This week’s Threadless email brought me one shirt that I like quite a lot, and several items where I question Threadless’ judgment.

I like this shirt a lot. The colour scheme is very appealing and it’s also a very neat concept.
Verdict: 5$

I think this is a nice design, but I’m not going to buy it because of the placement. While I definitely support breaking out of the mold, I don’t really enjoy calling attention to that particular part of my body. Maybe it’s just me.
It’s also expensive - close to $25 with shipping. That’s a lot for a shirt.

This one’s a reprint, and I like the design a lot - I think it’s pretty clever. However, I definitely agree with a lot of the commenters on the original submission that it looks good until you see its placement on the shirt — it’s too big and unflattering. I wish they’d taken those comments into consideration on the reprint.

And in this week’s “Why the *&$^ did Threadless put that on a print,” I bring you:

I think jar_bombadillo said it best: ‘why would I pay $35 for something I could print out myself for $3?’

Don’t forget to use our totally awesome coupon code, lovesthreadless, to save $3 on your next Threadless order!

Threadless issues three retail art panels each week, painted by Joe Suta, for the Threadless store in Chicago. They’re frequently amalgamations of that week’s designs or just single pieces and very cool takes on the designs of that week. Some of them are totally nutty and most aren’t my style, but I fell in love with the CTRL+Z inspired one and I’ve fallen in love with this week’s Le Romantique panel.

Joe really outdid himself with this panel. Just take a look:

Awesome, hm? Too bad it’s already sold out and that they’re one of a kind. Sigh.

New This Week | Le Romantique | Don’t forget to use coupon code: LOVESTHREADLESS for $3 off!

I mentioned my company’s web development blog a couple of weeks ago but we’ve moved it over to its own brand now: HTMList.com. If you’re into web development at all, take a look. You might learn something new.

I was browsing this week’s new submissions when I noticed this little note in the sidebar:

That’s right, Threadless has joined forces with Timbuk2 to create limited-edition messenger bags out of three Threadless designs:

All of them are pretty righteous designs on their own, and the fact that they’re available on messenger bags is even cooler. No telling whether this will continue with more designs, but if you’re interested hurry over to timbuk2 - they only made 200 of each bag!

Some of you may know that my day job isn’t writing about t-shirts. (If it were, my frequency of posts would tend to indicate I’m not very good at it.)

Instead, I run a fledlging web application development company called Synapse Studios. (On whose servers this site is lovingly hosted.) We build enterprise level web stuff. And we’ve started blogging about all the insane things we’re developing and the challenges we’ve had to overcome, wrangling with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX and every other piece of bleeding edge code out there.

If that sort of thing interests you even in the slightest, take a look at our blog.

I also just finished writing a piece on web readability, so be sure to check it out as well.

Synapse Studios Web Blog | Understanding Web Readability

Hey guys. As mentioned earlier, I’m on vacation starting tomorrow all the way through the 19th. Excitement abounds—I’m going on a transatlantic cruise. From St. Maarten, it takes 5 days to cross the Atlantic to Funchal, Madeira in Portugal.

So I’ve started a single-purpose blog called 5-Across to document my trip on the Carnival Freedom. I hope to be able to fill it with pictures of fun stuff, but I’m guessing the internet on the cruise ship will be battling me every expensive minute of the way. (65 cents, 45 if you pay in advance.) Needless to say, I’ll be “burst-surfing” a lot; checking my email and blasting a post and signing off real quick.

If you’re at all interested, head on over and check it out. In the mean time, I’ve added a few others who I think are going to start posting here and keeping it interesting, so look for Torei and Big Al’s content soon!

5-Across: A Travel Blog

Some of you may have noticed that my beloved Thriftee Alert system’s AIM/SMS bot had a terrible time staying up and active. This kinda sucked and made the whole thing sorta useless. Never fear, I’ve spent some time further hacking together a system that should fail-safe and trigger the script repeatedly. I had it doing this before, but it was leaving zombie processes on the server and it would eventually fail. Nevertheless, it now cleans those up as it goes and the end result is that the AIM/SMS notices should now ALWAYS go out, no excuses.

Should something fail in an epic manner while I’m on vacation (from 4/25-5/13), just go ahead and unsubscribe using the manage option on the page. If you email me to unsubscribe, that won’t get you anywhere.

If you haven’t set up a Thriftee notifier account, head over to the Notify Me page and get cracking. I’ve hammered out all the bugs I’ve found and I’m pretty confident it should just work from here on out, so long as my computer stays online and internet-happy.

Create $10 Threadless Thriftee Alerts for your specific desired size and shirt design!

Threadless extended their sale through tomorrow to make up for a server snafu that occurred last week.

Get shopping!

(Oh, and if you’re spending more than $50, use coupon spring08 for $5 off to the first 5,000 who do! Woo.)

That’s right, Threadless’ Spring Cleaning sale is in full swing. For older shirts, that means shirts for $9. For newer shirts (on their own private line, with special inks), it means $5 off.

Check out Threadless.com and start saving!

So in case you weren’t aware, Threadless started selling off the amazing art panels created by Joe Suta for the Threadless retail store every week. And every week, he creates three new pieces inspired by the designs of the week.

They’re $250 + shipping but they’re absolutely awesome and completely unique pieces of tasty art that you really really want to hang everywhere. And if I had a spare $250… I’d be picking up this one, Panel 100, right now.

Threadless Retail Art Gallery

It’s been a great year in general but an even better one for Threadless. They’ve printed hundreds of designs, launched a brick and mortar store, bumped up their prize values, launched the Bestee awards, launched the alumni club and so much more.

Plus, we had some great fun running our cake contest and a few other smaller contests throughout the year. Threadcakes *will* be back later this year again, with even bigger prizes.

What was your favorite Threadless-related event for the year?

You may still be able to get a fresh bit of Threadlessy love at your doorstep by Christmas Eve if you perhaps pick Next Day Air within, say, the next four hours. I wouldn’t count on it, though.

Barring that, why not give the gift that gives the best? Gift Certificates. A Threadless Gift Certificate has the neat effect of being a declining balance account. You (or your giftee) don’t have to use it all at once, which is great if only one available shirt catches their fancy at a given moment.

They arrive hot and fresh in your recipient’s mailbox (um, after you forward them and such) ready for spending.

And in the end, you know that they’ll pick what they want better than you would. Threadless tastes are varied and eclectic like that.

Gift Certs! Cheap! (Okay, well… face value.)

For those who have been following my size comparison blog, I’ve finally managed to add:

* A Small hoodie photo for size comparison

* A hoodie size comparison picture similar to the tee comparison to the left, showing XS, S and M hoodies

* A comparison picture showing Girly L vs. Girly XL vs. Guys S

 * Information and photos on washing shrinkage (cold water, no drier) in tees and hoodies

And, of course, if anyone has any suggestions or size information requests that I can fill (i.e. requests that don’t involve a shirt size that I don’t currently have), don’t hesitate to leave a comment either here or in the blog and let me know!

Threadless blogger Mojie has posted a comprehensive size comparison blog to help the ladies who tend to drift around in the Small sizes better make their decision. She manages to compare Girly Small through Large and a few hoodies to boot, all in a pretty nicely ceteris paribus comparison. (All the photos are consistent and useful.)

Threadless Comprehensive Girly Small Size Comparison

Since nobody here had the chance to wish me a happy Birthday yesterday, I thought I’d wish myself a belated happy Birthday even at the risk of committing a faux pas.

Some other notable figures in history also happen to share my date of birth and/or year, so I also wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to my B-day homies. (Yes, you heard me right.)

• Rembrandt van Rijn may have been born 401 years before me, but I like to think that sharing the same date of birth with one of the history’s greatest painters gives me some sort of mystical artistic power.
• Samus Aran made her first video game debate in the NES adventure Metroid in the summer of 1987. She was gaming’s first female character to have a staring role in a major console title. She’s been blasting aliens throughout the galaxy ever since.
• The first Legend of Zelda game made its US and Europe appearance in ‘87. Two decades later, Link is still saving Hyrule from the clutches of evil. The series has become one of Nintendo’s most beloved.
• Robert Wadlow, the Guinness World Records tallest person in medical history, was also born on the 15th. It’s not particularly significant, but somewhat freaky and therefore worth mentioning.

Since Rembrandt and Samus don’t have Threadless accounts (that I know of), feel free to direct your STP love in my direction in honor of our shared Birthdays. Be sure to check out the new prints and other awesome new stuff going on this week which Alexandra Marie mentioned in her last post.