The Pen Addict 127/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	127
Title:	My Idea Dock is Sideways
Release Date:	November 3rd, 2014
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 127
Audio File:	Audio Episode 127
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 127
Length:	7171 min <br />1.183 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 127 of The Pen Addict podcast on RelayFM. This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. For a free trial, visit lynda.com slash penaddict. Also by Hover, Simplified Domain Management, and Igloo, an intranet you'll actually like. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by the only man I could be joined by, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That's good to know, Myke, that I've got job security.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you do, actually. I don't, but you do.

Brad Dowdy: That's true, I could just shake you any time and just move on. Well, good.

Myke Hurley: As we've seen before, you know, you guys can... Sorry, you can get other people to help you out. Yeah. You've had it before, but... That's true. You've never been replaced on one episode, which is kind of crazy, really.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I'll have to work on that, see if I can get myself replaced. Like, you got yourself fired from your day job, so I'll see if I can get myself replaced from The Pen Addict podcast. What do you think?

Myke Hurley: I don't want you to do that.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. That'd be a bad idea. Bad idea. Mm-hmm. But we've got all kinds of news and notes and topics and things to discuss today, so what do you say we dive right into it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we should. I actually just thought of something else that I'm about to add to the document, too.

Brad Dowdy: Well, good. I think last week we did the Top 5 Pins update. I'm going to have a couple comments on some of the feedback I got on that a little later in this episode. But basically, since we did a lot of that last week, there's a lot of links and news type of stuff that we missed that I just wanted to discuss. So, the first one, that's actually made me think of you, Myke, and I got it from Mr. Design Concussion in the chat room, and that's Dan Bishop, for those who do not know from Keras Customs. He sent me this link on Aaron Draplin, and it was really just the link to... The link was about... It's a video done, a two-part video done on just kind of Aaron's life and how he came to prominence and things like that. But what really Dan was wanting to point out to me is that, did you know that he painted his house the color of field notes? That's why Dan sent me the link of the Kraft Brown field notes. No way. Yeah, he mentions that in the video. It's kind of funny. So, that's why Dan sent it to me. But really, I got a lot more out of the video than that because it's called Aaron Draplin and the Art of the Side Hustle. So, and that's kind of always been his thing when he does his speeches and talks to conferences around the country and things like that. It's just kind of always have these ideas going and always, you know, something's brewing, you know, in the background. And that's kind of how field notes came up. And that's how some of his artwork came to be. And that's how some of his design work happened and his t-shirts happened. And it just got me to thinking about me and you just kind of doing these things on the side that we actually really love and then kind of turning them into something, you know, that could maybe be like a self-sufficient, sustaining thing. So, I thought that was a good video for you to check out. I enjoyed it. It's only about 12 minutes long or something like that. So, I just wanted to throw that in there for you to check out and our listeners to check out. You can see Aaron's house painted the color of field notes.

Myke Hurley: No, that's cool. I've got it as an open tab in Chrome now. So, that will be watched. Yeah. I think YouTube has that like watch later thing. So, maybe I'll try and do that too.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Okay. Cool. And speaking of field notes, I kind of forgot last week that they came out with a new stock edition. Did you see that?

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I did see about that.

Brad Dowdy: We totally overlooked it on the show. And it's interesting because it's the cherry wood covers that they used in Shelterwood. So, they're calling this the cherry graph edition.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I wasn't a big fan of the Shelterwood. You liked it pretty well, right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I appreciated it for what they were attempting to do. I thought they looked really nice, felt really nice, and kind of, to me, embodied a lot of what field notes is about. It's not necessarily always the utility. Sure. Sometimes it's about just doing something that looks and feels really cool. Yeah. But that's what I feel anyway. Like, I just sometimes the color additions are meant to be something that are a bit more outward. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm totally with you on that. And actually, I think I like this cherry graph better than the Shelterwood. Number one, I kind of like the dark colors on the exterior. You know, it's in the black print, the field notes, all the printing on the exterior is black. And then the inside is the standard graph paper, which the Shelterwood was the 70-pound thicker paper with lined. It was lined edition. So, I like graph, and I like this cover better. So, I never used one of my Shelterwood editions. I might actually, next time I have to order something, I'll order a three-pack of the cherry graph and see what I think about these and use them. Because these actually look better than the Shelterwood to me. So, just my opinion.

Myke Hurley: My XOXO edition arrived.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, wow. Finally.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because, well, so the one from the benefactor could not make its way. It was sent via my third party, but it was returned to them. Oh, no. There was a problem with shipping. I don't know what it was. But they did, the Field Notes guys did a special for people on the mailing list. Right. So, I just bought a pack from that. Oh, well, good. And they arrived, like, yesterday. I will never use them, but, you know, to add to the collection.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's good. That's good you got on that, because they sent that out. What did they have? Did they say how many they had? Like, 250 packs or something? I don't know.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they restricted it to, like, it was really, like, I like the way that they did it. They were like, look, this is one per house. If you try and order more than one, we'll just cancel your order. I was just like, yeah. Because people try and do things like that, right? Oh, yeah. They try and sneak it in. Like, so just be, you know, don't even say, oh, we'll contact you. No, you'll just be canceled. So, don't even do it. Right. I also got an email that my color subscription is going to renew after the next one. Man, that year goes by fast.

Brad Dowdy: It does. It does. I didn't renew mine after the last one. I've just been buying them as they pop up.

Myke Hurley: I don't know what I'm going to do, actually.

Myke Hurley: I don't know. I probably will just renew, but I'm not sure.

Brad Dowdy: It's easy to renew, but I didn't want more. I didn't need any more craft notebooks, and they print so many now, I can just order them without, like, missing. Like, you used to have to worry in the past about missing them. Like, the Night Sky edition was one that, you know, was still kind of the height of the Field Notes popularity, and they printed a lot, but it still sold out, like, within a week or two. That's pretty quick. Nowadays, they're printing two or three times the amount of Night Sky, so you can get in there and get them after. But, I mean, the subscription's good if you just don't want to think about it.

Myke Hurley: I think the thing is, like, 20 bucks every quarter feels better than, like, 150 or whatever in one go.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Right. So, just as I'm moving into a world where my income is becoming, or at least for the short term, is just uncertain. Sure, sure. I don't know if I will want to plonk down the money just yet, but we'll see. I mean, I have, like, a whole edition to come out, which is apparently soon, they said.

Brad Dowdy: I know. So, I...

Myke Hurley: Which is surprising.

Brad Dowdy: They already started talking about the winter edition, like, really soon. It seemed like it was much sooner. It seemed like there was a long time between the last two editions than this one they released did the... Released the... Unexposed? Yeah, unexposed. And then, like, within a few weeks, we're already talking about winter. It's like, wow, that's quick.

Myke Hurley: I was looking at the site, and it says the subscription's in $97 at the moment, which is down from $129, so maybe I will just renew. Maybe I'll get somebody to buy it for me for Christmas or something. There you go. That's a good idea. I have to say, as well, while we're on this subject, two things about my Field Notes usage recently. So, I've been... When I record shows, I keep a pen and paper next to me, and it's where I take notes about things to edit out, or just things that I want to do in the show, or, like, note down the sponsor time codes or something. Sure. I always have pen and paper next to me. Also, I doodle sometimes when I'm recording.

Myke Hurley: And I've found the Arts and Sciences, like, perfect for this, because they're that big a size. So, I still have quite a few of those. Oh, they actually still have some in stock. Yeah. That's a great addition. I might buy some more. So, I was either going to continue using those, or I was going to buy some of the Steno pads. Yeah. I love those, too. So, either or. Either or, really. The Steno pad might actually be better for what I'm using it for, but I have a bunch of the Arts and Sciences left. Like, I have, like, three packs. So, because I knew I'd love those for whatever I ended up using them for. So, I might buy some more of those. I hope that they actually turn that into an addition, like, just a standard addition.

Brad Dowdy: Now, that, I would get behind that, for sure. Yeah. I actually ended up trading. We talked about it when they came out. I traded my Arts Editions for Sciences Editions. So, I have all the graph ones and none of the line ones now with Pen Addict Podcast superfan Shereen Broadwater. She's awesome. So, me and her did a swap of the opposite editions for Arts and Sciences. So, we each have a batch of our favorite ones. So, that's good.

Myke Hurley: Interesting.

Brad Dowdy: Very, very, very.

Myke Hurley: Oh, and the other thing, the other thing I was going to say was, I actually think the Unexposed might be one of my favorite editions now.

Brad Dowdy: I agree completely. I sent out a tweet the other day about how good it wears in the back pocket. The cover is extremely durable for what you don't think would be a durable cover because the Drink Local, as great an edition as it is, and I still say that's better than Unexposed, the covers cracked and wore out a little bit quicker. These Unexposed ones are really durable.

Myke Hurley: I just love the colors. They're so bright and crazy.

Brad Dowdy: I've been using them a lot recently. I really like it. Which reminds me, I need to update my field notes list. That's another thing on the agenda that I need to accomplish.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Mine's out of date, severely. But I need to... I changed the design of my site, so I need to kind of redo that page a bit.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So it's just one of those things. I've actually taken it away from the navigation because I need to fix it.

Brad Dowdy: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you on that. An interesting item that kind of slid under the radar for me.

Pilot Nibs

Brad Dowdy: Pilot, as a company, has been doing a really good job over the past couple of years of not just introducing products in Japan and leaving them there, but moving them over to the United States market within a year or two of their introduction. Recently, they did that with the Falcon, the Pilot Falcon in the resin barrel. They always had the metal barrel Falcon here, but I wanted the resin barrel Falcon. I had to go to Japan to order it. This was like two years ago. Well, now, as of several months ago, the Falcon's available in the US. Another pin that I love is the Pilot Custom 912, and it's coming to the US now, too. It's the bigger bodied, it's the very standard barrel, but it's a big, you know, businessy, classic looking fountain pen barrel. This is the pin that I use with the PO nib that I've talked about, that really fine, firm nib.

Myke Hurley: I always think of that as the post office nib.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's called the post, uh, posting nib. Is that right? Because yeah, the, the theory behind that nib design was for the, uh, Japanese people to use it when they're writing postcards because they write a lot of postcards and they needed something small and fine and firm to be able to write on those postal cards. So, uh, hence the, uh, the PO nib was born. So it's like that hook nib for those who haven't heard me talk about it before. And, you know, we can link to it in the show notes on the, in, uh, my review on the blog. So I love the fact that the 912 is actually coming here because I love that barrel. It's a great size, uh, great weight, beautiful nibs. I'm sad that the PO nibs not coming with it. I understand that. I guess a little bit, it's such a highly specific nib.

Myke Hurley: It seems like as well, it's culturally specific. So maybe it just wouldn't make sense for them to do. Cause I look at it and think it's broken.

Brad Dowdy: Right. You know, that's what it looks like. Right. Um, but they are going to have the music nib, which I've never used. And they're also going to have the stub nib, which I do have. I do have a, I have a 912 with a PO nib and a 912 with a stub nib. The stub nib is great. These gold nibs are great. Um, it's just a great classic all around good pen. So, um, they're going to start showing up in the U S and U S retailers here in December. It looks like I'm looking at nibs.com is where I found the link. We'll have this link also in the show notes, but, um, pilots doing a good job. Like they did it even on the lower end pens, like the pilot Acro ball, just the basic ballpoint. I had to get someone, someone sent that to me from Japan when it first came out years and years ago. And then finally, what about a year and a half ago, they brought it to the States. So pilots, one of the companies that's at least making an attempt to bring the great stuff, the stuff that's really successful in Japan, um, over to the U S. So I, I'm glad to see that and I hope they continue doing that. So that's, um, only good thing for us pen addicts. Definitely.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Um, we've got a few more, a few more news items, but, uh, why don't you talk about, uh, one of our good friends and sponsors of the pen addict podcast.

Myke Hurley: This episode of the pen addict is brought to you by lynda.com and easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn with lynda.com. You can instantly stream thousands of courses created by experts on software, web development, graphic design, and so much more. Lynda.com does a great job of making sure that they work with the very best experts available to conduct the courses that they provide. So they work with people that are experts in the industry that they're in or just the field that they're in. They sometimes even work directly with software and hardware companies to provide timely training that is relevant to the topic and produce with the highest quality in mind. These videos are produced in fantastic studios with all the best equipment, sound, video equipment, their stuff is made. So it is just nice to look at and easy to understand. The courses are broken down into bite-sized pieces. So you're able to learn at your own pace and they have great apps that allow you to learn on the go. Of course, you can do all this stuff in the web browser and you get things like searchable transcripts and playlist creation there, but you can also learn in their apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android too. They can be great for a second screen or maybe you want to learn something on the bus. You know, you can do all of that with lynda.com. They have one low monthly price of $25. This gives you unlimited access to over 100,000 video tutorials. I was digging around on lynda.com to find some interesting stuff to tell you guys about today. So this is some of the things that I came across. They have great courses on how to help you work better. So maybe you want to learn some management training or time management training. They have these things there so you can maybe learn how to be a better manager of people or just a better manager of your own time. Or what about a course on GTD, getting things done? This is something a lot of people talk about. They actually have a course that is hosted by the creator of Getting Things Done, David Allen. They also have, this is something I found really interesting, a typing skills course. So if you've ever wanted to learn how to touch type, lynda can help. I also found typography today as well. So I found this really interesting looking course that I'm actually going to watch about the fundamentals of typography. So it shows you how like spacing and alignment can affect design, as well as learning things like what kerning really is. They teach you this in this course. So maybe if you're looking on, maybe you're a graphic designer or you're interested in this sort of stuff. And I figured that typography maybe would be something that would interest the pen addict audience. You can watch this stuff and you can learn a bit. Maybe learn something you didn't know before. Now, I mentioned about going in and trying all this stuff and viewing all these videos. Well, I could give you access to all of them for free for seven days. We've worked out a great deal of lynda.com to provide you with unlimited access for seven days. So you can go in and then you're going to see just how great Lynda is. So go to lynda.com slash pen addict to sign up. That's lynda.com slash pen addict. Thank you so much, Lynda, for their support of this show.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, Lynda.com. That typography thing actually sounds pretty cool. I'll have to check that out myself.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, really cool.

Stickers

Brad Dowdy: So I did a thing for our friend, Sean Blanc and crew over at the suite setup.

Brad Dowdy: That was posted today, which I think they told me that was going to happen, but I forgot about it until I saw some tweets and some emails about it. So that was pretty cool. So what did you think about that? You put that in the show notes. Were you going to give me a hard time about my desk?

Myke Hurley: No way. You haven't seen mine. I don't know. I just thought it was interesting. Well, one, I mean, congratulations on putting stickers on your laptop, like a real true human. That's right. Like a pro. You've got some great ones on there, right? So you've got Studio Temporary, Karis Customs, Dome Paper, Knock, Erasable. You've got the Fountain Pen Day one. Oh, you've got the USA one as well. Yep. You have a Volcano sticker on there. Congratulations on that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Kaweco and Modern Giant, which is a local friend here. And Word. Yeah. I got lots of stickers. I got more on the bottom too. But that actually felt kind of funny about my desk setup because it's so not like the other people who have been on the sweet setup before. You know, this nice, neat, clean, minimalistic, futuristic desk setup. And mine, I mean, that picture right now, if I went to go take the same picture, I don't know if you'd see any of the desktop right now.

Myke Hurley: So you even cleaned it up a bit. It was going to say everyone probably just cleans it up, but even you did and it's still messy.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. And I'm not a messy person at all. I just, this is the one area where stuff just lives sometimes until I can get to it and move it around. So yeah, my desk, that's a clean picture shot of my desk. I didn't want to clean it up too much because then that wouldn't be right because that's not how it looks all the time. But this is actually the clean, clean version compared to what it normally is.

Myke Hurley: So what sort of stuff do you do on your desk?

Brad Dowdy: I write the review. I write my pen reviews there, all the handwritten stuff there. When I'm on my laptop, I'm actually usually sitting in a chair, sitting on the couch or something like that. If I'm writing an article like that, I do all like my. My pen writing reviews and things like that on the desk. That's what I do most of it. And then I'll do like, you know, when I'm working on knock stuff, I'm doing it from there. Usually just because I have other things spread around, like if I'm doing the accounting or stuff like that. But yeah, I, I do all the handwriting stuff, pen testing, pen reviews, all that's there. All my paper and all the pens I need to review are loaded up in the desk drawers. Um, I should have taken, I should have opened the drawers and put that in the picture too, because holy crap, they are a mess. But, um, yeah, I'm, that's pretty, pretty, pretty straightforward. And then, uh, the, the article also talks about like apps and phone apps that I use. Um, speaking of which I told you this morning, I ordered my, my iPhone six plus. So me and you, me and you are a team now. Good. Team barge phone.

Myke Hurley: I don't even plus club. You're in a plus club. Plus club. That's what I'm happy about. You're in the plus club. Uh, so I mean, like when I look around my desk, my desk is littered with like computers. Um, but I also have like a couple of pen holders. Like I have a couple of the dudettes sitting in the back. Um, and they're kind of just full of my favorite stuff. But really like I tend to have, like at the moment I have, um, the, in front of me, I have the arts and sciences edition, uh, field notes with the Karas customs ink sitting on top of it. And then I also have a, just one of the exposed ones that kind of just sits just on the desk as well, which is like when I have calls and stuff, I take notes in that. And that, that's typically what I do. Like I have all these pens on my desk, but really I tend to just use like one of them at a time. And it's usually something simple to use. Like I, before I was using the ink, I was using a Makuru Toga just because whenever I'm taking these kinds of notes, they are like true scribble notes. Like I'm just grabbing a pen and I'm just like scribbling it down. So I kind of don't really want to use a fountain pen for that sometimes. Sure. Cause it's purely like I'm grabbing whatever is closest to me and just like sometimes not even looking at the paper and I'm just writing it cause I'm like reading something or doing something else. So they're like purely just for that, that purpose. Um, so yeah, I'd find it interesting to look at your desk and I mean, I assumed that you tidied it up like anybody would for this kind of thing, but yeah, just a little bit, just

Brad Dowdy: a little bit. I should, I should do an after shot.

Myke Hurley: Like if they ever ask me, I mean, not that I know anybody that works in the sweet setup or anything. No. Um, I probably wouldn't clean my desk just for the point. It's like to show that this is actually what my desk looks like. Unlike all these other fraudsters you've had that, that, that clean up their desks, you know, just complete lies. It's all lies.

Brad Dowdy: The only, the only bit of grief I got on the picture, um, was that my idea doc is turned sideways. So I had some people on Twitter, uh, point that out that, uh, your idea doc is sideways. I'm not sure I can get behind that, Brad. What's the deal? I don't have a good answer. I don't have a good answer for that. But mostly I think it's because I use the cards. I use the cards in the back slot more than I keep an active list on the front slot. So.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But then you says, I created this darn thing. If I say this is the way it goes, it goes this way. You can't turn it sideways.

Brad Dowdy: Who are you? Who are you Twitter people telling me how to turn my idea doc? Doug? Full Doug? Yeah. Full Doug. You have a problem?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Doug.

Brad Dowdy: Did you make the idea doc? No.

Myke Hurley: Maybe make your own idea doc. You can turn it whatever you want, Doug. The idea, Doug. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Bring it.

Myke Hurley: That Doug.

Brad Dowdy: Doug. You got to watch out for him. I know. All right. So as you may know, I am, I get called the enabler a lot. We all know who the real enabler is. It's Mr. Thomas Hall. But, you know, I carry the mantle.

Myke Hurley: Even enablers have enablers.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Even enablers have enablers. So long time listener and reader of the pen addict, Theo, sent a great mail about the enabling. And I wanted to read that. He says, Brad, we all joke about you enabling, but here is proof positive that you are the king of all enablers. In July 2012, I emailed you my top four pens. Pilot GTEC-C, Retro 51, Zebra F701, and Shrade Tactical with Fisher Refill. A humble utilitarian list that you graciously shared on pen addict podcast number 22. Two years and 104 podcasts later, my top five is now Lamy 2000 Extra Fine, Sailor Pro Gear 2 Slim, Masayama Tuned FNIB, Pilot Capless Decimo FNIB, Faber-Castell E-Motion Newton Fine Stub, and Retract with Pilot Juice. Uh, yeah. Your fault. Not to mention the nine bottles of ink. Seriously, though, thanks. It's been great fun exploring the depths of this hobby. I look forward to visiting with you and Myke every week. Regards, Theo.

Myke Hurley: Theo, you are basically the embodiment of me and Brad here. Because, I mean, you know, I had, oh, I really like the Uniball 206. You know? And now I'm like, oh, look at my custom made. Oh, we should probably address the vast incorrectness of my explanation of the material, right? Did we address that? Oh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We didn't. We didn't. I was close enough to where I didn't re-follow up on it. And I don't have it written down now, so I'll just get yelled at again if I don't do it right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, same here. I mean, so.

Brad Dowdy: Well, when I get mine, we will have the opportunity to talk about it again. How about that?

Myke Hurley: Okay, yeah. Let's do that. When? Is that on the way?

Brad Dowdy: It's in progress. Okay. I mean, it's paid and ordered and it's in the line. So it's going through the workflow.

Myke Hurley: Talking about things on the way, and this is like terrible. Did you get that thing yet?

Brad Dowdy: I did not. Okay. And I actually talked to him. So this is like behind the scenes stuff. So yeah, it might be lost. So not yet.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I really hope not. Yeah. Yeah. So basically a really awesome list. Now I won't say yet because we will talk about it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because I'm not supposed to know what you got.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Sent me and Brad something that I really want to talk about on the show, but obviously Brad hasn't received his.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So Myke's arrived across the pond and mine has not shown up yet.

Myke Hurley: Which is a very rare thing to occur in this show, in this show's history that I have received something before you did.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Well, you went to somewhere that I haven't been either. And this sounds pretty interesting. I want to hear about this. You took a little, had a little jaunt this weekend. Mm-hmm. Yeah. A little, did you, did you channel it?

Paris Trip

Myke Hurley: I did. I went to Paris this weekend. I went through the channel tunnel. So we went on the train, which is actually just incredible to, to be somewhere like in two hours, like in another country on the train. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. When there's like a lot of places that I can't even travel to in like England in that period of time. But anyway, so we were in France. I went to Paris. I went to the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, cool.

Myke Hurley: Cool. Which is really, really fun. Really nice, actually. But one day we were like walking around and we went to this little hipstery area. I can't remember the name of the actual area, but it's near Jacques Bonne-sur-Jean station, the metro station. And we went, there's this little canal there. So we went, we was kind of by the canal and we had coffee or whatever. And we're walking back to the station and some notebooks caught my eye in the window of a store. They were like, like, like, I'm trying to do it like. Writer. Yeah. Okay. We should go. They were Leuchterm notebooks in the window. I was like, hmm. So we went in and this place was like a haven. Like, I'm not kidding. So I put, I put in the show notes, a Facebook page that this business has set up. It's called L'Ancrieur or L'Ancrieur. And it's, it's a papery.

Myke Hurley: What did it call? What did it call? Is it a papery? Oh, pepetery. Pepetery. Okay. That's my terrible French. Yeah. It was like walking into a physical manifestation of the podcast.

Myke Hurley: Like they had in there the brands. So I'm like walking around. They had Leuchterm. They obviously have Moleskine, but they had, um, A.G. Spaulding.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah.

Myke Hurley: They had, uh, a huge Lamy selection. They had, uh, Rodia notebooks. They had, um, it's relatively new as well, actually looking at the page, the page. I've only been up in a few months, it seems. Um, they had, uh, Pilot Capless.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: So which is obviously the Vanishing Point.

Myke Hurley: They had like a whole, like, selection of Vanishing Points you could buy. They had, uh, Hiroshizuku Inc.

Myke Hurley: Um, they had like the Pilot Metropolitan. They held a whole display of those. Um, I'm trying to think. Oh, they even had like the Lamy 2000, like the Lamy Dialogue 3. Like, it was incredible, this place. That's awesome. Like, I didn't buy anything because I owned all the stuff. But I was like looking around and like they had lots of like nice little things, like little, like fancy looking notebooks of companies that I wasn't, you know, weren't familiar with or whatever. But I was just like blown away by it all. It was just this incredible little place that was kind of out of nowhere. But like they obviously really knew what they were doing. Because the brands that they had, you wouldn't necessarily just think to, to get, you know? Right. Like to have Hiroshizuku Inc. Right. Is a weird thing to have.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. To see in a store. Yep. I'm with you.

Myke Hurley: Like if you don't know what you're buying, then you kind of, you know, you're not going to get that. There's no reason you would get that because that ink isn't really easy to come by, I assume. It was a shame because I wanted to kind of talk to the owners, but we had a bit of a language barrier. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Did you say, do you know who I am?

Myke Hurley: I was like, buddy, I can influence things here, you know. Have you heard of Brad Downey? Oh, she's sweet, man.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I was just kind of blown away by it. It was just this really nice place. But like I was just so surprised that it existed. Yeah. So really, really cool. Really cool. If you're ever in Paris, you should definitely check it out. That's great. It's a pen addict home away from home.

Brad Dowdy: That is very, very, very cool. I actually hadn't heard of that store. Sometimes you heard, sometimes you, you know, people do like trip reports and shop reports. This is one I have not heard of.

Myke Hurley: So if you're always asking me where to go in London to get pens, I haven't got an answer for you, but I do have an answer for Paris. So maybe you can jump on the Eurostar. It's only two hours away.

Brad Dowdy: God, that's awesome.

Myke Hurley: And then you can go and buy some Rodeo notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: So we want to, we've been, we've been sitting on something for a little while.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Myke, that we keep, honestly, we keep forgetting.

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: We keep forgetting to do this and we want to do it. Our friends at Cult Pens, I don't know if y'all remember, I don't know what episode it was, Myke. It was four or five episodes ago. Yes.

Myke Hurley: It was, it was a stupidly long time ago, which I apologize about.

Kaweco Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So they, Cult Pens, sent you one of their specially made Kaweco Classic Sport fountain pens in dark brown, which is just for Cult Pens. And they did it, number one, to send you the pen and number two, to taunt me because you had something that I don't have.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So now, in the tradition of taunting, we want to give two more people these pens and you can hold them over my head as well. So two of you can have pens that I don't have because Cult Pens has been nice enough to give us two to give away on the show. Is that right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: That's correct. So what's even better is that the way that we're going to be giving them away is via Brad's website. Right. So he has to go through all the process of picking a winner and everything, but yet he does not get to own one of these pens. That's right. So what we're going to do is, I think most people, a lot of the people listening will be familiar with like the giveaway kind of, I'm trying to think of, like the mechanic, the giveaway mechanic of pen blogs, where basically you post something in the comments and then a winner is drawn at random. So what we're going to do is, this episode, when it's posted on the Pen Addict website, so this is on penaddict.com. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: It'll post at 8 a.m. on Tuesday the 4th.

Myke Hurley: There you go. So it'll be up at 8 a.m. What time zone is that? Eastern. 8 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday the 4th. There'll be a site that on, there'll be a post on Brad's site, which is talking about the show. Now what you need to do is just go into the comments. Now we don't, what we want to do is we want to make sure this is only for listeners of the show that do this. So all you have to do is identify in some way for some sort of secret code or method that you listen to this podcast. So you could, I think really you should all just be making jokes about us, which is perfectly fine.

Brad Dowdy: That's totally fine.

Myke Hurley: Or maybe talking about the Visionaire if you want to. But you just need to identify in some way that you are a listener of the show and then someone will be picked at random within a week, say. Okay. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: And we'll announce it on next week's episode.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Well, that's not next week's episode, but Brad, how do you, what do you do to make sure you get people's information?

Brad Dowdy: I can get it just through, all they have to do is, is leave a comment and I get everything I need through that.

Myke Hurley: Great. So there you go. Leave a comment and you'll get everything, Brad, whatever it needs.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I'm not going to mention this in the post. When I write the post on the blog, I'm not going to say anything about a giveaway. It's just for people who listen and I don't know, other people might see all the comments on the post and kind of catch on. But if you're a listener of the podcast, leave a comment on the post and just let us know that you listen. You know, give us some kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge comment. And yeah, we'll pick two winners to get the pen that I don't have.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. So thank you so much to Colt Pens for that. And yeah, get in. It's a really nice little pen. I love the color of it. It's very classic. It's great. Very classic.

Brad Dowdy: It's very great. Dude, we got so much more to talk about.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I know. We haven't, we've only kind of just finished the follow-up and we're only like 40 minutes into the show. So no big deal.

Brad Dowdy: No big deal.

Domain Names

Myke Hurley: Let's talk about our second sponsor for this week. And it's our friends over at Hover. We love Hover. Hover.com is the place to buy and manage domain names. Me and Brad use Hover.com. It's the only place that we think about buying domains. And it's because they just do everything right. And they do it better than anybody else. They make it so easy to search for domains. So you've got a great idea for a business or maybe you just want to check if something's available because you had a really funny idea to troll Brad in some sort of way. You know, you should always be buying domain names to somehow troll Brad. I heartily endorse that.

Brad Dowdy: Nakaya.sexy.

Myke Hurley: Something like that. Yes, because they do all of those sort of top-level domains. Not only can you get all the top .com, .cos, .mes, but you can get like .sexy, .academy, .xyz is a new one, which is quite funny. They have all of those and they're all really well priced. But you can find out what is available very simply. You just go on to Hover.com. You just type in a keyword or a couple of words or a phrase and they will start building suggestions for you and showing you what's available and showing them to you at very low prices. For example, you can get .com domains at $12.99 now. They have recently lowered their prices on over the 200 domain options that they have available. And all of, see, one of the great things is you kind of end up saving so much money by using Hover because there's a bunch of stuff you don't have to buy, like who is privacy? Now, so many other registrars will make you pay for this. This is one of my favorite things about Hover. I mention it every time because I love it. I just think it's so important. So who is privacy, in case you don't know, when you buy a domain with a registrar, you have to put in a bunch of information that goes into the database of registration, to put it simply. So this stuff can all be asked for. So people can do what's called a who is search and they can get all of this information about you unless you have who is privacy enabled on your domain. Now, so many other registrars, I won't name names, but you can kind of guess, make you pay for this. They make you pay extra. Hover, enable it. By default, they just ask you, do you want it? If you say yes, they'll just put it on and it's free and you can enable it at any point. You can take it off at any point if you want to. But this is just something that I love. Hover, believe that your private information should stay private. And that's one of the things that I love about them. They have fantastic customer support. They have a no hold, no wait, no transfer telephone support policy. So if you have any issues, you've got any questions, you just call someone. You're going to get the answer from that person. They're going to help you because they're not going to transfer you around, bounce you around the call center. If you prefer to have robotic communication like me, you can email them. They're really great with their email support. They're very friendly, very nice, and they can help you, especially if you're in like another time zone like I am or on the other side of the world. They also have something called the valet service. So if you want to move from someone else, maybe you have like 25 domains with another registrar, well, they can take care of all of the hassle for you. You just tell them you want to move from here to here. They'll ask you some stuff. They'll ask you some bits and bobs you need to give them, and they will move all of it for you. This is going to be really difficult to do. I tried to do it once and locked a domain for like 6,000 years and I can't get it away, and it's just the worst. But Hover, know all of that. They know all the hoops that need to be jumped through, and they'll take care of it. And this is for free if you're transferring your domains to Hover. They have so much cool stuff. You should be trying them out. Go to Hover.com right now, and you want to use the code 1OVUS, or one word, at checkout. You'll get 10% off your first purchase at Hover.com with the code 1OVUS, and you'll be showing your support for the Pen Addict and Relay FM. Thank you so much to Hover for sponsoring this episode.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, Hover. I love Hover. They're great. I did transfer a bunch of domains over there a while ago. I didn't use the valet service, but it's simple enough to do on your own, and it was great.

Myke Hurley: They have guides as well if you want to do it yourself.

Brad Dowdy: Definitely. I used all that. All right. So we have a pen blog of the week, and it's not exactly a blog, but rather a newsletter. My inbox was filled with people recommending the Pen Parade newsletter from Hallie Bateman. Yeah, Hallie Bateman. She's an artist in Brooklyn, and she did a newsletter release last week where she was talking about making this beautiful... I don't even know how to... She basically just says it right in the title. A pen that's a carrot dipped in ink. And that pretty much sold me right there. And I got my... So many people emailed me this link, and I want to give credit to Ross. Ross was the first one to send me the email. But you should all go check out Hallie Bates' Pen Parade newsletter. We'll have the link in the show notes. She looks like she releases one like every two weeks or so. They're really funny. She's hilarious. I've followed her on Twitter. She's really... She's got a good feed. So go check this out. Sign up. It's free. And you'll get crazy stuff that she does in your inbox every couple of weeks. So have you had a chance to check this out, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I've not even heard of it, but I will. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I had never heard of it until I got shown this, and it's really, really funny. Basically, pens don't have to be pens. A pen can be a carrot dipped in ink. Those are words to live by, Myke. Yes. Deep. Very deep. But I like it. It's funny. So good job, Hallie. And hopefully some people will check it out. So you snuck something in on me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. What you got?

Myke Hurley: You've been up to some stuff. Well, Jeff probably has. I don't know if you've been.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Both. Mostly Jeff. But yeah. He gets all the... You know he gets all the credit.

Myke Hurley: I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you. So one is you've got some small batch cases at NotCo. Yeah. What are these?

Brad Dowdy: So what we wanted to do was we like to... It's fun to experiment. And I think this came out of the Fodderstack Fall Festival when we had a bunch of people over at the shop in September and we did a little raffle for everyone who was there. And one of the raffle items was you got to make a case of your own. A Hightower case which is the three pin slot on the left side and the memo notebook pocket on the right side. You got to basically look at all of our materials and pick out, piece together all these parts that you wanted to put together in a case and we'll make it for you right there. And it was really cool. The guy who won, I'm blanking on his name right now. He just went through, he picked out all these random colors and it ended up looking awesome. It was just like this mashup of all these different colors and patterns and threads and things like that. So we got the idea to not quite go as far as he went with the randomness, but to use some of our fabrics and just put together some cases that we thought the colors match well or just something new to put out there. But maybe they're not necessarily going to be like a standard stock item. So we're not calling them limited or anything like that because they might end up, you know, if they do really well and get good feedback, you know, maybe we'll expand on them and make some more things like that. But we just basically it's kind of like our testing bed and we wanted to see what people like and get some feedback on some new colors and things like that. So, you know, it's just it's just us having fun with what we do and making some neat some neat cases to go along with it and offering them up for sale. So they've had really good feedback so far. So very happy with how it turned out.

Myke Hurley: Something I'm even more interested in. So there's a little post put on onto the NotCo blog, just new case designs. And you're kind of talking about the process that you go through when you're because you're working on something new right now. Right. We've spoken about it already. You're working on a folio of some description. Right. For sure. And in that post, there's a couple of links to some Instagram photos of different sort of layouts for the folio. I'm really interested in this like a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's been fun like seeing what Jeff comes up with. You know, we've gone through several different designs of this folio style case right now. We haven't. We're nowhere near like locking it down and getting like the final production design ready. But it's been fun to play around with all these things. And I really like the direction it's headed and the style of the case. And what it's going to accomplish. I am really, really happy with that. Jeff, as I've mentioned before, is just a master experimenter. He can have an idea in his head scratched out onto a piece of paper and a case made like within an hour. It seems like he's just really, really good at that type of stuff. So I get all these pictures of all the time. Look what I did. I did this. What do you think? I'm like, man, this is great. So, yeah, it's just part of our thought process. Part of, you know, letting people in on the design process. Letting people know that it's not as easy as just stitching together a case and putting it up for sale. We want to do it right. And we like to get feedback from our customers and, you know, try to make a really, really good quality case that everyone's going to enjoy. So that was just part of the process behind it. So it was fun to put that out there. And, you know, you'll continue to see. We like getting feedback. And we like sharing, you know, what we're working on with everyone. Because it's fun. It's fun for us. It's fun for us to build these things and to talk about it. I mean, we love doing this. So it's just fun to be able to share these kinds of things.

Myke Hurley: I want to see if you can pry that Rotofarden out of my hands.

Brad Dowdy: I've had a couple people mention that. Like, is this going to replace certain things for me? So we'll see. We'll have to see what we can do.

Myke Hurley: Jeff did reply to me from a Twitter account with that. Oh, okay. Okay, I will get that Rotofarden away from you. Oh, okay. That's what it was. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Before we started the show today and we were prepping, I could hear this noise. It kind of sounded a little bit like this.

Myke Hurley: I don't know if you can hear that. Hang on. Yeah, you can hear it.

Myke Hurley: This is what I hear. I'm like, what are you doing? I was like, are you scribbling? And he's like, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, what are you doing? So tell me what you were doing.

Brad Dowdy: I went to the post office while I was sleeping today. The doorbell rang and I couldn't drag myself out of bed, but I knew what it was. And so I woke up to a letter from the post office saying, hey, we have a package for you. And it was about an hour before we started recording. I was like, all right, I got time to run to the post office. Myke, you were actually like, hey, I can record a little early. I'm like, yeah, I'll be on a little early, but I'm going to run an errand real quick first. And you're like, okay, see you later.

Nakaya Pen

Brad Dowdy: So I went to pick up the Nakaya that I mentioned that I bought. I knew that's what it was because it was coming from Denmark. So I had to sign for it. So I went to the post office to pick it up, rushed home, knowing that we had to record. But I wanted to go ahead and get it inked up and kind of get it broken in.

Brad Dowdy: So I cleaned it out real quick, threw some ink in it, and came in here to record. So I didn't have time to write with it. So while we were getting ready for the episode, I was starting to just scribble with it and get it flowing. So that's what I was doing. I was making scribble noises with my new awesomely orange Nakaya.

Myke Hurley: You need to see this. So if you use an app that has show notes in it, go take a look at the pictures. There's an Instagram photo. And there's also like a page on nibs.com. Or go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 127 and take a look at the links there. I am lusting badly after this pen. What is this? Like what is going on here?

Brad Dowdy: So let me give the worst pronunciation that I've ever given on the history of the Penaddict podcast. And Lux Vesperus, if you're listening, I will need a full correction of this one. You ready? So I have in my hands the Nakaya Piccolo Cigar Negoro Nuno Kise Hon Kataji Fountain Pen.

Myke Hurley: That sounded okay to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. But I have no idea, right? It's just a really, really long name. So what this is, is Nakaya's Artisans. So if you know about Nakaya's, they're a lacquered pen. So that means that the artists that make the pen are layering on, brushing on lacquer to build up the barrels of these pens. Different colors, different designs. And in this particular model, they, within that lacquering, they engrave cracks into the surface of the pen. So there's a depth into this pen where it looks like, you don't want to say broken, it doesn't look broken, but it looks like it's like a shattered, cracked pen. It's got these really unique crevices in it. Yeah. So it's got this depth into the lacquering, and they've worked around it to build up around these cracks. And it's part of the whole process of designing this pen. It's crazy. It's, like on the nibs.com page, which would link, it says they take about six months to produce these pens, to run through the whole process of making these pens, just because of the handiwork, the artwork that these guys have to do and gals to make these pens.

Brad Dowdy: It's beautiful. It's hard to explain in a picture, but it's really, really cool. And we'll go in more in depth later in it for sure. But I considered this when I was buying one of my first Nakaya, but I wanted more of a normal pen, just a more standard pen, the first one I bought. But I'd always, I mean, it's this beautiful orange color, so it's always been on my radar because I love orange.

Brad Dowdy: And I just happened to see one come up on Fountain Pen Network's classifieds and worked out a deal. And it came with an extra, extra fine nib, so I was happy about that. And so, yeah, I just, I couldn't wait to start using it, so I was scribbling a little bit when we were talking. So I've only had it in my hands for, what, like an hour, hour and a half? It's, it's, it lives up to the hype. I'm pretty happy with it.

Myke Hurley: It's pretty special looking, man. Yeah. I must say, pretty special looking. I'm very jealous of it, actually.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a lot of use out of this and like it a lot. It's very dashing pen. And you can tell it's, you can tell there's a lot of workmanship that went into this, into this pen. And it came out beautifully, and I'm very, very happy with it so far.

Myke Hurley: I, I've won a Nakaya, but I have not got the money for that.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe one of these years.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, one day. One day for sure, but right now, I don't think it's gonna, it's gonna happen. But I want one of those ones, boy.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So we'll go, uh, maybe we'll have a, uh, a big Nakaya episode. When I, when I finally do my first review of a Nakaya on the blog, which, uh, I keep putting off. Because it's, uh, hard to wrap my head around writing a review for a pen like this. But when I finally do that, which will be sooner rather than later. We will do a, uh, Nakaya episode where I can hopefully discuss, um, all the ones I have more in depth.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Sounds great.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So I want to, last week we did the, the top five, uh, pens update. I updated the, uh, top five pens blog, um, page on the Panatic blog and went through all that discussion. Talk about the top five pens, talk about all the updates that I made. And got a lot of good feedback on that and got a lot of questions on that. So I want to dig into that, Myke. But do you want to, uh, talk about another good friend of ours before we really, like, dig into these top five pens?

Myke Hurley: I sure do. This episode is also brought to you by Igloo, an internet you actually like. If you've ever used SharePoint or have an internet that feels like it's been dragged through the 90s to today, you'll know just how an internet can be dull and unengaging. Not only is it likely to be constantly out of date and nobody's bothering to update it, it basically just becomes this place where you just go and grab some information from. You know, if you work in a big company or if you just work in a smaller company that kind of haven't been able to afford to get something built themselves, intranets can be kind of, they're not what they should be. You know, they should be more. There should be something to them which really helps and benefits the organization that you're in. Well, a lot of the time, this isn't how it is. But this is what Igloo is able to fix for you. Igloo knows how important it is to connect people in your organization together. They know how when they make an office a more fun place to be, it can really help extend the culture you're trying to build and can just engage people and just create meaningful relationships between the people that work in your organization. The starting point for a lot of this with the intranet stuff is around design. But this is so much more than just putting your logo onto it and changing the colors. Of course, they allow you to do all of that. But it's about the way it feels. So with everything with Igloo, it's all widget based. It's all drag and drop. So it's super simple to configure the pages on your intranet. And you can do this with their apps that they give you. So you can add in like microblog type stuff. You can add in actual blog content. You can have your tasks in Igloo. You can have shared calendars and all that sort of stuff. So it lets the people in your office work well together. And you're able to see all of this on all devices. It works fantastic on the phone, on tablets. It's all featured responsive web design. So it's going to look great everywhere. And all of Igloo is available to use via the responsive web design that they have. You can make changes to settings and preferences all on the phone as well. You know, a lot of people kind of restrict some of that stuff. But they don't. They make it all available to you. You can customize everything with Igloo. You even have the ability to add HTML, CSS, and JavaScript globally across the site. Or maybe just in a specific team space. So you can do this with all their customization stuff. You know, with the widgets and the apps too. You can just enable certain things in certain places. So like different parts of the organization might need different structure and different layout. Where you can do all of that. Anyone with the appropriate permissions can publish content with their WYSIWYG editor. You can even build your own apps with their custom widget builder too. Basically, Igloo give you a place to make awesome stuff on your intranet. They make it feel like it's yours. And they just make it awesome all around. Igloo is free to use of up to 10 people. You can sign up right now. Igloosoftware.com slash penaddict. Thank you so much to Igloo for their continued support of this show.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you so much, Igloo.

Myke Hurley: There was one other quick thing I wanted to mention, Brad. I mentioned this in previous episodes. Which is our listener survey. But a bunch of people fill this out. And we love you guys for doing it. But if you haven't yet. Or maybe you fill that out for a different show. I'd love you to fill it out for the penaddict too. If you do it on the same computer that you filled out a previous survey on. It will save all of your results. So you don't need to enter it all in again. So this is just a quick survey that we're undertaking. To make sure that we are finding the right advertisers for you guys. It allows us to understand the types of things that you're interested in. We can match this with the right people. And just make sure that we're giving you the right type of sponsors. The companies that we're talking about today. Linda, Hover, Igloo. We know that these are the right guys for you. We want to continue to have these great relationships with our sponsors and with you. Anybody that fills out this survey. Which you'll find at podsurvey.com slash penaddict. Anybody that enters. They will have the chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. We're not going to share or sell your email address or your information. And we won't send it unless you win. So go to podsurvey.com slash penaddict. And you may win a $100 Amazon gift card. Thanks so much guys.

Top 5 Pens List

Brad Dowdy: Alright so our conversation around the top 5 pens update last week really got me thinking. And most of it was around some of the confusion I may have caused. In the difference between a recommendation and a favorite.

Brad Dowdy: And I think the top 5 list as a whole may be suffering a little bit from that confusion. So what I'm thinking about is reworking the top 5 pens list. I think it has a value. I want to keep doing it. It's definitely something I need to do and want to do. And want to keep up with. But I think it needs a little bit of a reshuffling to better define it. If you will. And spell out clearly what is a recommendation and what is a favorite. Now I don't have the final product. You know completely. I'm not completely dead set on anything yet. But just in my head I'm thinking. Like if I have a gel. A micro gel pen category. Would it be beneficial to have micro gel pens. Recommendations. Micro gel pens. Brad's favorites. Or is that too much. These are the kind of things I'm working through in my head. So I'm just trying to decide. And would like to get some feedback. On how I should break down this list. Further. Or should I just scrap all my favorite stuff out of it completely. And just really define it as the recommendations list. You know maybe that's the way to go. And in that way it's very clean. And straightforward. And you know exactly what you're looking at. Because like the fountain pens list really threw a kink into it this time. The fountain pens list is really more of a favorites list for me. Of course it contains recommendations. It's pens that I love. And pens that you know I would totally recommend you buying. But it's maybe not as clear on certain things. And I think it the fountain pens for example could use a little more breakdown anyway. Like I think I probably need to break out and have a beginner's fountain pen list. Right. And a moderate fountain pens list. Or something in a price range. You know something like that. So I think the list is getting so big it's getting a little bit convoluted. So I don't know. Those are the thoughts I'm thinking out loud. So I'd love some feedback from anyone who's listening and a fan of the list. And you know wants to see some tweaks in there. I think it definitely needs some adjustment. So do you have any thoughts on that Myke? We didn't talk about it before. So I don't want to drop it on you if you don't have anything. But I just think there needs to be some clarity in what I'm trying to accomplish with that list.

Myke Hurley: Yeah I think last week kind of what I was mentioning was like you had loads and loads of different things. So at that point I'm like suggesting more and more and more. I think maybe you have too many lists. Yep. And I'm suggesting more lists because you already have so many lists. Right. So maybe you should have less lists.

Brad Dowdy: That's what I'm thinking too. I'm thinking less lists and more clearly defined on what they are. Like spelling out a recommendation versus a favorite. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mean but then the problem is you end up doubling it again.

Brad Dowdy: Well no no no no. I'm just saying I might just leave the favorites out completely. Right. Just have a full recommendations type of list. And you know but in defining that in the beginning saying you know these are my recommendations. But you know I also want to put that maybe I can do you know one list of my top 10 favorite pens. Just of all categories. Just one list for my favorites kind of thing. So we'll see. It's something I'm playing around with. Yeah. Now let me let me throw this out there. And this is the first time I've mentioned it. And I don't know if I'm insane the amount of work this would take. What would you and the listeners think about a crowdsourced list? To where I could set up a Google Doc. We have a defined time frame to you know for everyone to post their favorites. And I put in results. You know I get results from that. I don't know that's just another thing I was thinking about. That would be cool. I don't know how much work that would involve or entail. It seems like it would be interesting enough to get other people's feedback on these lists. You know have a top 5 or 10 you know crowdsourced favorite pens. Or something. Something like that. So do you think that's a viable thing?

Myke Hurley: I think that would be pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I just got to see how much work that would entail. That won't be like the next thing coming. That's maybe like a down the line thing. If I can like really lock down you know what I want to accomplish. But I just think I got a lot of good feedback on this list this time. But I think it's gone astray a little bit. And needs some reeling in. So I'm open to feedback on that. And you know please I've gotten a bunch of emails. And a bunch of feedback already on that. So I'm open to more. And I will be working on it. Though I can promise you this. It will not be another 6 months before I redo this list. Because it's kind of weighing on my mind right now. So maybe in the next couple months. I will have at least a revamp. And a clarity update. For the top 5 pens list.

Brad Dowdy: So. We'll wrap this up on a few listener questions. That I got last week for the top 5 pens. Just some specific follow ups. On some specific products. And I don't know if I should ban Doug Lane. He had the first question in here. I don't know if we should ban him. For his idea.comment. But he actually had a pretty good question. It was something I thought about. Doug. He said. Would love your take on why. The rising. Pelican. Edelstein. Tanzanite star. Crashed and burned. And it didn't stick for me either.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. That's an ink. That I thought for sure. I would love. Was a lock. Top 5. Blue black ink. There's just something about. The shading. Or coloring. That's a little bit off for me. Actually out of the Edelstein inks. I like the Topaz better. It's a really bright blue. Kind of getting into that Sky High. Sailor Sky High. Pilot Orochizuku Kanpeki range. The Topaz is. I reach for the Topaz more than the Tanzanite. And that kind of says a lot. Because I'm such a blue black ink fan. Edelstein inks. Perform. Wonderfully.

Brad Dowdy: It's just something. A little bit. About that color. I can't. I can't put my finger on it. But I end up. Not going for that color. When I'm starting to refill pens. And clean out pens. And use different inks. I end up skipping. The Tanzanite. And that's actually. Maybe because. My. The blue blacks I like. Have a little bit of shading into them. And that's not normally. An ink color. That shades a lot. And the Tanzanite. Is really not a big shader. It's got a good sheen. The sheen looks beautiful on it. So. That's why it's kind of. Falling down the list. A little bit. At Danny Roll. Asks. Do you have more than. Three fountain pens. Inked at a time lately. Do you switch out your pens. Before using up the full ink capacity. So the first part is. I've been really really good. At keeping three fountain pens. Inked at a time. I have. The Notco Lookout. That's perfect for that. It holds three pens. The only exception is. So those three. Pens I carry in the lookout. Are like the pens out of my collection. That I want to use. For whatever reason. That I'm enjoying. The exception to that. Is when I get a new pen. In. That I need to review. So I need to. Test drive it. And so I'll. Have some extra ones. Inked up. You know. Sitting on the desk. Like I have the. Karis Custom ink. Inked up. Inked up. And I just got this. Nakaya. The new Nakaya. So it's inked up. So now I maybe have like. Five pens inked up. But yeah. I've been doing really really good job. At keeping it to three. Core pens that I use. And then plus. I might have. A couple more. That I need to review. Which. I guess you have to count in that list. I don't. I don't really. Because. They don't usually come with me. Just the three that I have inked. And I'm carrying with me. So. That's actually worked out pretty well.

Brad Dowdy: Danny also asked. Or commented saying. Adding the Murex is not fair. Do you believe you and ClickyPost. Have the power to increase the prices. Of vintage pens on eBay. Not me. But Dudek does for sure.

Brad Dowdy: He's a. He's a culprit of rising prices. You know. And the Murex was kind of. One of the pens. That. Has me thinking about. Redoing these lists anyway. Because yeah. Maybe it is not fair. To do it. But. I also. If I'm going to say. It's one of my favorite pens. Of all time. And. You can actually buy them. Somehow. You know. Even though it's. Secondary markets. Should it be on the list. So. I've got a lot of thinking about. How I'm going to do those type of things. In the top five list. Going forward. So. We'll have to work on that. Um.

Brad Dowdy: Trent asks. Says. My favorite pen is the. Uniball 207 Ultra Micro. I vastly prefer thin tips. What is a quality. Pen upgrade here. I'd like to get a. Similar. Ultra fine tip ballpoint. But nicer. So I think he's asking about. Barrel upgrades. And this is an easy one for me. Since I. I. Talked about it so much. Last episode. The TI2 Tech Liner. Is made for the Uniball 207. Um. I love that. Pen. If you want a ballpoint. I would get the. Jetstream. I'd look at the Jetstream Alpha. That JetPens carries. That refill. Does not work. In the. TI2 Tech Liner. Despite the fact that it fits. The magnetism. Does not allow the ink. To flow properly. In the Jetstream. If you can believe that. Um. The way the ink's manufactured. I don't have all the specs. But Myke Bonds. Talked about it before.

Myke Hurley: That's crazy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Something in the. Uh. The ink formulation. Does not allow it to flow well. Um. Through the magnet. That the. Um. That the refills are slotted through. So. I'd look at the Jetstream Alpha. Plus you can get the .38. Uh. Millimeter Jetstream refills. Which is thinner than any. Uniball 207. You will ever use. No matter how small.

Brad Dowdy: Um. Um. Michael Green. Just had a comment. Says. At least one. And often two. And up to three. Uniball pins. In all. Non-fountain pin. Categories. That is. They say. In. In German is. You want to go for that? You. You have this mic?

Myke Hurley: Uh. Record. Uh. Uh. Stig.

Brad Dowdy: We need Ryder back on. Yeah. Recorder. Stig. Which. Uh. I had to look that up. And that's. Uh. German for record breaking. So he was commenting. He was commenting on how many. Uniball pins I have in the list. For non-fountain pins. Um.

Brad Dowdy: Uniball. Uniball.

Brad Dowdy: You really can't go wrong. The only Uniball pin. That's readily available. That I do not like. Even a little bit. Is the. Vision. The standard. Um. Standard Uniball. Vision. It's just. A really. Really. Inky pin. It bleeds a lot. Um. It does not leave a good line. Outside of the vision. Pretty much everything. Uniball does is spot on. Um. Carl asked. Does the exclusivity. Of the cult pins. Deep dark blue. Keep it out of top five. Consideration. My answer to him. I just replied back. Nope. Um. I did my best. Jim Dalrymple on that one. It's just. It's just not a. A top five for me. Even though. I might. I think I might even have it. Inked up in one of my pins. Right now. It's a great ink. But it's not. It's. It's hard to get into the. Uh. Top five. To break into the top five. Blue blank. Blue black ink category. I've probably got ten. That I rotate through. And that's one of them. But um. It's. It's right there. Like around the five. Six spot. It's a great. It's a great ink. But it's. It's a deep dark blue. And I like a little bit of shading. In my blue black inks.

Myke Hurley: I like blue blink.

Brad Dowdy: Blue blink. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Blue blink is one of my favorites.

Brad Dowdy: If I. If I ever come out with my own ink. We'll call it blue blink. Perfect. Deal? Deal. All right. Let's end it on that. Perfect ending to a perfect episode. Michael.

Myke Hurley: Sounds good to me. If you want to catch the show notes for this week's episode. Go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 127. If you want to catch Brad online. He is at Dowdy. As I'm on Twitter. And he is at penaddict.com. I am Myke Hurley. I am at iMike. I am YKE. And I'm the host of many shows on relay.fm. If you'd like to catch more of me. You can. There's lots of me on the network. Thanks again to our sponsors for this week. Our friends at Linda. Hover. And Igloo. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back next time. But until then. Say goodbye Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye Brad.