outpost of Nadia's before you hit the fens....

So by popular request, in tribute to the home of the jam factory, here are some brand spanky new Histon T-shirts. Show some love for the northside of the city and check out these shiny new glad rags.

And remember you can always design your own at the Cambridge T-Shirts website!

Free Shipping 16th to the 30th of September

Until the 30th of September, Cambridge T-Shirts is offering free shipping on all orders, yes all orders, crikey! All you need to do is simply enter the following code during the order

SHIPFORFREE

and we will send the order with free shipping. You can check out our products here and remember you can always design your own Cambridge t-shirts here.

Now on to the usual legal yada-yada offer ends September the 30th, you can only use one voucher per order. Cannot be combined with other discounts. Never eat more than you can lift. Never hit a man with glasses. Use your fist. Just because it's toxic doesn't mean it's not tasty. The complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working. You need only two tools for life. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape. And last but not least two rules for life: (1) Don't tell people everything you know. (2) ....

Tuesday, 12 August 2008

Licensed to Eel

It's now exactly 20 years since the release of the seminal folk rap album "Licensed to Eel" from Norfolk's infamous "Eastie Boys".

The joke of "Licensed to Eel's" cover--that the Easties could crash their tractor into the side of a mountain and keep on tickin'-- serves as a good metaphor for a career that even some of their 1988 admirers thought might be over after the one-time-only shock of this full-length debut.

"License to Eel" is rural, obnoxious, and sometimes offensive by today's PC standards, but if you can take it with a grain of salt, it's also fun to listen to, it was the first rap album all about beet farming, whittling, and disrespecting the Archers.

Even after all this time the songs haven't dated that much and are still influencing the music of today. Yes the Easties may have calmed down over the years but it's always nice to take a trip back to the 'Good Ole Days' when they shook the world and taught it how to party!

So bang it on turn up the volume and revisit those classic tracks "Rhymin & Peelin", "Slow And Lowestoft", "Time To Get Eel", "Slow Ride (stuck behind a caravan)" and of course the classic "No Sleep Till King's Lynn". Every song the grooves, the samples, perfect.

Cambridge T-Shirts is now celebrating this anniversary with a re-issue of the classic "No Sleep Till King's Lynn" shirt, show your love and check it out here.

Monday, 11 August 2008

Back To School Bonus....

Until the 25th of August, we are offering free shipping on all orders which contain at least one children's or baby product. All you need to do is simply enter the following code during the order

BACKTOFREESHIPPING

and we will send the order with free shipping. You can check out our kids products here and remember you can always design your own kids Cambridge t-shirts here.

Now on to the usual legal yada-yada offer ends August the 25th, you can only use one voucher per order. Cannot be combined with other discounts. Never play cards with a man named after a river. The wheels on the bus go round and round. Never give yourself a haircut after three margaritas. It's a small world after all. Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones. Nobody ever makes cup-a-soup in a bowl. The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity. Thank you very much.

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

Trumpington is a village set in the heart of rural England. Once the main town in the county of Trumpingtonshire, it is now effectively a suburb, within the boundaries, and only a short bus-ride away from, Cambridgewick Green. It's located on the south-west side of the city and borders Chigley Hinton to the east and Grantchester to the west.

The Trumpington Market Square is like many other market squares, with numerous shops, a handsome Gothic Town Hall and an assorted collection of shops and houses; but one feature is unique - the town hall has a clock tower, telling the time, steadily, sensibly; never too quickly, never too slowly; telling the time for Trumpington.

Every morning, the people of Trumpington take in their milk, open their shops and set out their wares. They do this with one eye on the town hall clock, and one ear too, for they know that dead on the hour a slight rumble from the recesses of the tower will announce that free entertainment is about to begin. With a loud clonk the two doors on either side of the clock face slide open. To the regular rhythm of a gay mechanical tune, the gilt figures of Sir Roger de Trumpington, and Lady der Trump emerge and solemnly strike the hour on a bell. Not until the automatons have returned to the tower and the doors have shut do the trumpspeople resume their activities.

In the rather nice park is a bandstand, and it is at this bandstand that the Trumpington fire brigade band play, while the people from Trumpington and nearby areas listen and watch, though this does sometimes clash with the six o'clock dance at Chigley Hinton.

The Fire Brigade are perhaps Trumpington's most-recognised feature, their Fire Engine is the most modern, sleekly-lined, gadget-filled vehicle it is possible to buy. It is Trumpington's pride and joy. The fire-bell regularly shatters the peace of the countryside. The great doors swing open and the six stalwart firemen slide down the pole.

The obsessive compulsive Trumpington Fire Brigade roll-call has become famous locally: "Pugh! Pugh! Barney McGrew! Cuthbert! Dibble! Grubb!" They are continually being called out to attend some emergency or other (in many cases to resolve fairly trivial matters); but to their annoyance, rarely an actual fire. (One reason for this may be that both fire and water would be difficult to animate.) However, this doesn't stop the Fire Brigade absent-mindedly getting out their fire hose and receiving a rebuke ("No no! Not the hose! Remember what the judge warned you about!").

The fact that there hasn't been a fire for 30 years is, of course, rather a pity, but there are many things one can do with a modern, sleekly-lined, gadget-filled fire engine, and since the fire brigade also have to work second jobs as the Town Band to make ends meet, time never drags in Trumpington.

Thursday, 17 July 2008

Stop dreaming of the quiet life cos it's one we'll never know.....



A Town Called Malice was and still is the one for me that started it all. I wanted to start dancing and never stop, but more importantly I wanted to be him, I wanted to make that noise, the bumping, pumping, insistent, infectious bass line that underlined the whole thing, the engine room that dragged the song forward by the scruff of its neck. Together with the poignant lyrics it seemed that, in just 2:55, it offered that rarest of things to anybody left with the imagination to hear it, namely things don’t have to be shit if you want them to change. I worshipped at its bass altar.

It was only as I got older, mellower and my musical tastes started to broaden that I realised that the very bass gods I worshipped might have gods of their own. All roads lead to James...... The ultra-catchy bass line was in fact pretty heavily influenced by "I'm ready for love" by Martha and the Vandellas. Check it out.

Yet even when I realised that perhaps after all nothing is new, even when I realised he was singing about Woking, this still warms my heart every time I hear it, join me and worship.

Monday, 14 July 2008

Waiting For The Big One...

So you may look at the current designs on the Cambridge T-Shirts site and wonder why they are not a little more 'fancy', you may rightly assume my limited artistic abilities have something to do with this, but wait.... let me play me geeky get out of jail card!

Our current printing technology uses plot printingwhich gives great quality hard wearing results, but limits us to pretty simple designs. There are all sorts of rules that have to be followed to get designs to print using this technology, you can't use more than three colours, no element of the design can be less than 1.5mm, etc, etc, etc... painful in other words, but a change is about to come! None of our existing designs are going to vanish and we will keep using the existing technology because it gives some really cool results, but very shortly we are going to start using some cool new technology called " Digital Direct".



With digital direct, no transfer material is needed anymore, which looks better and makes the shirt more comfortable to wear. It's basically a mighty big ink jet printer you stick a whole T-Shirt in at a time.

This means we can get a whole order of magnitude more fancy in our designs and that some of the things we have been promising will shortly start to appear. Just as a taster check this one out for the River Cam Surf Punting Club...



And if you can't wait you can checking out the current range of local things for local people right here.

Tuesday, 8 July 2008

TANSTAAFL...

"To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another."

TANSTAAFL means that a person or a society cannot get something for nothing. Even if something appears to be free, there is always a cost to the person or to society as a whole even though that cost may be hidden or distributed. For example, you may get complimentary food at a bar during "happy hour," but the bar owner bears the expense of your meal and will attempt to recover that expense somehow. Some goods may be nearly free, such as fruit picked in the wilderness, but usually some cost such as labor or the loss of food for local wildlife is incurred.

So roll up, it's cheap postage promotion time. It's pretty simple from today to July the 17th just use the special secret magic code "SUMMERSUNPOSTAGEFUN" and you don't have to pay any P&P when you order from the Cambridge T-Shirts shop. Not a lot more to it than that, pretty simple.... or is it.... are you paranoid.... or are they out to get you?

Friday, 4 July 2008

For those about to detune.... we salute you!

Many people can play Guitar, but very few can play heavy and fast! You have to play fast to be a good Guitar player, people who disagree with this are people who can't play fast themselves! Have you ever heard someone who can really shred say that they don't like playing fast? No, because everybody knows that if you can play fast, more people are going to like you more.

Since the dawn of rock when the first ancient Persian plectrum performer plugged his kithara into the first hand carved marshall amp guitarists have craved heaviness and speed and tried everything to achieve this, patches, pumps, strange mechanical devices, spending 18 hours a day locked in a room practicing, even heading down to the crossroads to sell their soul to the devil himself.

Tantalisingly existing at the very edges of music and legality there has been the legend of Dropped-D, what the speed, skill-level, intensity and purity of formula one is to your average driver, Dropped-D is for your average guitarist.

So how can you unlock this mystery? Traditionally this art has taken years of solitary study to achieve mastery combining the physical skills of a highly trained martial artist with esoteric musical knowledge.

Trying to explain the difference between drop-D and normal guitar to a non-musician is like trying to explain to your special cousin from Norfolk why they should get the short bus home and not accept a lift home with a drunken Richard Hammond in his brightly painted, puppy filled, fun time ice-cream dragster.

First you must train your hands through hours of repetitive drilling and meditating to master "the bird", one of the most difficult techniques for any normal musician to conquer, even I lack the verbal acuity and elegance to reduce it to a simple form you borderline moronic musical mortals will understand without patronising you , it is best represented via a picture illustrating it's raw power. A power that you are unlikely to every fully comprehend.

We then must move on to the theory that underlies this dark art. A normal guitar is tuned to E, the ancient secrets of Drop D change this in subtle and mysterious ways, with years of practice this can then be combined with the"bird" to unlock EXTREME TECHNIQUE, the deeper, fuller, faster sound that all guitarist secretly crave.


So how can you a mere mortal get a glimpse of the power and the glory currently only attained by the guitar gods? Well thanks to the gaming geniuses at Cracktivision™ harnessing the bleeding edge console potency of the CantPlayStation™ even you mere mortals can now experience the ecstasy of becoming a Drop-D Hero.



With it's patent pending single button controller, a revolutionary new system to get you very real results in very little time, nothing comes close to matching the thrill of Drop-D, now even you can play along with your favourite anthems from Drop-D masters such as Nickelback, Linkin Park, Creed, Nickelback and some more Nickelback. Only power chords, one finger drop D power chords, these are the best and most difficult chords to play, now you can play them at every opportunity! Just put your fat finger across the stings and, wow, a power chord. Slide it up and down and you've got a song! Seriously, you could step on this drop D beauty and it would sound good!

Of course wherever there is beauty and truth you will find jealousy and envy, the envious who say Drop D power chords, easy song structures, no solos, it's for morons, well if you are one of those myopic melody loving fools then maybe what you are looking for is something simpler to suit your addled tastes, we suggest you try something a little easier for you to understand, maybe try putting a t-shirt on instead.

Friday, 27 June 2008

Start your engines......

Just mentioning "Mitchams Corner" is enough to prick up the ears of any racing enthusiast. The annual 24 hour urban rally is famous as one of the most mythical races in the world. It unusually takes place on open public roads, with no official timing or prizes for reaching check points first. In fact, with very little point to its very existence, it is by definition one of the last pure sporting events, held solely out of sheer boredom and obviously for the tremendous honour of taking part.

Since 1923 famous manufacturers such as Diashatzu, Toyboata, Volks Wankin, Peugoat, Renfault, Porch, BlandRover, Mercedes Bends, Mitsabitchi and Laguar have taken part and contributed to writing the Mitchams Corner legend. A legend founded on an egalitarian belief that no competitor willing or unwilling should be excluded and unique in allowing both the unwary motorist and cyclist to unwittingly take part.

This exceptional circuit (one of the shortest in the world) bathes in an aura created by the most renowned manufacturers and the greatest drivers in motor sport.

The 24 Hours feels like it lasts a whole week, starting with scrutineering, the peering the prodding, poking and disapproving, followed by practice, then on and on to the penultimate drivers' parade through the centre of Mitchams Corner. Then comes the magic of the race, which continues all through the night.

During the rally, some participants have been fined for speeding and other traffic offences by the police as they passed through, cars have been confiscated and in 2007 the rally was cancelled after the contestants decided they really couldn't be bothered and parked up at the Portland for the night.

It's a breathtaking event, low performance cars thundering down the straight at well under 30 mph, spectators gripped by the suspect nature of this human and technical challenge... experienced drivers pushing back the limits of tedium...

Let yourself be wrapped up, carried away, guided and seduced... Endurance IS Mitchams Corner...

Wednesday, 25 June 2008

My Day In The City, It's Not Very Pretty

Now don't get me wrong I love adverts, British advertising at it's best can be funny and thought provoking while still trying to persuade you that the answer to your woes is to spark up a cheap cigar and that the opposite sex will genuinely find you more attractive if you smell like a professional footballer or his anorexic wife. Unfortunately the local buses in Cambridge are adorned with some of the most nauseating, shallow, tacky and intelligence insulting adverts I have seen in a long time. It would not be so bad if they were monuments to local heroes like the inventors of DNA or Disco Kenny, but it seems that making it entertain us, say something about us or to us is obviously below the advertising geniuses behind this campaign.

With a blandly smooth picture that's at least six foot in height (if local rumours are to be believed these were bought on the cheap on a computer disc of clip art!) these nuggets of arsepirational 'lifestyle' ordure encrust our council sponsored local transport in a desperate attempt to pimp the notion that it's not just losers who get the bus. These larger than life, emetically hip and upbeat profiles of the smug bourgeoisie leer down down at the gridlocked traffic as they vainly try to impress you with their narcissistic boasts of going to improbable places while doing unlikely things, like some nightmare blind date with some kind of satanic accountant who tries to steal your very soul whilst simultaneously attempting to get into your pants and explain the intricacies of triple entry bookkeeping. They seem to miss the point that I, like a substantial proportion of other local people aching to jump the green band wagon, only embrace the 'citilife' when there's not a lot of other choice. It's not aspirational it's the transport of last resort, but it shouldn't be this way! When I was a student 'ooop north' the local council sunk vast wheelbarrows of folding wedge into the local public transport infrastructure and it was a funky bus lane a go-go wonderland of affordable magic carpets that would whisk you from one side of the city with no mess, no fuss, just a council funded bus. Cambridge by contrast appears to have one of the most enthusiastically half arsed public transport policies I have ever encountered, bus lanes start, then mysteriously end just as they get to a congested piece of road, they get narrower, wider, mingle with cycle lanes and have their surfaces decorated in increasingly lurid shades or orange, you can only assume they form some part of some ritualistic message to the old gods that only makes sense from outer space.

It would be laughable if you had not actually had to stand repeatedly on the outskirts of the city for an hour and a half as the the horizontal rain whips in off the fens and in to any exposed opening in your clothing and body, waiting for the bus that might just arrive in time to get you back to work for tomorrow.

There can be nothing more dispiriting than watching eight consecutive, brightly liveried, mobile billboards trundle past on their way to neverland, or at least never to return land.

As the greatest poet of our generation said "It says nothing to me about my life" and it's about time it did, so why not tell people exactly what it has really been like by wrapping your self in one of these beauties, your shirt, your words, your real day in the city!

Ahoy Shifty Mates!

Well Plagiarims seems t' be havin' hit th' news again recently, in th' academic world, plagiarism by students be a very serious offense that can result in punishments such as a whippin' or hangin' fer cases in which a student commits severe plagiarism (e.g., submittin' a copied article as his or th' lass' own work). Plagiarism be a defined as robbery committed in th' library, or sometimes on th' internet, without a commission from a sovereign nation (plagiarism wi' sovereign commission be research, an' distinct from plagiarism). Plagiarism against famous authors remains a significant issue (wi' estimated worldwide losses o' US $13 t' $16 billion per term), particularly in th' colleges between th' Oxford an' Cambridge Campuses, off th' coast o' journalism, an' also in th' Straits o' political speech writin', which be used by o'er 50,000 commercial reporters a year. A recent surge in plagiarism off th' coast o' journalism spurred a multi-national effort led by th' British Government t' patrol th' waters near fleet street t' combat plagiarism. While books popular an' successful authors be still assailed by plagiarists, th' Royal Navy an' th' U.S. Coast Guard be havin' nearly eradicated plagiarism in U.S. waters an' in th' Caribbean Sea.

Yet still fer many plagiarim has a magic, glamour an' romance. This romaticised image o' th' plagiarsit possessin' parrot, peg leg, hook, cutlass, bicorne hat, skull an' cross-bones, fearsome copyin' skills, a learned intolerance fer absolute captainliness, an' a disdain fer th' copystarboard laws they b'lieve be havin' abandoned them be strong in th' public imagination. So lets raise th' Jolly Copyer an' before we keel haul th' plank show our support fer th' buccanneers o' academia wi' a new T-Shirt, Ya lily livered scallywags!

Monday, 23 June 2008

This other Cambridge

So a while ago I got name checked on a local web-site We're All Neighbours, not entirely in a positive way mind, it was part of a thread on "Why is Cambridge Shite", my t-shirt site was held up as an example of the "pretension.... and overly inflated ego..." of the city as a whole, which was pretty funny. Of course the beauty of other peoples pop-psychology analysis of you is that they might just be right, doing anything in public, and the Internet is pretty public, does require a certain amount of raging ego!

Anyway it got me belly button gazing for at least five minutes and trying to justify me to my head, and that is obviously where blogging closes the circle given that it's main purpose as far as I can see is to allow geeks like me to whinge about how the world is so very, very cruel to them and how they are going down the bottom of the garden to eat worms....

So why did I start the Cambridge T-Shirts site? Well I had been churning out t-shirts in a variety of guises for a while, mainly for my own amusment/ego, most of the stuff on sale said "nothing to me about My life" and the more obsessed I became with shirt design the more I started to notice the Cambridge shirts. The visitor to Cambridge could be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion from the visible evidence that the only thing in Cambridge is the University. They would not be entirely wrong, to a large extent the town has and is defined by the University, yet at the same time the students are only 20% of the population, outside the reality Bubble there is another 80% of the town who sometimes seem to not exist... except they do because they are the people I work with, live with, play with and drink with. The same people who post on Internet bulletin boards asking why Cambridge is so shite?

This antipathy that sometimes bubbles up between the 80/20 divide is no new thing, you can even go on tours within cambridge to discover the "Town not gown", it's even been around long enough that even wikipedia has a page on it, which makes it fact with a capital Fac.

Anyway as ever on to where this blog always ends up, trying to flog you some brightly coloured and mildly entertaining coverage for the top half of your body. In the spirit of equal opportunity we present something for both the 20 and the 80.

Until next time, ego a go-go!

Wednesday, 18 June 2008

Busted!

"The macho elite Cambridge University Top Don school for advanced fellows and tutors was established to select the best Academics and develop, refine and teach them tactics and techniques The Academics selected to attend are considered to be the best of the best.... I feel the need..... The need for tweed...."

Or at least that's how the advertising fluff on the Cambridge T-Shirts web site used to read..... until I got an email reading:

"We're concerned that there is a possibility your designs are copyright protected by a third party."

Which, ignoring the initial human urge to disagree, you can see their point... especially as that was pretty much the whole motivation behind the T-Shirt, the very idea that there might theoretically be an "elite Cambridge University Top Don school" made me giggle. Plus lets be honest with the seeming constant academic one-upmanship and even wikipedia recognising the concept of the Superdon, it didn't even seem that far fetched.

Still I have no particular desire to be banged up for copyright crimes so I guess it's back to the drawing board, rest assured the top don will re-appear, if for no other reason than the design for the back of the T-shirt is just too good to waste....

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

What Cambridge Needs Is A Monorail

Everyone who lives in Cambridge knows it is is approaching gridlock. The council is busy wasting our money on the misguided bus, a classic example of group think, to provide an impractical service that won't solve the problem, it's dangerous with a potential to have spectacular collisions with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, it will be hideously expensive and won't actually make anything better! It's too little too late.

Monorails have evolved over time to become an incredibly safe and efficient transportation choice used all over the world. A 12.8 km monorail opened in Naha, Japan in 2003 with 15 stations. There is also a 27 km, 29 station monorail line currently under construction in Jakarta, Indonesia!

Monorails NEED to be incorporated into a regional transport system. Anyone with any idea of creating transportation that "Really served" the community can see what an essential role a monorail would play, 100,000s of commuters could be moved daily at rapid speed and to all the local areas. Over time more lines could be added

Every right thinking person knows what the the real answer is! Elevated rail is inherently cheaper than tunnels and safer than the alternatives, obviously commuters will benefit from a choice of leaving their cars and riding a monorail, the fiscal logic is so compelling, yet resisted by the powers-that-be, SOMEONE has to be making money off the more expensive alternative. Who?