The Pen Addict 221/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	221
Title:	Thank You?
Release Date:	September 7th, 2016
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 221
Audio File:	Audio Episode 221
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 221
Length:	5757 min <br />0.95 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Pen Addict Podcast

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 221. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy as always. This episode is brought to you by Harry's and Squarespace. Mr. Dowdy, how are you today?

Brad Dowdy: I'm good, sir. How are you? That was a very lively introduction by you. I mean, they're all pretty lively, but you're on it. I'm pumping up the jam. Yeah. Well, you have a big afternoon. I mean, this is the most important part of your day on Wednesday is The Pen Addict podcast, number one. The number two is the Apple event this afternoon, right?

Myke Hurley: That's why I'm so excited right now. This is my peak of the day.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. So we'll get you started off on the right foot. Although my show notes are filled with a little bit of angst.

Myke Hurley: Anger. Pure vitriol in our show notes today. Lots of curse words, which we cannot repeat, but I just want you to know there are F-bombs all over our show notes. So you have that to look forward to.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. A certain person put me in a bad mood, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But the first thing I wanted to talk about, though, is your moving conundrum from last week. And it didn't get me motivated to get my house in order, if you will, because it's something I've been meaning to do for a long time. But I finally had the time and effort to be able to get in and try to organize some of my stationery, you know, like some of the stuff we talked about with you moving last week and getting new shelving and all that kind of stuff and how you should store things. And I still don't necessarily have great answers for you, but I tried to at least fix what I have because it was pretty much a mess. So you saw some of my pictures I posted on Instagram.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I was also watching your story, your Instagram story. Oh, yeah. Those are fun.

Brad Dowdy: Like, yeah, those are fun. Then I forgot to end it. And then it vanishes after like 24 hours. Yeah, it does. So that's okay.

Myke Hurley: Femoral content, Brad. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I've got to say, like, looking at this, man, there's you've got a lot of stuff here. But in a way, like, it doesn't feel like as much as I would have expected at the same time. Like, you should have, and I expect you do have way more stuff than this. Yeah, I do. You've got a lot of ink there, man. Like, I think that's your key problem. I know that you're calling out notebooks as your issue. And you were really upset about notebooks. But looking at that, like, basically one and a half shells of ink, like, that stuff is just difficult to do anything with.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it is. And, you know, not a lot of it, not all of it has boxes. So they're always hard to arrange properly. But, you know, I mean, I took some before and during and after pictures. And I didn't get to finish it all the way because I got sidetracked during the middle of the day. I was gone for a while. So my project got put on hold until I got back. So I didn't have as much time. But I spent a few hours working on it. And so I have, like, this six-shelf thing in a closet.

Brad Dowdy: And the shelves don't have any, you know, stores with it. That looks like a pretty big closet. It is a big closet. It's got two sides. Like, the whole left side is full of more shelves. That's all, like, books and DVDs and then, like, pen boxes. So I did rearrange some of that. And I'm going to rearrange more of that for some of these notebooks. Because what I found out as I was doing this, like you said a minute ago, notebooks are the real problem here. Like, I'm fine with the pens. I'm fine with the inks. But the notebooks are everywhere. And I don't know what to do. Like, my first...

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I see that. I guess, like, where I'm saying, like, ink is a problem because it's hard to do anything with. At least you can have, like, way more bottles of ink and it takes up less space.

Ink Collection

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the ink's clearly a problem. I mean, I have too much. But that's okay. You know, I like trying different things. And I'm good with that. Then I did, like, the top shelf. I put up a bunch of the big notebooks that don't really have a great place to go. And then the third shelf, I got the little field notes retail display from my friend Kevin Penley that used to work for Knock. He was moving and wanted to get rid of it. And I said, yeah, I'll take it. And I figured I'd use it for my storage. It'll probably eventually go in my office. And that's where I keep, like, the one of each of all the colors. So, they're in that little display.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've got to say, I'm so jealous of that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, that came out good on the shelf. And then I stacked all the extra field notes I have up to the side of it. And then, like, I took a bunch of pens and notebooks and other things off the shelf. So, I have three more shelves to get through. The pens are going to be okay. I've got, like, these, they actually call them dish pans or dish buckets. Not, like, dish pan, like, not like bed pan, but, like, you know, washing dishes. Like sink bucket things. Yeah. Yeah. Like, for drying dishes and things like that. So, I got them. They don't really fit perfectly in the shelf. But they're good enough for, like, all my gel pens, all my ballpoint pens, all my highlighters. All those things go in Ziplocs in those bags. So, when I get, all of a sudden, I have 10 of those on my desk. I can go in and drop them in the little bag that they need. Right? So, the problem is still going to be when I get done with this is the notebooks. Because, number one, there's so many of them. Number two, there are so many different sizes and configurations. They don't stack neatly. So, having to figure out what to do with that. You know, like, it's good. Like, the memo books stack well as long as they're wrapped. The A5 books are usually the right size and configuration to stack well. Everything else is kind of a crapshoot.

Brad Dowdy: You know, just random sizes. Some used, some not used. So, I just got to figure that out. I mean, and I'm going to ship a bunch of these off. You know, I've got some people. I'll probably send some to the school just because I don't need this many. And the biggest thing that you should focus on, which I'm trying to do when I get done with this, is to have room for growth. You know, you got to build in some extra space.

Myke Hurley: This is what I was talking about, right? Like, you can't just have it so like, oh, great, everything fits. No, that's a problem.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, if you max it out right out the gate, you are in big trouble. So, I ended up not getting finished. So, I'll probably get back to it this weekend, see if I can figure something out with the notebooks.

Myke Hurley: So, my final solution is going to be the IKEA Kallax stuff. I was taking a look through it. And what I really like is, obviously, because it's IKEA, it's kind of expandable in a way. Like, because it's basically like the empty squares. But you can buy doors and shelves, like drawers, to go inside of them. So, you can kind of like, customize it to what you need. So, like, I'm going to get a few. I'll get some boxes, throw some stuff in, get some shelves. Or, like drawers, I mean, and put some stuff in those. And then I should be able to, like, build and rearrange it, like, over time. Because you can kind of pull stuff out, put new stuff in. So, that's probably what I'm going to go with. Well, it is what I'm going to go with. But, obviously, I haven't worked out the exact amount of these things. But in my mega office, I'm basically going to put as many of these units in as possible. And then some of them will be empty. But that's fine, because that's the idea, right? Exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's perfect.

Myke Hurley: So, there you go.

Brad Dowdy: I didn't, a bunch of questions, you know, did I find anything, you know, I was not expecting to find. I really didn't. I found a bunch of old business cards from Jeff's previous business called Alter Manufacturing.

Myke Hurley: You also found that crazy JetPens hat that you put into the cigar story.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that hat's pretty sweet. I love that thing. So, yeah, I moved that to my closet. And so, I can wear it from time to time. Jet Doe has the same hairdo that I do. So, I appreciate him. And that hat's pretty sweet. I can fit my hair right in it.

Notebook Frustration

Brad Dowdy: So, as thrilling as that was, the notebooks got me a little angsty. And when I started writing the show notes, that angst came out in these next few topics. A little bit. And it's really just the first one. The other stuff's fine. But I just got on a roll and just started going through the notes that way. But our nemesis, I'm going to call her, Ann Truebeck. If you guys will remember that name, she's the one that was on the Freakonomics podcast. I think Stephen Dubner did that. I don't know if his partner did that one. But I think it was Dubner was the host on that one. And she was, she's writing a book about, essentially, that handwriting can just go away. We don't need to learn it. It doesn't matter. And she, this came back to light because she did an opinion piece two weeks ago in the New York Times, in the, you know, in the op-ed section called Handwriting Just Doesn't Matter. And she goes through all this historical stuff of why, you know, how we've evolved over time. And no one, you know, scratches on caves with rocks and sticks anymore and things like that. So, you know, but it's just all this nonsense. And then what really, you know, that's fine. I'm good with all this. You know, she's going through the failings of handwriting through time, how it's changed and morph, why we should move into digital things and things like that. And then at the end, the very last paragraph, she has to drop in the thing that bothers me the most about her. And it's this first sentence in the last paragraph. She says, but as a left-hander with terrible handwriting who watched my son struggle to master cursive, he had to stay inside during recess for much of the third grade because he wrote his J's backwards. That is a loss I can weather. That drives me insane. I just want to come through the computer at her when she writes nonsense like this. She did this on the podcast. She said her son had issues. I think they changed schools or something in second grade. It was a second grade issue on the podcast where her son, you know, was trying to learn handwriting and couldn't get it. I think my daughter wrote her nines backwards for about two years. I mean, this is what kids do. It's part of the learning process and they need to be taught that so they can write it normally.

Brad Dowdy: Your son had to stay back from recess for all of third grade for writing his J's backwards. I doubt that. He just needs to keep going and keep writing and keep learning. And then the J's happen. You know, he's not going to write his J's backwards forever. You know, you don't see adults walking around sucking their thumb. You know, it just stops. It's infuriating when she invokes her son not being schooled properly or not being able to do everything perfectly right out the gate. When, you know, I've seen my daughter go through the same thing and it's a completely normal thing. Like what she's saying with her son is not abnormal. That's such a normal thing going through first, second, third grade as you're learning to write, as you're trying to pick up just printing. And I'm not even talking about cursive here. Like, you know, I just want the kids to be able to learn handwriting. I would like them to be able to read, to write cursive because it helps you read cursive. It helps you study all the historical documents. It helps you. It's just good for your brain. There's no reason why you should discount handwriting like she wants to discount handwriting. And just to be perfectly clear, the tagline at the bottom of the post or the article in the New York Times is, Ann Trubick is the author of The Forthcoming, The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting. So, I mean, she's trying to sell a book. And that's fine. But the way she invokes her child repeatedly really bothers me because I've had kids that have gone through this stuff and have learned, you know, over the years just by practice, just by doing their homework. You know, we'll sit there and write pages of the letters that they're not working on, that are not coming out right in their hand, and they get frustrated.

Brad Dowdy: It's part of growing up. It's part of learning.

Myke Hurley: It's like saying that we shouldn't learn mental arithmetic anymore because we have calculators. Right? But, I mean, we still do that stuff because there's, like, basic understanding of just the way things work. Maybe in 50 years we won't teach Kursiv in school anymore. Maybe. Right? Maybe for whatever reason it just won't happen anymore. But right now it's still something you need to know. You know, you need to know how to write. You need to know how to fill out a form. Yeah. See, it's a skill that kids need to learn. And quite frankly, kids will always struggle with it. I still struggle with writing at times. Like, I get my P's and my B's mixed up and my D's. Anything that looks like that shape, I get them all mixed up constantly. And I don't know why I've always been this way. It's just a thing that's embedded in my brain just to get those mixed up. Like, it just happens. Yes. Like, but I don't think any, I mean, I don't know what kind of school is doing that to a kid. Right. Right. Like, keeping them in every recess. Maybe they do sometimes. You know, for extra, like, extra training, extra help. But that's also not a punishment. Like, they're trying to help him. Right. It's not being detained. Like, they're trying to help the kid. I don't know. I mean, clearly this upsets her for whatever reason, and I understand that. But I don't think that decrying, I mean, we spoke about this before, right? When the article came out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, when they did the podcast. It was a few months ago when they did the Freakonomics show, when she was on there.

Myke Hurley: But I don't think it's reason enough to decry that handwriting should be over.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. So we put the, so that was two weeks ago. Last week, the opinion page ran all the letters to the editor that they got, or some of them. There were seven that they posted. Not one of them supported her. Like, they were all, you know, pretty upset with her conclusion. Which generally, when you see a divisive article, you'll get both sides' responses represented in a paper like the Times. You know, in the op-ed letters. You'll get, you know, some people fully agree. Some people disagree. Some people in the middle. This was all just disagreement down the board. So I thought that was kind of telling. It's, I don't get it. I don't know why you want to make this your thing. Like, why is this your platform? I don't understand it. And I never will. So there's that. But one thing I do understand, Myke, is the value of a good shave. And boy, I had a great shave with my Harry's razor this morning.

Myke Hurley: Look at you. You're just, you're so good at this. I try, man. You really do.

Brad Dowdy: And Truebeck got me ramped up.

Myke Hurley: Harry's does give you that great shave. And they continue to give you an even better shave. Because they improve their product and don't charge you more. This is what makes Harry's so great. They're adding tons of features to their razors. They're changing up their blades. But they're not charging you any more for it. They're keeping that price the same. This isn't what you're used to with previous razor companies. But this is why Harry's is different. And it's why you should be checking them out. Harry's five-blade razors include a soft flex hinge for more comfortable glide. A trimmer blade for hard-to-reach places. A lubricate and strip. And their new razor handle has a great texture to it. So even when your hands are wet, you'll be able to keep that grip and get the shave that you're looking for. Harry's will give you a full refund if you're not happy with their products. Because they believe in guaranteeing their quality. Because they know how great they are. And they're at a great price as well. They're just $2 per blade. So much cheaper than what you're going to find out of the big brand blade companies and razor companies. Which is why on average an everyday shaver saves $150 a year on blades using Harry's. That savings is amazing. And you get so much for it. You get a great looking product. Great smelling products. All of their shaving stuff like the foaming shave gel. And the aftershave stuff. And all of the creams and stuff that they have. They all smell amazing. You get great value for money. And you're going to get a fantastic shave. And because you'll be able to get your blades and your products for cheaper, you'll be able to switch the blades out more often. And get that smoother shave every single time. Now, for just $15, you can get yourself a weighted razor handle, moisturizing shave cream, and three precision engineered five blade cartridges. And a beautiful travel cover as well. But you can get this for $10 as being a listener of this show. Because if you go to harrys.com right now and use my code, which is PenAddict, to check out, you'll get $5 off your first purchase. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com. Coupon code PenAddict to check out for $5 off. Thank you so much to Harries for their support of this show. And RelayFM.

Montblanc Paper

Brad Dowdy: So, my rage towards Ann Truebeck kind of flowed through these next couple of topics. But it's really misplaced. I was just on a roll writing the show documents. I'm not that upset about them. But we should definitely talk about them in a very curious manner. You know, there's lots of questions about it. And the first one is the new Montblanc notebook that they're doing, the augmented paper. What are they calling this one, Michael? I didn't pull this one up here.

Myke Hurley: The Montblanc one?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. The Montblanc something. I guess they're, yeah. I thought they were calling it. I guess they're just calling it augmented paper?

Myke Hurley: Augmented paper, yeah.

Montblanc Augmented Paper

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, this is the kind of things that you've heard of us talking and railing on about the handwriting recognition. You know, writing with a pen, getting it into a digital conversion. And this is Montblanc's version of it. And the article I read on it was on The Verge. And they, while I'm not a huge Verge fan or Verge reader, I thought the author, who's this James Vincent, actually did a pretty good job on this, basically with a lot of the I don't get it stuff. You know, the price with anything on Montblanc is going to be the kicker. It's going to be way more outrageous, you know, than any other comparable product for the most part. You know, the Moleskine stuff was around $200, $250, I think. It was around $2, maybe $199. So, but, you know, James comes to the conclusion. He says, for an inverterate note taker like myself, all this seems like a tax on productivity. I create new to-do lists every couple of days, performing triage on the old list to reprioritize my tasks. I use a cheap A4 binder notebook and nice pens, but they're not Montblanc nice. And I'd hate to be stuck using what feels like, to me, a chubby ballpoint. I'm intrigued by digital note taking, and I'm going to preserve, persevere with the augmented paper a while longer. But my first impression is that I'm better off with a paper, a pen, and my messy scribbles. And I think that is a lot of people's end result who tries one of these devices out, don't you think?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think so.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, and you certainly don't need to spend the Montblanc price to test this out.

Myke Hurley: You know, you can get it over... 650 euros. Insane.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. 650 euros. It's... They use the Starwalker model pen, which is an okay design.

Brand Value

Myke Hurley: But it's like everything Montblanc, right? Like, you're paying for the brand, you're paying for the quality of the materials. Like, you're paying extra to get the Montblanc-ness of it all, really.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And the title of the article is great. It says, Montblanc's Augmented Paper Digitizes Rich People's Handwriting. Yep. I thought that was pretty funny. That's exactly what it is. And that's what it is. Yeah. But it's not just... It's just not a good experience, right? No one has... Yep. One day in our lifetime, someone's going to nail this technology. Moleskine's close, right? Yeah. Moleskine's close. But it's not there right now. And the level of frustration that you have when you have to use not your favorite pen on not your favorite paper, and it only works sometimes, is not worth any amount of money, much less 650 euro.

Myke Hurley: Yep. And, you know, you get like an Italian leather envelope that it all goes in, and the modified Starwalker, and a Montblanc Italian paper notebook. But apparently the app itself just kind of sucks. Like, who was it that did the review on The Verge? James Vincent. James talks about the fact that the application, you can tag the notes that you save, but you can't organize them into folders or anything, so you just have this long list of stuff if you're just scrolling through. And every note that you take on the paper gets its own page in the application. Even if, like, you went back to a previous piece of paper and wrote on that piece of paper, it doesn't get merged in. Right. It just takes it as a new note, and apparently there's a way to merge notes together, but it's really difficult to get it right. Right. So, it kind of, it doesn't really pay attention to the pages. And if I remember correctly, the Moleskine one does, because it knows what page you're on, and kind of will add to it. So, and there's no live conversion of handwriting in this application, in the Montblanc one. So, it all picks it up after you have to sync, essentially. So, you kind of sync it. Now, what's really weird about this is Montblanc are using Wacom's technology, but Wacom's product seems better.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, that's next on our list. And I called them being on the bandwagon, but I knew that was an incorrect term. They're actually one of the leaders in this. And if anyone's going to nail this, I fully believe it's going to be them. They haven't done it yet, but talk about this slate, because didn't we, wasn't there a product called the slate or something similar that we talked about in the past? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's such an obvious name. I think it might have been used before. So, they have two products. They have the Wacom slate, which is just a notepad. And then the Wacom folio, which includes an integrated cover. But the notepad, like, it's... To call it a notepad is probably a little bit wrong. It's kind of like a notepad slash backplate thing. Yeah. It's a writing board, essentially. And then there's one that includes a cover as well. Now, the Wacom's version does let you use and see live capture handwriting. And with them, they have a cloud sync storage stuff. The app has five gigabytes of free storage. And then you need to pay more, like a subscription fee to get more storage in the cloud.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, I want to ask you, and I want to discount the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil from the conversation. Are you even remotely interested in a device like the slate?

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: Really? But... Like, I'm at zero.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Let me rephrase that. I'm interested in the outcome of a product like this. Mm-hmm. But as you said, like, it needs to be some way in which it can just integrate with whatever products I want to use. Right. Right? And I don't know how you would do that.

Brad Dowdy: There's such a huge amount of friction with these devices right now to accomplish anything. Right? It's, you know, I have a pen and a piece of paper sitting here. And I can just write down whatever I want, and I know where it is, and I know what I said. And I don't have to have an extra device to sync my notes. I don't have to wonder if it actually works. I don't have to have extra batteries, extra charging cables. All kinds of friction that prevents you from getting what you need down. And that's all I see in these type of devices. But like I said, I think if anyone's going to eventually do something that's going to be kind of like the great crossover potential, it's going to be Wacom or Wacom.

Lenovo Yoga Book

Myke Hurley: There's another product, though, which is kind of interesting, which isn't one of these, but it's another take on this type of thing.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you picked up on this, and I hadn't seen it before. It was actually in the Moleskine article, but I didn't click the link. The Lenovo Yoga Book. I'm going to say this is kind of interesting, so hit this up for me.

Myke Hurley: So the Yoga Book is like a new type of laptop that Lenovo are making, and it kind of builds on some stuff they've done with dual-screen tablets and stuff. So it is a touchscreen on one side, and it can either run Chrome or Windows. And then the bottom part is just like a flat touchscreen, but not a screen. So it's a Surface that can have a keyboard. It will light up a keyboard, so you can type on it, but you're basically typing on glass. Or you can also put a piece of paper on this and take notes. So they have a stylus, but they're stylus. You can pop out the stylus part and put in an ink cartridge, and then you can take notes on it on any piece of paper that you choose. And it senses, because the paper's on top of the slate side, not the screen side. So it senses that, and then it can do two things. It can do the live kind of handwriting, or it can apparently do live handwriting-to-text conversion. Okay. And there's two ways you can do it. You can either do it so it's flat out like that, so you can see it as you're writing, or you can flip the whole thing over and just write, and you don't see the screen. Gotcha. Now, I've done a little bit of digging on this, just to try and understand the way that they're doing this. And there is an ink refill that Lenovo sell. I don't know what this refill is. It says Ministar on the refill, and a bit of Googling suggests that that is a company that exists.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Well, it's a stock D1 refill. So any D1 refill will fit, is what it is. So there you go.

Myke Hurley: You can put any... So that's getting close, because you can use any paper you want. And you can use any D1 refill you want.

Brad Dowdy: And this is cheaper than something like the Moleskine, because you don't have to pay for... I mean, the Moleskine. The Montblanc, because you don't have to pay for Montblanc. You know? And this has a full operating system in the computer. You know, either Windows 10 or Android Marshmallow. And it's cheaper. This is at least interesting. Like, I can shake my head at this and go, okay, I get it. You know? And, you know, maybe this works out well. We don't know how the technology works and if it's useful. But I still... Like, if you're going to do any of this, if you're not going the pen and paper route, and I don't even own one, but I don't see how anything beats an iPad and Apple Pencil for doing the most amount of things in the best way.

Myke Hurley: It's the closest that I've gotten to.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's why I own none of these products. Because I don't think they would work for me. And that includes the Apple Pencil or an iPad Pro. I don't... I just don't have the need for it.

Myke Hurley: Because basically, as time has gone on, the way that I use my note-taking stuff for the iPad Pro is I use an app mostly called Notability, which I really like. And it does a good job and it has good tools. It has highlighting tools and stuff like that in it. But what I would do is, say I'm on a business call and I take notes on the business call. I take them here. Because then it syncs by iCloud. I've got it on all my devices. And that's the way that I do it. So they're the types of things that I'm taking notes in. Because that stuff is better for me to have that all over the place. So for me, those things are better than using paper and scanning it or whatever. Because I can just write it straight in Notability. And I like it a lot for that.

Brad Dowdy: So you're using the Apple Pencil to transcribe those notes, essentially.

Myke Hurley: So I have my iPad in front of me and then I'm just taking notes in Notability of my Apple Pencil. And it's great. Right, right.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, cool. Well, I'm glad we touched on these because they're all new. I'm sure people want to hear about them. You know, it's going to be that holiday season time. I don't know why. Well, it's holiday season. So...

Myke Hurley: No, but I mean, I don't know why so many companies are jumping on this specific bandwagon.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's expanding. And if anything, if we've learned anything, one, there's going to be some frustration. And two, Moleskine seems to do it better than pretty much anyone else right now. So it's not a perfect system. It's not a perfect outcome. But, you know, next five years, I think we're going to see someone like really get it. I mean, it's on the way. I'm mildly interested. I'm not interested in any of these devices. But I think one day I will have something like this.

Myke Hurley: This episode of The Pen Addict is also brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page, website, or online store. Start building your website today at squarespace.com and use the offer code INK at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. With easy-to-use tools and templates, Squarespace helps you capture every detail of what drives you. Because if it's worth the effort, it's worth sharing with the world. Squarespace lets you put together a site that looks professionally designed because they have professionally designed templates. And it doesn't matter how much coding knowledge you have. It doesn't matter if you've ever made a website before. You will be able to use Squarespace because you can use their fantastic tools, their drag-and-drop page editing tools, their beautiful widgets and WYSIWYG editors to make a site look and feel exactly how you want. This is all part of their state-of-the-art technology that not only lets you craft and create the site that you want to make, it also ensures security and stability at all times. They have great hosting, they're rock-solid, and you don't need to worry about security updates. Because they just take care of all of it for you. This is why Squarespace are trusted by millions of people around the world. Yes, millions. Squarespace has millions of customers. You should be one of them because their products are fantastic. Their site templates, I mentioned them already, they're professionally designed, they're beautiful, but they also feature responsive designs, so your site will look great on all devices, from phones to tablets to desktop computers as well. They have 24-7 support with live chat and emails. If you do have any problems, they're always there in case you need them. They also have their dev platform as well. So if you do know code, if you do know what you're doing, you can dig in to the code and tinker with your Squarespace site and still take advantage of all of their great support, all of their great hosting, and all of their great security and tools. And also, if you sign up for a year, you'll get a free domain name as well. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month, and you can go and try them out right now by going to squarespace.com. You can sign up for a free trial. You don't need to put any credit card information in, so you can really give Squarespace a whirl before you sign up. And then when you do, make sure that you use the offer code INK, I-N-K, at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for The Pen Addict. Thank you so much to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So we both have Squarespace sites, and at one time we both had Field Notes pages on our sites, but as we got busy, those fell by the wayside, because it's just hard to keep up, and we're doing so many other things. But there's a new Field Notes resource that's underway. Right now it just has wallpapers up, but it's so cool. I wanted to get it out there. It's called Fieldly. How did you come across this? Someone in the, I think it was, was it you, Crazy Bobbles, in the chat room here on Slack. Put this in the Slack chat. I was like, I'm totally using that for the newsletter this weekend and for the show, because I think they're really cool. They're very, what's the word? It's simple. Minimalistic. It's not the word. Minimalistic, yes. Minimalistic wallpaper. So they just kind of take the colors in kind of blocky type design. It's an aesthetic I really, really like. So yeah, it was Crazy Bobbles here. He found this somewhere. I don't know where, but he's the first one I saw it from in Slack. And I thought this was really cool. I co-opted the Drink Local wallpaper for my laptop background, and I have the Field Notes grass-stained green for my phone backgrounds. What do you think about these?

Myke Hurley: I love them. What I really wish that they had was a desktop background of all of them.

Brad Dowdy: That'd be cool.

Myke Hurley: Because they're like, the desktop backgrounds, they're like super big, and then they just have like the one element in the middle, which is like the simple representation of that edition, which I love. But I really, as I say, I would love to be able to see all of them in one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I don't even know who's behind it. I looked for it and just, you know, see if I could send them an email or something. Maybe I didn't know.

Myke Hurley: It is a design agency called Quarry.

Brad Dowdy: Ah, so it's not a person.

Myke Hurley: Digital experiences is two people. Dennis Cortez and Drew Miller. I did a little bit of digging.

Raven's Wing

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So it's like a project of theirs to kind of like show off what they can do.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Some of my favorites on here are the dry transfer because they have a little cellophane bag with the lollipop stick.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And they have all the little elements. They did such a really, really great job with this. Like they, these people are very clearly fans of Field Notes. And it looks like they're going to have more in this page. Like right now, it's just wallpapers, but they have two links that aren't active yet. Field Notes list and reference.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I look forward to seeing what they do. If it's as beautiful and useful as this, it's going to be a nice resource for all of us. I mean, clearly I have a problem. You saw pictures of it.

Myke Hurley: I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to set up maybe Raven's Wing as my desktop background. It's so iconic, you know, that orange band. Yeah. Real sweet.

Brad Dowdy: I like all the different colors of the drink local. So that, that was good. My, my second choice was just below zero for the desktop. So that one, that one looks good too. So anyway.

Myke Hurley: The blue blind one is good because they've, they've put the blue background.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. It's just all around good. They're, they're all good. You can't go wrong with any of them. But apparently you can, you can't go wrong with orange inks either. Myke, you got something in the mail.

Diamine Autumn Oak

Myke Hurley: I don't even know if you'd call this orange. You don't think? No, I don't think it's orange. I received in the mail Diamine Autumn Oak. And I don't know where this came from. Um, it was a Colpens order and it just arrived at my house. So I don't remember having this conversation with anybody. I'm sorry if I've forgotten, but whoever it was, thank you for sending this to me. I have it now. So, um, that's good. I, I really don't know why, but it's here. Uh, I got, yeah, Diamine Autumn Oak. You don't,

Brad Dowdy: you don't think it's orange-ish like a Noodler's Apache Sunset. I don't think, I don't know that you've ever used that, but that's a great kind of shading fall. It's a fall. Well, Autumn's in the name, so.

Myke Hurley: I used Apache Sunset, but to me, this is brown.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: This looks brown to me. I mean, I don't know if I'm doing it wrong, but like, I loaded it up in one of my pens and it's brown. Huh. Okay. Although I am having a bit of a problem with, with the pen that I've got it in, which is just a quick aside. It's just so frustrating. I hate changing inks because when I ink this thing up and I start using it, it's nice and brown, but now after a while, it's going like a horrible dark green color because the previous ink that I had in this pen, doesn't matter, I've washed it out. Like,

Brad Dowdy: it just takes so long. Were you not on our Boogersuckers episode?

Myke Hurley: I'm not doing it.

Brad Dowdy: Do you, why?

Myke Hurley: Because I hate that you keep calling it that.

Brad Dowdy: But you're the one complaining about your orange ink. But I don't have it. I don't have it.

Myke Hurley: I don't have one.

Brad Dowdy: So what do you want me? What do you want me to do? Go down to the, I mean, go to the grocery store and get one.

Myke Hurley: Well, maybe I will, but I'm not going to do it now because you're bullying me. Just out of spite. Well, I mean, I don't have one because I don't do this. Yeah. I don't change ink so much, but.

Brad Dowdy: You don't. You don't. You run out of ink. It's the same color. You refill it and then if there's a problem, you'll clean it out, but you're going to run the same shade through so it's not really going to show any difference, which I could, I totally get.

Myke Hurley: But what I was playing around of it and when, when the color was accurate, it looks like an leaves color. So it's like, it's kind of like a amberish, like, but I would say it's closer to brown. I can see why people could class this as orange, but to me, it's, that's a brown color. Like when leaves go in the fall, right? That to me is a brown. Yep. Yep. Yep. But I actually really like it. I mean, I hope that I can properly clean this pen out because I will leave it inked. Just keep,

Brad Dowdy: yeah, just keep using it. I mean, I don't have a brown ink, you know? Yeah. I like, I've started to get into brown ink some. I usually have at least one inked up where I would never even purchase one in the past.

Myke Hurley: But now, as I say, it's this horrible blue, green color. But yeah, whoever got me this, thank you very much.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's what we really need to find out is where this ink came from. It definitely came from the UK. So someone placed a cult pen's order for it. Yeah, it came from cult pen's. I mean, anyone could have placed it. I'm just saying it came from cult pen's. So someone knew to. Yeah. We've, we've missed something maybe.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You know what? I bet like as soon as I find out what this sentiment is, I'll be like, oh yeah, I remember. I have in that conversation. Yeah,

Brad Dowdy: exactly.

Myke Hurley: But right now, I have absolutely no memory of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: But it's a nice color.

Brad Dowdy: It is. It's a very popular color. It's a good one.

RSTPA

Myke Hurley: Do you want to round out with some RSTPA today?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, let's do it because we haven't done it for a couple of weeks now. I've saved several of the questions that I wanted to get to. Some I can rapid fire. Some I want to spend a few minutes on. And like this first one, which is from Carrie, not Fountain Pen Day Carrie, but hey, Fountain Pen Day Carrie, if you're listening, this one's not from you. It says, hello, Myke and Brad. I'm one of those people who loves your podcast, even if I'm not a pen addict myself. I'm looking to buy my first fancy pen for the express purpose of wireframing. I like to draw up my websites and actually draw code before I touch a computer. I was wondering what a good pen would be for drawing straight lines and drawing tiny notes. Something that is precise and very easy to handle. I have shaky hand and I grip pens too hard so it'd need to be comfortable as well. Looking through the pen websites is a bit daunting. There's so much selection. Keep up the good show, Carrie. So that's a great email. This is the kind of email I love. And there used to be, I've already responded to Carrie via email.

Brad Dowdy: And there used to be this site years ago where a designer ran a blog where he reviewed the pens that he did wireframes with and I couldn't find it. I searched and searched and searched. I could not find it. But I gave Carrie three general recommendations which were number one, the Secura Pigma Micron. I'm looking for something that has a lot of various tip sizes and black ink and that has archival ink properties and has a durable tip enough to where he can use it with a ruler if he needs to. So that's the first one that came to mind. Also the Stadler pigment liner. Essentially the same pen. Just depends on your aesthetic preferences. Some prefer one over the other. The second one I gave him was the Oto Graphic liner which has a full metal tip. It doesn't have the felt, I mean the plastic tip like the Secura and Stadler. But it's also permanent. It's also pitch black and they also have very, very, very fine lines.

Brad Dowdy: If you get the right size, you get the smallest size with that. The third one I gave is the Pilot High Tech C which is used by a lot of designers for this exact thing. That needle, anything with a needle point, if you notice, I didn't give him any like conical tips. That's much more conducive to running against a ruler in a straight fashion.

Brad Dowdy: You know, you keep the lines straighter because you don't have that variance that you get in the cone tip. and then when you're not using the ruler, you definitely have a better line of sight for the needle even though, you know, it's arguable. It's not that much. Then I mentioned one thing to him which I actually thought of while I was typing it and something I wasn't aware of years ago when I was first answering this question. But these days, I see a lot of wireframe work with color and the Copic system for something like that because you can get the very fine black tip. They're metal tip. They're refillable. They're expensive. You're going to pay a premium for these pens. But they allow you if you're using the black to do your framing and then you need to add splashes of color, their marker systems will draw over these markers without bleed or anything. Like you can do all kinds of cool touches and stuff like that. So those were my recommendations for like a wireframing setup. So those are all pens that I love, pens I like and it was really, really good email. I enjoy, I especially enjoy seeing someone, hey, I love your show. I'm not really a pen addict but I just like, listen, that's cool. We get that sometimes.

Myke Hurley: I like that. The only thing that came to my mind which is not even answering the question would be a Rotary 600. Yeah. It's totally out there because obviously it's not a pen, it's a pencil but I feel like if this is the type of work you're doing, doing it in pencil at least to begin might be a good idea. Yeah. So I recommend the Rotary 600 for that.

Brad Dowdy: And that's the clear choice. I completely agree with that.

Myke Hurley: So I think you should add this to your arsenal even if you're looking to go pen at the end, carry. I think having a Rotary 600 would be a really great addition to that to allow you to do a little bit of extra or a little bit of work or a little bit of like pre-work or whatever and you can kind of go over it if you need to. Yeah, that's great. That would be my recommendation. All right.

Brad Dowdy: So the next one is and these are from a week or more ago on Twitter a bunch of the hashtag Ask TPA questions. You can always reach us on Twitter at hashtag Ask TPA. We have a script that pulls in all the files and gets them ready for us for the show. So the Idea Pump wants to know why there's no love for the Zebra F301 compact in the EDC community. What did it do to be ignored? So I wanted to bring this up because the 301 is actually a very popular pen. You can get it at all kinds of stores on the store shelf grocery stores office supply stores everywhere. The problem with it for the EDC community is the grip is really really bad. It's this hard plastic attempted kind of knurling thing and it's just crummy. And the Zebra F701 has a full stainless steel barrel and a stainless steel knurled grip and it costs twice as much as the 301 but that twice as much means it costs $6 instead of $3. So the F701 is going to win that battle every time in the EDC community just because of the way the grip is made for the F301. It's a good pen. I see a lot of people use it in an office environment but for a carry pen it's going to lose nearly every time to the F701. Right, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I don't know anything about these.

Brad Dowdy: I know, I know that.

Myke Hurley: I've never even seen them before.

Brad Dowdy: That's why I wanted to answer it because it's a question that comes up a lot.

Brad Dowdy: Alright, so this one you can help me out with and I think I know your answer but I want to elaborate on it a little bit more. so I guess I probably should have gotten real names on some of these but this is at Kotelid. It's not really spelled like it sounds but I'm going to go with that. He asks you and I which pen and or notebook subscription do you recommend preferably EU based because I am in Greece thank you very much.

Myke Hurley: I can't help. I don't know any.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: Well, you just want to say field notes, right?

Myke Hurley: But yeah, I mean but I can't help because I can't go with the EU based. Right.

Brad Dowdy: So I'll help with that and that's why I wanted to bring it up because they're very good followers on Twitter. They're very good in the Twitter community and they do a subscription of random notebooks. It's called Pocket Notebooks. Very simple name but it's pocketnotebooks.co.uk and I don't subscribe to it. I've talked to them many, many times. Seems like a good group of people behind the scenes. They're at least in Europe. You can get all kinds of different very, very cool notebooks and they have subscription services. So, and I don't know like they're I'm just clicking through links here. I don't have the full details but like they have a large subscription box set of nine that's like 24 pounds and you can ask you can get it delivered every one month, every two months, every three months. So, you know and it gives you a random sampling of different things. You can try, see what you like but I thought that was a very good question because there may be more out there and I'd like to know especially if there's any European-based companies that are doing things like Pocket Notebooks does. I know there's a few other options here in the U.S. but that seems to be the perfect answer for your question.

Brad Dowdy: Alright, Travis Keltner on Twitter wants to know how do you know if a pen is fairly priced at a pen show? Is there a vintage pen price condition guide? I put this question in here on purpose because this actually comes up all the time but you only hear it if you're at a pen show and this is goes back to you know first time pen shows new pen show user new pen show visitors things like that. They want I mean you don't want to get taken advantage of right? So the question has arisen to me and to several other people's well why isn't there some kind of vintage price guide? And I guess in theory there could be there's not that I'm aware of because I guess other things that have price guides like coins or stamps or baseball cards there's all kinds of condition ratings that can be applied to it and that would have to be done it would be a huge undertaking nowadays to get this done I don't know if there's something in the past and the problem with that is keeping it updated it's such a massive undertaking getting it done number one would be years of work and number two keeping it updated constantly it just tends to be a general challenge so we've been doing some articles on the pen addict a gentleman by the name of Ron Gilmore thank you Ron for writing these posts he's covered like the Parker Vacumatic the Parker 51 the Esther Brooks so what you want to do the best thing I can do is read some articles of the main vintage pens those are some of them some of the Schaefer's and figure out like people will often say and I know Ron does I bought a pen in this condition and it was around this price and then you can kind of get a ballpark range if there's a you need to focus on something before going into vintage I think like you need not need to go into a pen show and say I'm going to purchase a vintage pen you need to say I'm going to look at Esther Brooks today and do your research before you go and understand what the different models are what their general price should be what things to look for from a condition perspective and have a mental price in your head on what you should pay for that on what's a fair price it's never going to be a perfect science and this is one of the biggest challenges we have in trying to bridge any kind of generation knowledge gap between collectors who have been around forever and collectors who are new coming into the market so we think about this a lot we talk about it a lot with everyone at pen shows there's no good answer but if you can focus on one or two things learn what you want learn what you need to know about them make a purchase see how it goes and then maybe pick a different pen to learn about and do your research on that pen and then go in and you know see what you can find for that and then that information just kind of you know you collect that information you're expanding your knowledge and then it's easier to find okay well I've done pretty good with these parkers and 51s and vacuumatics let me look at these shafers now I know what to look for without doing as much research and it's just kind of builds on each other so that's a long question to say no I mean a long answer to say no there's no price or condition guide but you can kind of build your own in your head if you narrow your focus a little bit especially in the beginning

Myke Hurley: it's a minefield I think it is

Brad Dowdy: there's never a show where something like this doesn't come up when I talk to new and old collectors alike

Myke Hurley: my complete kind of feeling about this is just I buy vintage pens because I like to look at them and that's that like I don't buy them to use them because I feel like I'm setting myself up for disaster I know that people do it and I know it works but like that's just the way that I end up thinking about it

Brad Dowdy: so speaking of disasters Myke and you're probably the wrong person to ask based on your noodlers I mean your diamond autumn oak experience a moment ago but Bryant in the slack wants to know if we have any ink nightmares that have ruined pens and nibs and he puts in noodlers with a question mark as in you know does noodlers do that and it's specific inks with noodlers ! like the A-State Blue

Myke Hurley: which I we've been through this so many times I have no idea why people do this

Brad Dowdy: yep but people who love the ink so much and can't get away from it will dedicate a specific pen for that because it will stain a converter it'll stain a barrel if it's in a demonstrator with a piston filler it may stain the feed I don't know what it's going to do to the nib it's a very harsh ink but people can't get away from the color so they'll dedicate one pen to use if you use good pen hygiene unlike Myke you I'm just kidding you actually do you do the right thing if you take care of your pens I have zero hesitancy to use iron gall inks because I know I'm going to keep up with that pen and it's not going to be sitting around for two or three months allowing that ink to do bad things to my pen so if you get really attached to a very harsh ink like an iron gall ink and not all iron gall inks are created equally right like Diamine's Registrar's is very strong it's liable to stain it's hard to clean and then things like Roaring Cleaners Salix is more on the tame side you know it cleans out easily even after weeks of being loaded in a pen so there's always going to be some story about ink ruined my pen and there are inks that will ruin your pens but honestly they're few and far between if you practice good cleaning hygiene so you know if you're worried about it up front test it in a pen you're not messing up I've never I've maybe I've never like overly stained a barrel like that would be the most extreme but I also never have purchased bay state blue or have tried like crazy things to put in these pens you know up front so I am cognizant of what I put in most pens but I don't hesitate to put iron gall inks or pigmented inks in my pens as long as I maintaining them and cleaning them correctly so all right so a couple more and then we'll wrap it up and this is from Bob at my pens my pen needs ink who again who I've told him before has my son's favorite sticker in the pen universe even over the pen addict sticker so he sent me some extra ones so thank you Bob he wants to know if either of

Brad Dowdy: while sitting when another hard surface is not available do you Myke

Myke Hurley: no I don't know

Brad Dowdy: so I bought one of these a few years ago from Levenger because they seem to have the most styles that were of my taste and I used it pretty frequently before I had a desk available and now it just kind of sits in the closet I actually used it for a while and enjoy using it and would break it out if I was sitting on the couch or in a chair and wanted to do some writing it worked very well and had kind of these elastics kind of like a hard walnut top and then like a cushion on the bottom that was velcroed on and you could actually get it pretty stable sometimes it wobbles some because of that cushioning effect but you could get it

Brad Dowdy: I got good use out of it I haven't used it in probably a year or two though I don't really break it out much anymore because I have enough different writing spaces for myself to use but I like them if you're trying to do something more than writing like drawing coloring you're going to get a little bit more movement than you like but otherwise I would recommend them last last one and we're back on the Europe bandwagon which I can always get behind Myke we love our European listeners sure

Myke Hurley: we do

Sailor Vendors

Brad Dowdy: so Kim herself wants to know do you know reliable sailor vendors in Europe and she tagged you and I actually I didn't go through the list here but I know Apple bomb in the Netherlands I think that's how you pronounce it spelled Apple boom pins I believe they are a sailor vendor what about our friends at Colt pins they are and that's who I would buy from so yeah in the UK Colt pins let's see Apple and I'm Apple bomb carries pretty much everything so they are very very popular even for you know people ordering in the US they get a lot of US business because they carry all kinds of products and let's see I'm pulling it up sorry oh they do not have the sailor let's see here

Myke Hurley: nope

Brad Dowdy: I got them I got them let's see nope no sailor so Colt pins I was trying to give a few options but trust

Myke Hurley: me I know what I'm talking about this dowdy fellow he hasn't got any idea yeah yeah so the only thing is the Colt pens don't really have a great selection of sailor stuff

Brad Dowdy: well there's only eight inks at a time if you're looking for ink but as far as pens go that's a different story and if anyone knows any other good sailor vendors in Europe I'm probably missing some probably the Akerman store probably sells they have a full lineup of you know they don't just sell it's not an ink store right it's a fountain pen store so Akerman might have that but I don't know if they ship what their shipping is so that's a couple of options there to keep in mind and we'll see if we can come up with some more we'll follow up on that

Myke Hurley: yeah I mean the customs

Myke Hurley: UK they have a list of companies that they recommend as vendors one of them is the writing desk which is a company that I can endorse like yeah definitely great stuff from them and they have all the pro gear and all that so if you're looking for the pens the writing desk are a good company to buy from I bought from them online and I bought from them directly at the London pen show I bought my first Edison from them

Brad Dowdy: nice okay and Ackerman in the Netherlands has the full lineup because right when you go to their page they have the king of pens so if you carry king of pens from sailor you carry everything so there you go

Myke Hurley: do you carry everything then because you carry king of pen right

Brad Dowdy: I carry it all Myke

Myke Hurley: if you want to find our show notes for this week you know ! go

Myke Hurley: thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode Squarespace and Harry's if you want to find Brad online he's at penaddict.com he's on Twitter penaddict on Instagram I am imike i-m-y-k-e and we'll be back next time thank you so much for listening until then say goodbye Brad Dowdy

Brad Dowdy: goodbye Brad Dowdy