The Pen Addict 136/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	136
Title:	Have You Seen This Pen?
Release Date:	January 5th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 136
Audio File:	Audio Episode 136
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 136
Length:	6363 min <br />1.05 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 136. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet, great deals on high quality pens, over 100% satisfaction guarantee. Harry's, an exceptional shave at a fraction of the price, and Hover, simplified domain management. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined as always by The Pen Addict himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey buddy.

Myke Hurley: How you doing?

Brad Dowdy: How we doing? I'm good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm good too. Everybody's good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's Monday. It's Pen Addict Day. I'm coffeed up. I've been filling the chatroom pre-game stream with curse words. And so that just means I am ready to roll and knock some heads today, I guess. I don't know.

Myke Hurley: I can think if there's ever a reason enough to join the chatroom that people want to hear you curse, they can do that. We do record this show live. If you go to Relay.fm.com slash schedule, you can find out when the show records and you can go to Relay.fm.com slash live when it does and you can listen along.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep. So I've got a few bits of follow-up and some recurring theme chit-chat I wanted to get to if that's good with you for a little bit. I like chit-chat. Chit-chat. But with the knowledge that I am going overboard on the field notes here again, we get in these runs we've talked about before where we have these recurring threads over like three or four episodes. And by the time we get to like the second or third episode, everyone's tired of hearing about the same topic. But we talked about the Starbucks Roastery Edition last week on the field notes, the special one you have, right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Orange Dot Grid Notebook

Brad Dowdy: So I talked about how nice looking it was and really good looking. And last night, I still hadn't taken it out of the package. So I unwrapped it last night to start using one and I opened it up and I didn't realize that it had an orange inside cover and an orange dot grid.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I mean, I think I just ignored you when you were talking. And I just I didn't put two and two together, right? Like I didn't see it with my own eyes. So I was just like, oh, that's nice. You know, it's a wooden cover field notes. I'm probably not going to use it. And I opened this up and it was like, you know, it was like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, you know? Yeah. It's like the light just hit my eyes. I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. So I wanted to say I'm a little slow on the uptake. I apologize to you for ignoring your orangisms on the last show.

Brad Dowdy: And this is one of the most beautiful editions I've laid my hands on now that I've actually opened it and I'm going to start using it.

Myke Hurley: So that was what I was saying about like the coffee information on the inside, you know?

Brad Dowdy: You know, you'd think there'd be two people on this podcast and the other one would pay attention, wouldn't you?

Myke Hurley: You know, these things happen.

Brad Dowdy: Happens. You know, so who knows what I was doing at the time you were talking. But this orange dot grid, man, that's made for me. So I'm excited.

Brad Dowdy: I'm excited.

Myke Hurley: Orange dot grid sounds like a great domain name for you. I don't know if there is a dot grid domain. Let me see if such a thing exists. That'd be great. You could get like...

Brad Dowdy: Oh, that'd be cool. That would be sold. Dot grid would be sold already if it was. But you could always do orange dot grid, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no, it doesn't look like there is such a thing.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, they need to step up. I mean, they have dot plumbing, right?

Myke Hurley: Exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So one more quick field notes thing. And this is the big crossover field notes link. Myke, did you see this link I put in about the new Punisher? I don't know if this is a comic or graphic novel. Did you see this?

Myke Hurley: No, I haven't seen this.

Brad Dowdy: So field notes, there's a group called It's Tactical that's always done their own stamping on their field notes and they sell them through their website. It's always been a thing. I mean, for years and years and years, It's Tactical has always done this and they're kind of well known for their logo. The field notes, It's Tactical notebook made the cover of the Punisher comic book that was released this week. Wow. It's insane. I mean, it's literally the exact, I mean, it says right there on the front cover of the Punisher, it says field notes and it's got the It's Tactical logo, which is this skull and a shield kind of a looking thing. How crazy is that?

Myke Hurley: The writer or the artist or something, probably the artist must be a Field Notes user, right?

Brad Dowdy: Must be.

Myke Hurley: Maybe somebody sent it to them because it has a skull on it, you know? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, he probably, you know, talks with some of It's Tactical people about the, you know, weapons and gear and stuff that they use. You know, as he's writing the comic, I'm just, you know, that's pure make-believe on my part. But it's right smack in the middle of the cover. I mean, it's not even hidden. It's not like you see a corner of it. I thought that was pretty insane. That's a big deal. So I just, I mean, not really much to say about that except how cool is that?

Myke Hurley: That is awesome. That is really sweet. I love seeing things like that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So I wonder if it shows up again in the pages. I wouldn't. We'll have to see. So I put together the show notes last night and I put in all these things I want to talk about. And then I check it right before the episode today. And, you know, you've usually added things. And then I'm looking at this one entry you made. And I'm like, did I not delete this from like six months ago?

Brad Dowdy: So do you have a confession to make or what's going on here? All I see is Myke's missing pin. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure we covered this already. Did we have another issue, Michael?

Missing Ink

Myke Hurley: Well, do you remember last week I mentioned that my ink had gone missing?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, that's right. You were looking around the room.

Myke Hurley: It has not shown up.

Brad Dowdy: Are you serious?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Nobody has seen it.

Myke Hurley: So I don't know where it's gone and I fear it's missing.

Brad Dowdy: Have you taken apart your rucksacks?

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And backpacks? Yep. And that's where I usually find them because I switch between bags sometimes and I'll find one, you know, months later in a backpack that I didn't ever transferred out. Oh, that really sucks.

Myke Hurley: There's a certain someone very upset in the chat room right now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's like the, it's the a thousand emoji workflow sort of is hitting our chat room window right now. Mr. Dan. Dan.

Myke Hurley: Trust me, Dan. Nobody is, is more upset than I am about this because it's, you know, it was, it's the, the one with the, with the retro 51 refill. So it's my favorite of the two as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it's the roller, roller version.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So I've been using the fountain pen, uh, cause I have that in my, in my bag. So I've been using that when I've been out and about to try and make up for a little bit, but, um, I've picked up the Twisby 540 ROC again and that's sitting next to me as my show notes pen at the moment. So I thought I needed to try and do something to try and make me feel better. Cause I was using a retro 51 and it was kind of making me feel a little bit sad that I'd lost the ink. You know? Cause it was kind of just like reminding me that it's gone and I don't know where it is. It could still show up. Like I, I cannot work out. How it's gone missing because it doesn't leave my desk and I am like as sure as I can be that I didn't take it anywhere because my, my, my topo bag has pens in it always. So, and it has a, it has a retro 51 in there and it has the ink fountain pen in there. So I wouldn't have taken the ink with the retro 51 with me anywhere when I went away for the holidays. So I don't know where it's gone, man, but it's, it's, it's, it's making me sad. And I'm asking everyone in my family and everyone's like, no, no idea.

Brad Dowdy: So, um, you need to put that on Craigslist or put some signs up around the neighborhood or the coffee shop or something. Lost pen.

Myke Hurley: Have you seen this pen? And it looks just like this one, but the inverse reward. Yeah. Yeah. That's really sad. I'm really bummed out about it. I'm really bummed out about it.

Brad Dowdy: I can tell you're really bummed out and I'm getting more and more bummed out for you. So, uh, yeah, that stinks. I, I hate when that happens. It rarely happens to me. It's happened from time to time. Um, but not on something like, like I super love, like I know you, how much you love that pen and that just makes it really, really difficult. So that sucks. I feel for you, buddy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, uh, so it'll, it'll turn up in like a year and just some random place.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I mean, I've been just like, look, I've just, I'm doing it now as well. Like I'm just looking around.

Brad Dowdy: It's like that lost dog. It's like, I'm pretty sure it's here somewhere.

Myke Hurley: Every time I think about it, I go crazy about it. Yeah. Now I'm like under the desk somewhere. Yep.

Myke Hurley: And I know when, if it, when it does show up, it's going to be like, Oh my God, it was under my keyboard. You know, that kind of thing. I've literally just picked up my keyboard to check, by the way.

Brad Dowdy: Was it there?

Myke Hurley: No, you would have known if it was, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: Man, that's terrible. I think we should, uh, uh, have it like a in memoriam at the end of this episode, play, like play a little song, little bagpipes, um, for your ink.

Ink Correction

Myke Hurley: I think we might have to, man.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Speaking of ink, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get your mind off of the, off of your ink. Um, I have a correction from last week. Um, I was mentioning the new 2015 Lamy AL star in the orange and they were selling, uh, orange ink cartridges to match it. Yeah. And, uh, right after the show, everyone let me know that last year's Coral Safari also had a Coral special edition ink that they sold with that. And I remember once people started, uh, pinging me that I realized, yep, absolutely. But, um, that's, that's cool. I I'm glad that they do that little extra thing for these pins. Cause Lamy actually releases a lot of special editions, kind of like retro 51. You know, there's like, if you miss one, you know, just wait a few months and there'll be another one you can, you can pick up. So anyway, I just thought I wanted, I wanted to make that correction.

Myke Hurley: Sorry. I remember a bright yellow one.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah. I have that one. That was, that was one of my first fountain pens is a, um, like a chartreuse fluorescent yellow, uh, Safari. That was one of my first fountain pens that I owned. Still have it. Never use it sitting away in the closet, but, uh, I do have it. And, uh, every now and then I'll break it out. I, I really love how the Lamy Safari feels, um, when I write with it. It's just a good pen. I just never write with it just because of all the other pens I have, but it's very, very enjoyable when I do. And it's one of those pens. I have pens that I actually miss when I don't use them. That's one of them.

Brad Dowdy: So kind of like your ink.

Brad Dowdy: Well, let's, let's get happy for a moment and talk about, uh, one of our really good friends. And, uh, we got a bunch more to get to.

Myke Hurley: Let's talk for a moment about our friends over at hover. They are the best place to buy and manage domains. If a dot grid domain was available, that is where I would have rushed to buy orange dot grid for Brad. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: There's going to be a, there's going to be a land rush.

Myke Hurley: I was, I was going to go and buy all of the dot grid domains that were available. However, none, none, not a TLD dot grid does not exist. However, hover has all of the ones that you would want though. Like if they have hundreds of options of TLDs, they used to have, you know, what it used to be, right? They have all of those ones. They have your dot coms, dot cos, dot net. They have dot me. You can go dot co.uk, dot tv, dot fm, you know, all the standards that you've been used to for years, but they have so many more. They have, oh, like you name it. They've got it. You want to get dot diamond. Maybe you want to get dot limo. What about dot x, y, z? You can get all of these at hover.com. They have all of the top level domains to maybe, you know, maybe, maybe you're looking for dot business. Maybe you've got some business you want to do, you know, uh, maybe you're looking for dot fish. Maybe you're a fishing person. You want that kind of thing. I'm just looking through hover's website right now. There are hundreds and hundreds of options, all at great prices, really competitive pricing. Hover aren't the cheapest, right? You can go to other places and you can find cheaper, cheaper domains, but I tell you what you're not going to get with those people. You're not going to get a fantastic experience, right? You're not going to get a site that's going to take you all the way through without hassling you and bothering you. You're not going to get a company that doesn't email you with stupid promotions, right? Hover don't do any of this. And if you go somewhere else, that's what you're going to find. You go to any other domain registrar, you're going to get a terrible experience. Hover have fantastic customer support. They have a no hold, no wait, no transfer television support policy. They have great email support. This is what you get with Hover, right? This is what you're getting. You're not getting people that don't care about you and don't ever want to speak to you on the phone. With Hover, you get Whois privacy for free, including with all of their domains. Basically, what this is, is it keeps your personal information private. When you register a domain, a bunch of free information gets entered into this database, which people can search on and they can find your information if you don't have Whois privacy. Every other domain registrar that I've ever seen or had ever used before I found the wonder of Hover will charge you extra for this. And this is insane. Why should you have to pay to keep your personal information like private? You just shouldn't have to pay for that. Hover believe in that and they give it to you for free. If you have a bunch of domains elsewhere, you can use their valet transfer service. They can basically, you just give them all the information that Hover needs and they will take all of your domains from other places and they will bring them into Hover for you for free if you switch them to Hover. Which is incredible because you don't get all locked up in the crazy DNS nightmares that these other services want to do to stop you from leaving. Hover are the experts. They know what they're doing. I love them. I couldn't speak highly enough of these guys. They're fantastic supporters of what we're doing at Relay, but more than anything else, they have a great product. If you are looking to buy a domain name, go to Hover.com. If it's your first purchase over at Hover.com, you can get 10% off if you use the code space credits, all one word. That will also show your support for this show. If you've used them to buy a domain in the past or you used them to buy another one, you may be an existing customer, tweet at them as well. Say that you heard about them on this show. That will really help us out. However you want to tell Hover, if you use the code, let them know on email, social media that you know about them from the pen addict. It will really help us. Thank you so much to Hover for supporting this show and for helping us out at RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: That's awesome. Space credits. Space credits. So I don't want to take credit. The space credits thing is something that I keep saying over and over. Ed Jelly gets full credit for the term space credits. I just want that to be on the record. So people credit that to me. And it was actually Ed Jelly blew our mind one time when he was on our show. And that refers to that PayPal account where you keep kind of the fun money in. Those are your space credits. And that has stuck. And it's a brilliant term.

Brad Dowdy: Our label mate, Michael, Mr. Stephen Hackett, our friend and cohort here at RelayFM, he had a post on his 512 pixels blog that we will have in the show notes at relay.fm slash pen addict slash 136. The title of the post is called On Paper Notebooks in a Digital World. And Stephen's an actual, he's a paper convert as of a few years ago. Carrying, you know, a field notes book or some type of memo book with him. And he just did a short post on how he files and sorts and scans and does some of the stuff. He's done this before and he's just kind of done an update on his field notes. I wanted to put that in there and send you guys his way to read this post.

Brad Dowdy: It just shows how he goes through things. And I failed a little bit at this system. But it's always one of those things that I want to do. I don't know if you're, do you, we've talked about scanning before and we've talked about like DoxyFlips and things like that. Do you still scan notebooks or have you ever gotten into like a heavy scanning notebook archival workflow type of thing?

Myke Hurley: I have scanned them and I have a stack of five here waiting to be scanned. But that stack has been growing quicker than I've been scanning. The best thing about Stephen's post is just to look at the image. Of his field notes covers. I just love the way they look.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I totally, I maximized that and like went through all of them. And it was just fun to look at, you know, the, the worn images of the covers. He does a full cover shot front and back as the cover image for that file. It's pretty sweet.

Brad Dowdy: Pretty sweet. Yeah. So that's something.

Myke Hurley: If you can guess every edition, you know.

Brad Dowdy: Ooh, yeah. Yeah. Don't get me started on that now, but I'll start looking. But yeah, super cool post by Stephen. Go check it out. For sure.

Brad Dowdy: Something that just popped in our feeds literally 30 minutes before the show, Myke, I'd say. was an interesting item on the, was it on Amazon, the UK Amazon store?

Myke Hurley: Amazon.co.uk. This came to us from Ben Weil on Twitter. Basically, at the moment, you can get a capless fountain pen fine. It's a pilot vanishing point. Exactly. Exactly. It's known as the capless in other markets. Like in the UK, it's called the capless. You can get it for £54 at the moment, which is incredible for a price. I don't really know who's selling this. Like it says it, but I don't know these people. But like they're doing, like you can kind of see like customers have viewed this also. There are a bunch of different places that you can pick one of these up for. It's a great price if you're looking for a vanishing point and you're in the UK. So I would definitely check it out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So just, you know, top of the head conversion. That's probably like around $100 US, which is way cheaper than you can get a vanishing point for. Yeah. Normally, they're usually 140 is about the going rate and they rarely go on sale. Yep.

Myke Hurley: It's hard to find a pen that is cheaper to buy in sterling than it is to get it converted from dollars. And this is one of them.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So, yeah, that's very cool. I did the same thing you did. We both did. Whoa, that's a great price when we saw that come through our feeds. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: On the flip side, the not a great price. It looks like the Estabrooks are becoming available.

Estabrook Pens

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Brad Dowdy: Ugh. They're Farnese pens, which I actually just used for the first time about two weeks ago. I bought the Montblanc JFK ink. I got a sample of that. And we'll be talking about that more because it's a really great ink. That's the only place I could find that has it.

Myke Hurley: I think I've got a Retro 51 from these guys before. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: They're a really well-known pen store. They're very popular. Been around for ages and ages. This Estabrook thing doesn't have anything to do with them at all. They just happen to. This is where Estabrook is pointing now. The new Estabrook that we've talked about in the past is pointing people saying, hey, Farnese pens now carries this pen. They don't have, Estabrook does not have them on their site yet. But what made me want to talk about this is, number one, I've had some emails. Hey, have you done any follow-up on Estabrook? And I hadn't. And B, friend of the show, Anthony York, tweeted me saying he just got banned from their Facebook page.

Myke Hurley: Wow. What was he doing?

Brad Dowdy: Which is always fun. I don't know. I don't know. I didn't ask him. But it's just typical. It's how they're running their stuff. So you're forewarned is all I can say. You know, these Estabrooks, in my opinion, are ugly.

Brad Dowdy: Overpriced. But the biggest problem I have is the way the people that own the company are handling themselves. What they do is, the first sentence in every thing about the pen, their new pen or their new product. Let me just say, the regular fountain pen is $70. The high-end one, that silvery one, is $350. And they have a rollerball that's $60 or $65, I think.

Myke Hurley: I can't work out how you jump from $70 to $350. Yeah. Well, not the way that these look. Apparently, it's made from solid sterling silver, which has been hand-etched with a unique check pattern and hand-polished.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Available with a German iridium silver-plated nib medium.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They need me to hand-polish anything. You know? Let me know. I'm pumped.

Brad Dowdy: So, here's my biggest problem. Everything you read from these guys pumping out about this pen, it says, Estabrook, comma, America's original pen company since 1858, comma, and then carry on. These pens are not made in the U.S.

Myke Hurley: How do you know that?

Brad Dowdy: Because they won't answer the question, where are the pens made?

Myke Hurley: That's a good enough reason. Yeah. I'm just, I'm poking you. I want to hear what you're saying here. You know?

Brad Dowdy: It's so simple, Myke. So simple. Hey, where are your pens made? We are proud to have our pens made in the U.S.

Myke Hurley: Well, you'd say that, wouldn't you? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Never, ever, ever. And they, I'm guessing that's why Anthony got kicked off their Facebook page. I left them a message a long time ago, last time we, last time I yelled about Estabrook, and they never answered it. I don't know if it eventually got deleted. I didn't care that much because they just annoy me. Um, it's super frustrating to see a company handle themselves in this manner. And it, there's not many things that bend me out of shape than, than actions like this. It doesn't have to be this way, but, um, they're obviously, um, trying to, I don't know. I don't know what they're trying to do, to be quite honest. Just, they're trying to re, re, uh, relaunch this brand. They're just really bad at it. So anyway, that's my Estabrook rant. And, uh, I, uh, you know, more to come, but there, there's no way these pens are made in the U.S. and they just won't answer the question.

Myke Hurley: Who's going to be the first person to buy one? Yeah. Like in the circle and, um, try it out.

Brad Dowdy: I'd be super wary of even carrying them, to be perfectly honest, but I'm not a retailer. So who knows? I'm sure they're perfectly fine overpriced pens. Yeah. I'm interested.

Myke Hurley: I also don't feel like I'm the right person to judge it. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's what you have me for. Yeah. That's what you have me for.

Myke Hurley: I bought the Visionaire, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Way to go. What did I tell you, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Are you going to do it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You, you, you did, you did it to, uh, you did it for the greater good though. You did. I will give you that. So, um, I will not be buying an Estabrook for the greater good. There's no way that pens a $70 pen. So forget that. So, um, all right, let's get to, um, a quick topic here where we want to talk about our stationary resolutions for 2015. Um, we've done this in the past and we just talk about some things we're either looking at, um, to do, um, you know, in the upcoming year, as far as, you know, pens, pencils, paper, things like that go, um, things we want to change things. Um, you know, we want to try like in the past, like last year, mine was to use the Hobonichi Techo and I failed miserably. Um, so, you know, we always, you know, at least we don't spend too much time on these resolutions. I'm not a big resolution guy, um, to begin with, but, um, you know, I've got some ideas on some things I want to do with my pens and paper. And you, you want me to go first, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let's do it.

Brad Dowdy: So my primary goal this year is to consolidate. Um, I've been by, I still buy plenty of pens and I get plenty of pens from vendors and things like that, but I really want to thin the herd a little bit and, you know, not anything aggressive, crazy. I'm not going to say, okay, I'm only allowed to own 10 pens. I mean, I can barely stay under 10 inked pens. I'm not going to just own 10 pens. Um, there's lots of pens I want to own. There's lots of pens that, you know, I own that may not get used for a year, but that I'll never get rid of, you know, like I haven't been using my Parker 51 very much, but there's no way I'm getting rid of that pen, right? It's just one of those cool pens you have. And, you know, every now and then I'll use it, but I think there's room to kind of trim around the edges of some of the pens that I'm not using, um, as much right now that could actually go to a better home and, you know, I could, I could sell them or do something with that. I just want to kind of tighten up and I want to be a little bit more patient when I'm buying pens. Um, you know, and just not get like a, this hair trigger mentality and just like start, you know, popping the space credits button whenever I see something cool and, um, you know, just kind of take a chill for a minute and figure out where that pen's going to fit in my usage. And is it going to have a, uh, a primary spot in the overall big picture of my pen collection? Um, so that's kind of the big one for me is to consolidate what I have and be more, um, considerate of when I make a purchase, how I'm going to use those pens that I buy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Secondly, I want to break through the blue black ink, um, phase that I'm in and it's not a phase. I mean, it's my favorite ink. Like, so I'm always going to have blue black pens inked up, but if I have eight pens inked up, I don't need seven of them inked up with blue black. And that's literally what I have most of the time. Okay. There's no point of that. You know, use a green, use an orange, use a red, use a purple, use a turquoise, whatever. You know, I get stuck trying all these different blue black and navy inks and I love them so much. I can't get out of it. So I'm going to have more ink diversity. Um, if you will, this year, you know, you're going to see me writing in, in more, more ink colors, hopefully. And finally, I think this was the same one as last year and I failed at it, um, as well then is I need to sketch and draw more. You know, I'm not talking about like creating art pieces like to hang on a wall, but I, I need to get the ideas out of my head on the paper, no matter what they look like. And I've been doing this so far. It's only been a few days. Um, and just, you know, a notebook and just, you know, if I'm listening to music or something like that, I'll just be scribbling little drawings, which I never do. It's a really freeing and releasing, um, kind of thing. It's almost like a meditation. Um, and I, I did not do that last year at all and I really want to do that. So that's something I'm actually going to have to force myself. The other two, I think I can just work into my routine. The sketching thing is something I'm going to have to make myself do and force myself and have time. So that's kind of what I'm doing. And, um, those are, those are kind of my, my plans for 2015.

Myke Hurley: Explain the sketching thing to me a bit more. Do you mean like sketching out ideas or just like sitting and scribbling like to like, you know, when you're in the conference call or something?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it's both. I actually have like this one page. I, everything I, it's kind of doodling and sketching if you will, at the same time, like I have, you know, just one of the knock notebooks I have right here on this page. I have like a backpack design that I'm working on. So I'm playing around with that. But then also at the, um, at the same time I was listening to a song, um, called whiskey bottle by uncle Tupelo, which is one of my favorite songs. And, you know, I drew out like imagery of some of the lyrics in the song just to kind of, you know, that's like two separate things. One is like, okay, let me sketch out some product ideas or just goof around with some product ideas and see what, see what happens, see what ideas I get. And then secondly, let's just, you know, really just kind of do something different and, uh, and play around, you know, like I did that little Aaron Draplin sketch the other day that I posted on Instagram. Oh yeah, I like that.

Myke Hurley: I like that a lot actually. That was fun.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That came out of, I wasn't sitting to draw Aaron Draplin. I was like, well, let me draw a hat and then a beard. And I was like, holy crap, that looks like Aaron. It was just, you know, that kind of stuff. You know, I need that expression a little bit more. So it's something that's inside me that I have to get out. And that's a huge, huge challenge for me. More so than like journaling, like then, you know, sticking with a, a, a daily planner for a year. Sketching is much harder for me to, um, to actually accomplish something.

Myke Hurley: So maybe you should sketch in a daily planner. Therefore you have to do it every day. What about, I could like cross those streams.

Brad Dowdy: Well, it's actually, um, I did get the idea a little bit from Patrick Rohn, who in his Techo every day, he puts in a little mini sketch, you know, just of something. So he's like committed to doing it. Um, and I, I kind of got that idea because I kind of sketched like him. My sketches are like really, really small, um, like footprints, you know, like on this one page and a three, three and a half by five and a half notebook, I've got like probably six or seven different images. You know, I, I do that stuff like really, really small. So anyway, so that's what I'm working on.

Myke Hurley: Sounds good. Right. I have, I have a, I have a few of my own, uh, but before we do that, how about we thank our second sponsor for this week's episode?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that'd be great.

Myke Hurley: The holidays are over and now's the time to start fresh and start making smarter decisions. And you can do this with our friends at Harry's. Many of us are thinking about what we're going to do. Differently in 2015. Maybe you're thinking about going to the gym. Maybe you want to eat healthier. Maybe you want to draw every day. Well, why not start giving a bit more love and attention to your handsome face? It's time to make the smart switch to Harry's. Harry's have high quality German engineer blades that are crafted for sharpness and precision. We're talking half the price of big name drugstore brands. None of the hassle that you have to go through to buy them. These are blades that are great quality. You don't overpay anymore and they get delivered to your door. That is like a perfect mix right there. Harry's.com was started by a couple of guys who are passionate about creating a better shaving experience. It reminds me a bit about like, you know, Brad and Jeff. They're a couple of guys that love what they love and they wanted to make something. So they did it in the way that they wanted to. And this is something that the guys at Harry's have done too. They have created products that look fantastic. I have a Harry set of my own and I love the way that like the classic design of the blades and the handles and stuff like that. I just love how it looks. It just harkens back to like a simpler time, which is quite nice when you're doing something which is so like,

Myke Hurley: it's so old school shaving because, you know, if you're doing it with a blade, because it hasn't really advanced that much, you know. You've got companies like Gillette that are throwing all kinds of things on there, you know, like 25 blades and 16 L.O. Vero pads. But it's still like effectively the same thing. It's a razor blade on your face. Like that's pretty much the same. And like their products really kind of signify that. And I quite like it. And, you know, as well, of course, the products feel great on my skin. I love the way that the gel feels. I love their foaming shave gel, which is like this little gel and you kind of rub it in your hands and it turns into this big foam, which is really interesting. I like the way that looks, but they have that great smelling stuff. It's all great. You know, they bought this factory in Germany that has been crafting some of the world's highest quality blades for almost a century. They saw what these people were doing and they wanted it. So they decided that they would buy the factory and cut out the middleman. And that's how they can give you their great blades at a great cost. The starter set is just $15. This includes the razor, three blades, and your choice of Harry's shaving cream or foaming shave gel. Shipping is free, so you don't have to worry about the price jumping up when you get to the checkout screen. Go to harrys.com and they will give you $5 off if you use the code PENADDICT with your first purchase. That's harrys.com and the code PENADDICT. Start shaving smarter today with Harry's. Thank you so much to Harry's for sponsoring this week's show and helping us out at RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So not only am I a Harry's customer, and we've spoken about this, I was a Harry's customer before they even started sponsoring our show or shows on the network. My wife is now a Harry's customer too. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I bought the last time they sponsored was before Christmas and they had those new handles. They had kind of like this icy blue one. So I bought that to upgrade my orange acrylic one. And when it came in, I was like, you know, I think my wife would like one of these. So I let her pick and she picked the new icy blue one. And we are now both Harry's customers and very happy about that as well.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's something, you know, I definitely focus on the man aspect because that's my mindset. And obviously, they're kind of focused around that. They make their blades tailored to that. And there are different considerations to think about for women. Sure. And my understanding is that they are looking at it. But obviously, they can be used for both.

Brad Dowdy: Totally. Yeah, she loves it. Very good.

Stationery Resolutions

Myke Hurley: That's really cool. I like that. Yep. So we should probably talk about my stationary resolutions. We should have given them a snappier name than that, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I'll go ahead and help you out. Number one, find the ink.

Myke Hurley: Well, that is actually on there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we should have had a, you know, we've done this for three or four years. And we've never had anything besides stationary resolutions for the name. So maybe the chat room can help us out with that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we can think about that for next year. One of my resolutions is to find my missing ink. Yeah. What I haven't got on there this year, which I've had in previous years, like kind of related in name, is to try out more inks. Like, I'm not really interested in it anymore. I just ended up being I'm not really an inks person. Right. I like what I like. So one thing for me is I need to buy less notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, man, that's like totally obvious. And I didn't even think about that.

Myke Hurley: I have too many already. I'm looking at like, you know, I'm running out of space to store these things. And I'm buying more and people send me more. You know, the great listeners of this show are always sending me stuff. Which is amazing. I love it.

Brad Dowdy: What did I tell you right before the show started?

Myke Hurley: I know. Yeah. I've got another book on the way. I said, hey, I'm sending you some notebooks. Yeah. So if I renew my field notes description, which I'm pretty sure I will, I'm not going to buy extras unless it's like super special. But it has to be really special, you know, and I'm not buying any until they at least arrive. Because what I've been doing for so many times, I think this, like the last maybe year or two years, the only books I've not done it for is the Ambition Edition. I've bought more of every pack before they've bought more of every pack before they've even arrived. I need to stop doing that because my next resolution is to use more notebooks. I am not using them anymore. Yeah. Let me rephrase that. I use them, but I'm not using them at the same rate. I would go through a field notes book, a single book, maybe every three weeks when I was at my day job. I am currently not doing that. I don't know what uses to use for my notebooks. I use the larger field notes, which I have next to me all the time when I'm recording the shows and I take down notes for edits and stuff like that. And I do use that, but I go through one and like it takes weeks to go through because I use one page for like three shows sometimes because there's not really a lot for each show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You know, so I need to find new uses. I mean, I always have a field notes like in my bag and when I'm at my desk, I always have one. And when I'm on phone calls, I take notes. But I don't have enough phone calls even.

Brad Dowdy: You want me to give out your phone number?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, let's do that.

Myke Hurley: You know what I mean? Like I have like business calls and stuff. Like I'm looking at this one book here. I have two pages left in it and I started it. Oh, I can't even see because. Oh, I started it in October.

Myke Hurley: It's just been sitting by my computer. And then I have a couple that I keep in my topo, which I take when I go co-working. And I had a call today, so I use one page. Like I need to find more uses for notebooks. Maybe this is a similar thing to you. I need to think about that a little bit more, you know, like sketching or something. But I don't know when I do that. I think I need to stop feeling like I need to write everything into a digital system because it's searchable and backed up and syncable. That's where I'm putting a lot of these notes. So maybe I don't need to do that. Maybe I shouldn't do that. The other thing, which is something that I was thinking, oh, what can my resolutions be? And then I had like another thought. What could help me use this stuff more? I want to start thinking about a perfected EDC. Okay. I want to start thinking about what do I want to have on me? Like, so obviously it would be a field note, but I'm thinking like, what is the EDC, the everyday carry? Sorry for people that don't know. What is the everyday carry pen for me? And I want to go back to thinking about that a little bit more.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I like that. That's something we should do an episode on that. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And I'm thinking like, you know, what do I put it in? And I've got all these great knock products that I don't use enough. And I'm thinking like, let me think about this. Like what can be a really good everyday carry setup that I can use? And I'm thinking like wider than this as well, because I need a new wallet.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right.

Myke Hurley: Right. So here, oh no, I shouldn't have said it. I shouldn't have said it. But yeah, guys, I need a new wallet. Help me out here. I need a new wallet. So, you know, I'm starting to think about a bunch of these things. Like, you know, what is the everyday carry scenario for me? Like, what are we looking at? And that's something I want to start thinking about this year.

Everyday Carry

Brad Dowdy: All right. So I'm writing this down for EDC episode sometime. It's probably not going to be very soon.

Myke Hurley: Because we've done stuff like this before. Sure.

Brad Dowdy: But I've never, you know, the bag dumps and carries.

Myke Hurley: Do you have like what you consider to be like an everyday carry kit? Like a small one for pens and stuff?

Myke Hurley: Probably not, right? Because yours is quite large, isn't it? So this is what I'm thinking. Maybe we both need to think about this.

Brad Dowdy: I know. That's why you've got my brain working on this. Because I think that is something I need to work on. Yeah, totally.

Myke Hurley: TM23 in the chat room has just asked a question that if I don't answer now, I'm going to get a quadrillion people ask me this question. Yeah, just go ahead. What am I looking for in a wallet?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, let's have this clarification now. So we'll cut down the emails.

Myke Hurley: I carry cards. I maybe carry five to six cards, right? And a few business cards. I like something that you can put notes into, mainly because I keep things in the notes pocket. Like I keep notes that are important to me, like not money, like paper notes, like, you know, little, I don't know what you'd call them, memory notes, things. And I keep my glasses cleaner in my wallet. I don't care and I don't want somewhere to put coins.

Myke Hurley: That's pretty much it.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Are you a front pocket or back pocket carry? That's an important question.

Myke Hurley: Back right pocket. That's where it's going to go. Back right pocket.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So we'll work on that.

Brad Dowdy: We will work on that.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure you guys will. This is what I love you for.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. And I'll, I need to take a better picture of my wallet because I always get comments on it. Mine's from our friend Keegan at One Star Leather. It's a front pocket wallet. It's a front pocket wallet. That fits me just perfectly. So, you know, maybe look at what Keegan offers because he makes some larger back pocket styles too. So just something to think about. All right. So I want to go to one more topic here before we wrap. and it's about a topic we've touched on several times, but the questions keep coming up about it. And that's good. I like questions about this. And that's about handwriting. So I made a post on, what day was this? Friday. And I actually did it at a random time. I usually post things at eight in the morning. And I'd already had a post for that Friday. I was doing a giveaway. Um, but this is something that I just, um, opened up a text editor and started, uh, started writing because I wanted to, to put this, put this down. And I had a change in my handwriting style last year, not in my style, but I changed from time to time how I do specific letters and numbers. Myke, um, it's just one of those weird things that I've always done. If I get tired of a letter looking sloppy, I'll practice and change it and make it a new form. So last year, um, I was writing 2014 a bunch. Um, and I got tired of the closed top four. So I converted myself to the open four. And that actually takes time to do. That's a muscle memory thing. And it takes a good, good bit of time to do that. And I finally got it. You just have to practice and, you know, just write a bunch of fours and keep doing it over and over again. And then they'll, the old style will slip in less and less. And the new style will become more prevalent until it's about a hundred percent of your muscle memory to write that new style. So I wrote this post about it and about how I've always done this for about 20 or more years. Um, making changes, practicing new letters. And then, you know, the comments and questions about this kind of blew up. So I wanted to just talk about it a little bit more. Um, there's a lot of people in the same boat that I wrote down their comments and I just wanted to kind of, uh, touch on that. If that's, uh, that's okay with you.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'd love to.

Brad Dowdy: So, the main question I get is how do you make it better? And, you know, the, the easy thing right now would be to, like, really knock on you, Myke, for your handwriting, but I'm not going to do that.

Myke Hurley: Thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.

Brad Dowdy: No problem. No problem. You're welcome.

Handwriting Practice

Brad Dowdy: So, the, there is no easy way to change your handwriting. Just like everything else, you have to put in the time. I wrote about how I would get a legal pad and a pen that I liked and I would just fill line after line mostly of a single letter or a single number, not a full alphabet, right? That's too much change every letter. So, if I wanted to change how I did my A, for example, my lowercase a instead of a circle and a line down, you know, I wanted to have kind of like that open top A. So, you would just get your pen and just start writing A's all the way across the page, line after line after line after line and then change to something else because you're going to need to practice that in reality when you are writing and see if it sticks and things like that and just kind of refine the shape and it's totally muscle memory and that's where that time is going to, you're going to have to put in that time. So, what I did to put in that time, I wanted to have like an architectural style handwriting. So, I was in a drafting job so I'd look at blueprints and I'd say, oh, I really like how this A looks and then I'd just copy it over and over. I'd go home at night and just write and write and write at my kitchen table letters. that's what I did for fun back then. Just all over and over and over again. And then eventually that becomes an entire alphabet. You figure out which ones are poor and you work the hardest on those and some come real easy, some come very difficult like a G. G's are generally pretty hard to get right. And yet, like Mikey's talking about in the chat room, these things are digital now. You know, you get, you know, drafting and design work, you know, are done. You don't have to write this stuff anymore, right? There's not a lot of handwriting going on. So, it's kind of a lost art. And my handwriting now is so poor compared to what it used to be when I really practiced this all the time. I don't sit down and do that anymore.

Brad Dowdy: So, if I could give everyone just a couple of quick pointers, it's one, it's find a style that you like. And you're going to have to put in the time to mimic that style, whether it's a full alphabet or a single letter. And we'll have a couple links in the show notes. Stephen Brown has a YouTube video out there. And, um, there's also an architectural writing video series, which I actually don't like his style, but the way he works through it is actually very good on shows how he practices. He also uses a ruler, which I really don't like. Um, that's not practical. For non-architects, but you can go through the, you can see the process, um, in his practicing. So, pick a style you like and just start mimicking those letters. Two, you need to understand that the pen you use is going to affect how your letters look. For me, my letters look the best if I use a squared off nib, like a cursive italic nib, or a stub nib, or a art or drawing type pen, which doesn't bleed and leaves a very sharp line. Those are the two pens that I use to practice the most with. That's how I want my lettering to look.

Brad Dowdy: Um, and that's it. I mean, you, you're just going to have to put in the time. It's all about the practice and repetitiveness and eventually just works its way into your muscle memory. So, I don't have an easy answer for this. Um, but I do want to go through, you know, some of these comments I got and touch on that and see if, you know, maybe I can help out a couple of people because this always comes up. Um, but since we talked about, you know, what pens we use, how about we talk about our last sponsor of the day who, uh, happens to have some really, really good pens.

Myke Hurley: Our friends over at the Pen Chalet are back to sponsor again. These guys sell authentic, amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils and so much more from all of your favorite brands like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Kaweco, Sailor and many, many more. They have great reliable service, very fast, very quick at getting back to you and they have great shipping stuff too. They have free shipping on orders of over 50 bucks in the continental United States and they also have reasonable shipping rates to all international destinations too. They run special discounts all the time and they have super special discounts for pen addict listeners which I'm going to talk about in a moment. And as well as all the brands that I mentioned earlier and all the types of pens that they sell, the Pen Chalet also sell pen carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters and so many more. They also have a bunch of limited edition pens and stuff that you're going to find just over on the Pen Chalet because they're cool like that. Pen Chalet has low prices on high quality pens and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com and use the code penaddict. It's going to get you 10% off your order. But what you want to do to find some of our special offers this week, so you can use Pen Addict on anything in the store at the checkout screen you're going to get your 10% off. But you want to go and check out the special offers that we have. If you go to the Pen Chalet website, penchalet.com and you just click the podcast link right at the very top, it's going to take you to a page. You enter the code penaddict there and it's going to show you a bunch of super special offers. There's a ton of offers this week just for Pen Addict listeners. I want to talk about a couple of them. So they've got the Field Notes Ambition Memo Notebooks. They've got them for $6.27 with a sale price and then after you use the coupon as well. What about the Covecos? They have a few different Covecos. They have the Classic Sport, the Ice Sport and they have the Deer 2 as well. All on sale. They have a Lamy 2000 which you can grab for $134.33 which is fantastic. Great pen. Love that pen. Retails at $199. Anything caught your eye there Brad?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so before the episode Myke told me that Pen Chalet is sponsoring and he told me not to go look at the page until it was time for the ad read because we don't have one pen. Like sometimes with Pen Chalet we feature one pen plus all these extra deals. Well this time we just have Ron has just added things into our regular deals page at the Pen Addict specific page so Myke told me not to look at them until he brought this up. The first thing I choked on was the Field Notes thing. Field Notes Ambition the current colors edition $6.27 for a three pack of those. You're not going to find a better price than that. It's 30% off. Yeah the Kaweco Dia 2 it's 9788 which is a really really good pen. I compared it to the Pelican M205 although it's not a piston filler just in the feel and look and style of the pen. And there's one pen on here that might fit a lot of people's needs and I consider this what's the best way to put it a play pen. This is a pen you get and you fidget with and you know you just kind of mess around with it's not going to be like an all day everyday writer but that's the Noodler's Ahab fountain pen. What that is is that's a steel flex nib pen and for $14 you're not going to find a cheaper pen than that. Now I'll be up front and honest Noodler's does have some quality control issues with these pens and people have to take them apart and put them back together again but that's what this pen's for. It's for learning how to it might give you a problem and you're going to learn how to take it apart and mess around with it. These nibs are swappable with other pens and for $14 I mean it's not like you're losing anything here if it's you know all of a sudden you hate it. But a lot of people want an inexpensive flex nib pen. This is your one. Your Noodler's Ahab fountain pen. So I wanted to point that out as that's not something I've even noticed Ron have on the site before. So that's very very cool.

Myke Hurley: So it's a bunch of fantastic stuff that you can grab for yourself over at penchalet.com Thank you so much to penchalet for the continued support of this show. We love those guys.

Brad Dowdy: Love them. Very cool. I'm gonna have to go back and dig through that a little bit more. So back on the handwriting thing. This is something I could do post after post after post and videos of. I mean this just never people really can't get enough information on how to work on improving their handwriting. So let me go over a couple of comments that people made about this post and just about handwriting in general. And a lot of it's just to show that it makes me feel good that I'm not alone in my insanity. for these little minor tweaks that I do that are like super important to me. So Charlie D on one of the comments in the blog post says over the years I've made a number of transitions to my handwriting. Started putting a cross on my sevens, mostly a stylistic choice. Changed from a round lowercase a to one with the cap, which I've done to legibility and confusion with lowercase o's. Started putting a slash through my zeros, which I've played around with. I love that look, but I have not committed to that yet. A two-part capital G, which means you write the C part and then you kind of do a seven over the G. I don't know the exact terms of the parts of the lettering. Anna can fill me in on that. She's a pro.

Brad Dowdy: And putting a cap and a foot on my ones. almost everything that he's done here, I've messed around with at some point or do exactly like I do my G's the same way, I do my lowercase a's the same way, and I'm always messing around with something else. Do I want to put a slash through to zero? I mess around with that a lot. Then we had an architect, a real live architect, chime in to the post, Mr. Brian Acom. He said, it's a bit amusing to me that others would want to learn to write like an architect considering that the sentiment amongst my studio and later my students while on that forced march was of pure resentment. So in architecture school you're forced to learn to write a certain way. It says, nothing like being in architecture school and having handwriting homework. We soon learned why it was done that way and learned to love it. It is second nature. I commend your pursuit of the perfect five and your struggles with the four, although it can be said that the reason we close the four in architecture terms is so it can never be construed for an H.

Myke Hurley: Why is there such strict handwriting in architecture?

Brad Dowdy: Because you cannot make a mistake. You cannot have someone read your plans and make a mistake or have confusion about what it's saying.

Myke Hurley: That makes sense. It feels like there would be other industries though, right, as well, that would be like that. I mean, I'm not being funny, and this is your joke. No, no, no, no, what I'm about to say, you would expect that doctors might have the same sort of restrictions, but yet they are known to have the worst handwriting. So that kind of is surprising to me in a way. But who am I to speak about?

Brad Dowdy: I can agree with that. I can agree with that. And that's why my four was closed at the top, because that's how I learned how to do it when I was changing my handwriting. So that was just part of it. He says, he continues, he says, my threes and fives all dip below the baseline into the slug akin to the style from a few centuries ago, and I'd love to be able to effectively change my one into a European style one that has an up and down stroke. So how do you, how was your one, Myke? How do you write a one? It's just straight line or do you have like a foot?

Myke Hurley: Straight line unless there's a reason to do it the other way.

Brad Dowdy: Unless you're making a point to have clarity in that number.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, well, let's say I'm writing, I don't know, I'm writing a one close to an I or an L. I don't know what the reason would be, but Mikey Reactor said in the chat room, and I'm not sure, he says he's not sure about this and neither am I, but it would kind of make sense if it's true that doctors are encouraged to write poorly so people can't fake prescriptions, but I don't know, that seems like an old wives tale to me, because anyone can write poorly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But anyway. Yeah,

Brad Dowdy: just get your kid to write it and that'll turn out about the same as a doctor's handwriting.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, Brian goes on, he says, so he, he's talking about this one that he says, considering it took me over five years to finally get my nine correct and natural, I think I'm going to wait for a while to change some of his other letters, but just, that's one of the points that hit me. Took him five years to get his, to settle on his nine. That's how this handwriting thing is. It's a huge challenge. So, even just fixing one letter, it's just so ingrained in your muscle memory that it took a guy whose handwriting would probably blow all of ours away five years to lock down his nine. So,

Myke Hurley: this is not nearly enough of an issue for me. I can't even, like, you know, obviously for architects and stuff, but I can't, I don't put enough, I don't put any thought into this, you know, about my handwriting. Thank you. But it's weird to me that even you do, like, why would you change your four? It just seems like such a strange thing to me to do.

Brad Dowdy: I know. And apparently I'm not alone. I mean, that's why we have this blog and podcast thing because we're all weird this way.

Myke Hurley: It's just, yeah, it's just the

Brad Dowdy: dangdest thing you've ever seen in your life. It's like, you know, how do we all have this same thought process about the minutia? But that's, I mean, that's why this whole community is so great and that's why we love everybody and everybody so much. So, so, yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. You know, I had a couple other small comments like David Ray asked me, you know, in the past I've always said I've been a tight pin gripper. Like, I really gripped the pin hard and he wanted to know if I've made any progress in relaxing that and I have and that's all thanks to fountain pens to be quite honest. My angle of attack has changed because of fountain pens and my grip pressure has changed because of fountain pens because the way fountain pens lay ink on the paper is so different. it allows for that. It allows for that relaxation and to get more of a flowing style even when you're a printer like me. I mean, if I wrote in cursive, I'd probably have a really, really light grip, but I have to keep some form of pressure because I print because I'm up and down off the page a lot. I can't, the pen can't slip between every letter. It would take me days to write a sentence. But yeah, honestly, using fountain pens and relaxing my entire arm and fingers as I grip the pen, it has made a difference. So yeah, and that's pretty much it. Like I said, we've got a couple videos that we'll put in there, one from Stephen Brown, who everyone who listens to this podcast knows. Definitely check that out because he talks about writing with fountain pens in that. So it's something I want to talk about, something we'll talk about more in the future because it continues to come up just like a fountain pen 101. How do I clean a fountain pen and how do I make my handwriting better? Those are such recurring topics and I love them and I'm happy to help anyone out that I can who has questions about these things because it's things we're experiencing and things we continue to go through. So it's all great stuff.

Myke Hurley: But don't ask me because I can't help you, I'm afraid.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, don't ask Myke about the handwriting stuff.

Myke Hurley: Because I'm no good.

Brad Dowdy: Forward those questions to me.

Myke Hurley: Oh dear. I look forward to your new handwriting addict podcast to some other person.

Hand Lettering

Brad Dowdy: Oh my gosh, yeah. We'll get some of the hand lettering guys on one of these days. I keep threatening to do that so I'll have to do that. Because that stuff fascinates me. Typography in general fascinates me. And then the guys who do the handwriting stuff, you know, do the large pieces with the really, really neat handwriting. And don't even get me started on the master penman program. I think I mentioned that in one podcast, you know, in passing with a link before. But there's actually people who go through this long, grueling process to become a master penman. penman. It's like a really huge deal. It's like a Nobel level of writing. There's very few of them. So, yeah. See, now you've got me off on a tangent when I was trying to wrap it up.

Myke Hurley: You could totally be a master penman.

Brad Dowdy: It would take a long time. I'm not even close to what these guys do. To finalize their exam, their final exam is they have to draw their own diploma.

Myke Hurley: That is the best thing I've ever heard.

Myke Hurley: That is so cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I've read a bunch about them because it fascinates me. So, it's really neat. And when you look at what these guys do, you're like, yeah, that's not normal. This takes decades of work. So, yeah. It's really great. I suggest you go look up Master Penman and you'll find some really cool stuff.

Myke Hurley: That is awesome. That is really cool.

Myke Hurley: Okay, if you want to find the links for this week's episode, you should go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 136. You'll find your links there. If you want to find us on Twitter, I am at imike and Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M and I'm imike, I-M-Y-K-E. If you want to find Brad's great work, you will find more over at penaddict.com. Thanks again to our sponsors. For this week, Hover, Harry's, Hover's, I was going to call them, Hover, Harry's, and Penchalets.

Myke Hurley: We'll be back next time with another episode of the Penaddict. Until then, say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.