The Pen Addict 23/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	23
Title:	That's How An Addict Thinks
Release Date:	July 19th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 23
Audio File:	Audio Episode 23
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 23
Length:	4242 min <br />0.7 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 23 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. It is hosted, as always, by the king of all penndom, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, sir. How are you? I'm great, Myke. How are you today? I'm very well, and I am Myke Hurley of the 70 Decibels Podcast Network. And we are sponsored this week by Squarespace 6, which we're going to talk about, and MailChimp as well. Another couple of great sponsors this week, and we're going to talk about them during today's show. So, Brad, you've got a – neither of us, for the last few weeks, have spoken about new equipment. And finally, you have got something new.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I do have something new. And we were talking about it offline, and we wanted to take it online, but we've both been kind of going through a little bit of withdrawal. You know, we haven't been – we went on a stretch there where we were left and right, you know, two or three, you know, real big, you know, new items a week. And, you know, both of us kind of – you know, there's a limit to that. And, you know, I finally got something new and interesting that I want to talk about. And this pen has been on my wish list for – since it's been introduced maybe a year ago. I don't know exactly when, but it's the Kaweco AL Sport Ballpoint Pen.

Myke Hurley: And what body did you get? Gray, black, silver?

Pen Size

Brad Dowdy: I went silver. Nice. Because I have the fountain pen in black and gray. So I wanted to see what the silver looked like. And I also remember a few weeks ago when we shared that photo of my friend Patrick from Scription had that chromed out Kaweco AL Sport. Yeah, yeah. Remember that a few weeks ago? And I was like, well, I wonder how close this silver is. It's more of a matte silver, so it's not really chromed out like his.

Myke Hurley: Any more information on that?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, nothing, nothing. So I'll have to hunt that down because that's going to be pretty awesome. But anyway, I went with the silver because I already have the black and gray fountain pen models. And, you know, I love those fountain pens, right? I mean that's – you know, besides my vanishing point, that's probably my second most used fountain pen easily, the AL Sport fountain pen. And so I knew – I always held off on the ballpoint because ballpoint ink is not my favorite, right? You know, I just don't – I just don't normally write in it. If I do, it's going to be with a Jetstream or a Pilot Acroball, one of the hybrid ballpoints that glide a little bit or have a little bit darker line, things like that. But it finally hit me and what finally made me order this, the AL Sport ballpoint is this – since it's a mini size pen, it takes a refill size called – that's commonly referred to as a D1 refill. So that's the dimension of it, the size of it. And it hit me, well, there's gel D1 refills. There's different ballpoint color D1 refills. There's lots of things I could do with the refill of this pen. So what I did was – even on JetPens, if you look at the – which is where I got this from. Even if you look at the writing samples, JetPens writing samples of the Kaweco AL Sport ballpoint, you can tell that the ballpoint ink cartridge is just average.

Myke Hurley: It looks cropped like it's not good.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You can – so that turned me off. And then I don't know what made me think of it. I was like, you know what? I bet this thing takes D1. And the Zebra Charbo X multi-pen has gel ink refills that are D1 size. So I was like, well, hell, that will be just an awesome swap out for this pen. And so I bought the AL Sport ballpoint and I bought a couple of additional Strabo X gel refills. And you can see if you look on JetPens, they have customers who also bought this item also bought. Well, it's like filled up with like Zebra refills because this – Oh, really? Yeah. Because the Kaweco refill is not very good.

Myke Hurley: That's hilarious.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so it's cool. The pen itself, it's about a quarter inch short from what I would – for what would be a perfect fit in my hand. It fits in my hand the way I grip it. It comes up over the cusp of my hand, you know, so it's got balance. You know, it's not digging into my palm or something like that. It's long enough. I wish it was like a quarter inch longer. You know, maybe I'm spoiled.

Myke Hurley: It looks about the size of like the uncapped fountain pen to me.

Brad Dowdy: Very much so.

Myke Hurley: And that's too small. That's going to fall. That's going to get lost in my palm.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. And with me, it doesn't. You know, I don't have large hands. I've got very average size hands. That's a, you know, just a standard medium size hand.

Myke Hurley: Dainty hands dowdy, they call him.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. That's right. And you've got me off track now. Because my brain's working on things I'm not allowed to say. But anyway.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's about a quarter inch. If it was a quarter inch longer, I think it would balance better and fit better in my hand. And, you know, the fountain pen's got me spoiled, right? Because when you post the cap, you have that extra length. That gives you a better writing fit in the hand, if you will. So it's good in that aspect as far as, you know, length-wise, dimension-wise. But I think it could be just a fraction longer. But what I do like is the fact that I'm able to use a 0.4 millimeter black gel ink.

Myke Hurley: Thank you, R2.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I had that thing on vibrate earlier today. I don't know how it came off.

Brad Dowdy: The black 0.4 millimeter gel ink D1 refill. So that's pretty cool. I'm real happy with that. That works well in this pen. And, you know, the swapping it out is obviously really simple. It just unscrews from the knock and pop the new cartridge in. And it works great. So I've been real happy with this. But you know what really burned me? Is I waited so long to buy this pen. I just waited and waited and waited. I always wanted this pen. And then I bought it maybe two weeks ago at the most. And sitting at work last night. And I see the JetPens new product feed has populated. And I start looking through it as I always do. And guess what's in there? A brand new Kaweco AL Sport Touch ballpoint pen with capacitive stylus. And I bet you that might have solved the length problem. It looks like it might be a fraction longer. I haven't seen if they have dimensions on here yet. But that's a pretty slick looking pen. And if I had my druthers, I probably would have bought – if I had a choice, I would have bought the one with the stylus, of course.

Myke Hurley: Just quickly, what did you say you wanted? You wanted a quarter of an inch, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's 0.4 inches larger.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. See, I think –

Myke Hurley: It's practically just what you wanted.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it has a built-in clip, right? You don't have to buy the additional external clip. Which I think on the Kawecos looks very good. I have a problem with them sliding up and down the barrel. I can't make them tight enough.

Myke Hurley: That clip is attractive.

Kaweco Mechanism

Brad Dowdy: So I'm wondering if this is a – if this is a twist top, does it say? Yep, twist mechanism at the top. So it's not a knock. It twists. It has a clip. It's got that extra dimensions I want. And it takes the D1 refill. So – oh, they even put it in the description. It says JetPen recommends substituting the included refill with a higher quality D1 size refill from Japan such as that for the Charbo X.

Myke Hurley: I love that they even put that in there. Yeah, they put that in the description. Yeah, I mean, and it's that – just having the stylus on there is just cool. But more than anything for you, it's the – the length.

Brad Dowdy: It's the perfect size. Yeah, it would be perfect. So I was two weeks early. I got a little anxious. So one of these days I'll upgrade to the stylus model but not right away. But I'll get some use out of this pen. It's a good pocket pen, good carry pen. I love the aluminum barrel. So it does – since it's a knock, you know, a lot of pens with the moving parts on the inside, they rattle a little bit.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Like if I tap it, you can maybe hear it a little bit. You can hear that. Right. So when you write, there's a little bit of feedback as far as rattling. It's not – once I start writing, I don't notice it. But if I'm being real quiet and just doing a couple letters, I'm like I can hear it a little bit. So this twist mechanism will probably solve that too. So basically what I'm saying is this – the AL Sport Touch looks like about 10 times better than the regular ballpoint. It's going to – it's probably going to cannibalize these other ones.

Myke Hurley: And I think what you're also saying is you're just going to buy one of them.

Brad Dowdy: I will. And the black one looks pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: It's gone on my list. It's on my list.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's gone on my list too. So good pen, not great pen. I love the refill.

Brad Dowdy: I love the aluminum. It's pretty lightweight, but it's not overly lightweight. Just a little bit short could be a little bit better. And guess what? It looks like there's a better option out there now. So got a little too anxious on that one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, don't wait, man. Less haste, more purchasing.

Moving Houses

Brad Dowdy: I know. I know. I'm probably on purchasing hold for a few weeks. We've talked about it and people have probably seen it on Twitter. I'm moving houses. So I don't want to have anything in shipment limbo. So I'll probably wait a few weeks before I order anything new. But we'll see. I can always get it in an order today and I'll be here before I'm gone, right?

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: That's how an addict thinks.

Myke Hurley: Well, yeah, if you just rush. So I'm going to talk about our first sponsor now. Yeah. That's MailChimp. New sponsor to the network. MailChimp provides you with easy email newsletters. They make it simple, easy for anyone to set up newsletters or campaigns, all that sort of stuff by email. So let's say, for example, we're going to use Brad as an example here. Brad wants to set up the pen addict newsletter. And every week he wants to – I'm going to make you do this, by the way. He will send out his pen recommendations to anybody that signs up for the newsletter. So he scours the web and he finds things like the AL Sport Touch. And every week you will receive in your inbox from Brad the pen addict times, right? Now, the way that Brad will do this is on his website, on his Squarespace website, which we'll talk about shortly. He will have a button which says subscribe to the newsletter. Type in your email address, press subscribe. Then Brad has asked MailChimp to then take you to another page where he will ask for your name and your Twitter address because that's what he wants for his sign-up process. You can ask for whatever information you like. So if, for example, you're using MailChimp to integrate into a shopping cart, which they have, well, you can ask for all sorts of address information, things like that. So MailChimp can also be used for other email services like that as well. So you would set all that up. And then what Brad has done behind the scenes is he has created a newsletter template using one of the hundreds of professionally designed templates that MailChimp have. He's created this template. So every email that you receive is going to look stunning. He's checked it in MailChimp's Inbox Inspector, which is a tool that they have that will allow Brad to see how his email will be displayed in many different email clients to make sure that even in the most obscure ones it's going to look great. Then you subscribe and you will start to receive the weekly email newsletter that Brad is going to be sending out, which he can write from the web. He can do it on his Mac or he can use one of the iOS apps, iPad or iPhone to send out the campaign every week. So he can send out his newsletter with all these links and everything. Then once Brad has sent them out, he can also look at statistics as well because that's what MailChimp does. So he can see how many people have opened his newsletter, how many people have clicked the links in his newsletter, how many people have just deleted it. Well, they can tell you all of that. MailChimp is excellent. And I hope that I've given everybody a good summary of some of the features that they have. But you know what probably the best feature of MailChimp is, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: What is that, Myke? It's free. That would have been my guess. Awesome.

Myke Hurley: If you send less than 12,000 emails a month or have less than 2,000 subscribers to your list, it's free. And if you are lucky enough to be popular enough, which I'm sure you would, you probably have like 75,000 subscribers in the first half an hour, then they have really fair pricing schemes. So you can find something that matches you. Really incredible service. I love MailChimp. Great customer support. Great sort of copywriting, as Mr. Broomer put it. Real good sense of humor. And they provide you with an excellent service. So go to MailChimp.com to check it out. Don't need to give you a promo code because it's free. So go try it out. MailChimp.com. I want to thank them for sponsoring. So you're going to rant now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's not going to be my usual rant at the office supply stores for not hearing anything new. And it's actually – it's somewhat of a rant and a question because I don't have the answers. And I'm kind of – I'm looking for some help here because this is a – ever since I started the pen addict, you know, and once I kind of got a good reader base, you know, I obviously get lots of emails and lots of questions. And one that pops up a few times a year, usually around the spring or early summer is, hey, I want to buy a pen for a graduation gift or some type of – I want to buy a gift type pen. You know, it's someone who, you know, may not know a lot about pens and they want to buy a pen for someone else who may not know a lot about pens, but they think buying a pen for them is a good idea, which I obviously think it is. But here's my problem. You know, people don't want to buy a $3 high-tech C, right? That's a really great pen. They say, you know, my budget's $100. I can't recommend a pen. I go through this every time and they say, you know, recommend me a pen for a friend. He's graduating from law school or whatever. You know, I have $100 to spend. What should I buy him? My dilemma is – I guess it's a couple of – I understand what you're trying to say.

Myke Hurley: Can I try and interpret what you're trying to say because I want to make sure I'm following the right lines here.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I understand that when people want to buy gifts, pen gifts, they want to get something nice, right? Right. I've had some nice pen gifts because people know what I like.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: But the problem is at that sort of level of money, you're getting into very precise instruments.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Those instruments have to fit that person. Now, if somebody is not a pen addict, you'll be fine. Right. But if you ask a pen addict or you want to buy for another, that's where you come into problems. Because you ask someone like me or you, tell me a $150 pen. I can't do it because I have to know how that person writes. Right. I have to know what they already enjoy. Right. It's really difficult. And unless like I've had really, I've had nice stuff bought for me in the past. And that's because these people know the type of thing that I like. They know like a good weight in an expensive pen. And, you know, then they like the kind of tools that I like. But if you have to ask, then that's the problem. Right.

Brad Dowdy: And from my perspective, I think it's a little bit deeper than that. And I probably shouldn't look at it this way. But my feeling is that in that price range, and we're not counting fountain pens in this. I want to be clear that, you know, if someone wants to buy a fountain pen in that price range, that's actually a lot easier.

Myke Hurley: It's a piece of cake. Just go to Mont Blanc or something, you know. Yeah.

Gift Pen Dilemma

Brad Dowdy: But the problem is with, you know, I want to buy a gift pen is that in that price range, you're paying for the barrel. You're not paying for the writing experience. Excellent.

Myke Hurley: And I have a really good point.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I have a real issue with that. Right. So it's hard for me to recommend you to buy a $100 pen that's going to have a 0.7 millimeter liquid ink refill that's going to bleed all over the page.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. When possibly the best refill costs a couple of dollars.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. That's my dilemma.

Myke Hurley: It's a real. So this is the thing, right? So I think when it comes to that, you've got to say to someone, right, I will suggest this barrel to you. But understand that I'm also going to say you need to refill it with this 20 cent refill. Right. Because that is better than anything you're going to get in that barrel.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right.

Myke Hurley: I think that's the way that I would broach that and just say, look, you've just got to trust me on this. Like, look at the – we've just spoken about it, the AL Sport. That's a $60 pen, right?

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. You're buying – how much is the Zebra refill?

Brad Dowdy: $3 maybe. They're actually kind of expensive. They're like $3.30.

Myke Hurley: But even that, though, $3 is what's actually making that pen a good experience. Absolutely.

Brad Dowdy: It totally changes the pen. And I don't think people understand that who aren't crazy like us, right? They see a Mont Blanc. And I'm just using them as an example. They actually have a pretty decent refill compared to a lot. But they see a Mont Blanc and say, oh, that's a good pen. It's not a good pen. It's a good barrel. You're buying for the design and the gold plating and the name and the marketing, right? You're not paying for a great writing experience. Yes. I will say they have decent refill options compared to a lot of pens. But I think you understand my point.

Myke Hurley: As you mentioned, though, that's all changed at fountain pen level. And typically, the more money you spend, the better nib you're going to get.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: It does actually change. Look at us. The best fountain pens we own cost us upwards of $100 and something in the vanishing point, right? And that nib – I tell you what, I dropped it the other day. It didn't do it. It was fine. Oh, good. Absolutely fine. And I was like, this thing is a tank. Like, I dropped it with the nib out.

Myke Hurley: I know, man. Like, I keep doing it to all my expensive pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So if someone emailed me and said, hey, pick me out a – I need a graduation gift. I want a fountain pen for $100. You know, and I'm no fountain pen expert. I could probably give you 20 options. If you ask me that same question, just saying I want a pen, which I generally mean to take, you know, a rollerball or a ballpoint pen because that's your only options in that price range. You can't buy – almost none of those manufacturers in that price range are putting gel ink refills in their pen, which is beyond me. I don't understand if that's just old thinking or if that denigrates their beautiful pen somehow. But it's such a better writing experience. Because, you know, I think the last request I got a few weeks ago, which is what made me think of this topic, I think I gave them two responses. And one of the responses wasn't even a specific pen. I told them to go, you know, look at the Lamy site because they have some nice rollerballs. The thing is I have a Lamy AL Sport rollerball, and I hate it because the refill is horrible.

Myke Hurley: Wait, what Lamy? You said AL Sport.

Brad Dowdy: AL Sport. I'm sorry. AL Star. Sorry. The All-Star Lamy. They're really close to name to the Kaweco, and that's still the pen in my hand. Sorry about that. So the AL Star, which is only like a $35 pen, but that refill is, I think, the same refill as in, you know, some of the higher-end Lamy rollerballs. And it's not a good refill. I have a hard time recommending that.

Rollerballs

Myke Hurley: I just have a real problem why people want to use rollerballs. It doesn't make sense to me, man. Right.

Brad Dowdy: It really doesn't. And, you know, that's kind of the crux of the problem. You know, why aren't these manufacturers using a nicer quality gel ink refill? Like Moleskine started to use, you know, there isn't a liquid ink option for their, you know, higher-end pen. They have like the most expensive pen they sell is like $50. There's not a liquid ink option. They've just gone straight to the gel, and I think that's a good decision. I'd like to see more higher-end pen manufacturers at least have an option. It's usually you can buy one pen barrel, and you can have a rollerball or a ballpoint cartridge. And neither one of them, I'd say, you know, in general, there's obviously specific cases, but in general, neither one is going to give you a good writing experience, in my opinion. And therefore, it's really, really difficult for me to recommend pens in that category.

Myke Hurley: The retro refill, the Schneider refill, is that liquid ink? It is, but... The way it's dispersed is good, though, isn't it? Exactly. That's what makes that so good, because they've actually taken time to craft a good nib.

Brad Dowdy: That's exactly right. And it's something about, they've obviously put in the time in their refills, and that's why they're one of the best. That's why so many companies like Retro51 use that refill, because I think they've taken the time to really, you know, craft a refill that's going to give you a better writing experience. They're not just throwing liquid ink into a cartridge and throwing it into a pen, and you put the pen down on, you know, regular paper, and it bleeds, you know, all over creation. The Schneider refill doesn't do that. Is it pressurized? Oh, excuse me, the Schmidt.

Myke Hurley: Schmidt, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so is it pressurized? No. No, but the ones in the Fisher are, aren't they? Yes.

Myke Hurley: It's ink, man. So much I don't understand about ink still.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, same here. I mean, that's why I have, you know, I haven't dug deep in refill options for the Retro51, you know. The readers have been awesome with all their suggestions, and, you know, I have a long list of things to try now for the Retro51 as just other options. But that one actually writes for a liquid ink refill, the Retro51 writes very well. But, you know, and that would make an awesome gift pen, but, you know, people have an idea in their head that the money that they spend is more important than the performance that they're going to get out of it. I think someone would enjoy a $25 Retro51 more than a $100 pen, you know, that just random rollerball pen, you know, Parker or Cross or, you know, one of those brands, you know, just because of the price point.

Myke Hurley: If you investigate, like, this is, I can't, I'm sorry, everyone, but I'm talking about it again. You know, if you investigate the Retro line, there's so many models. You can find something that fits the personality of the person you're buying for. Right. Like, if you really look around online, you know, and that's what I love about the pen so much, is just the amount of different ones you can get.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's not even that. It's that you can buy $3 pens that write better than these pens that people want to spend a lot of money for.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I have a hard time. I struggle with that. And I let them know. I mean, I generally let them know. I don't go on and on like I'm going today. But I'm like, look, here's the challenge with what you're asking me. You know, you're going to ask me to recommend a pen. And it's not going to be a pen that I would ever use because I know it's not going to write very well.

Myke Hurley: But I would put it to the listeners, though. You know, if you've ever, if you have a good like general suggestion in that sort of range, I'd love to hear it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I really would. I mean, I know there's options out there. And, you know, like we've talked about, everyone's going to be, well, buy this barrel and put this refill in it. I'd like to see something just almost off the shelf, if you will, or that you can order with a gel ink refill or something that writes better than normal. That's an option. It's a difficult thing because I think people get, you know, bogged down in the price of the pen equals quality. And what they're buying is a quality pen barrel and quality materials and quality manufacturing. But they're not necessarily buying quality writing.

Myke Hurley: Agreed. That was good. That was a good dowdy rant there.

Brad Dowdy: That's been actually, every time I get that email, I get this, you know, the kind of the steam pops off my head. And I'm not saying don't send me those emails. I'm saying I don't have a good answer. And it frustrates me that manufacturers aren't making changes in their products to accommodate some of the better writing technology that's available today.

Myke Hurley: So I guess a good rule of thumb, if people want that answer from you, is expect a pen hack.

Brad Dowdy: For that type of question and that type of price range, that's probably going to be your best bet. And, you know, I imagine nine times out of ten, they're not going to go for that for a gift, right?

Myke Hurley: Well, you just haven't got to tell people.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They'd have to go into it themselves before they gave it to them.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, exactly. Well, if you really love your pen addict, then do that. That's right. Should we do our second sponsor?

Brad Dowdy: Let's do it.

Myke Hurley: Squarespace 6.

Squarespace Version 6

Myke Hurley: Something new. It's exciting. So this is pretty big news. This is massive. Squarespace have released the new version. Version 6. It's a complete redesign of everything you know about Squarespace.

Myke Hurley: In my opinion, my favorite thing is the new templates that they have. If you go to mikehurley.net, I'll put that in the show notes, you know, so it's just in there for you. I've been using Squarespace 6 for a little while. I've been on the beta, and I love it. I just love it. My site is responsive, so you can go onto the iPhone, onto the iPad, and the site automatically scales down. Like, if you open it up on your web browser now and resize it, you'll see all the content and stuff move around. Squarespace automatically resizes the images that I upload as well, so I don't need to worry about any of that. I just upload whatever I need, and they make sure that it's scaled down for mobile, so it's not taking up too much data, not taking too long to load. They've looked at their system called Layout Engine, and they've done a lot around building this up again. Now, Layout Engine is Squarespace's page builder. It's what allows you to create custom layouts for each of your pages in seconds. You add blocks of content to the blank pages, such as photo galleries, video places, you can add text, social media content. They have native markdown support now, so you can just select, I want to write in markdown, and you can just add a markdown block, if that's what you really want to do. But the Layout Engine is so awesome. You can just say, right, I want to chuck a form in here, so I created a contact page, started a blank page, said, I want to put a bit of text in this side, on the left, I want to put a form on the right, and I could swap them around, drag and drop. It works like a native operating system. It's incredible. They have social media integration now, Brad, so you can, every time you post, it will tweet automatically. Big feature that they wanted. Link lists, they do now natively, if you want to follow the daring firewall style of link lists. Squarespace have that as well. Do you know what's amazing, about all of these incredible features? Not only do you get all this new stuff, you get all of the stuff that they've had before, like the 24-7 support, the rock solid hosting, all of this, extra stuff, new templates, new design, new system, new posting system, new backend, price is the same.

Myke Hurley: Squarespace starts at $10 a month, if you're going to buy the standard plan, on the month-to-month basis, and $20 a month, if you're going to go for the unlimited plan, on the month-to-month basis. If you sign up for one of their annual plans, you get 20% off, and if you sign up for two years, you get 25% off those, the amounts that I mentioned before. So on a month-to-month basis, if you sign up for one year, on the unlimited plan, you get it for $16, instead of $20. And if you sign up for one of the annual plans, you'll get a free custom domain name too. But what's more, if you use the offer code 70decibels7, that's 70-D-E-C-I-B-E-L-S-7, you'll get 10% off during checkout. If you tried out Squarespace before, and for some reason you weren't sure about it, I can give you a two-week free trial again. So you can go try it out. If you've not tried it out, and you're excited about what I've spoken about, go to squarespace.com, forward slash 70 decibels, two-week free trial. That's on us. Enjoy it. Thank you to Squarespace. Squarespace.

Brad Dowdy: Brad? Yes.

Myke Hurley: Oh, sorry. Did you want to add something?

Brad Dowdy: No, I was just going to say, I just started looking at the Squarespace 6 last night, right? Because, you know, I'm obviously already a user of Squarespace, so they, you know, sent me the email saying, hey, we have these other options. It's really, really good looking. I only had about 30 minutes to play around with it, but yeah, you could do some cool stuff with that. It looks really good.

Myke Hurley: You can very easily move over, Mr. Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: I know. They have an FAQ. I'll think about it.

Myke Hurley: Do it. Do it. All right. Mate, it's so good. So beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: And they, on that aspect, they, since the Squarespace 5 is, which is what Pen Addict's on right now and what was there before, and Squarespace 6 is, it's a completely separate, you know, backend, everything. You actually have to export and export from Squarespace 5 and import into Squarespace 6. And they, I mean, it's like two or three clicks of a button and they move everything over. And they just,

Myke Hurley: they move over your billing and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. So it's possible to do. I wish I could do it with the 70 decibels site, but I'm terrified to touch it.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I know. And I just, I just went, I just went through all that with, with my site too. So I'm not, you know, I, that took enough, uh, took enough elbow grease to get, to get that all moved over. So I need a break, I think, but, uh, I'm looking at it. It's, it's certainly tempting. And if not, you know, if you're a current Squarespace 5, um, subscriber, I guess that's the right term, or you have a, you're, you currently have a paid Squarespace 5 plan. They give you a free Squarespace 6 site anyway. So I could build another site on there right now. Um, because I already have a Squarespace 5 site.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. You see, I, uh, I want to move over, but I've, I've hacked Squarespace 5 so much to get the site the way it is. I'm, I'm terrified to touch it. Yeah. Yeah. Every time I have to put a new show in, I get, I get flop sweat. It's terrible. Right. So, uh, we've got a listener email that was, uh, sent in to us via the 70 decibels contact page at 70 decibels.com full slash contact. Would you like to summarize that for us, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: Because it's quite a long email. So no, I, I am not going to summarize it. I've read it two or three times and I want to read the whole thing. Okay. Go for it. There's a lot going on. Um, this, this email falls under, uh, epic length. So bear with me. I'm going to, I'm going to read through this. You know, I might, I might jump a little bit, but there's, this, this is a good type of email because it's got a lot of background on what I use, you know, what this person uses and a lot of, you know, ideas for what they're trying to do. So it, it really helps. Let me read this whole thing.

Myke Hurley: Go for it.

Pen & Paper

Brad Dowdy: And this is from, this is from Kyle. Um, so Kyle says, Hey, Brad, Myke, I'm just getting back into pen and paper after trying to do everything digitally. I'm looking to get into the circus system for my quick notes, calendar, task management system. Aside from that, I've been looking about for a better capture system than the small Moleskine Kaye. I use a pilot G2.5 as my go-to pen. I use the secure picker Micron 01 as my daily pen, as well as secure picker Micron 005 for in Bible notes during Bible college. I like my lines tiny, but the microns wore down eventually. Not a deal breaker, but inconvenient. I also love fountain pens and have a Schaefer Prelude. I used to use a calligraphy pen, like a fountain pen, and love the expressiveness, but found the nib far too wide for my taste in the end. I'm a part-time student and work in a retail environment, so that's why I use a cheap carry pen. For school, I use a Kuretoga for math classes, and the rest are online, so I now use my MacBook Air 13-inch. I love fine, scratchy pens. If a pen is truly slick like a 1.0 ballpoint, I hate it. I apply a fair amount of pressure when writing, and use italic cursive and print interchangeably. I think clear demonstrator pens look a little cheaper, but are fine for everyday carrier because of that. I prefer a solid fountain pen as my go-to pen when I sit down and purposefully write. I aspire to the vanishing point one day, but that'll be a special occasion when I get it. My wife doesn't get my obsession, which actually helps me moderate my wild spending impulses, but it means I have to grow my collection slowly and deliberately. Christmas will likely be my next opportunity to stock up on things I want. My question to you is this. After getting into the Circo system and getting a punch so I can punch my own paper, I have about $55 to get pens or a journal quick capture system. I'm torn between a medium Pele, an extra fine Kaweco Sport, a Levenger pocket briefcase, or Field Notes basic notebooks. At the moment, I'm leaning towards not getting a new journal and filling out a Moleskine I have in the Field Notes plus Kaweco. I'm really jonesing for a shiny new pen, but I'm worried about the durability of Field Notes because my Moleskine Kaya's get trashed in my pocket. I'm also open to other suggestions about how to get the best bang for my buck. I'm open to trying the Hitec C or something in the gel rollerball vein, but I really wish for a fountain pen. I know those are some disparate choices. My main dilemma comes from not knowing what I want to do about everyday carry. I would love to hear what you guys carry in your pockets and how you manage it because between keys, a phone, a notebook, and pen, and a wallet, I have a lot of junk in my pockets. I try to carry a backpack with me most places, but that's not always practical and can come off a little dorky, so I'm worried I won't end up using the Circa enough to justify it. Any suggestions for green ink would be great as well. I currently use Pelican Brilliant Black and would like to branch out. I love the show. You guys do awesome work. Please enable me further. One addict to another. Kyle. So did you get all that? What's your answer?

Myke Hurley: I haven't got one.

Brad Dowdy: That's a long email, Kyle.

Myke Hurley: That was why I sent it to you.

Brad Dowdy: Kyle's got a lot going on here.

Myke Hurley: Bing bong.

Brad Dowdy: All I need now is the phone to ring and we have the trifecta, right? So we've had R2. We've had the doorbell.

Myke Hurley: Did you just throw R2 outside and now he's trying to get back in again?

Brad Dowdy: No, but I did turn him on vibrate. And so now if we can just get the phone ring, we've got the pen addict podcast Brad's house trifecta. We're going to ship out bingo cards for you guys for next week. All right, Kyle. So there's actually a little bit I don't understand. I'm trying to figure out what he's trying to use the circus system for. And I guess that's really just for school. And that's circus system is a big investment. So I have not used it personally. People who use it swear by it like our friend Patrick Rohn. I would obviously stick with that for your school work. You've invested a lot. I mean, just the punch alone is quite expensive.

Kaweco Classic Sport

Brad Dowdy: So you've got the school. Kyle's got the school piece covered and he wants to have now he's got just $55 to spend and wants something more portable, everyday carry style. So reading his use and the things he likes, I actually would go with one of his options, which is the Field Notes Notebook and a Kaweco Sport Extra Fine Nib. The Kaweco Extra Fine Nib is one of my favorite fountain pen nibs, bar none. I know, Myke, you're not an Extra Fine Nib fan. And I'll just tell you, this is the most buttery smooth Extra Fine Fountain Pen Nib I've ever used. It destroys the Lamy Safari. It's really, really an elite nib. And if you're looking at the Kaweco Sport model, that's like a $22, $25 pen and you're getting a nib that's just killer.

Brad Dowdy: You know, you're worried, Kyle was worried about the clear demonstrator look of the pens. The Kaweco Classic Sport, they have solid black, solid blue, and maybe a solid green, solid burgundy. So you don't have to get a see-through or demonstrator type. About the Field Notes, you know, wearing out and the durability in your pocket, it's going to be the same as the Moleskine. I don't know what to tell you there. There's not a lot of ways around that, especially if you're a back pocket carry. If you're a shirt pocket carry, you'll be fine. Front pocket carry might be a little bit rough, but back pocket carry is obviously going to be the roughest.

Brad Dowdy: What I do is I use the Done Utility Journal and they made a leather cover for that utility journal. So it's almost like I carry a thin wallet in my back pocket because I don't carry a wallet. I carry a front pocket money clip. Like a pimp. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm a player. Yeah. I don't know where that came from.

Brad Dowdy: That is how I roll.

Myke Hurley: That's totally how you roll.

Brad Dowdy: Actually, I just carry a big fat wad and a rubber band.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, but for my everyday carry, when I leave the house, it's the Done paper and the leather cover because I carry it in my back pocket and I mean, let's just be honest, it just wears out in there. It's really rough, you know, sitting on it and, you know, those aren't, they're durable and that they'll, they'll make it but they do end up worse for wear if they're not covered and you're carrying in your back pocket. The pins I usually take with me, I have a very short list of everyday carry pins that I take with me when I leave the house and I carry the, uh, Kaweco AL Sport fountain pen which is a little bit, if your budget is 55, that's a little bit out of your budget. It's like 67, I think, or mid-60s. Um, it is a really, really durable pen. I actually like it better for an everyday carry than the little, than the Lilliput. The Lilliput, uh, I'm afraid I'm gonna lose because it's so tiny, the Kaweco Lilliput. Um, but, if I'm not carrying the AL Sport and the Dome Paper Notebook, the, the other pen I carry, it's about, I think only two, two other pens I carry when I leave the house for my notebook. It's a .5mm Jetstream, just the basic Jetstream Sport cheap barrel and the Secura Pigma Micron 0.3. Um, Kyle uses the 01 and 005. Those are way, way too thin for me and they are gonna wear down super fast like, like Kyle's experiencing. So, Kyle, if you want my recommendation, I go with the Extra Fine Kaweco Sport in the field notes. I haven't, the Levenger pocket briefcase is, is tempting because I'm a huge index card guy. But, the problem that I see not having used it is, one side of your paper is always exposed with your pocket briefcase, right? Are you, are you familiar with that pocket briefcase, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, Pat used it to look like that. Yeah,

Brad Dowdy: so it's like a, it's like an index card holder that, just think of a, as a piece of leather that covers your four corners of your index cards and that's how it holds it in. I, I could see that if you care, if you're a front shirt pocket carry, but any pocket carry, you're, unless you're flipping over the cards and that, that just seems a little bit of a hassle to me. That's the thing that's kept me off of the, the Levenger pocket briefcase. So, I'm a, I'm a field notes or in my case, stone paper, but a field notes and Kaweco guy. I mean, I hope that helps Kyle. I don't, I don't know if we answered your question perfectly, but, it was a really awesome email, you know, and, as far as green inks, I haven't really gone there. I, I can't help you there, but maybe one day we keep threatening to get more into inks and we keep telling, we have a, some of our, our, our friends on Twitter keep telling us not to do it because then they'll have to spend more money on the inks that we're testing out. So, it's going to be a few months before I get in, any more into inks. So, that's pretty much it. I, I, we appreciate the email, Kyle. Do you have anything to, to add on that, Myke, or?

Myke Hurley: Just thank you. And, if people, as always, want to get in contact with us, they can do that by going to 70decibels.com forward slash contact. They can email Brad directly at thepenaddict at gmail.com. We're also both on Twitter. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Brad is dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And one more thing. I, I want, I want to thank people like Kyle and all of our other listeners and readers that are taking the time to, that they're putting in the thought and the time that they're putting into these emails and these questions. We really, we really appreciate your comments and the feedback. You know, I was checking the iTunes the other day. You know, we were up to like 50, five star reviews on there, which just boggles my mind. And all the comments are so nice. We, we really, really appreciate your feedback and, and, and listening and, and reading. So we, we do appreciate it.

Myke Hurley: Excellent stuff. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. I'm Myke Hurley and he's Brad Dowdy. And until next time, bye-bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye-bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.