The Pen Addict 142/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	142
Title:	Agents Of Orange
Release Date:	February 16th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 142
Audio File:	Audio Episode 142
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 142
Length:	5959 min <br />0.983 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 142. Today's show is brought to you by Lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts. For a 10-day free trial, visit Lynda.com slash Pen Addict, Squarespace, Build It Beautiful, and Pen Chalet. Great deals on high-quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey.

Myke Hurley: I haven't done that in a while.

Brad Dowdy: That was the most amazing intro ever, and it only took you one take.

Myke Hurley: That's how I roll.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you're, I mean, professional podcasters.

Myke Hurley: One take Hurley.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, one take Hurley.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've realised I haven't said, I don't think I've said that in a long time.

Brad Dowdy: You haven't, and it was beautiful. I mean, I got a little tear in my eye.

Myke Hurley: Memories.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a phrase we love, and we like to drop it in there every now and then. It's really good.

Myke Hurley: Just rolls off the tongue.

Vacation Plans

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So what's going on with you? I'm on vacation. How are you doing?

Myke Hurley: What is it, President's Day today, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, my kids are out for a couple extra days, and they kind of wrap around this weird holiday school thing with these faux holidays that we have sometimes. So, yeah, kids are out for a couple days, so we got out of town for a couple days.

Myke Hurley: Where are you on the earth right now?

Brad Dowdy: I am in Destin, Florida, which is on the beautiful Florida Gulf Coast. It's actually beautiful here today, and we've had some better weather than anticipated. So we're enjoying ourselves quite nicely. Thank you.

Myke Hurley: See, that explains when you took the Instagram on the beach, and I was like, beaches in Atlanta? Obviously, I didn't know this. I didn't think it was on any coasts, but it could have been like a man-made beach by a huge lake or something. I don't know how your country works.

Brad Dowdy: It's weird. It's big. It is definitely weird. It is definitely weird, and we have lots of weird goings on in our country. So you need to get a little bit weirder to step up your game with us. And Florida is actually one of the weirdest states in the Union, and that's like a whole ungenius level podcast thing just about Florida, which we could just call the podcast Florida, and we would never run out of material.

Myke Hurley: I'm pretty sure Merlin and Dan have that podcast covered. Did you see that we broke $13,000 in the Kickstarter a couple days ago?

Brad Dowdy: I did. I did. I saw that a couple days ago, and that's unbelievable. So this is going to – I keep every day, or at least every other day, I have someone else tweeting me or emailing me. I'm coming to the Penn Show. So I hope the organizers of the Penn Show understand what they're getting into, and I have it on good accord that they have no clue what's about to happen.

Myke Hurley: We have radioed down on the Penn Show. We are. It's going to be awesome. I'm so excited. If you hear this, by the way, as we record today, which is the 16th of February, you have nine days left to back the Kickstarter project to get yourself a video version of a live recorded episode. Episode 150 of the Penn Addict in beautiful serendipity will be recorded, and you will be able to get yourself a video version of it if you back our Kickstarter project. If not, you will have to deal with the audio, which is fine, but you won't get to see the tears in Brad's eyes.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. That's right. And all the special – I've got to put on my Myke Hurley producer hat and book a bunch of special guests, so I'm going to work on that. So you'll want to see video of that, and it should happen. I see no reason why it won't.

Myke Hurley: It's going to be fantastic. We have a real grab bag today.

Brad Dowdy: It's basically all the links I haven't gotten to in the past two or three weeks worth of stuff, and it's all really good stuff that I wanted to talk about. So I wanted to get it in there after our various conversations, but we do want to pick up on one little thing from last week, and that's the LaPen. I was actually pronouncing it wrong last week. It's not the LeePen. It's the LaPen.

LaPen

Myke Hurley: I like calling it the LaPen, but I won't go into it any further than that.

Brad Dowdy: That's most people's take on this. I have not gone that far, Michael. But you can feel safe in saying that being located across the pond in the UK. So I will temper myself and call it the LaPen. But their Kickstarter actually got suspended, which I have never seen in all these projects we've looked at, at least on our show. I've seen live projects, and I've seen canceled projects or basically projects that have been shut down by Kickstarter. The LaPen has basically – it's flagged. You can't search for it anymore on Kickstarter, but the page is still up and live, and the backers can actually comment on the page. But there's a big, huge mark on it called suspended if you go to the page, which is weird. So I'm guessing at this point it's only going to happen on LaPen.com. I did it again. See? LaPen.com, which you can go visit, and Mark is going to sell these pens directly. No one in the entire world would have any argument against this pen, right? Because this pen is being manufactured by another vendor called Titaner, I believe, in my opinion. I'm stating that because I can't say factually that I know that for a fact. But it's every single bit of information I have shows me this is the case. And if Mark was not going that route, he would have answered whatever Kickstarter's questions they had with him surrounding the suspension, and the suspension would have been lifted on Kickstarter. That tells you everything you need to know about this project. If I created a Kickstarter project and wanted and was being questioned on the validity of my project and what I was doing, I would certainly have answers that validated it and cleared the name of my Kickstarter project. Or I would accept the banishment knowing that I'm not doing something that should be on Kickstarter. This pen shouldn't be on Kickstarter. This pen should be sold on his site directly. Perfectly fine. Go to town. I mean, and that's pretty much it.

Myke Hurley: Why would a project be suspended? This is from the Kickstarter FAQ. A project may be suspended if our integrity team uncovers evidence that is in violation of one or more of Kickstarter's rules, including misrepresentation of support through self-pledging, misrepresentation of failure to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator. The creator provides inaccurate or incomplete user information to Kickstarter or one of our partners. The characteristics of the creator's account overlap with the characteristics of backer accounts that pledge to their project. A party related to the creator is posting as an independent supportive party in project comments or elsewhere. The creator is presenting someone else's work as their own. The creator is offering purchased items claiming to have made them. Projects may also be suspended if they chose to launch now, which is a system where Kickstarter will allow you to launch without going through to their team for approval, which is a new thing. But on closer inspection, do not fall within our rules. Now, the reason I read this was they're already interesting. The main thing is the reason we've not seen this is this is part of the newer Kickstarter rules. So we wouldn't have seen this on previous stuff because launch now is like a newer thing. So that's why we've never seen it before, because it's probably quite rare.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's exactly right. And launch now, like when we did the knock Kickstarter, we didn't have that option. Right. We had to go through like this whole auditing thing and I had to edit and I had to add and I had to keep going back and forth with Kickstarter with all this additional information that they required before I launched this project.

Brad Dowdy: Why they changed that, I don't know. You know, I guess they figure they have the same 30 days as everyone else to vet the project, but sometimes it doesn't look good on their part.

Myke Hurley: But yeah. Anyway, I think I did the right thing and allowing the launch now thing because it allows people to launch on their own timetable, which I think was the problem because people would try and like, I don't know, maybe they would try and set up like press. I don't know why. Sorry about that. Yeah, they're trying to set up PR and stuff like that. And you're kind of stuck in the Kickstarter approval process. That kind of sucks. But it's good that they do it. And apparently it says suspension is non-reversible.

Brad Dowdy: Now that I didn't know. I figured it would be, okay, we suspended it. We're going to ask the project creator more questions and then we'll determine whether we're going to continue with that or not. I don't know why they just don't remove it.

Myke Hurley: I'd like to think that they asked the questions first and then suspend.

Brad Dowdy: Suspend doesn't seem like the right term for that then. If it has zero chance of coming back from a suspension, then it's not really a suspension. It's a cancellation.

Myke Hurley: Well, but they already have cancellations already, a term that they use though, isn't it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: That's probably why.

Brad Dowdy: Welcome to your Kickstarter podcast.

Myke Hurley: Well, I just think it's interesting. I think when you look at all of the rules, the reasons, sorry, they're also enlightening.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So anyway, to sum this up, what Mark is doing right now with the law pen is absolutely perfect. It's exactly what should have happened in the first place. It was a project that's fine for Mark to launch, just not on Kickstarter. Sell the pen yourself. That's it. It's super simple.

Myke Hurley: Yep. It does not belong there. And I wish him the best of luck.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. You know what else doesn't belong, Myke? What? Stupid orange metallic vanishing points. Oh, I was so sad. In the rack next to Stormtrooper vanishing points. So. What's the problem?

Myke Hurley: Tell me how you know about this now then.

Brad Dowdy: Well, our good friend, Dwayne Lively, who is actually in the chat room today, all the way in Japan. Who knows what time it is there? I can't even keep track with your time. He's in the chat room today. He made the trip to Atoya, which is where this picture was taken last week that we discussed on last week's show. And I was pretty, I was pretty sure this was going to happen with the orange metallic vanishing point, not being on the lower shelf with the other metallic vanishing points. I was thinking they, they popped that one up on the display up there. But the way the picture was shot, it didn't really look metallic-y. But we have the shots now. I love Dwayne went and took shots of the vanishing point to send to us just to prove the fact that it was actually the metallic version of the vanishing point instead of a flat or matte orange version of the vanishing point. So, you know, if nothing else, this tells us that pilots should make a flat orange vanishing point. And at that point, I will do a happy dance and probably go berserk. And I would probably pay the premium for that, which I haven't done on the Stormtrooper yet.

Myke Hurley: So I was going to say, if it tells us one thing is that Dwayne is a hero detective.

Dwayne Photos

Brad Dowdy: He is. I have several more pictures from him in my inbox. I didn't, I didn't get them uploaded at all, but we'll have these in the show notes. He also showed me a really neat wooden barrel one, which I'd never seen before. I'll send that over to you after the show. And it, it looked larger than the normal vanishing points. Or as they say, which I have to state this, which it kind of drives me a little bit crazy about pilot, but I love them so much. I'll give them a pass. They use different names in different countries. Right. So people don't know when I, you know, when I typed, um, on that original Instagram post that I love those VPs. They don't even know what a VP is. It's not a vanishing point over there. It's the capitalist, right?

Myke Hurley: It's the capitalist here as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So the U S continues to get it wrong on so many levels and naming conventions is one of them. We're not more important than everyone else. So I wish people would get that through their heads, but you know, I, Myke, I am pro metric system. Awesome.

Brad Dowdy: I just want to throw that in there. I appreciate that.

Myke Hurley: I think.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. So you're right. Uh, to circle back around, Dwayne is our hero. Thank you, Dwayne, for going to take those pictures and, um, confirming what I kind of thought was going to be the case, but I was holding out one little strand of hope that I was wrong.

Myke Hurley: So basically Dwayne stopped you from making a stupid decision, you know, like maybe taking a risk or something.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was, uh, the, the evidence presented itself that the, was probably not going to line up to be a non-metallic orange vanishing point. And, um, the evidence, uh, bared out in this case.

Myke Hurley: Sure did. Unfortunately.

Brad Dowdy: All right. We have more orange things to talk about besides the orange t-shirt that I'm wearing.

Myke Hurley: You wearing an orange t-shirt?

Brad Dowdy: I am.

Myke Hurley: You wearing the pen addict t-shirt?

Brad Dowdy: I am not. I'm wearing my, uh, Draplin heavy duty t-shirt because I'm a heavy duty individual.

Myke Hurley: Well, there you go.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Can't argue with that. Yep. So let's get into more orange stuff right after we talk about one of our friends.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of the pen addict is brought to you by lynda.com where you can invest in yourself and learn something new. Lynda.com is giving a free 10 day trial to listeners of the pen addict. All you need to do is go to lynda.com slash pen addict. Lynda.com is used by millions of people around the world and has over 3,000 courses on topics like web development, photography, visual design, and business, and oh, so much more. If you maybe want to set some new goals, maybe you have a hobby or some skills that you've always wanted to learn, you can find out about anything you need with lynda.com. All of their courses are taught by experts and they're adding new courses to the site every single week. When you sign up to lynda.com, you'll get unlimited access to these courses and all of the new ones that keep getting added. And you'll get unlimited access to view these on your tablet, your mobile device as well with their apps for iOS and Android. But of course, you can view them on your desktop PC, laptop, Mac, whatever it is you can get to a web browser in. Lynda.com have highlighted some courses that they think that you might enjoy. Now, one that I know you guys are going to enjoy, which was a really cool thing that they did with Aaron Draplin. They did a fantastic logo design video that we've spoken about a bunch on the show. It was a really great example of some of the really fantastic stuff and the great production quality that you will see with lynda.com. Maybe you want to learn a bit about management. You know, maybe that's the type of thing you're in or you're going towards, like a leadership type thing. They can help you with that, help you on how to lead teams, and they can help you out in the workplace. Maybe you want to go paperless. This is something that's interesting for listeners of this show, but just because we love pens and paper doesn't mean that we don't want to go paperless. Lynda.com can help you get rid of the paper that you don't want to see in your daily life. They have courses on typography as well. I think this is something that people that listen to the show might enjoy. How to effectively use different fonts and typefaces in design, and they have the fantastic documentary Helvetica that I really, really suggest you see if you haven't already seen. It's a really interesting look at a very, very important and monumental typeface. Invest in yourself right now and sign up for a free 10-day trial to lynda.com by visiting lynda.com slash penaddict. If you've yet to check it out, please go and see, because not only will you learn something new, it also really helps support this show as well. lynda.com is a great supporter of the network, so show them some love. Thank you so much to lynda.com for supporting this show and all of RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm going to give you the floor, Michael. You say in our show notes that I'm wrong, and I would like to hear why.

Myke Hurley: You are categorically wrong. So I was looking through my RSS app today, and I saw, posted a couple of days ago, Pilot Hiroshizuku Fuyugaki Inc. Now, not only did you review this with like a paragraph, you didn't even tell me about it, which tells me all that I need to know. You kept this to yourself because you knew that if I saw this, I would uncover you for the liar that you are. Clearly, you're being paid off by the, I don't know, the Sailor Review Board or something.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, the Sailor contingent is paying me off to write bad things about Pilot Fuyugaki so you can go buy inks that Sailor doesn't even manufacture anymore. That's exactly what I'm doing.

Myke Hurley: I knew it. See, I knew it.

Brad Dowdy: So I've had this ink sample from Lori, great listener, great reader of the blog and the podcast. She sent me a couple of ink samples and I've been very delayed in getting this ink reviewed. And I finally inked it up and used it for a little while. And it's a really good ink from the Pilot Hiroshizuku line. I just feel like I could say that about every ink from the Pilot Hiroshizuku line. They are some of the most well-behaved, most trusted, most really perfect inks if you can find the color that you want. And for me, that color is not Fuyugaki.

Brad Dowdy: It's orange. And that's about it. That's why the review was so short. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to say. You know, I like the ink. I don't love the ink. I'm not going to buy a bottle of it. I was thankful to have a sample of it before I committed my dollars to purchasing the full bottle. But I know you drink the stuff. So I'm going to let you tell us why it's so wonderful.

Myke Hurley: Well, I love orange the same as you do. But unlike you, Mr. Brad Dowdy, I'm left-handed, if you'll remember. I do. And the reason that I came across and stick to my Hiroshizukus, especially the Fuyugaki, is because practically all other ink has an insufficient dry time for me. And I have been able to find a fantastic orange. So just once again, proving Brad Dowdy's elitist, right-handed orange ink agenda that he's been pushing on this podcast for the entire time. That's all I'm going to say about this. I had nothing more to add. You'll be hearing from my lawyer.

Brad Dowdy: Get in line.

Myke Hurley: That's the second time today I've threatened a lawsuit onto a co-host. So this has been a productive Monday.

Brad Dowdy: Good Monday for you. Not so good Monday for your co-host. I'm getting litigious in here. So, yeah. So, you know, honestly, if this is an ink that I tried very early on, it might have latched on a little bit more. But my eyes have been opened to a few other inks that fit my personal taste a little bit better. And I end up liking an orange ink with more yellow in it, which is a brighter ink, than an orange ink with more red in it, which is a deeper ink. So it's just personal taste. And you're wrong. And that's pretty much it.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Well, there we go. All right. It's the last episode. We're not going to make it to it later.

Anderson Pens Store

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. So our next T-shirt will be in Fuyugaki orange. Thank you. All right. So now starts the awesome batch of links that I have for this episode because I get lots of really, really good emails. And it's stuff that I haven't seen before. And people are finding this stuff and send it to us. And I want to share it with everyone else so everyone else can see it. And the first thing is this crazy Google Maps walkthrough of the Anderson Pens retail store. Did you even know that you could do this on Google Maps, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I knew you could do it in general. I didn't know you could do it at the Anderson Pens store.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I didn't even know you could do it in general necessarily. And Brandon sent us this link. And you click on this link. It takes you to Google like you would assume Google Maps or whatever. And it's essentially like that. But it's like someone walked through their store with a camera. And there's you can basically 360 degree their store in Appleton, Wisconsin. And I thought that was really, really cool. I've never seen anything like this before.

Myke Hurley: So it is exactly literally exactly what happens. Somebody walks through with a camera. Actually, if you go right down to the bottom. So if you like pan the image down to the bottom, you can see a tripod in the bottom of the photos.

Brad Dowdy: Really?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I didn't even realize this was a thing. I mean, I knew the whole Google Maps and the cars and taking on the map data. I didn't know there was actually a physical inside presence that they were starting to do. And that they've done it in Appleton, Wisconsin. Inside Anderson Pens just trips me out.

Myke Hurley: Well, I don't know if you're able to get people to come and do it for you or submit your own. But I know that Google were doing it. They were actually going to stores like big places. I don't know. San Francisco, New York and stuff. And going in with people that had these camera backpacks and doing it. So I'm interested to see how they got theirs done. Because it's clearly being taken from a tripod. And obviously with nobody in the way. And I don't know how that was possible.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I should probably listen to some of your other podcasts to learn about these things.

Myke Hurley: What I like now is I'm looking at there's like a poster of Mont Blanc. And the guy's face is blurred out in the Mont Blanc poster.

Brad Dowdy: Just automatic face recognition equals blur.

Myke Hurley: There's even a picture like a really old photo on the wall. Like it's clearly a meaningful picture that I can't see what it says. But it's even picked that out and blurred that person's face out too.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so our friend Dan Bishop who's actually coming up next in this document that I'm going to talk about. He said he talked to Brian Anderson at the LA Pen Show. And they requested Google to come do that for them. So that's very, very cool.

Myke Hurley: So it is Google. John Holland. Whoever John Holland is. Okay. It's an old picture of him. John Holland something. It's in Specialty Fountain Pens. It's like a picture in a nice frame.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I've heard of him. I won't pretend that I know who that is. But I know the name from reading things on the internet.

Myke Hurley: So the images are in such great quality. You can zoom in. So you can take a real good look at the Anderson's pens that they have for sale.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's really ridiculous. I thought it might be like a nice inside shot, but it's literally the entire store, including the display cases and what's specifically in the display cases. It's pretty, pretty nice. So very cool. Very cool. So I mentioned Dan Bishop from Karis Customs. He was at the LA Pen Show this week. And my feed, I got a lot of enjoyment reading my Twitter and Instagram feed this weekend to see everyone that went to the LA Pen Show. And saw a bunch of people there that I recognized in images and was, you know, pinging Dan, making sure he was having a good show and things like that. Because this was Karis Customs' first pen show. And Dan mentioned how well it went and things like that. So I just wanted to point anyone to who wanted to see some links and feedback from the LA Pen Show. You can go on Instagram, the FP Geeks feed. If you're not already following that, they did a really good job of taking a bunch of pictures. You can kind of get a feel for what a pen show looks like. But if you're coming to Atlanta, it's not nearly that size. It's really – LA is really, really large. Between LA and DC, those are the two biggest pen shows. So don't get freaked out by the size of that if you've never been to a pen show and you think you're going to be intimidated. It's nothing like LA at all. But the FP Geeks Instagram feed did a really good job of capturing a bunch of big names in the fountain pen world, a lot of names we've talked about on the show. And I have an announcement to make, Myke. Next Monday, we're going to hear a recap of the LA Pen Show from Mr. Dan Bishop himself. So we have that.

Myke Hurley: Where is he going to be?

Brad Dowdy: He is going to be on Skype.

Myke Hurley: No, not this show. Not Dan Bishop.

LA Pen Show

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. He's just going to make me feel bad. He's going to be on the Pen Addict podcast and we're going to hear all about the LA Pen Show. So we haven't solidified that, but I just put the pressure on him so you can assume it's going to happen now.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah. So we're going to do that. In more pen news, I'm really, really excited about this next link.

Brad Dowdy: And it might even cause me to get emotional because there are certain things I believe in. And I believe in supporting small businesses and people doing it on their own and people making a jump like you did, Myke, to do something that's their passion, that they're really good at, and that there's a market for. And our good friend, Sean Newton, who one of these days we're going to have to get him on the podcast. I have yet to meet him in person, but we talk so frequently.

Brad Dowdy: Sean's been a teacher for the last seven years. He's been an art teacher.

Brad Dowdy: And as you know from this podcast, he's also a pen maker, and he does a lot of my nip work because I think he does a really exceptional job. Well, he announced it last week that he's leaving his teaching job and going to make pens full time. Wow. This is so scary, and I'm so proud when I see someone make this decision. I just get excited and emotional, and it's genuinely a big deal. I mean, for someone to make this decision is a huge, huge deal. And I just wanted to tell Sean, I don't even know if he listens to the podcast, but I just wanted to tell him how proud I am of him and that I believe in what he's doing. And I'll throw my support behind him 100% because I know he's legit. He does good work. He does fantastic work. I don't own one of his pens yet, but I'm going to start working on one now because I want to support him. I'm going to get a Shinobi that Thomas Hall has. I've never borrowed his Shinobi yet, but he has a couple from Sean that he's done, and Thomas sends him around. But I love the looks of the Shinobi, so I'll see if I can put one of the Shinobis that Thomas has reviewed or that J.D. Ames has reviewed on Peaceful Writer. She's reviewed a Shinobi. I'm going to start getting one of those. And I just implore you all to take a look at Sean's site if you're interested in what he's doing. Just take a look. Start a conversation with him. He's legitimately one of the good guys, and congratulations, Sean, for making this jump. It's a big deal.

Myke Hurley: That's amazing, man. Well done.

Brad Dowdy: It really is. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, well, I guess you can't imagine you left your day job to go do something you believe in. I say that because I'm having these same thoughts, right? I mean, I'm not going to lie. I would love to do this full time. So you have these pipe dream thoughts or if I win the lottery thoughts, and these are the things I think about. And our friend David Sparks wrote a wonderful post today about leaving his law firm and going independent so we can have more time to focus on what he does with all the Max Sparky stuff and all the field – what are they called? The field guides. The field guides that he does and the podcasts that he does. And it's just – it's really inspirational to see people like this do that, and you're obviously a huge inspiration for that too. So I just wanted to prop Sean up and tell him I'm proud of him, and I'm proud of you, Myke. I'm proud of you, bro. You know what? I'm especially proud of you for Myke. What's that? How well you read sponsor ads.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, and online store. For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code INK at checkout. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. When it comes to finding a place for yourself on the internet, whether you want to set up a blog to talk about pens, you want to set up a gallery to show off all of your pens or maybe your field notes, or maybe you want to sell pen cases made out of beautiful materials, Squarespace is the place for you. They have fantastic, clean, and beautiful designs. Their templates are fantastic. They allow you to create a really great-looking site that's going to look fantastic on all devices because all Squarespace sites feature responsive web design built right in. With Squarespace 7, their most recent release on the platform, they've added even more stunning templates. They have 15 new ones in total, and Squarespace have applied everything that they have learned from powering millions of sites on the web to make their whole platform even better. They now have something that they call the cover page. This allows you to create a really great-looking single-page website with all of the power of a Squarespace site. This can be just a you-want-a-one page, you-want-to-set-up-a-website, it's just one page, it has a bunch of information on it. It's really clean, really simple to use. You can set that up, or you can set that up as an introduction to your entire website if you want to. It's like a lovely landing page, or maybe, you know, it's just like a great intro that you can have to your site. Squarespace have also partnered with Getty Images to provide you with a great deal on awesome photography at just $10 an image. All of this fantastic new stuff sits on top of Squarespace's core of awesomeness, like their 24-7 support with live chat and email. They have teams located in New York, Dublin, and London who are there to help you. They have their commerce platform, which allows anyone to add a store to their Squarespace site. And they have their rock-solid, fast hosting, and so much more. If you sign up for a year with Squarespace, not only did their plan start at just $8 a month there, you'll also get a free domain name, allowing you to choose exactly what you want your website to be called. So go sign up for a free trial right now of no credit card required and start building your website today by going to squarespace.com. And when you do decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code INK to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for The Pen Addict. Thank you so much to Squarespace for helping us out today. Squarespace, build it beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: I had so much pressure on that one. I only made one mistake, and I'm so annoyed that I made that mistake.

Brad Dowdy: I was thinking that when I unintentionally put the pressure on you. I was like, oh, I just put the pressure on Myke. And, oh, listen to him. He's killing it. Look at him go, oh.

Myke Hurley: So disappointed in him.

Brad Dowdy: That's all right. You're awesome, and everyone knows it. But it was pretty great. All right. Continuing the fun here. I have been sitting on this link for weeks since at least, I don't know, late January. But a friend of the blog, Tina, who writes Fueled by Clouds and Coffee, has been writing this series on her blog called Epic Pen Search and Discovery. She's up to part four, I believe, now. I have the link in the show notes to part one, and you can follow along on her blog. But for those of you who are new to fountain pens, it's not like a, you know, from the beginning, here's the fountain pen type of post. It's kind of like this whole discovery phase that I did with my fountain pen education post that I had a bunch of pens on loan from Thomas and was learning about these things that I was not familiar with whatsoever and learning about different pen types, different nibs, and things like that. Tina's doing an awesome job with this post series. And I wanted to point that out so everyone would go take a look and read her blog and read through all the parts of this series. And it's not over yet. I think she's on part four, like I said. And, you know, just follow along. She just – the part four has the Pilot Custom 912, which is the pen I have the PO nib in, the posting nib. She has the FA nib. So the Pilot Custom 912 series is one of Pilot's – I guess you would say it's one of their main pen lines. But you don't really see it in the U.S. They're just starting to come to the U.S. So in companies like Platinum and Sailor and Pilot, they kind of have one main pen line where you can get every single nib that they create. You know, not just extra fine, fine, medium, broad, things like that, but they add in the stub. They add in things like the PO nib. They add in things like a flex nib. They add in a music nib where you get the full lineup, and she just did a post with the Pilot Falcon nib. And it's not the same Falcon that you get in the Pilot Falcon, the pen that's called the Pilot Falcon. This one actually has more flex. So check out these posts that Tina's doing. Check out her artwork. She's one of the Urban Sketchers if you're familiar with the Urban Sketching Project, which is really cool. And she's done a really good job on this series, and it's not over yet. So keep track of that. Now this is a link that speaks to you, Myke. Have you had a chance to read the link about the lawyer who lost a $500 pen at the courthouse and asked his county to find it or replace it?

Myke Hurley: The problem is I don't know where I lost my pen. I have to ask the world.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, where you lost your ink. So which color ink did you lose, by the way? Was this all one color? Was this like the multicolor thing you had going?

Myke Hurley: No, it was the multicolor, and it was the rollerball one.

Brad Dowdy: The rollerball. Please can we stop talking about this? It makes me so sad. So like the rollerball with the orange bottom and the blue barrel, or the blue section and the orange barrel? Let me check. I'm just curious. Unless you might have lost the other part of it by now.

Myke Hurley: It was the rollerball with the blue section and the orange cap.

Brad Dowdy: Way to go. So you will feel this lawyer's pain. You might – we're talking about lawsuits. You might talk – you might have another lawsuit going. So let me read this. John Kerwin said his Mont Blanc Meisterstuk ballpoint pen went missing after he accidentally left his things at the courthouse security kiosk one day last November. The pen was a gift from his uncle, the late Monsignor Eugene Kerwin, he said. A judge later retrieved Kerwin's keys from the security office, but the pen was missing, Kerwin said. After reviewing surveillance video, Kerwin said he was able to identify the officer who last touched his pen, and he complained to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, which runs courthouse security. I'm not accusing anyone of stealing anything, Kerwin said. He was just the last one who had custody of it. Sheriff Tim Dunning said his office has opened an internal investigation of the officer, who was not a sworn deputy. He said he declined to comment further. Today, the Douglas County Board will take up a $500 tort claim that Kerwin filed with the county clerk's office last week. I just want my special pen returned to me, he wrote in the claim. If that is somehow not possible, then I expect the exact model replacement. I ask you to intervene and energize this internal affairs investigation.

Brad Dowdy: This is serious business, Myke. Yeah, well, it is. Dude lost his favorite pen, and he is playing hardball to get this pen back or to get it replaced. So you should explore your legal options, Myke. I don't know what happened to your pen, but legally, you need to look into this. And as is always the case with great pen losses that are so important to us, like your ink, I present to everybody, the kids in the hall, the greatest sketch of all time, the My Pen sketch. And if you're new, if you're a longtime listener, you've heard us share this sketch for years and years and years on the blog and on the podcast. But if you're new and you haven't seen the kids in the hall, My Pen sketch, you are missing out. And, you know, the kids in the hall feel what this lawyer is going through. I mean, his pen is gone. What are you going to do?

Brad Dowdy: So what are you going to do, Myke? Is there a court case in your future?

Myke Hurley: I just wish I knew where it was. I mean, of course, then it wouldn't be lost anymore. But I just don't. I just I cannot. I just I don't understand.

Cursive Project

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So you need you need to find this pen because you need to practice your cursive because there is an awesome project on Kickstarter right now for cursive logic. And you've seen a bunch of our friends share it. I'm sure, Myke, right? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: People sent sent me a few times. Mainly people send me it to tell me to improve my handwriting. And I know all of those people. Well, Brad, I won't I won't engage.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So you do need to improve your handwriting. I mean, that's a given. But and, you know, there's one way to do it. And this is by cursive logic. Do you do you don't write in cursive? Do you write in cursive?

Myke Hurley: I think I mix between both.

Brad Dowdy: OK, that's right. That's right. You're very, very strange.

Myke Hurley: Sometimes capital, sometimes cursive.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't write cursive at all. But my kids are right at that age where they're like dabbling in cursive and they want to learn how they see this writing, this cursive writing, and they want to learn how to do it. And they're not getting taught that in school. So cursive logic is this Kickstarter that teaches you that it provides you a workbook that teaches you a new way to learn cursive. And I love how they titled this this project. It says cursive is endangered. Together we can save it. And it's true. I mean, you hear about all this drama, you know, all these big newspapers, right? You know, handwriting's dead. Cursive's dead. Pens are dead. Analog's dead. Right. I mean, how often have we died since we've been doing this podcast at least once every quarter or so. Right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So check out this cursive logic. It's really cool. If you want to know more about it, our friend Ian Headley did a great interview with Linda Shrewsbury of Cursive Logic. She talked with him on his blog, Pen, Paper, Pencils. And he did an interview with her about how this project came to be, what they're trying to accomplish, several videos, several shots of this in practice. And it looks really cool. You know, I've backed it. I want to get my kids interested in this and give them something to learn. My daughter's going to eat this up. But, you know, Cursive Logic is really, really close to funding and it hasn't funded yet. They need $25,000. There's three days left. It's at $21,000 right now. If you're interested in handwriting and keeping this kind of analog world going, take a look at the project. Watch the video and see what you think and consider backing it. You know, I haven't talked to them. They've sent me a few emails. I haven't really had a conversation about it, but it looked interesting. And so I've backed it and hopefully it will be successful. So it's just something I wanted to check out. Something I wanted to mention.

Myke Hurley: Do you get a lot of like Kickstarter pitches?

Brad Dowdy: Define a lot.

Myke Hurley: How many do you get a week on average?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, several. Several a week.

Myke Hurley: Yes, that's a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, several a week. So, you know, I mean, I'm used to it by now. And like, hey, look, there's the next link.

Brad Dowdy: I'm used to it by now and I can kind of suss them out pretty quickly, the legitimacy of them. Some I don't bother to respond. Some I'll say looks good. I'm not interested. Some I'll say tell me more. Some I'll say instabacked. So, you know, it's a lot, but that's okay. I like seeing the new stuff and, you know, it's cool. How about you? Do you get any of that stuff? I mean, not for like pen stuff, but just for like general stuff. You're into so many different things.

Myke Hurley: They're starting. I don't get many, but I'm starting to get some. So however these things begin, they're beginning.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You know, like I get these random things. And I'm like, I don't even, I have no idea who you are. Like I have no idea how someone sent me one the other day where they were apparently following up to a previous email. I've never received or. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Right. So let me, let me put business Brad's hat on real quick. And if you are a project creator, please use common sense. Do not send me a form email. Do not say like you just had. Hey, I'm following up on the conversation that we didn't have last week. Be a person. Call me by the right name. You wouldn't believe how often that happens. Um, that's an instant delete. You know, tell me something personal that I need to know about your project. Don't form letter me. Don't wall of text to me. Um, it's really simple. Be genuine, honest, um, conversational, open. It's people, people are so bad at a lot of things. And this is one of those things that you don't have to be that bad at. You know, just, just come at me like a real person. And then we can probably have a conversation. And that's how I'm, let's my conversation start and everything else. I'm sorry. It gets, it gets deleted. I just don't have time for, if you don't have time for me, I don't have time for you. It's very simple. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: I'm talking to Dan Bishop directly.

Brad Dowdy: He's typing in the chat room. No, Dan is, uh, Dan does a good job. Dan does a good job. He does.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So on that, on that cursive logic thing, Myke, I've someone sent me this video. Uh, Brian sent me a video, um, email me a video and I haven't finished this video. I meant to do it before we started the show today, but it's called inbound. It's from Clive Thompson, who is a popular writer. And he did a whole kind of, it's like a 10 minute speech or 10 minute talk on.

Brad Dowdy: It's the, the title of it is how the way you write changes the way you think. I mean, it's definitely something we believe in. So I'll, we'll throw that in the show notes for everyone to check out. And I need to finish watching that, but he's, he talks about the same thing about how all the big news outlets are talking about, you know, the death of handwriting, the death of analog tools, things like that. So definitely worth checking out. So, all right. I got a few more things to get to. We're going to be able to get it done today, Michael.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure we will. But before we do that, I want to talk about our third and final sponsor for this week, our friends over at Penn Chalet. Penn Chalet sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoint, mechanical pencils, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands like Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, and Kaweco, and are, of course, an authorized dealer of all of them. They have special discounts all of the time. You can go over to Penn Chalet and see what sort of deals they're running. They're really great at all of that stuff. They have great deals for us. We'll talk about that in a moment. They're very fast and reliable customer service, as always. And they're always adding new styles of pens every single month. As well as the brands I mentioned earlier, Penn Chalet sells limited edition pens, as well as the accessories that you're going to need, like pen carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. Penn Chalet do sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates, but of course, they also sell in the continental United States with free shipping on orders over $50. Penn Chalet has low prices on high quality pens, and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to PennChalet.com and use the code PennAddict to get 10% off your order, or click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter PennAddict for even more savings, as well as your 10% off. And those savings that you're going to find this week, still got some fantastic stuff over there. They want us to let you know, and you definitely should know, Penn Chalet still have the Kaweco Art Sport. They're still up there, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: That's such a hot pen. It's a really, really good pen.

Myke Hurley: And they're doing that at such a great deal. You can pick one of those up for $72.90 after the special sale and after the PennAddict 10% coupon. It's 40% off. They retail for $135. And we mentioned last week as well, the Platinum 3776. They have the regular and demonstrator versions. The regular version, so the non-demonstrator version is $108. After all the discounts, that retails at $200. And the demonstrator version is $135, retailing at $250. I believe, Brad, I'm going to say this terribly, the models that they have are the Nice Per Sai and Shoji models over at Penn Chalet.

Brad Dowdy: So those are the demonstrator 3776 models that they've made for the lakes, some of the lakes in Japan. And so they're this demonstrator. Some of them have kind of a blue tint to them. I actually own the Sai. It's one of my favorite pens. The nibs on Platinum pens are amazing. It's one of my favorite nibs. And, you know, unlike you, I'm a huge fan of the demonstrator. So I like seeing the ink in the converter in those pens. And I love seeing the nibs on all the Platinum stuff because they really, really work good. One other thing I wanted to show you, Myke, on Penn Chalet. Have you seen their fountain pen inks infographic? I almost called it ink-fographic, which maybe they should have done.

Myke Hurley: I remember Ron sending this to me. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: So did we talk about it? I don't think we even talked about it on the podcast yet.

Myke Hurley: You know what? I don't think we did.

Fountain Pen Inks

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So he did this really cool infographic laying out different fountain pen inks. And we'll have that in the show notes. But it basically categorized types of inks from waterproof, water-resistant, which there's obviously a difference, pigmented, permanent, lubrication.

Brad Dowdy: There's even freeze-resistant, fluorescent, fast-drying ink. So if you have some ink questions and you're kind of new to fountain pens and you're trying to determine, okay, I'm going to buy my first bottle of ink. What are the things that are important to me? It's like when I review inks, like Myke was talking about how my Fuyugaki ink review was really short. It's because I don't focus on a lot of the real deep-down characteristics of an ink. Does it look good and does it perform good? That's what I care about. But if you care about waterproofness, go look at this infographic. If you care about a pigmented ink, if you're an artist, something that's not going to wash away when you're using other materials over this ink, go look at this infographic. If you want a permanent ink or if you need an ink that's fast-drying, if you're left-handed, go look at this infographic. It's super helpful.

Brad Dowdy: And it gives you a good kind of guideline to buy those inks that are going to best suit your needs. So thanks to Ron for creating that. And, well, we should have shared that sooner. All right. A few more links, Myke. And one of them is on keeping a laboratory notebook. Now that sounds like super generic and uninteresting. But it's really one of the most interesting things that pen addicts can kind of get involved with because official laboratory notebooks are very – what's the word? They have to be – follow a lot of guidelines, if you will. They have to be permanent. They have to be archival. A lot of people's lab notes from like official like scientific labs have to go on the record, right? They're official. They're considered official documentation. So if you're working in the lab and you spill something on your notebook, is the ink going to stay true in the notebook? Are you going to still be able to read the information? This is a very, very important thing for those who work in a laboratory. And we've done some stuff on this before in blog posts on the pen addict. I've actually had someone who worked in a lab go through a bunch of lab tests and ink tests and paper tests to try to figure out what inks work best with different solvents that you'd find in a lab that might spill on your paper or spill on your notebook so you can continue to read your notes. And this is a really, really deep dive into that. And honestly, it's almost too much to talk about in this episode, but it's extremely long and extremely detailed. And they come down to a lot of conclusions about the types of pens that handle the different type of solvents in the lab. And it was an interesting conclusion to which pens perform the best. The Secura Pigma Micron, which is an archival ink, did really, really well. So did the Pentel Hybrid Gel. So did the Uniball Gel RT, which is like the 207. And the RT, which uses Uniball Super Ink technology, making it archival. So you can kind of see the theme here. These companies that tout their inks and their brands as an archival ink, those are the inks that are really lasting through these different solvency tests. So this is a long, long, long, long, long post, which is awesome. So I thought I would throw that in the show notes for everyone to check out. And what's the last thing you've spilled on your notebook that erased your inks?

Myke Hurley: I don't know if I have.

Brad Dowdy: Coffee spills, coffee spills, whiskey spills, girly drink spills, nothing.

Myke Hurley: Nothing I can think of recently. I mean, you do know me. I am partial to a girly drink, of course. Yeah, good.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, I'm good with that. We're going to have some in Atlanta for sure. But yeah, I'm not a big spiller of liquids on the notebook. But I am also not in a laboratory setting all day long. So if you're into this type of thing, how many words do you think this post is, Myke? A couple thousand? It's ginormous.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's huge.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe a thousand, maybe a little more. But it's got a really, really huge ink testing sheet on there. So check out if you're really concerned about the permanency of your inks, check out this post. It's really, really cool.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Guess what we're going to talk about next?

Myke Hurley: What do we got?

Visionaire Pen

Brad Dowdy: Everyone's favorite pen, the Visionaire. Woo-hoo! So you remember a couple weeks ago we had that Visionaire on eBay. Someone sent me a link to a Visionaire that popped up on eBay. It was selling for like 99 cents or $1.15 at the time. And we all got a huge, huge kick out of that. Well, guess what? The guy who put the post up, the eBay post for the Visionaire, he emailed me. So I said at the time on that episode that I guarantee this guy is a listener or girl is a listener of this podcast. And it turns out that they are. Excellent. So I want to read this email real quick, at least part of it. So he says, hello, Brad and Myke. My name is Dave, and I'm the guy who's eBay auctioned for the infamous Visionaire you read and linked to in episode 140. Love you, Dave. Love you, Dave. You're the best. He says, you put the right eyeballs on the auction, which led to a much higher selling price. $15 is what it went for than I'd expect it. So that was awesome. He said, but what's really great is how it brings me full circle with the pen addict. You see, the very first episode I listened to was number 64. I was already a Visionaire backer, and though I'd previously tested the inky fountain pen waters years prior with a pair of Kaweco Sports and platinum carbon desk pen, I was still a neophyte. Well, needless to say, I loved the podcast and immediately began listening to all the episodes from the beginning. The Visionaire was a bust, but as you had both, so hopefully predicted, I tried some other quality brands and became completely hooked on fountain pens. This is exactly what we hoped would happen, right, Myke? We said, if anything good comes of this Visionaire thing, it's that people who are beginners in fountain pens take the plunge, and hopefully the quality of the Visionaire would not turn them off completely. And they would be interested enough to kind of pursue that line of thinking further. What other fountain pens are there out there? What other inks can I use? Is there something different besides this? I see this is a problem. It doesn't really suit my needs. Can I fix that? And it's really, really cool. So I am happy to see that someone like Dave was willing to kind of make that leap from the Visionaire kind of into the next thing. And he goes on and he bought a TWSBI 580 AL in orange, which neither of us have yet. So he continues saying, I never could have imagined that the Visionaire would once again connect me to your show. That thing is truly a cloud with a silver lining. So I wanted to thank Dave for reaching out and for putting his Visionaire up on eBay because really no one should have that thing in their house because it might get struck by lightning.

Brad Dowdy: So what are you going to do with your Visionaire now, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Cherish it.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: And when you have a child, you're going to sign the birth certificate with it?

Myke Hurley: There's any reason to keep it.

Brad Dowdy: Hmm. Okay. All right. I see that there. So, well, I think we'll end it on that, Myke. We got some more things to talk about, including the Nakaya review I still want to get to. But we've covered a lot of ground in this podcast, and our listeners have a lot of links they need to be reading while they're listening to our podcast. So why don't you tell them where they can find those awesome links that I have so thoughtfully curated for everybody and how they can find us online.

Myke Hurley: Well, they can go and find the links at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 142. But Brad, I have some late breaking news.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, late breaking news. This is my kind of news. What you got?

Myke Hurley: From our friends over at Penn Chalet, we have another deal. So Ron has just, like, got it in in the wire today.

Brad Dowdy: Ron, are you in the chat room?

Myke Hurley: Ron, can you hear us? We've got the Platinum President in Burgundy with a gold nib.

Brad Dowdy: All right. This looks pretty good. I am not a gold furniture guy, but I like the red resin pins, and that's what the President is. It's very much shaped like the 3776, and it looks like the same type of style, but it's got a lot more flair to it. Yeah, it's fancy. This is what a red resin gold nib pin should look like. Like Pelican makes that sweet 400 tortoise that's got just really pops off the red and the gold. So this is something I'm going to look at after the show and see kind of what we got, what we have here. I don't know that I've seen this pin before, to be perfectly honest with you.

Myke Hurley: So we have the Burgundy Fine and the Burgundy Medium nibs, both gold. The pen usually retails for $275, but for pen addict listeners, after the coupon, you can pick it up for $148.50. Thank you, Pench LA, for getting that in there just before we finish the show today.

Brad Dowdy: Thanks, Ron.

Myke Hurley: He's always that. Ron, he just goes the extra mile. He can't. These days, he can't even let the show finish, and he needs to put another deal for pen addict listeners.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Ron's the best. I reviewed my Orange Pilot Custom 74 that I bought on the show from Ron a few months ago. I reviewed that today on the blog.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. I'll put that in the show notes, which I already mentioned where you can find them, but I'll say it again. Relay.fm slash pen addict slash 142. Or you can find them in your podcast app of choice. If you'd like to find us online, there's a couple of ways you can do that. If you want to find Brad Dowdy, you can find him at Dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, and he is penaddict on Instagram. Also, if you want to find Brad's fantastic work, go to penaddict.com and knock.co. I am Myke Hurley. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. And I must ask, if you've never listened to my show, Inquisitive, you should pick it up from this coming week's episode. I've been working on something really special, and I hope that you enjoy it.

Brad Dowdy: I'm excited for that. I will tell you, I'm excited for that. I did not. Myke offered up us Relay.fm host a sneak preview, and I didn't listen to it because I want to listen to it when it drops. But I did hear last week's episode with Merlin, which was awesome as the precursor. So I have this built up, Myke, and I'm pretty darn sure you're going to deliver.

Myke Hurley: I really hope that you'd listen beforehand, but it's fine that you don't.

Myke Hurley: I hope that everybody else does tune in, though. So I think it's going to be something quite exciting. And I hope that listeners of this show will enjoy it, too. But until then, we'll be back next week. Thanks again to our sponsors of this week's episode, Lunda.com, Squarespace, and our good friends over at Penn Chalet, who just can't stop getting you those deals. They love getting you those deals, and we love Penn Chalet for that as well. But most importantly, thank you all for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Bradley.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Casey.

Myke Hurley: What's going to get out of here? LAUGHTER LAUGHTER