Halibut Stuff is yet another in a long series of diversions from life for me, Smitty. It all started on a drive up the California coast. I was trying to figure out a particurlarly hairy regular expression for a project I was working on when I saw a Federal Express van pull out in front of me on the freeway. That was it. The thought came to me, and it was all over from there. The rest of the trip, I was busy thinking of other ideas for shirts. (I'll let you guess what gas station I used...)
As soon as I got off the road, I hopped on Photoshop and the first artwork for RegEx was done. By the end of the weekend, I had a prototype. The response was suprisingly positive. I expected to be mocked, but instead got many compliments from people I didn't even know (...how to tell when you're in the Silicon Valley...)

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had five designs done and ready to be printed. $2000 later, I was ready for my first showing of Halibut Stuff to the world, at DefCon 6.0 in Las Vegas, summer of 1998. I was worried that some of the designs wouldn't sell very well; I expected to come home with a fair number of shirts and sell them on the web when I was done.

We sold out by the end of the second day. It was a truely amazing sight to see people wearing _MY_ shirts. Thanks go to everyone who handed over $20 of their hard earned money for one of my shirts. Ya'll rock. (Especially that guy who traded me a Butt Set for one. :) -mts 1.16.99

Mark Smith

Keith Mosher

Joshua Hill

Owen Pike

Read Mark's story of the
founding of Halibut Stuff.