The Pen Addict 156/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	156
Title:	Point Your Pen At The Yellow Banana
Release Date:	May 28th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 156
Audio File:	Audio Episode 156
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 156
Length:	5252 min <br />0.867 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 156. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined, as always, by Brad Dowdy. Hello, Mr. Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, Michael. How are you?

Myke Hurley: I am very well. Let me just say this episode is brought to you by our friends at Pen Chalet, who give great deals on high-quality pens of a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Mash Drop, an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds, and Notgeist, an online store that features notebooks and journals. So, Mr. Dowdy, how are you this fine Thursday afternoon?

Brad Dowdy: I'm doing really good. You know, finally feeling better for the most part. Hopefully I sound better than I did last week. And, you know, I listened to you do the intro there, and I know we do this podcast every week, but when you mention that we do this every week, I'm always kind of... We actually talk about pens every week for, you know, a solid hour. So we always... We never run out of... We never run out of things to talk about, it seems, does it?

Myke Hurley: Never, never, ever.

Brad Dowdy: It's pretty funny. It's very cool. And now that we've been doing this so long, we have some common themes that run through some of our episodes. And we actually have a resurrection today of one of our old favorite topics, the scribble pen. Can you believe that's back in our notes again?

Myke Hurley: Can you remind people what the scribble pen was?

Scribble Pen Kickstarter

Brad Dowdy: Okay, so for new listeners out there, the scribble pen was a Kickstarter campaign where the pen design professed to color match objects in the real world, if you will. If you're sitting at your table, and you have a piece of paper out, and you have your scribble pen next to you, and you have a bowl of fruit sitting next to you, and you're going to color the bowl of fruit, you would pick up the scribble pen, you would point the tip at the red apple, and then you would be able to draw red onto the page. And then you would be done coloring red, and then you would point your scribble pen at the yellow banana, and it would switch colors into yellow. So that's the basic, basic idea of it. It was basically like an ink cartridge and a pen that would switch colors on the fly. And none of us that are involved with this show, that listen to this show, anyone with any reasonable common sense on top of their shoulders thought that this would work. There's just, it defies logic that this would work. And it turns out, you know, it was pulled several times. It was pulled from Kickstarter, pulled from Tilt, Indiegogo. I don't even know where all the scribble went.

Myke Hurley: It's so funny, because we've just, a new feature on the Real AFM website is Site Search. So we have that now. So you can go and you can search the website. So I searched the website for scribble pen, and we spoke about it on episode 110, 111, 115, 16, 17, and 19.

Brad Dowdy: Man, that's some awesome search.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's handy. That's super handy. So yeah, it was a big deal for a while, because we were all up in arms about it. Like, basically, they're going to steal our money. And then it went away. You know, we all, they tried to do it on their own. The last thing that they tried to do was basically, okay, start their own website. Take, I don't know if they were taking pre-orders, but they were basically taking, like, what do they call it? Like, demo units. They wanted people to be like their beta testers. So there was like a beta test group that they were getting information from to send people out the beta. So this all went on, and it's been, what, almost 30, 40 episodes since we've talked about it. So that's a good, you know, half of a year or more since we've talked about it. And I got an email in my inbox this week just from a new listener who was telling me about how much they just found the podcast. They're going back through the whole back catalog. You know, our conversations were very important for him going through a tough time in his life. And I love hearing that, that we can give someone some peace for, you know, an hour a week and kind of get their mind off of things. And it was a really awesome email. Then at the end, he goes, oh, by the way, I listened to your Scribble stuff. And he says, I'm on Reddit, and I'm in this subreddit called, I'm not going to say the name, but it's S-H-I-T-T-Y Kickstarters. It's the subreddit, which I didn't know there was such a thing. And he says the Scribble pen came up. And I started, he started going through the links on this. And as it turns out, there's a Google document. We're going to put it, they're going to link to the show notes.

Myke Hurley: What is this?

Brad Dowdy: It turns out this is like the Scribble pen is part of a legitimate big time scammers crowdfunding thing. So I don't want to. All right, let me have some disclaimers here. I haven't totally read every details. This is an 18 page document where someone has found out this guy. His name is Ralph Oz, who goes by maybe 10 different aliases online. He's been involved in the JASTA keyboard and mouse. It was an Indiegogo project. The ProScan, which I do remember seeing, which is a measure of food calories. It's another thing you point at something and it measures food calories. The Scribble pen and the switchy Wi-Fi power socket. This guy's involved in all of these and all of them have turned out to be scams. So this is reading material for another day for lots of you. It's literally 18. It's an 18 page document. Someone has done the research.

Myke Hurley: This is I'm just like, I cannot believe this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. My jaw was dropping as I was reading through this and I didn't read every word because it's whoever did this research did an insane job. I mean, and there's all part, all parts of it where you can like at the end of it, it's got all the places where you can reach out to like the police and thing that are working this in certain areas and things like that. It's it's really, really nuts. So it turns out that the Scribble is likely part of a legitimate scammers efforts to to get into everyone's pockets. So and fortunately, thanks to our community, the Scribble is the only one of these three that got really killed. Like the only thing that came out of the Scribble was the beta program. Right. So if people gave their credit cards to get to the beta program, they're probably not real happy right now. But these other projects of this guy's continued on and, you know, like money, like changed hands, like millions of dollars, changed hands on some of these other projects. So it's a it's a good long read. Save it for your bedtime reading. It'll probably take an hour to get through this whole thing. But it's got screenshots and names linking him to linking this one guy into all these projects. And so it was interesting to get this in my inbox this week because I hadn't seen all this. You know, I just kind of forgotten about it. It didn't look like the the Scribble was, you know, wasn't even on the radar anymore. And it looks like the beta test program was still going on. So, yeah, beware. And I'm proud of this community for hammering the Scribble pen and getting it off of getting off our screens and hopefully saving people a lot of money along the way. Because it was up to a few hundred thousand on Kickstarter when it finally got shut down, I believe. Then another couple hundred thousand on Tilt when it finally got shut down. So I was glad to glad to see that. So we did good. You're lost in this document, aren't you?

Myke Hurley: I just I cannot believe this. This is this is crazy, like really amazing. Like, yeah, this is true detective work. Like someone is like. Yeah, I can't see all the links because I'm not going that deep, but like finding all these different social media profiles and LinkedIn profiles and all that kind of stuff. Yep. Relating them together that this is this is some serious stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's tied in like all the who is registration from the domain registrations and tied them all in together. Like it's a it's a huge web is basically what this document is tying this all back to this one guy. And the scribble is wrapped up in it. So it's mind boggling. So that's some fun reading. You know, luckily we don't have to deal with the scribble anymore. But I thought this was interesting because I'd never I'd never seen the level of detail that someone tracked this down, tracked down this guy on. So it's pretty crazy.

NPR Paper Coverage

Brad Dowdy: Another link I got several times this week, Myke, did you see that NPR did did a few bits on paper this week? Over at the NPR site.

Myke Hurley: I didn't see that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So.

Brad Dowdy: I've there was two links that people sent me. I don't know if they were doing something every day this week. I didn't see anything for today, but there were two articles. One is don't write off paper just yet. And two is a digital chapter.

Brad Dowdy: Basically, notebooks are as relevant as ever. So they both have the written article, which is not a transcription of the audio bits. But and then they have an audio link where you can go and listen to the listen to the stories. So the don't write off paper just yet is basically. A paper industry.

Brad Dowdy: Topic, you know, it's not necessarily pertaining directly to like the things we deal with, with notebooks and paper. And it's basically big picture paper, you know, saying that, you know, the U.S. is is definitely, you know, losing the market in paper. You know, the traditional paper, the things that makes, you know, packaging and shipping materials and, you know, books and things like that. You know, they're talking about how China is the dominant force in in paper because they've been allowed to use these genetically modified trees that can produce at such a higher rate. And the government has a huge subsidy for paper manufacturers and things like that. So that's what the first article is about. And but it was saying, you know, in the U.S. that it's not going away either because, you know, we're always going to is digitally entrenched as we are. We also order from Amazon and, you know, that's a box made from paper and everything ships with paper in it and things like that. So paper is not going away. OK, the second article was more pertinent to us directly, basically saying a lot of things that we already know that, you know, it bugged me like the very I don't know, the first couple of sentences of the the audio. They called notebooks old fashioned, which makes me cringe. Just like I just don't even I know you're going to talk positive about the notebook, but don't even go there saying that they're old fashioned. That kind of they compared it to the rotary phone.

Myke Hurley: And the rotary phone is dead and has no use. It's right.

Brad Dowdy: So that made me cringe. But the rest of it was the rest of it was fine. Basically, the author went to like the author is a big notebook or is a big notebook fan and went to like the local Starbucks and saw, you know, everyone working on their laptops. But did find a bunch of people working on their notebooks. So he kind of interviewed them and got some words from them on how they use their notebooks and why they use their notebooks. And, you know, it was just a common theme. How the notebook is not going anywhere because, you know, when you use analog tools like pen and paper, it uses different parts of your brain, which we've covered several, several times. And they talk about a study that was done, you know, where, you know, half the class did a lecture taking digital notes. The other half did the lecture, you know, writing notes by hand. And the group that wrote the notes by hand, you know, totally destroyed the other group in the test, things like that. And that's all that's all stuff we know. So it's good to listen to. They did talk to the Moleskine people, you know, they there. That's the other cringeworthy part. You know, they they were on hammering on the Moleskine thing, but they did make a good point when they talked to the Moleskine people saying that. They find that they find that their Moleskine shops do the best when they're located nearby an Apple store. So like it's the same group of people that understands, you know, some of the good things about Apple products, whether it's design or functionality or that type of thing. That same kind of thought.

Brad Dowdy: Mentality helps these people, you know, understand that notebooks are also a great thing to have for a completely different reason than your your digital reason. So I got more out of the second article than the first one, but they're both good to listen to. I mean, I think one's seven minutes, the other one's five minutes. So, you know, definitely check those out if you want to.

Brad Dowdy: You know, want to hear a couple of things, you know, it's mostly stuff that we've covered here before, stuff we know already. Right. Not not breaking any new ground. You know, maybe they should interview us and get the real details. What do you think, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I don't know why these people don't just give us a call. You know, like we're always we're always here to tell them how awesome notebooks are. Yeah. Did you see today that Moleskine have got a calendar app?

Brad Dowdy: I did. Did you see this? I did. I didn't. I haven't downloaded it to look at the app or read about it, but I did see the link being passed around.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I read about it on the version. It just doesn't seem like an app that I would be interested in and you have to pay for it. And so I would never use it. So I'm not going to buy it. But really interesting because they don't make a calendar. Like that's not a thing that they do. But now they're making a calendar app. I think more power to them.

Brad Dowdy: And it's not there. It's not their first app either. They've done other apps. They've done a note taking app in the past.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But that makes sense. Right. The note taking app. Yes. Yes. Because they can, you know, you can tie the two things together in a way. But it's just interesting.

Baron Fig App

Brad Dowdy: Right. And you saw our friends at Baron Fig also released an app, a note taking app yesterday. Oh, really? I didn't see that. I did. It's called Mosaic. It's very pretty. I mean, it's got some issues that prevent me from using it, but it's very. I like what they did with it. I think it's a good start if they can improve on it. I think it could be a killer app. The layout of it's really good. It's really good looking. It's well designed. It's very fast. But it's got some issues that would prevent me from using it on a day-to-day basis for my notes.

Myke Hurley: Just out of interest, what kind of?

Brad Dowdy: It's got no sync. I can't get out whatever I put in. That's a huge thing. So if I can't get information out of something that I'm putting information in, that's a non-start for me. Yeah. Can you share it? No. No sharing. Interesting. No export. No sync. The second is if you delete something and you miss the undo, there's no trash. I accidentally deleted something while I was just playing around with it. It wasn't anything important. I was just playing around with the default files. And I was just swiping around seeing what I could do with it. And I deleted something. I was like, well, damn, that's gone. And it's just gone. So it's got – but the way it's set up is perfect for me. Like I would love it if – I would love to use this app if I could get out what I could put into it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean it looks really nice.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was impressed with how fast it was too. It's – when you get a fast app that's working nicely, you can notice it. And it's really fast.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I would like to see more of this. I don't know if the Baron Fig guys listen. But if they would like us to test anything that they've got, I would happily do that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I read some of the reviews on it and they're saying the same things that I'm saying. Sure. You know, it's not – but it could be something because the way it's physically set up is how I like to take notes. So it would be very useful for me if I could sync it somehow. Then I would use it. So, yeah. We'll see. You know, step one, cut a hole in the box. So they're going to work on step two.

Pen Chalet Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: Let's take a break on that note. Let's do that. This week's episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by The Pen Chalet. You know Pen Chalet. They sell the best stuff. They sell brands that you know and love. They sell Monteverde pens. They sell Pelican pens. Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor and Kaweco. They're an authorized dealer of all of these. Roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils and so much more. If you want it, Pen Chalet are going to give it to you. And not only will they have all that stuff in stock. They've got it right there. They back it up with a 100% satisfaction guarantee because they just want to make you guys happy. They have very fast and reliable customer service. They're always doing great deals. They've got great prices always, but they're always doing great deals. They're doing loads of discounts. They add new stuff all the time. But they also sell as well as like all the pens and pencils that I mentioned. They sell carrying cases, pen holders, refills, converters and so much more. They ship internationally with great shipping rates. But if you're buying in the continental United States, you'll get free shipping on any order over $50. So what you want to do right now, so you should always do this, right? Whenever you want to buy a pen, you should go to Pen Chalet first because you can get 10% off if you use the code Pen Addict, right? On your order. So you think, oh, I want this pen. Just go to Pen Chalet. See if they've got it. You'll get 10% off and you'll help support this show and Ron and the guys and girls over at Pen Chalet. But what you should always do whenever you listen to this show is do what I tell you to do right now is to go to Pen Chalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. And you want to click the podcast link at the top of the site and use the code Pen Addict when you're given a little password in. You put Pen Addict in there and you will see our special offer for this week, which is for the Montegrappa Fortuna, which is a fountain pen. It's 30% off at the moment and another special for Pen Addict listeners. There's a new color, a blue color, which I love. It looks kind of like a blue and a rose gold. It's very pretty looking. They usually retail for $15 more than any other color, but Pen Chalet have them listed for the same price as the black version, the regular version for Pen Addict listeners. So not only do you get 30% off, if you want to get that blue one, you get even more money off as well. So, yeah, that's another fantastic deal from our friends over at Pen Chalet. You should go and check it out. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for their continued sponsorship of this show. Thank you so much.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so the Fortuna is really sharp. I like this is the one Montegrappa pen that I like the barrel design of. The cap kind of kicks out a little bit. I noticed that in the Montegrappa Batman pen and the skull pen that they've done before, that it's the same kind of shape. And I like that shape and style of the pen. And I haven't used one yet, but they look really cool. One other thing I've noticed in what Ron's deals are right now. Have we ever talked about the Porsche design pens? I don't think we ever have.

Myke Hurley: I think you mentioned it once or twice, but say it again.

Brad Dowdy: I just like the design of this pen is really good. It looks like it would be something up my alley. And they're generally pretty expensive. But this Porsche design slimline P3125 with a gold nib is $216. I thought they were usually like $400 or something like that. But yeah, it's an 18 karat gold nib. That's something I might look at after the show. It's always been a pen that's interested me. And it's just very simple design. So that's something I'm going to look at. So very cool. Thank you, Ron. And thank you, Pen Chalet, for continued support of the Pen Act podcast. All right. So we sent out some pens this week for our Kickstarter backers. We did the giveaway last week on the show. And I never emailed anybody. And that night, I got the first response from Noble Ignatius replied and said, Whoa! You know, I won. And then I think the next day, Ray Blake sent me a DM or sent me a tweet and said, Hey, I'm a winner. And that leaves one. Mark North, waiting on you, man. You know, I'll give him another day or two. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Some people might be a little bit behind.

Brad Dowdy: I'm just being mean because I have Mark. I have his address and everything. I could just email him and say, Hey, you won. But it's not. That's no fun. I want to see if they can catch it like if Mark can catch it like the first two. So if I don't hear from him by Friday, I'll send him a link. I'll say, Hey, you might want to listen to this podcast. Just saying. And also on that front, which I will do an update this afternoon on the Kickstarter page, all the cases have shipped, Myke. And people actually have already received them, which blows my mind because we didn't start shipping them until Tuesday, I don't think. So people nearby Atlanta, we got the first picture in of the first knock case out in the wild. And I'm glad to see these start hitting people. I'm glad to get these in everyone's hands. And I definitely want to know what everyone thinks about them because I'm jealous. I don't even have one. Do you not?

Myke Hurley: No. I'm not going to get one either. There will be one in my house eventually.

Brad Dowdy: Good, good. Well, yeah, I'm not even going to get one. I won't even get one with the Union Jack on it because we only made enough for the backers. And that's all we made. And that was it. So I won't even have one. So y'all will be feeling pretty special. But I'll eventually get the regular color one with the regular tag.

Myke Hurley: I saw Adam Moore tweet earlier that he had received his. Yeah, that's super cool.

Brad Dowdy: That was very cool. So hopefully we'll see more of those coming in the rest of the week and early next week. And then hopefully in a couple weeks, you know, around the world because we definitely had lots of lots of contributors from all over the world, really. So we'll be seeing those trickling in. So I want to see those pictures. So hit us up. Yep. We have a new pen blog of the week. And it's a blog that's new to me. It's called The Pelican's Perch. And how I miss this all these years. Well, I don't know how long it's been in service. But Joshua writes The Pelican's Perch. This was actually recommended to me by the pen economist. Sent this over to me. He said, hey, this would be a great blog. And I was like, I don't think I've even heard of this blog. So, yeah, it's pelican focused, which is a good thing. He talks about, you know, all the different pelican models. He's had Pelican did a thing last year. They did a wonder. They did something called a wander wanderlust project where they sent a box of Pelican goods. Drees from the pencil case blog. He got the box from Pelican. So basically Pelican shipped this box to all these people and had them write about it. And they would pack it back up and send it on to the next person, which I remember that. Yeah, I remember that. So Joshua at The Pelican's Perch was part of that. And, you know, he's reviewed the 805 Stressman, which is such a beautiful pen.

Brad Dowdy: God, he's got lots of posts on here. So if you're a Pelican fan and just a fan of cool pictures and good writing in general, check out Joshua's blog. Like I said, it was new to me. I started reading it just a couple of days ago, getting ready for this podcast. And it's really, really well done. So definitely hit up The Pelican's Perch if you don't already. Cool.

Myke Hurley: Excellent choice.

Brad Dowdy: So I had some big news last week, this weekend, I guess. I guess it kind of really hit this weekend. I was part of an article in the New York Times. They have a magazine section, which is online. And then it's a weekly magazine that's in the Sunday physical edition of the newspaper. It's like an insert, right? Like a magazine insert. Yeah. So it's a gentleman named Tom Vanderbilt. Who I met, Tom, originally when I was working for JetPens like four years ago. Tom and I collaborated on an article about JetPens. I was kind of the middleman for that article. So Tom knew about me. And he reached out a few weeks ago saying, hey, I'm thinking about doing this article. I'm stuck on this Uniball Sino UM51, which is the DX, what we call it. And he said, I just love that pen. And I know we've talked in the past. So I want to do an article on this pen. And would you be interested in helping me out? And I said, sure. Tom's a really nice guy. He's real easy to work with.

Brad Dowdy: And so he did this article. And it's a really, really great article. So you should all check it out if you haven't already. I sent it around a bunch last week. And I'm quoted in it. He wanted to know things for me like, why can't I buy this pen in the U.S.? And, you know, why did Japanese care more about what they write with than the U.S.? So he talked about that a little bit in the article. And then he also talked about how these fine tips are what he really likes and, you know, things like that. So the article was super well received. It's got like 46 comments on it over at New York Times and, you know, a bunch of people loving the, you know, loving what Tom was saying about these pens and everyone chiming in with their different pens, which seems to happen with these types of articles when you kind of get a new group of people, you know, saying, oh, I like pens, too. You know, this is interesting. Let me find out more about these pens. So my inbox got flooded, excuse me, with people saying, oh, my God, I didn't know there was something. I didn't know there was a blog about pens out there. I love pens. I've always loved pens. These are the pens I use. Just dozens of emails.

Myke Hurley: That's fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Oh, there's a podcast. Oh, my gosh. There's a podcast about pens. I'm going to I've started to listen now. Thank you so much. You know, here's my favorite pens, the Energel. I'm glad you you know, I'm glad you're out there and I can read about these other pens. So it's been it's been super positive, you know, just from a feedback perspective and getting the word out there that, you know, hey, there's more than the crummy ballpoint in your office supply cabinet. And that's what I wanted to talk about real quick. In this article, Tom, you know, made the point that he can't get this pen in the U.S. Right. From a store. He can't walk into a store, which you would consider. And when I say store, I'm meaning very generic big box stores, Office Max, Staples, those type of things. You can't walk into a big box office supply store and purchase pens like this, despite the fact this is a very simple mainstream pen in Japan. It's really nothing special in Japan. It is over here because you can't get it unless you're ordering from JetPens or you're going to the Kinokuniya Japanese bookstores in New York, San Francisco. They might have a couple more. They might have one in Chicago. I'm not sure. So, you know, other Japanese stores in the U.S. like Daiso, things like that. They're just not easy for the general public to get. So, someone actually took a picture in the Kinokuniya bookstore in New York. They had cut out this article and pasted it up on their Japanese gel ink pen display, which I thought was pretty funny. And one thing that I didn't know Tom was doing is he took a snippet of my top five pens list and put that in the physical magazine. It wasn't in the online part of the article. So, in the physical article, there's like a white space sidebar and it says, you know, the pen addicts top five pens you can buy at the store. So, it's the big box retailer store. So, that was pretty cool and that was hanging up on the Kinokuniya pen shelf, you know, taped up there. Hey, here's the pen addicts recommendations. I thought that was pretty neat.

Brad Dowdy: Can I touch on a couple points that Tom made in the magazine?

Myke Hurley: I would love you to. I like that I find out things like this on the show. You know, it's like, ah, you know, it's funny how I only find these things out on the show.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, which is good. You know, I like both. It goes both ways for us. You know, we like to surprise each other and I think that makes for a good show. But the things I want to talk about are things that I've always like banged the drum for. Like. The U.S.

Brad Dowdy: Versions of these Japanese companies, Uniball, Pilot, Pentel, Zebra. Don't give the U.S. market any of the good stuff. You know, this isn't new if you've listened to the pen addict for a long time. But for new listeners, this is an important differentiation from the U.S. pen market to the Japanese pen market. Everything in Japan is built around a culture of stationary usage from when you're a child until when, you know, you're old and retired. And, you know, you have grandkids and great grandkids running around. It's still in that whole, you know, 80 years of your life or more, stationary plays a role in your life in Japan. So these companies, which are all Japanese companies at their core, they're all founded in Japan. They're able to do things specific for that market because they know they're going to sell. Right. And in the U.S. market, it's an afterthought what they supply us. It's the very basics, the office supply stash kind of pens and paper that they supply us. And very rarely do we get the cool stuff. And by the cool stuff, I either mean micro tip pens, gel ink pens, which is what Tom is talking about in this article, the 0.38 millimeter DX, the unique systems that they use. It took us forever. It took us years to get the Kuru Toga from Uniball. But they finally came to their senses on how good a pencil that was and that it was actually a game changer. It took years for Pilot to sell the Acroball in the U.S., despite it being one of the best ballpoints. And then they still only allow, like, the basics. You never get, like, an Acroball multi-pen or anything like that. Zebra still doesn't sell the clip over here. They sell the regular Sarasa. They don't sell the clip over here, which is the superior pen. So it's a thing. You know, you just can't walk into a big box retailer and get these stuff. You have to hunt it down either in specialized Japanese stores in the U.S. or online. And that's really how the Pen Addict started for all of our new listeners. It started out on my hunt for these micro tip gel ink pens, which I always knew I wanted, right? I never could find anything that I wanted in the stores here in the U.S. until I found JetPens online. And JetPens being an importer of Japanese pens, you know, kind of blew my mind. And then that's kind of how this whole thing started. So, you know, I just wanted to mention those things that you can... To this day, you can't get some of the best pens in the world. And I'm talking about $2.50 pens in the U.S. They're only available in the Japanese market. And it doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon. Like I said, I've been banging that drum for years and years and years. You really don't see any change. I was shocked several years ago when the Pilot G-Tech C landed on the shelves, but they didn't put anything behind it. So they just vanished, you know, like really soon. They lasted about a year on the shelves here in the office supply stores. So, you know, the big box retailers here in the U.S. just don't have any sense of that market and how to market it. So they just say, forget it. Just give us the cheapest, most common, most name recognition pen you've got. And we'll just continue selling, you know, Pilot G2s by the millions and not worry about anything else. So, all right. That's my rant for the moment.

Myke Hurley: I enjoyed it though.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I could go for hours about that.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Hey, do you want to hear about a new sponsor?

Brad Dowdy: I totally want to hear about this sponsor. I'm so excited. So go.

NoteGeist Notebooks

Myke Hurley: This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by NoteGeist, an online shop that features notebooks and journals. There's something at NoteGeist for every kind of use and every kind of user. Whether you like blank, lined, grid, planners, or sketching layouts. Maybe you're in the mood for using fountain pens, roller balls, or graphite pencils. Whatever you want, you're going to find it at NoteGeist. The NoteGeist store has a wide variety of notebooks, which means you can easily shop in one place for all of your favorite brands, whilst also picking out something new. NoteGeist carries stuff from Blackwing, Field Notes, Palomino, Rodia, Word, and many more. And they also have a lot of amazing hard-to-find notebooks, like Bandit Apple Carnets, CR Notebook Wallets, some retired and hard-to-find field notes, Paper O notebooks, Paper Blanks journals, Unemployed Philosopher's Guild pocket passport notebooks, and some Write Notepads, which are these awesome letter-pressed Boroughs of New York series that they have there. And they have some fantastic EDC small pocket ledgers as well from Write Notepads. NoteGeist's owner, Gary, puts a lot of care into deciding what to offer. And I know this from just talking to him over the last couple of weeks, especially as we've been working through this stuff, and he wanted to make sure he had all great photography and stuff ready for when we did this on the site. So that's really awesome. Everything at NoteGeist is selected for quality, and it's something that Gary either uses or tests himself before it appears in the shop. If he's not happy with it, you won't see it. If you add to that his careful packing, fast shipping, and personal touches that are added to every single order, it's easy to see how NoteGeist is quickly becoming a favorite online destination for notebook and journal lovers. So please go and help him take it to that next level. NoteGeist. Notebooks and journals to capture less moments.

Brad Dowdy: So this is really awesome. I first met Gary online through the Field Nuts group on Facebook, and that's kind of where he hung out during the day, and we would talk back and forth. And then he said he's going to start this site called NoteGeist. And originally, he did a really cool thing where he would kind of – he was very active in, like, the Field Notes secondary market, right? So he ended up having, like, all these collection of books and was constantly trying to find these books. And he's like, you know, I need a place to sell them. And so aside from all, like, the new products that Gary gets, like these write notepads are really, really slick. And, you know, all the other – the Word notebooks, which are really high quality. I like them a lot. And all the current Field Notes and the Paper O's and the Rhodia. You know, all your standard stuff. He carries essentially new old stock stuff, right? Stuff that is no longer being made. He hunts down and sells them on the site. So you can go find old Field Notes on here. Like, he's got, you know, America the Beautiful. He's got Northerly Edition on here. You know, you're paying, you know, the aftermarket price for them. But people look for these things. Like, he's got Night Sky up there. He's got some really, you know, some older editions on top of all the new editions. And I thought that's kind of how he got his name out there at first. He was, like, having all these neat old stuff that he was bringing out there to the market and selling and making available. And selling it, to be honest, quite fair prices. He's never been one to, like, gouge prices on, like, Field Notes stuff. So it's cool to see the site growing. The site has changed in design from when I first started looking at it. It's really beautiful. It's really well done. And I'm really proud of him for putting this out there. And, you know, making it another spot for all the people like us, people that listen to the show. This is the kind of shop you want to see out there. This is, like, our home. It carries the neat, hard-to-find stuff that you're not going to find at your big box retailer like I'm just, you know, harping on a minute ago. So this is the kind of company you want to support with your dollars, you know, to help them keep growing and help Gary find all this new, hard-to-find stuff for us and bring it together in one spot to where you can just go online and buy it. And this is the kind of thing I love seeing. So I'm glad Gary's on board with us. And definitely check out Notegeist.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, please do. Please do. That would be fantastic.

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Woo.

Myke Hurley: I feel like I'm running out of breath today. Yeah. So maybe it's my time to talk.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's your turn. So you have something new that I have en route but I have not received yet. So let's proceed with making me jealous. Go.

Myke Hurley: Probably about a week or so ago, our friends at Cult Pens sent me a new product that they've been working on. It's the Cult Pens. They call it the Cult Pens Mechanical Pencil. Is that its name? The Cult Pencil. The Cult Pencil. There you go. I can see it on their website now. Yeah. So it's the Cult Pencil. It is a mechanical pencil that Cult Pens have designed. So they sent it to me here and I've been using it like constantly for like the last week. Yeah. That's good. So it's like it's a metal. It's metal in design. It's aluminium. It's got a knurled grip like you see on many mechanical pencils. And it has something that I've never seen before, which is called a double knock mechanism. So what it does is there's a button on the side and you press the button and it retracts the piece at the bottom. I don't know what it would be called. Like the sharper part where the lead comes out from.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. I don't know why I'm blanking. It's the most common piece on there.

Brad Dowdy: Chat room. Help us. Sorry. Go ahead. But yes.

Myke Hurley: I don't know what it's called.

Brad Dowdy: I know what it's called. I just can't think straight at the moment.

Myke Hurley: The writing tip?

Brad Dowdy: No.

Myke Hurley: No. But that's what it says on their website.

Brad Dowdy: It's got a real name.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Well, whatever that bit is. The pipe. The pipe. So there you go. The pipe. So it retracts that entire thing and then also makes it so you can take the eraser off as well. Okay. But it's got, yeah. So you click it and then you do the other clicking, which extends the lead from the pipe. Yes. And I love it. It feels really great to hold. I love the knurled grip. It's comfortable because sometimes I find knurled grips to be a bit uncomfortable. Uh-huh. Because they're not very soft or welcoming, you know, if that makes sense. Right. But there's just been something about taking my show notes. So it's like when I write and scribble little things down for the shows. Something about taking them with a mechanical pencil that's really nice because it's probably the smoothest thing you can get. Right? Yeah. And I've just been able to, like, just knock out the notes really, really quickly. Um, and it's just excellent for doodling as well. I like to doodle and obviously a pencil is better for doodling. I don't know what this means, Brad, but I might be becoming a mechanical pencil person because I've been thinking now. I'm like, oh, do I want to start, do I want to go down this road now? I don't know.

Mechanical Pencils

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So let me, let me rehash this a little bit from my experience. Fountain, uh, fountain pens. Jeez. Mechanical pencils were my gateway drug into micro-tipped gel ink pens because back in the late 70s and early 80s, you could not get pens that could write very fine. You know, you were lucky if you ever saw a 0.5 millimeter in your life. Everything was, you know, 1.0 millimeter ball points or 0.7 millimeter rollerball ink pens. But if you shopped at the right places, you know, 30 years ago, you could find 0.5 millimeter leads, which are even finer than, um, you know, the, the line with, they write a very fine line in the mechanical pencils. So that's all I use for years and years and years was mechanical pencils because I couldn't get anything to write with. And ever since we did the mechanical pencil episode, what, like five episodes ago, I've been carrying one with me all the time. I'm like, I've missed using them. You know, I always have them. I have so much stuff laying around. I go in cycles, right? Like I might forget about mechanical pencils for months and months and months and not use it. And then, you know, just talking about them. And when I was getting ready for that episode, I had all my pencils out and I was using them and testing them out. And now I'm carrying like one or two with me all the time now, just because you realize you miss these things or it's a different feel than you get with these, you know, with like your medium nib fountain pen. Right. It's such a different experience that it's kind of cool to experiment with that from time to time. And that's kind of what I think you're, you know, you're seeing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, definitely.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's a, it's a very enjoyable experience. And, uh, I love me some, uh, drafting style mechanical pencils. And that's what this is. The, uh, the cult pencil. So very cool. Hopefully mine will show up this week or next week. Um, it's supposedly on the way. And, uh, I will say some things once I, uh, once I get mine and, uh, give it a test run.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'll review it on the blog too.

Myke Hurley: I, there's just something about all of this, like the design, the way it feels like all of it is it's come together to actually make a product that I thoroughly recommend.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And it's fairly priced. What's it? 20 pounds, I believe.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Something like that.

Brad Dowdy: 1999, something like that. Yeah. So good price. Um, you know, good pencil. And I, I can't wait to get mine to, uh, to try it out. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Um, I actually, we have a couple more things that we want to talk about. We do have one more sponsor and this actually ties in so perfectly. I need to do it now. Okay. And you'll see why that is in a moment. This episode of the pen addict is brought to you by master up an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds from audio and electronics to quilting and cooking. And of course, pens as well. It's a place for you to connect with people like you to discuss your favorite products and your activities that you love about them. And you, but you can also really importantly buy them together as well. Master up represents a whole new type of online experience that combines community content and commerce. Master up offers a place where enthusiasts can meet and connect over the stuff that they love. A forum where you can vote on and discuss the products that you're passionate about and also connect directly with manufacturers to buy products together to get bulk pricing. These aren't flash deals or anything like that. They work directly with people to make this stuff happen. The thing that is the most important to the guys and girls over at master up is that they want to build communities around things that people love. That's what they are passionate about. Ultimately, they're here to help you by making the products that you care about more affordable and accessible and provide you with a platform to connect with other like minded enthusiasts. I know that group buys is something that's really important to the people of this community. And this is something that master up can help out with. Like, for example, do you know what I just found, Brad? As I was sent this one day over day, they currently have the Rotaring Rapid Pro mechanical pencil.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, I see that now. I just got the site.

Myke Hurley: It's on master up right now. It's, you know, MSRP is $4255. It's currently at $3099. And there's 14 committed. If they get 30, it goes to $2899. If they get 40, it goes to $2699. So this is just an example of just a great deal, right? That you can, that this is the sort of stuff that you can get. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And I haven't used the, I haven't used the Rapid Pro, but it's very similar to the Rotaring 600 that we always talk about. It's got a little bit different shape tip, but it also has the double knock mechanism that you were just talking about, right? Where the, you can retract the pipe, which the 600s don't do. So yeah, that's pretty cool. That's a good deal.

Myke Hurley: So there you go. It's just a great, the one great example of master up and, you know, why I wanted to mention now. So all of this stuff is totally worth checking out. If you want to go and find out more about master up for yourself and sign up, go to this address, DRO.PS slash the pen addict. That's DRO.PS slash the pen addict. Of course, that'll be in the show notes and you can sign up right there. Thank you so much to master up for supporting this show and all of relay FM.

Massdrop Campaigns

Brad Dowdy: So two quick things about mass drop before we continue on one. I mentioned this the last time that they were on here. This is one of the few email newsletters that I allow into my inbox. I always check this out because there's always something, something that I'm missing, you know, seeing. Yeah. I feel like I miss out if I, if I don't see it in a, in a timely fashion. So I always check out their email and two, they really, you guys who are on mass drop have really been pushing for the knock brass town. To show up on there so much so that mass drop keeps emailing knock saying, Hey, you know, everyone wants us to carry this. And we're like, Hey, we can't make enough to sell on our own. So maybe one day we'll get some, some cases on there and mass drop for you. But I don't, it's not going to be anytime soon with the rate we're going.

Myke Hurley: So there was something that I wanted to mention today. I thought might be quite cool. Uh, on some of our other shows, we have like a, a way of collecting questions and feedback over Twitter by using hashtags. Yeah. So like on upgrade, we have ask upgrade and we have connected QA for connected and we have relay your fields for analog. And I was wondering if you thought that it might be cool to have something like that for this show. It's a way of people to ask questions and things like that.

Brad Dowdy: So I totally think that because I'm always in the, uh, in our Slack room, like asking, okay, you know, what are I, what ideas, what topics you want to hear us discuss? And I usually, I just scrape those out, put them in, you know, a document that we share and we use them, you know, for future episodes. But I think it would be kind of cool to just have a show hashtag that people could just send to anytime. And that, that we could just pick up and, and go through our, ourselves, you know, uh, I think that would be an awesome idea. So what, what, what's, what's our hashtag?

Myke Hurley: I have no idea.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know either. I tried to do one for myself one time called ask, ask PA, but I don't know if, um, you know, that works or what we'll, we'll, we'll take suggestions on what our hashtag should be. Um, you know, it could be like hashtag visionaire or something. And then there's always, there's always come to us. That'd be terrible.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Um, so yeah, I, I like the idea of continuing to get fresh ideas for the show. Like I got one in the, in the Slack room today. Um, I got like four great new ideas. Three of them I felt were probably like a half episode show worth of, which means I need to plan it out, but you know, I will do that soon. But then I got one today, like is a really great idea and really straightforward, but it's, it's timely. And the fact that, Hey, give me some father's day ideas. Like my dad goes out fishing and, you know, but he wants to have like, you know, what could I get him? That would be like a pen that he could use, you know, if he's out and about, you know, in the woods, on the lake and the ocean, whatever, you know, kind of a, like a pen. And that's the type of topic that we miss a lot of answering on this show. Right. Like I can remember and jot down and plan for the big topics. Like, you know, I'm going to do a, um, a custom pen topic here pretty soon and that'll take up a good half an episode, but that's something I have to plan. But Hey, give me an idea for father's day. That's something I'll miss if it's not like hashtagged in a document or I'm not seeing it like immediately to write it down.

Myke Hurley: So that's one of the key reasons, right? That's why I like this because people say these things to me and I might like be at the grocery store. I'm checking Twitter. I'm like, Oh, that's a good idea. And I don't do anything with it and I forget it. But with upgrade and with analog, especially they go into this document. And then before the show, I check in and I just pull out the things that I want to talk about. And that is, it's a very, very useful way of collecting it because the feedback and the followup and the suggestions are saved somewhere. Yes. Right. That that's kind of the key thing about it. So I would like to start doing it. I don't know what the, I mean, we could probably just use the hashtag pen addict, but. Right. I don't know if you would maybe not want to use that because it.

Brad Dowdy: Well, no, it actually, it'll probably trap some random stuff. Let's think about it. Let's that'll be our homework and we'll, we'll announce the hashtag next episode. Just give me some time to think about it. What would be good?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. That looks like there's actually quite a lot of stuff in pen addict as a hashtag.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So we'll, we'll, we'll, uh, yeah, that, the ask PA might be a good one.

Myke Hurley: That's still to see. I've, I've raised that, that could, if there's a band, right. That goes by that name then. Yeah. Cause there's, there is stuff there. Ask PA. So.

Brad Dowdy: But is it, is it current?

Myke Hurley: Uh, within the last couple of days.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Okay. So we'll think of something over the next few days and we'll take suggestions too. If y'all have some suggestions for us, um, you know, let us know, you know, either Twitter, email, whatever, and we'll, we'll figure it out. Um, what would be a good hashtag that we can own for the podcast. And that way all your feedback and all your questions can go into one place where Myke and I can, uh, locate them easily. So before I forget, Myke, let me answer these father's day ideas ones.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I add a, add a few things and this is a real specific question. And as soon as you say outdoors and water and, you know, any kind of thing like that, I'm going straight to the Fisher space pen. Um, because it's small, pocketable, durable. It can write in, you know, water upside down dirt, anything like that. So you want to look at the Fisher space pen. Or the Fisher space pen refill in the, um, Max Madco bolt, the County comm embassy pen, or pens like the, um, retract or render K from Karis customs. You want one of those metal barrel pens to where you can use the Fisher space pen refill

Field Notes Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: and pair that up with like a field notes expedition notebook that can write, you know, if it gets wet, it's not going to get damaged. It's not going to, uh, you know, get destroyed by the elements. Yes. Quickly as a traditional paper notebook would. And your father's day is done as far as I'm concerned. That's actually the father's day for that specific question is a very, very simple answer. It's something that uses a Fisher space pen refill, either the space pen itself, or one of the mini barrels that you can get. And, um, and then some type of, uh, waterproof paper, like the expedition, which actually works really well with the, um, with the space pen refill. So that would be, that would be my suggestion. And it's actually, uh, pretty straightforward that when there's not, uh, many, many other choices I would go than getting a metal barrel pen with the space pen refill. So there you go.

Myke Hurley: Can't get any better than that.

Brad Dowdy: Nope. Nope. And it doesn't get any better than this podcast, Myke. So, uh, let's, let's wrap it up. All right. So good.

Myke Hurley: If you want to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash one five six. If you want to find us online, I am I Myke I M Y K E on Instagram and on Twitter. Brad is at Dowdyism D O W D Y I S M on Twitter. And he is pen addict on Instagram. And of course he writes at the fantastic pen addict.com and you can buy his wares over at knock.co N O C K dot C O. Um, thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode, a good friends over at mass drop pen chalet and note Geist. And thank you most of all for listening to this week's episode. We'll be back next time until then say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Brad.