The Pen Addict 172/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	172
Title:	Writing on a Banana Skin
Release Date:	September 14th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 172
Audio File:	Audio Episode 172
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 172
Length:	5252 min <br />0.867 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 172. Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts and pen chalet. Great deals on high quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always, by the beautiful, bearded Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: You know what? You have actually trumped me. I mean, I'm a pretty good-looking dude, I'll admit that, you know, with the pointy hair and the fancy beard. You were the fancy beard king, and you trimmed up awfully nicely for XOXO. I mean, you set the bar high, my friend, and if you haven't seen those posts with Michael's beard trimming and hair cuttery, just check out his... He was so impressed with himself that he changed his Twitter avatar to it, so you know it must be good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've not decided on that avatar yet. I'm probably... I like it, but I'm not... It hasn't sunk in, and I'm probably gonna change it at XO. I'm gonna see if I can try and get someone to take a nice photo of me. Gotcha. And then I'm probably gonna change it again.

Brad Dowdy: Gotcha, gotcha. Well, I'll go on record as saying I like the neatly trimmed mic as opposed to the ruffian.

Myke Hurley: I struggle with this, Brad. I really do. I really do. I like the big beards, man, but most people in the world don't.

Myke Hurley: So, there's nothing I can do about it.

Pen World

Brad Dowdy: All right, let's get into some new hotness in the pen world. What do you think?

Myke Hurley: I like the sound of that.

Brad Dowdy: Instead of the new hotness on your face. All right, so our friends at Namisu, last year they made the Nexus Minimal Fountain Pen. You recall that one, and I'm sure our listeners recall that one. It was a pretty good project. I enjoyed the pen. I enjoyed the pen design. There was a little consternation over the grip area, excuse me, of the design. And they had a couple of fulfillment staffus. A little bit of delay, a little bit of wonky shipping, some things like that that kind of got people a little sideways. I didn't really have any issues with it as far as the shipping goes. Aside from the ink did bust in my pen when they shipped it, but it cleans out easily. So, they've come out with a new one. It's called the Nova Minimal Fountain Pen. And let me let you go first, Myke. What are your thoughts on this pen by Namisu?

Myke Hurley: So, the thing that I like about this the most is they have clearly addressed all of the issues that the Nexus had. So, I like the Nexus. It's nowhere near like a tier one pen for me, right? But I wanted something made out of titanium because it sounded cool. I wanted a titanium near because it sounded cool. And it looks good. It works well. Now, my main issues with the Nexus were the grip was uncomfortable because they used those ridges. And whilst the cap was tiny, it took about half an hour to unscrew it. They had way too much threading going on. The Nova has a smooth grip. Bingo. And looking at the video, the threading on the cap, whilst the cap is like half the pen size, is tiny, right? It looks like it's one turn to take off. I'm looking at this, Brad, and I haven't backed it yet, but I think I'm gonna. I think I'm gonna. I like the look of this a lot. I don't want a titanium one. I don't need any more titanium pens. I really like the look of that satin black aluminium.

Brad Dowdy: Ah, yeah. That's good looking.

Myke Hurley: And whilst we're recording, we've got an early bird going on for 26 pounds, which is kind of nothing for a pen like this. That is, you know, a Lamy Safari is like, I don't know, like 15 pounds or something.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So I'm all in on this one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Um, it ticks all the boxes, like you're saying. I didn't have a problem with the grip on the Nexus.

Myke Hurley: Don't get me wrong, it was fine to use. I would have just preferred it smooth.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Lots of people did have issues with that, and I can totally see the issues with that. For me, it just wasn't a thing. It worked fine. I love the shape of the Nexus. Um, the cap did have a short cap with a long threading on the Nexus. This has the, um, the Nova has this basically standard size cap, um, and a shorter threading. Um, but what they've done here is they have made a pen shape that is my favorite pen shape. And they're saying it in the chat room and they're saying it, um, you know, some of the things that I've said before, it's the Nakaya Piccolo slash Edison Pearl shape with the, um, the pointed ends and the tapering. Yep. And the, the wider, wider, middle, narrower.

Myke Hurley: It's a classic look. It's a good look and they're comfortable.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So I, the full titanium looks like what I'm going to go for. I've already backed it. That's the one I backed. I could always change.

Titanium Pens

Myke Hurley: You went titanium again. Why did you go titanium? Tell me.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I got, I got the black last time with the titanium nib. Right. So I'm with the titanium barrel, um, not the aluminum gray, the comet gray aluminum, but the titanium barrel looks just like, um, not a raw finished titanium, but it's a very just polished titanium look. And I don't think I have a pen that looks like that. It looks like aluminum. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It looks, you know, it looks like raw aluminum, like the shiny, like it's not, I always expected in my mind that titanium looked darker.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. So what I did, I apologize. I think I misspoke a second ago. So I want the titanium body, but I got a steel nib because I can use the titanium. I don't need to pay a premium for the titanium nib because I already bought the titanium nib in the Nexus. So I can just, I swap nibs all the time. It's, it's very rare that I'm going to want both of those inked up at the same time. And, you know, I, so I'll just get the plain steel nib, save some money and swap out the titanium nib, which whatever, excuse me, with whichever pen I'm going to use at the time. I think this is an awesome looking pen.

Myke Hurley: And yeah, I just backed the aluminum. I'll probably keep the aluminum nib. The titanium nib didn't really float in my boat. It was a bit squeaky.

Brad Dowdy: It's a different feel for sure.

Myke Hurley: So I like the look of this. And plus, this is a great company based in the UK. They do some awesome stuff, right? I mean, I would like to think that they've learned from like their past shipping problems or the logistics problems that they had and that they've, they've kind of got their backer stuff up to date, right? It's the second project for them. I'm sure they're going to have learned. Well, it's actually their fourth project, but I think this is their second pen. So they're going to have learned a little bit from, from how, from how to do this kind of stuff. So I'm excited. I'm excited to see where they go with it. They're 145% funded or 27 days to go. Yeah. They've got my money.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I, I like this one. And I didn't hear about this until someone, someone had linked it to me just recently. You know?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I feel like I should have found out about this, right? Usually you see like people send, they send emails out to their, or like they do project updates on previous projects, but I didn't see anything.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. If you're still, if you backed a project, you're essentially still on that project's backer list. And, um, the, the project creators can send you a message, um, through that until you unsubscribe, um, from that old project. So yeah. But for some reason I didn't see this, so I'm glad I did because I like it. And, uh, I did get, uh, saved a few bucks early birding it and, uh, it's cool. So yeah, definitely check that out if you're interested in, uh, in fountain pens. Now this one.

Ink Follow-Up

Myke Hurley: Oh, I have, uh, I have some follow-up for you, a follow-up question from Mr. Thomas Hall from last week's episode when we were talking about inks. Uh, and he has asked, uh, I, the Montblanc JFK is a limited edition. Are you going to be stockpiling if you love it so much?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I bought two bottles up front. So I figured that's enough. I'm not, I, I, I don't need three bottles of some favorite ink. I'll, I'll deal with whatever gets created in the couple of years. It's going to take me to use those two bottles. I did buy a second bottle. Once I liked the first one, I totally bought a second bottle. Now that bit me in the butt because I bought two bottles of the blue hour up front and I don't like that ink. I mean, it's fine. I I'll use it, but I don't need two bottles of that ink. So, um, I've already, uh, messaged someone about, uh, seeing if they want it because I I hear that they want a bottle. So, um, so yeah, I, I'll deal with, if it becomes like the greatest ink ever, I'm fine with moving on to the next thing. Two bottles is enough.

Brad Dowdy: Fair.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think that's fair. I mean, how long is it going to take you to use those seriously? Yeah. It's going to take a lot. So by that time, you'll have found something else.

Brad Dowdy: Those are, those are 30 milliliter bottles. So they're smaller, like a Roshizuku bottles are 50 milliliters. So I will use them. It's basically a little bit more than one bottle of a Roshizuku, but you know what? You know, I, I'm, uh, I, I like to, uh, spread the love around with the inks and, you know, I'll use all kinds of different things. Like I've still got sailor apricots, sailor sky high. Like I didn't even list those inks. I have bottles of those, um, you know, that I use all the time. Um, bung box sapphire, you know, those are some other great inks that, you know, I just like to mix and match, um, things like that. And, um, yeah, so I don't have to worry about it going away. It's not gonna, not gonna phase me. Cool. Cool. So we were talking about the, uh, like the aluminum and titanium pins, um, from the Nova and along those same lines, um, our friend Tony from everyday commentary, who we need to get back on the show one day. Um, he's our, he's our EDC man about town. Um, he did a post I really enjoyed, um, called trolling for hate pins in quotes versus pins. And the.

EDC Pens

Brad Dowdy: Impetus behind this post is Tony is as deep in the gear world, you know, uh, knives, flashlights, um, moderately pins, um, as you know, we are deep in, in the more traditional pin world, you know, fountain pins, roller balls, gels, inks, things like that. So he sees a different side of things. The gear world was very, very competitive. It's very. Litigious. Um, it's very, um, knockoff is not the right term, but let's just say the big, the big players, um, you know, definitely, uh, borrow from each other, uh, at will. Liberally. Lots. Yeah. Liberally. And there's lots of infighting between brands and fans of brands. Like that. We don't see the level of argument in the pin world as we do see, but in the gear world, at least from, from my point of view, and Tony could obviously answer that better, but talking with him, it's like a, it's, it's a big thing in, in, in that type of world. So he did a post basically for all intents and purposes, ripping the EDC pin style with the, the overbuilt over gaudy, just kind of ridiculousness of the EDC style pin just for fitting the EDC type pin model that, um, those types of consumers expect, you know, lots of, you know, additional things on the pin, you know, such as, you know, glass breakers or, you know, just a lot of design work in the grip that may not be necessary. And, you know, just real high level materials that maybe don't necessarily need to be in a pin and huge bolts and just all kinds of things that you see in what's in like the tactical pin realm. That's like way overkill. And his point being, it boils down to the writing experience and all of those pins have a horrible writing experience, right? I mean, that's just, they're built, they spend all this, um, expense on the materials of the pin and it still writes like crap. It's the old Montblanc problem that I talk about. Right. And when I say that, I refer to the Montblanc roller balls, you're paying so much money for the materials of the pin and it's going to write poorly. You know, Montblanc fountain pins are a different animal. They write wonderfully. But if you're paying $300 for a roller ball, you can have a better writing experience for three dollars, buying a $3 jet stream a lot of times. Um, and that's what we talked about last week with like the cross star Wars pins, right? If you're going to pay $400 for a roller ball and it's, you can get that refill for $3 and have it in some other pin, the writing experience is poor. So Tony went on and, and he, he's, this is, you know, he, I learned him my vanishing point way back in the day and he became a fan of it. And now that's like the pen he carries. Um, and he doesn't expect fans of like the EDC type of pin to carry a fountain pen, much less a vanishing point, but he's trying to point out things that I've pointed out for years to where the writing experience does not always equal the cost of the pen. And people, um, in the EDC community who are extolling the virtues of these tactical pens are completely missing or completely ignoring the writing aspect of those pens.

Myke Hurley: Cause these pens are made to look in a certain way and to, to have a certain thing about them, but not about the actual performance of the pen or how they write in any way.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. So Tony's quote on this in the article is the trend in EDC pens is pretty silly, massively heavy overbuilt pens designed to withstand cannon fire, but can't write worth a lick. So if you're using this type of pen every day, you're using your, you're, you're basically doing a disservice to yourself from a writing perspective because you're probably not going to use, you probably don't need the things that it's overbuilt for. You need it to write every day. You don't need it to break out of a car window. So, you know, if you're trapped, you know, okay, maybe I can understand a nice to have in a bag, whatever emergency type thing. But from a writing experience, it's, it's pretty poor. It's a good article worth writing. Um, Tony sent it to me, uh, ahead of time. He just wanted to see if he was like really out of line. Um, and I said, I wouldn't change a thing. Um, it was exactly what I believe in. And he said, well, just make sure to come back for the comments because he gets, again, the EDC crowd is, you know, very, um, set in their ways. And vocal about them. Yeah. And vocal about them and super argumentative. And they did, they did pretty good. I mean, there were some people that agreed with Tony and some people that disagreed. Of course you want people to disagree with you. Um, but you know, it's all about kind of like a little bit of an eye opening and a little bit of an education and a little bit of an understanding of something maybe you didn't understand before, you know, maybe, you know, you're buying this one type of pen. You don't realize, you know, what you're missing out. Um, you know, look, not like ignoring other types of pens. So, you know, he's Tony's not saying everyone should carry a fountain pen, but you know, if you're buying a pen and you're using it for writing, you should consider how it writes, not just what it looks like and what it's made of. So it's a good article. Um, it's worth not only reading that, reading through the comments to get some thoughts on, um, you know, what the fans of Tony's blog are reading, because we actually don't for as similar as Tony and I are, we actually don't have like a lot of crossover. Like, uh, there's probably a few readers of the pen and act that read everyday commentary and vice versa. Um, like I don't see a lot of the same commenters and things like that over there. So it's good to, uh, good to check out. I thought it was a good article and, uh, Tony did a good job on that. So, uh, well worth your, your 10 minutes to check that out and read because it's a lot of what I believe in and what we believe in, um, you know, on this show. So that's my take trolling for hate, Tony, Tony, um, he's not afraid to, uh, speak his mind. Yeah. He's not afraid to poke the tiger in the cage and that's okay. I respect that. And, you know, disagreements are wonderful, but it's all how you handle those disagreements, right? You know, I mean, we don't want everyone to agree with us all the time. That would be boring. So it was good to see. All right. Tell us about one of our good friends.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode of the pen addict is of course, brought to you by the great people over at lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills for a free 10 day trial. Visit lynda.com slash pen addict. That's L Y N D A.com slash pen addict. Lynda.com is for people that want to solve problems. So maybe, you know, you're looking to learn that thing that you've always needed for work that you've always struggled with a little bit, you know, maybe that's Excel or maybe that's getting things done, right? You want to be more productive. You know, we talk about using the, these daily planners and stuff like that. And then there are people like me who like to use apps and getting things done can really apply to this type of way of, of being able to, to organize your life and stuff like that and getting things done can help you there. Maybe you're curious about stuff. If you've always been interested in learning Photoshop or Illustrator to do some design work, or maybe you're just looking to make things happen. You want that promotion, right? So for that, you want to learn boardroom tactics. You want to learn negotiation skills. You want to learn body language stuff. You want to get better at your job. You want to be a better leader, a better manager. All of this stuff is available to you if you are a subscriber to the lovely lynda.com. Go and feed your curious mind by watching videos and fantastic tutorials from experts, top experts who are super passionate about teaching you. And all of their courses are broken down into bite-sized pieces. You can watch them from start to finish or consume them in any way that you like. You can stream them on demand. So you can watch these in the web browser so you can follow along with their great transcripts. Or if you want to learn on the go, maybe on the bus or in the break room, you can watch and download these courses to your Android or iOS device so you can learn on the go. You can take all these bite-sized chunks and these great video courses and you can create and save your own playlists of the courses that you want to watch. You can customize your own learning path to share with friends, colleagues, and team members as well if you like. Your lynda.com membership will give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics, all for one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, go ahead and visit lynda.com slash penaddict. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash penaddict to sign up for your free 10-day trial. Thank you so much lynda.com for their support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Thank you, lynda.com. All right. So in the chat room a moment ago was our good friend Shireen from the Atlanta Pen Show that came and visited us. And she had a great question. I can't remember. It was on Twitter. She asked yesterday, which I never really thought about because I'm fascinated with all like the desk porn type stuff that, you know, a lot of our friends do, like the suite setup and, you know, a few other sites, you know, where you see people's desktop setups and, you know, what their computer setups like. And, you know, a lot of them include pen and paper. But she said, what if you were setting up your dream pen work area? Like she's just moved into a new place and she's thinking about setting things up. And if you had a dream pen work area, which in my mind, you know, I take that as seeing like not just a writing desk, but also, you know, have all your, you know, whatever accessories and things you need. And I thought about this for a little bit. And what I came up with was if I was creating like my dream pen work area from scratch, I would want like a huge, like probably like six by eight area, a very large area. And I would want the top to just be like butcher block, just flat butcher block, nothing on top of it. And then on one end of it, I'd have, I do enjoy having like the, the cutting pads, you know, that I use, like, you know, that gridded pad that you see in some of my pictures, like you can use X-Acto knives on it. And it, it doesn't affect it. And so I'd have that on one side and then I'd have a desk drawer underneath for paper. And then off to the side, I'd have a shelf with ink. And then I would just have a few pens, you know, probably on the desktop as well with most of them stored off. So what I'm looking at in my head for like my dream pen work area is open space. Like I don't need, like my desk now is packed with pens and paper, like on the top of it, physically on the top of it. And I don't like that. It's a little bit claustrophobic. Like I just don't have a really good area to put it at. If I had a separate cabinet to the side where I could just have ink and pens there and have my desk area open. That way, when I'm ready to do work, a lot of things come on top of the desk, right? I'll have paper. I'll have different pens. I may be inking. I may be cleaning. You know, I may be modifying something. I may just be writing or reviewing. And then when I'm done with that, that gets all put back into the drawers or into the shelf. And then the desk is back to being this huge open space and pretty empty again. That's like the kind of work area I would enjoy for myself.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know why, you know, I like my I'm not a clutter person. Like my office desk is like the cleanest in the entire office. Everyone makes fun of me because everything is neat and orderly in its place. My desk at home is not as much just because I don't have a necessarily good system to keep all the stuff I want handy right next to it. But if I was setting up for scratch, that's kind of the feel that I would like. Do you have any kind of like thoughts on this, Myke, for like if you were just setting up like your pen work area? Like I didn't notice I didn't have any computer or I had nothing digital in that area. Right. I want to pull the paper out of a drawer, throw it on the desk, make a complete mess on the desk and then put it all away off the desk. Right. That's the kind of workspace I like. Like what would you what would you be thinking of for something like this?

Myke Hurley: First off. So this is my dream scenario. Right. This desk is writing desk. I don't have a writing area, by the way. It's just part of my big desk that I have. It's where I put my stuff. It would be built by Dudek.

Brad Dowdy: I think we could I think we could work on that because it sounds like, you know, kind of what I would I would like that, too, with the butcher block top.

Myke Hurley: So I want Dudek to build it out of walnut. I'm going crazy on this one. So I can put in there like slots for field notes. He can put he can drill in holes for all my pens. Right. A big circle for my all my pencil cup and stuff like that. And then it would have it would be a desk which would be all flat, but would have a raised area like a light box type thing, you know, but just that shape. So I'm not leaning like doubled over to right. Like I just can sit more straight with my with my lovely scenario. But it will also have on the left hand side a padded area. Right. For me to rest my left hand because I'm left handed and nothing is built for me. And yeah, so that that was my kind of my ideal scenario. And obviously we lost the drawers and storage space. And it would be just beautiful. And I would have little ink wells and everything. It would be a very quaint and beautiful thing. And maybe I would have on that on that the raised area. I might have like leather. Right. Like some nice piece of leather, maybe green leather to be all traditional looking. So it's got that kind of that nice padded feel to it when I'm writing. Like writing like writing on a banana skin with a biro. If you've never done that, by the way, get a biro or a cheap ballpoint pen right on a banana. It's singly no pen and paper can match that.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've done that.

Myke Hurley: So that's what you want. That's what you that's what I'm after.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I like it. I like it. So now the only thing I haven't considered is would this be like if we're going like big dream? Like would our desk be like somewhere else? Like in like not at our house? Like would we?

Myke Hurley: No, I wouldn't want all my stuff to be outside of the house, man.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Can I have that?

Myke Hurley: Like you would need like Fort Knox level of security.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's cool. That's a pretty neat exercise. I like thinking about stuff like this. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, like my desk, like my dream desk is so different than what I have right now. Like it's like not even close. So, you know, maybe I'll have to work on that one day. It's good to have those dreams and plans and ideas. But I do like your thought about getting Dudek to make it and integrating some of his stuff right in there. That'd be pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So this next link, I got an email from Eric Lowenthal, whose daughter's actually in this class. We got a link from a teacher's website. He's a physics teacher and his class. He sent them a link for the title of his post on his blog is called Notes on Notes. So we'll have this link in the show notes for everyone to check out because I thought it was that good. And I wanted to I wanted to read some of these points that this teacher is making to his students, which I thought or it's like everything that we believe in. So this is going to take a minute for me to go through this. And it's not that long, but it's like 15 different points. But it all kind of it all kind of syncs together. He says some notes on how to take notes in physics. This is all personal preference, but it has served me well. Number one, use a bound notebook, ideally with quad paper. Spiral bound notebooks fall apart and binders are cumbersome and the pages fall out before long. Bound notebooks keep you honest. So I like this guy already, right? He's saying specifically bound notebook, quad paper, the rest of this stuff. You're going to pay the price later. He says number two, use a new page for each new class or topic. Number three, write on only one side of the page. It makes it easier to read, particularly if you use pen, which can bleed through to the other side. I'm a big fan of this guy. Give each new page a heading and date. Number five, use color to highlight central concepts or put boxes around important ideas or equations. Number six, draw pictures that represent the problem. Label relevant things in the diagram. So now we're getting into sketchnoting, right? So he's telling them like what kind of paper to use, how to set up the page, how to transfer those concepts that he's teaching onto the paper. So he gets to number seven, don't use a laptop to take notes. You spend too much time getting down trivial details and will inevitably miss something critical. It's also way too tedious to include equations, pictures, graphs, calculations, and anything that really demands visual representation. The evidence is also pretty clear on this. Taking notes on a laptop is not as helpful towards understanding or remembering as taking notes by hand. And he actually has a link to an article that says don't take notes with a laptop. So number eight, keep a running page of the important equations or ideas, maybe inside the cover of the notebook. Label your formulas. So this is basically logging the important things, you know, either a content page or an index page. He's still talking about the big picture of setting up their notebook to help you study in the best way. Number nine, and I really enjoyed this one and it's something I forget a lot. And then when I remember it, I'm like, oh, I should be doing this all the time. If things are moving too quickly for you, leave space for omitted notes with a heading of what the topic is and then touch base with me or a classmate to fill in the gaps. I find myself doing this unknowingly. Like I'll leave a header for something I want to work on, leave a space and then work on something else. And then I can circle back when I have the time to give the thought to that previous note. Right. So it also goes along with his number 10, leave space in your notes. Don't cram them all together. Writing on one side of the page is helpful. So it says number 11, if you have questions but don't want to ask them in class, write down the questions in the margin of your notes and circle it and then seek out the answer during the break. I'm just loving these rules. These are so awesome. This is an amazing set of rules. So, you know, you have a thought separate from your notes, right? You're taking your notes. So that's why I always have, I don't write from left end of the page to right end of the page and take up that whole space. I always kind of have just by default a right column. But, you know, it's not a defined column, but I don't write that far over because now I can come back over and scratch down an addendum or a question and circle it or mark it. You know, that's where things out that live out on the right side of the page oftentimes have a question mark by them, you know, because I need to follow up with them. Exactly what he's saying here. He does say if taking notes on a laptop is really important for your learning, take images of the board and incorporate them into your notes. Some students like OneNote or Evernote for note taking, but other programs exist that may be worth considering. So that's he's saying that's like an ancillary thing, right? Take a take a shot of what's on the board, but incorporate it into what your handwritten work is. It's 13. He says, by and large, if it's on the board, it probably should be written down. For me personally, if I think it's important for the students, I will write it on the board. You'll find a lot of teachers agree with that. The number 14, he says, never be shy about asking for extra help. Even have me look at your notes. Sometimes I can tell where you went wrong and you're thinking simply by seeing errors in your notes. So this is tracking the whole system, right? There's a trail of thought that has worked its way through your notes that doesn't necessarily get put down digitally. Like if you're working in Word or something like that, you know, you don't, you probably might have a scratch paper on the side as you're working through digitally. And if you're just doing it on paper, you can see all that work process. Everything that you did wrong is going to be there, which is good. I mean, you don't want like the, I always felt like the digital, like the only the perfect answer had to go on the digital page. Right.

Brad Dowdy: But like all the work happened on like a physical pen and paper, a pencil and paper. So I think that's important. And number 15, he concludes, says, I am on your side, which he wants to, he really wants to help these students. He's given them the best way to go through the class. Physics is not easy. And I, yeah. And, you know, so his name is, his name is Sean. He is a professor of physics, astronomy, engineering, and the history of silence. So science, it's not silence. Um, this is good for anybody. So I always enjoyed, I was always good at taking notes in class because I liked setting up the page to where I could learn better from like that. So I thought this was good to see a teacher, like say, you know, you have all these digital tools available. They're going to be fine. They're going to be help you, you know, do your research, you know, learn more about the topics you're studying. But if you really want to learn this stuff, you got to write it down. Here's how you should do it. And here's why you should do it. And I just thought that was pretty cool to see from a high school teacher. And I think a lot of, a lot of teachers could learn from this.

Myke Hurley: That's definitely, I like it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I love it. I love it. So thank you for sending, sending that in. All right. So I want to, I want to, um, continue kind of on something I said about the, uh, the physics teachers recommendation. But I also want to talk about one of our good friends first before we get into that a little further.

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: Sounds like a good idea to me. Let's take a moment to thank our friends over at Pen Chalet for supporting this week's episode. Pen Chalet, they sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils. They sell loads of carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. They have all of your favorite brands like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, and Kaweco. They're an authorized dealer of all of them. Basically, what I'm saying to you is if you have something that you want to buy in the pen world, you should be going to Pen Chalet to see if they have it. Because they do great prices. Customer service is so important to them. They do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. They sell internationally as well with reasonable shipping. And they give a 100% satisfaction guarantee for everything that you will buy over at Pen Chalet. And we also have a discount, which makes it even nicer. You can use the code PENADDICT to save 10% on any order at PenChalet.com. So that's really awesome. You know, you want to do that. And then also, as well as the deals that Pen Chalet do for us, they also have loads of discounts that they offer every couple of weeks. They do special discounts twice a month, closeout specials every two weeks, as I said. They're always adding new styles of pens all the time. Every single month, they're adding more. This is a great company. So a relatively new company. And they really have nailed it right out of the gate. So as I mentioned before, you want to go to PenChalet.com. Use the code PENADDICT to save 10% on any order. But what you should be doing is clicking the podcast link at the top of the website. You want to enter the password PENADDICT for even more savings, as well as your 10% off. You'll find always a list of great stuff there for PENADDICT listeners. But we do have another special this week. And it is the Pelican 400 and 405. Pen Chalet have some very special offers on just a small selection of products there. I'm not going to tell you the prices. You'll have to go and check it out for yourself. So go to PenChalet.com. Use the code PENADDICT when you click the little podcast link at the top of the website. And you will get some great offers on some beautiful Pelican pens. There's very few available. So if you want one, buy it fast. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet, as always, for sponsoring RelayFM and the Pen Addict Podcast.

Brad Dowdy: So I mentioned about sketchnoting when I was reading these recommendations from this teacher. It was kind of like that's the picture in my head that I had when he was talking about how his students should learn. And, you know, just recently our friend Myke Rohde, who's been on the show to talk about his sketchnoting, was recently in Kansas City. And the wonderful Anna Reinhart attended his sketchnote workshop along with a couple other people that I followed. I know KC Coffee Geek, I believe, is his handle on Twitter. He was there. He was sending me pictures and tweets from there. But Anna did a great recap on her blog, and I've never gotten into the sketchnoting thing other than being fascinated by it. It's one of those things that fascinates me, like the Hobonichi, right? And then take it. The sketchnote is the format is just so brilliant in as far as helping you to learn. It just seems logically like the perfect way to capture information. So Myke now travels around the world and gives these lectures. And Anna was lucky enough to attend one, and she's got a link. We'll have a link in the show notes to her recap. And it just sounds really cool. And I want to get Anna back on to talk about this. I want to get Myke to get back on to see how the sketchnotes is just like taking over his life. I remember when he first started in his very first South by Southwest notes, and I was sharing them on the blog. And that turned into the sketchnote army blog that Myke created. And then it turned into a book for Myke. And now it's turned into these lectures and seminars, and he's got workbooks. It's just been fascinating to watch this whole thing that started with something so simple that Myke sat down at a conference one day. And put in his notebook. And now just look at what sketchnotes has become. I mean, it's one of those words that you're going to end up seeing, like the newly added to the dictionary words. You know?

Myke Hurley: Yep. Rody has done an incredible job of all this. I just wanted to say that. So it's not me, right? He's not talking about me when he says Myke. He's talking about Myke Rody. I'm not the creator of sketchnotes.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. It's Myke Rody. Yes. So when I say Myke, it's definitely not you. I've seen your handwriting, and it's interesting. So you can probably use some. Sketchnoting would probably be a benefit from you. Less letters, more pictures for you. Well, I can't draw a lick, so.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's what they said when you were in high school, like with the books. Ooh, it's Myke Hurley. Yeah. More pictures, less words.

Myke Hurley: This is unnecessary. Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: But anyway, I wanted to point that out because I eat up these types of posts that Anna did, you know, where she was live and in person. And seeing someone who, you know, I greatly respect all the work that Mr. Rody has put into all this and seeing these two kind of come together, you know, in the same space and end up with something pretty cool is amazing. So we'll get Anna on soon, and we'll get Mr. Rody on as well. I've talked to him recently, and we just have not come up with a schedule, but that will happen soon. He's a busy man, Michael, as I would be too if I was that proficient at sketchnoting. But I'm glad to see this blow up. You know, it couldn't happen to a nicer, better human being than Myke Rody.

Myke Hurley: Great guy.

Hand-Made Cases

Brad Dowdy: All right. So I want to wind this episode up a little bit differently. Than some of the things we talk about. Because I'm getting a lot of questions about Knock here, you know, heading into the fall and with us, you know, teasing a lot of new products recently. And I kind of wanted to do, if you didn't mind, Myke, a little bit of how the sausage is made at Knocko.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I want to know. I know as much as everybody else. I want to know.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. So I, you know, I don't have, there's no like written process for this, but I just wanted to kind of like put in people's heads, like how we do things. And Knock, because, you know, we've had this prototype flying around now called the Half Tower. And we're going to talk about that name as well. And, you know, people are chomping at the bit to get it. And we're, believe me, we're chomping at the bit to make it. So, but the way we, Jeff and I work together is, you know, Jeff has time. The way Knock is built, we have Jeff and myself, and then we have employees. We allow our employees, when they're working for us, you know, they're making our product, but then they take time during their work hours to work on their own projects. Right. We want, you know, a lot of times these are students that are in textile classes and, you know, are dressmakers or doing these other things. So they're all collaborating and learning from each other how to make different things. And Jeff does that too. You know, Jeff's sewing all these, Jeff's sewing all these brass towns, but you know what? Jeff's taking the time during his day to be creative and come up with new ideas and throwing things together, seeing what works and what doesn't work. So that's how our new products come about. Well, something like the half tower just came out of Jeff's head one day. He made it and it ended up in my mailbox. And I knew immediately, I said, this is our next case. Well, we can't just start making it right then and there. That's not out of our, that's not how we're comfortable selling our goods.

Myke Hurley: Sure.

Brad Dowdy: So Jeff starts making hand making more of these cases to kind of nail down. Okay. What tweaks and changes need to happen? Then we start sending some of these cases to our friends to get some ideas, let them use them for a while. You know, that's why you're seeing pictures of these prototypes. We took some to DC, gave them to people we knew would, you know, use them, beat them, abuse them to see where, if there's any issues, what could we do better? What needs to be removed? Things like that. I continue to use them and Jeff and I get back together and discuss what needs to be changed.

Product Development

Brad Dowdy: So that, that process alone, that's months worth of work to even get to that point. And we haven't even started making the case yet. So we take that, we nail, we nail down the prototype. We know we're going with it. We nail down the specs, the dimensions, the digital patterns, the cutting patterns, things like that. Now we got to pick, well, are we going to do new colors? Are we going to do old colors? How are we going to fit this in with our current lineup? Is something going to stay? Is something going to leave? Is it going, you know, are the colors going to match? Are we going to do something weird with the zippers? You know, all this thoughts and planning goes into that. And that's, that's usually just me and Jeff and we'll run, you know, and then we'll look at like colors, you know, with the, with other people that other staff that works there, you know, and we'll look, look, look through colors and decide what we're going to do. So then we have to order all this stuff and, you know, count, you know, kind of have estimates of how many cases, you know, we're going to make, how many things we're going to sell. Are we going to do anything special? That's, you know, kind of like a one-off type stuff. Um, you know, along with this, so we, because ordering fabric is not just expensive for the fabric itself, but it's expensive to ship. So we have to like nail our fabric order. We don't want to order extra fabric.

Myke Hurley: Or if you don't order enough and then have to pay for shipping again.

Brad Dowdy: Right. We don't want to pay double shipping for fabric ever because it'll kill us. Um, so then we get that done. Then it has to be cut. So that goes to one location where we have a, someone who cuts the fabric for us, um, with their, uh, laser cutters. And they, you know, they take our digital, you know, our digital patterns. And then we plan out, okay, you got, you know, X amount of this color, X amount of that color, X amount of the lining, X amount of the padding. You know, this is not just the exterior part that's getting cut. There's all kinds of internals and, you know, it's like putting a puzzle together really to make one of these cases. And so that happens. So then, you know, like I'll go pick up, you know, just a truckload of, of all this cut fabric and it's all sorted and organized in each little panel that has to be made and manufactured together. And then we take it back to the shop and we start manufacturing. So we're kind of in the, we're in the stage now for the fall. We're getting ready for the fall. We're definitely releasing this new case design in the fall. I will tell you right now, it will not be called the half tower. Okay. That's a, that's an awesome name. We love that name, but it was just an accident, but we're working on what the name is going to be to fit in with our other naming conventions. Right.

Myke Hurley: You want to give it a name that's its own.

Brad Dowdy: Right. We want to give it a name that it's own. That was just like a happy accident kind of name. So it'll, it'll be named something else. I don't have the name of it yet. When I do, I'll let you know, um, because we'll certainly start promoting it for that name. Um, so we're in the process, the fabrics on the way it's going to get cut soon. So then it takes us, it's going to take us like a month or more to manufacture enough quantity to be able to start selling them. So we don't want to try to as much as we can, we don't want to sell like five pieces at a time. You know, we still getting, we still have that issue. You know, like we sell out of our brass towns all the time. We sell out lookouts all the time, but we at least want to make them in batches in like some decent quantity to where they're going to stick around for a little bit. So we'll have new colors. We're going to have at least two new colors coming out in not just the half tower, but in all of our cases. So take what I said about getting everything cut and everything fabric ordered and everything digitized times all of our cases times two new colors. You can see the time that adds up into the creation of one single case. And it's pretty cool. This is, I mean, this is an awesome process to be involved in. And I just, I'm just trying to give some behind the scenes on like how we manufacture. I mean, I think it's kind of important that people, you know, understand, you know, the things that go into, you know, getting these cases out and sold. And, you know, we're, we really care about our products and we're okay if it takes a little bit longer than, you know, getting something mass produced. Um, and it's really worked out well for us so far. So you're going to see a lot of moving and shaking here, probably from October through the end of the year, um, in knock and then on into 2016. Like we already have plans. We're planned out through the rest of this year and through most of 2016 for our product line. We just have to plan that far in advance just because of the time involved in getting everything, um, completed.

Myke Hurley: So when, so if you were say, say you were looking to bring a new product, you know, maybe the half tower or whatever it would be called. Let's say you want to sell that in February, right? Just say, when would you have to start making them?

Brad Dowdy: Um, probably in November.

Myke Hurley: That's mad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Wow. Okay. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And we would, yeah.

Myke Hurley: You going to do Kickstarter for any of these new products?

New Products

Brad Dowdy: So no on the half tower, maybe on the folio. So the folio is another case that everyone wants. And we've been pro typing forever. We think we have it nailed. Um, the smaller size we do have nailed the larger size. We still want to see a couple of revisions done. That will probably be a Kickstarter because only because that's going to take a huge outlay for us. It's going to be a little bit different production for us on that case. Um, so we're thinking about doing a Kickstarter for that.

Myke Hurley: Like new machinery maybe?

Brad Dowdy: Or? Maybe. Yeah. Just so we can get the quantities out that we want in a reasonable fashion. That's going to be a difficult case to make, right? It'll be the biggest, most involved case we make.

Myke Hurley: It will make a lot of sense to have pre-ordering, right? I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So that's maybe a Kickstarter, probably a Kickstarter. Um, and it's definitely not going to be this year. You know, that's a 20, that's on the 2016 calendar. You know, we, we've been teasing that one for a while. It's just not fitting in with what we need to accomplish between now and the end of the year. Right? So, you know, right now there's only X we can accomplish and, um, we're running at full bore, which is great. And, uh, things are going super fantastically awesome. So it's nice to have, be able to plan this stuff, right? If things weren't going awesome, we're not planning into 2016, you know? So, um, it, it's fun. And, you know, we're going to have other products introduced in between there, uh, in between now and then, you know, we might do something new with paper and, you know, do some other things. And, uh, you know, we like doing the co-branding stuff. Like I'll give you an example of like the art snacks case that we did just for them. Um, it was, uh, the chimney top case. And from the time we started, um, working with Lee at art snacks till the time we shipped them was probably like three months. And that was like 400 cases of a simple design. So, you know, we're looking at like from design and prototype testing to actually be able to sell something was like six months. So it's, it's, you know, just in the way we work right now. So it, uh, but it's good. It allows us to schedule. Um, it allows us to validate everything along the way. It allows us to make the best product we can possibly make. And, um, we could not love doing it anymore. And it's, it's really awesome right now. Like we're, it's, it's Jeff and I's eyes light up with like the things that we have coming down the pipeline. So we're, we're happy to, to tell y'all what's next and we love, you know, getting y'all involved. And I know we have to tease you some with our, our prototypes, but you know, we want to see what you think too. You know, you know, do you think it's terrible? Do you see some change that design that we haven't seen and things like that? So, you know, the community is definitely a huge part in, in directing, you know, what we do is knock and, and, you know, we certainly. You know, um, love everybody for that. So it's, it's been a blast. It's been fun. And, uh, it's, it's going very well and hopefully continues to go well to the future. And that's, that's a thing. I mean, and that's only thanks to, to our customers. So I wanted to give a little bit of that, uh, behind the scenes on how things go. So when you wonder why you see a half tower and you can't have it tomorrow.

Myke Hurley: So I think this is a nice thing to go through a little bit different. And, and I like to talk about knock every now and then, you know? Yeah. And it's part of the show. I feel in a, in an interesting kind of way.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think so. And we'll, we'll bring it in as, as things, you know, develop in the future. And, you know, there's inevitable changes to be made and new products coming out. And, you know, I like to talk about them. You know, I don't talk about it like constantly. It's not my style, but, you know, every now and then we need to, to bring it up, address some things and, uh, give people the insight that they're looking for. I think that only makes, um, makes the company better to be quite honest, to have that back and forth.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Yep. If you want to find the show notes for this episode, head on over to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 172. If you want to find Brad online, he is at Dowdy is on one Twitter, D O W D Y I S M. And he is pen addict on Instagram. And it also, you can find him over at pen addict.com. I am at I Myke I M Y K E. And we'll be back next time. Thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode, uh, lynda.com and pen chalet until then say goodbye, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Goodbye, Casey.

Myke Hurley: No one's going to understand.