The Pen Addict 238/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	238
Title:	P Goes to 80%
Release Date:	January 4th, 2017
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 238
Audio File:	Audio Episode 238
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 238
Length:	6868 min <br />1.133 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Pen Addict Podcast

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict episode 238. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet, Squarespace, and Harry's. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy. Happy New Year to you, Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Happy New Year's, Mr. Hurley. How was your New Year's? How was your Christmas? We haven't talked since right before the holidays kicked off, and I know we were both busy over the holidays, and hope all of our listeners had awesome holidays. How was yours?

Myke Hurley: Christmas was really nice. It was a nice family affair, and then for New Year's, I travelled out to the US, where I got to surprise some friends when I showed up at a New Year's party that people didn't know was appearing at.

Brad Dowdy: Where was it at? I don't even know this story.

Myke Hurley: So, we went to New York, me and Edina, where we stayed with the Amants for a couple of days, and then we drove down to Virginia to join the Amants and the Underscores, who knew we were coming, to surprise the Syracusers and the Lissers, who didn't know that we were coming. We've been planning this for a couple of months, and yeah, I got to surprise them. And Casey's head exploded, which was the whole point of the surprise.

Brad Dowdy: Oh my gosh. So, I guess I need to listen to that episode of Analog. I saw there was a very special edition of Analog. That's what it is. It was in relation. Nice.

Myke Hurley: So, by this weekend, there will be an episode of Analog, where me and Casey talk about the trip, and also a vlog episode. We recorded the moment where I surprised them. Oh my gosh. That's too funny. Yeah. People should go and check it out.

Brad Dowdy: You did a good job keeping that secret. I didn't even know that one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It was one of those things where I told very few people, because the more people that knew, the more chance of it's like a slip up.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. For sure.

Myke Hurley: I actually didn't. I thought I might have told you. I don't even remember who I told.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you told a lot of people something on our last episode, didn't you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. You know, I was really worried. How'd that work out for you? I was really worried, right? Like, after the episode, I was saying to you, I was like, oh, did I make a mistake here? Like, should I have not said this? Is the entire pen addict audience going to turn against me when I unload my confessions? Because I played the game well, and you didn't play the game well, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Well, no. I just live a pure life. No, I just live a pure life, Michael.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. No pen secrets over there. I bet. And I have to say, like, there were a few people that said to me that I should hang up my microphone. But mostly, the feedback that we got were people siding with me. So, Pontus, our friend Pontus.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I want to say, siding with you is not entirely accurate. Okay. Sympathizing. Feeling your pain, sympathizing, I think is the right term. Yes.

Pen Show

Myke Hurley: So, Pontus wrote in. Pontus, our friend who traveled from the lands of Europe. Pontus and Julia. Over to the Atlanta Pen Show last year. Said, thanks for the not cleaning fountain pens confession. It made me feel better about my habits. But that Chivor explosion, explosion, people are unhappy about that. Leslie said that she also has a leaked fountain pen and a Ziploc bag. Like, and that's kind of amazing. But it was an Emerald of Chivor. And Eric said that he was sad to say that he was happy to hear about my pen misuse because it was something that he could relate to. Yeah. So, I feel better. I feel better.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, and I don't disagree that this is a thing. Like, this is not, like, way abnormal. It's just kind of insane. And, like, some of us have those super OCD tendencies, you know, and that's the kind of thing that freaks us out, you know, like me. So, but, you know, other people, it's, you know, part of their routine is no routine. And that's cool, too. It's wrong, but it's cool.

Myke Hurley: So, I have decided to, I have some follow-up for you, Brad. I decided to satiate the audience and I have provided a photo of the explosion still in its Ziploc bag. Okay, I got to look at this. I haven't seen this yet. So, I took this photo today.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. Yeah, that's legit explosion. You should clean that, not because you should clean that, but because that's a completely kick-butt pen. Yeah. You know I obviously love the 20, which is what the Pen Addict pen is. And yours with the clear and the smoke finial, it's just an awesome pen. You should just clean it because it should be in your rotation. That's why.

Myke Hurley: So, maybe you should check that second link. Oh, look at you. Get out. I got it out to take the picture today and I was looking at it and I thought to myself, I should just clean this pen. Yeah. So, I did. And I filled it with Califolia of Andronople. I have some important follow-up. It was not Emerald of Chivor in there. Whoa. I thought it was, but it wasn't. It was Conpeccy. Okay. That's better. So, it came out pretty easy. There is some blue in, like just basically it's like baked in. I can't get it out.

Brad Dowdy: So, the innards of the ice models are not smooth.

Myke Hurley: No. And so, there's some of it in the ends that was basically impossible to get out. But as you will see, it was very difficult for me to fill this pen. As you will see from the image, I took a picture of it in my hands. I couldn't. I cannot find my pipettes. I cannot find them. I don't know where they are. So, I had to fill it using a converter. So, I used the converter to draw the ink out and then drop the ink in. It was messy. Now, I'm in the terrible situation right now where the ink is not coming out the way that it should be. So, it's basically like a dark purple right now where it's still kind of drawing out the blue. But I've cleaned up the Franklin Kristoff and I have treated it to my favorite ink right now. And it's sitting here on my desk and I'm going to keep using it until it's shining a beautiful pink California in Andronopel. So, I have already achieved my first resolution of the year. I have fixed the problem. It is not as bad as we thought it was. And I'm ready to push forward now with this pen in usage. Because I have a Masuyama Italic on this. And it's a really interesting pen to use. I mean, I have pens that feel a lot nicer to use because the Italic grind makes it a little sharp for me in places. Like a little scratchy. And I think that's just my left-handedness. Because I've even had this pen tuned by Masuyama himself. But it's still just got that little scratch in places for me. But it produces some very interesting effects. Speaking of which, whilst I was in New York, I got to sit down and take a look at Tiff's collection. Who is quite possibly, as I said before, the fastest pen addict that I've ever come across. Because she has amassed this collection within a year. Which is quite incredible. Like, she has Nakaya's now. And she has some beautiful things in her collection. Including a pen which had a Jowo Feud nib on it. Feuday. Feuday nib.

Bent Nibs

Brad Dowdy: Wow. Yeah, those are cool. Like, I couldn't write with that normally, but it's a wild nib.

Myke Hurley: It's like bent, right? Yeah. It's basically bent. And then you can do a bunch of really interesting things with it. I need to get one. Because I was kind of blown away by them. So, I had a lot of fun playing with that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's meant to mimic like a brush pen. Where you can have wide all the way down to like a finer tip. If you get it real vertical on the tip of that nib. So, it's really, really cool.

Myke Hurley: So, I'm planning on getting one of those. I need to work out what pen I want to put it in. And then work out whether I need like a size 5 or a size 6. Okay. Because I can never remember the difference. I know it's like it's the size of the pen means the size of the nib. Like the 5 and 6. I know that from the Franklin Kristoff stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Well, yeah. Not necessarily, but generally. I mean, it's the size of the 5 is a smaller nib. And the 6 is a little bit larger nib. Like if you're looking at the Franklin Kristoff stuff.

Myke Hurley: So, do I need to get different ones for different pens? Or is it just a choice thing? I think, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Like your 20 uses a size 6 nib. All right. But if you had one of the pocket pens, like the pocket ices or whatever, they use a size 5.

Myke Hurley: You know what? Maybe I should just, I should further treat this Franklin Kristoff, which has been abused for so long. And buy it, the few day nib. What do you think about that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Do something nice for it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Dress it up real nice, you know? Yeah. Make it feel good about itself again. Yeah. It's had a terrible time. Yeah. So, I'm going to do that. I'm doing it right now. I'm buying a few day nib. It will be here within a month, which is awesome, I guess.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah. I'm buying one of those right now from fpnibs.com. Yes. And so, a size 6 few day nib. And then when it arrives, I will be able to dress my Franklin Kristoff up all nice. Make it feel good about itself. Put like some new clothes on it. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No one puts your Franklin Kristoff in the corner.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think it's something like that.

Nakaya Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Give it something nice. So, how was, is Tiffany enjoying her new Nakaya?

Myke Hurley: I believe so. It was kind of treated very nicely in its little bed, you know? Yeah. In a nice little cabinet and stuff. Hilarious. It's only made me want one more. Because just holding one for a longer period of time, she has the one with the feathers on it. Right. And like the fact that you can feel the feathers, right, with the way that they've painted it on. And it's kind of incredible. And I really, really badly want one. And we're going to talk a little bit later on in the show about how I'm starting that process. Right. Because I am starting the process. I like it. I like where this is headed. All right. So, next up today, Thomas, our good friend, Mr. Thomas Hall, he suggested that there is only one blue-black ink worth considering, which is Pilot Blue Black. And he's provided a link to a review that he wrote. And I want to know your opinion on this.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I mentioned it in the show. Right. So, talking about last week's Confessions episode and all the feedback we got, this is one of those episodes I think I've seen the most, this was the best episode ever feedback. I think just because it was like, it ended up coming out really genuine, which, I mean, obviously it was, but it came out that way. It was really natural and funny and hilarious. I've actually listened to this episode twice, once because I was driving and I just wanted to listen to it and I put it in my headphones. And the second time, because my daughter Elizabeth heard me laughing so hard, she wanted to listen to it. She said she wanted to listen to the whole thing. So, we listened to it. I listened to it twice. And it was literally hilarious. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: When I listened back to some parts whilst editing, I was laughing a lot.

Brad Dowdy: So, I mentioned two blue-blacks. I mentioned Shinkai, one, because that's my favorite. And it goes along with the Orochizuku inks that you have, Konpeki, Fuyugaki. You just know they're good inks, good quality. And then I also, the second one I mentioned was Pilot Blue Black. That ink is awesome. It goes in anything. It cleans really well, behaves very well. It actually has some permanence to it, which is kind of an off-label feature that it doesn't necessarily promote. But it's, I won't say it's like bulletproof, but it definitely has some waterproofness. It, when Thomas was teaching me about fountain pens, I had to order a bottle. Well, it didn't have to. I ordered a bottle because that's the only ink he wanted used in his pens. Because he knows exactly how it's going to behave after just years and years of testing. And it's a wonderful, wonderful ink. I mean, it looks beautiful. I use Pilot Blue Black. I probably use it more than Shinkai. If I had to pick only one, I'd pick Shinkai. I use Pilot Blue Black more, if that makes sense. Just because, you know, it's cheaper. It comes in cartridges, which I throw in my vanishing points. You know, all these things like that. So, yeah, it's absolutely awesome. And it's one of those inks that probably everyone should just have a bottle of. Because it's really inexpensive, all things considered.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, maybe I'll check this one out. I haven't made my full blue-black decision yet.

Brad Dowdy: It's got some cool shading. You know what I think?

Myke Hurley: I think I might wait for this until I'm at a pen show. And I can just use them and see. So, I can just choose the one that I think works nice for me. So, I can actually see how they look. Yeah. Now, our spiritual third co-host of the show, Anna Reinert, has provided to us her confessions and resolutions after hearing the last episode. And she is permitted for us to read them on the show today. Yes. So, we have seven confessions here. So, number one, I am the most lax pen cleaner, too. I started a little club here, Brad, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I mean, you could just call it Cherry Pickers Anonymous, because that's what this is.

Myke Hurley: You want to find me some other feedback? You go right ahead, buddy. I don't know, I can't even get on to say. I leave them to sit for months until half of them are dried out, and then I finally clean them out all at once. And it's an epic day-long process, so I side with Myke here, too. I don't believe in the whole ink is going to damage pens thing. I have enough old fountain pens across the old ink that I've saved that I don't think new modern ink will cause much harm to if it sits for a year. Yeah. So, sit down, Brad. Anna also doesn't like the pen type A or B. Sides with me. That I can understand. And this is one that I don't fully understand. I'm interested in this one, too. I have a stinky Franklin Kristoff from The Dallas Show that sat empty on a windowsill since the show. I'm hoping it will stop stinking soon. Is it ink? Do you reckon ink's the problem here? What makes a pen stinky?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know if it's ink or the material, but, you know, you can get some of those ebonite or celluloid materials that really smell. Like, I've got some Edison pens where the barrel will smell, you know.

Myke Hurley: I love that smell, though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and it's fine. And I don't know, I haven't had a Franklin Kristoff in any kind of material that would smell like that. So, I don't know what she's referring to. It's pretty funny.

Stinklin Kristoff

Myke Hurley: We should just call it the Stinklin. The Stinklin Kristoff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Stinklin Kristoff. I, you know, we're going to need to, next time we have her on, we're going to have to get a report on this pen. So, hold that thought, Anna, and share that with us next time you come on.

Myke Hurley: I have a ridiculous amount of field notes, too, and even want other notebooks and sketchbooks. My goal is to try and use the ones I have this year and try not to buy any more. So, I'm with you both here. Good luck, is what I say on that one.

Brad Dowdy: So, hold that thought right there. Okay. We were going to do some Ask TPA if we had time later in the show. I have a good use for field notes right here in one of my Ask TPA letters. What, let's see who wrote this. Serena wrote this. And it was just an envelope, a pulled out one sheet of folded paper. Do you know what that one sheet of folded paper was? It was a pulled out sheet from a field notes notebook.

Myke Hurley: Oh.

Brad Dowdy: So, she took like one, like unstapled, like the middle, pulled one sheet out, you know, so it's got the left and the right side, folded it in half like it was in the book, wrote the letter, and stuck it in an envelope. That's a fantastic idea. Just for letter writers.

Myke Hurley: That's really good.

Brad Dowdy: So, she used sweet tooth, which is one we all want to get rid of. So, that's a good use case for your sweet tooth, Franklin. I mean, field notes. You can just, you know, unstable them, pull out a page, or have a stack of pages there, and there's your letter writing stock. So, anyway.

Myke Hurley: And number five. So, we have the number five confession from Anna Hitchell. I have more pencils and colored pencils than you could possibly imagine.

Brad Dowdy: I've seen pictures, and she does. This is the truth.

Myke Hurley: Similar vein. Number six. I have too much ink. I gave away hundreds of sample vials last year, and I have acquired more this year and gave away this year. She keeps acquiring more than she's given away.

Brad Dowdy: This was a recurring theme in a lot of the response on this show. A lot of us have ink and paper problems. Like, it was funny. You know, some people had pen problems, and they were along the lines of, write more with what I have, buy less. You know, that's great. The specific ones were around ink and paper, and we all have an ink and paper problem.

Myke Hurley: And finally, I will never own a Visconti Homo Sapien. I just don't know what the big deal is. I've never liked the Visconti clip, like me, and the locking mechanism is odd. I like the lava finish on the road trains, but the Visconti, bleh.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, I'm never going to say never, because, you know, if someone, if for some reason she came across a London Fog Homo Sapiens, which is, you know, if she's not into the lava Homo Sapiens, I can see that. They do some other Homo Sapiens, like London Fog. Yeah, that's hard to stay away from, but I will agree with her that while it has been on my shopping list in the past, I have kind of soured on it, just because the nibs are super wet, just like Pelicans. I know it's like super, super wet. Nibs are difficult for me, and I can always get it adjusted, but it's just like, you know, kind of want a little more from the nib.

Visconti Homo Sapien

Myke Hurley: Oh my God, London Fog is so expensive.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. It's like $800.

Myke Hurley: Nah. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm looking at your review, and it says $995, but I guess you can get it cheaper now. Yeah. This is Susan's review, I should say.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So only like $600 or $700. Oh, it's nothing. No big.

Myke Hurley: I'll get one. I'll get four. Nope. And these are honors resolutions, and you can guess where these are going. Unload some ink and maybe some pens. Use up some notebooks and sketchbooks, and spread more pen, pencil, ink, and paper love.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. We can all do better spread the love. We do it a lot. We have a wonderful community that really spreads it, and I can do a better job at that, too.

Myke Hurley: No doubt.

Brad Dowdy: Positivity, man. That's where it's at.

Myke Hurley: So thank you, Anna, for sharing your confessions with us, making me feel better, and for commiserating with us all with your resolutions.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at the Pen Chalet. Oh, Pen Chalet, we love thee. You know all about Pen Chalet. Brad, do you know all about Pen Chalet? I know all about Pen Chalet. You know all about Pen Chalet, so you will know that they sell all of the rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils that you want from all of the brands that you love. They have fast and reliable customer service, tons of great discounts all the time, free shipping on orders of over $50 in the U.S., and they also sell internationally with great shipping rates. Pen Chalet offers low prices on high-quality pens with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Now, as always, if you want to buy any pen, any pen that you're looking for in the world, you should go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and enter the password PENADDICT. It's a secret password just for PENADDICT listeners. That is where you will find a bunch of offers, which I'll get to in a minute, but also the code that you need for that week to save 10% on anything at Pen Chalet. So if there's a pen that you've got your eye on, go see if Pen Chalet has it first, because if they do, you can always get 10% off. So it's good for you, and it's good for us, because it helps support the show. It also helps support Ron at Pen Chalet, who is the nicest person ever. Now, we have a plethora of deals this week. You want to log in and see them, but there was one that really caught my eye, which was the, uh... Well, it's funny. What's happening over there?

Brad Dowdy: I'm trying to order this before I say what it is.

Myke Hurley: Okay, you carry on going, because I'll talk about what is, what I like the look of, which is the Diamine Shimmering Fountain Pen Inks.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I have, there's a new batch of them. I didn't review any of the other ones, but I know Susan did, and I think Jeff did for the blog. There's a new one, Myke, called, I want to say Enchanted Ocean, that I am actually intrigued by. I got a Christmas letter with that ink. I've seen samples of that ink. It just looks kind of fantastic. So, um, that's one on my radar, and there's a bunch of new colors.

Myke Hurley: So, the one that the Pen Chalet is offering is one that intrigues me greatly is Caramel Sparkle.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, I think that was one that I really like that color of, too.

Myke Hurley: So, I recommend picking that up, because you can get it after the sale price and the coupon for $12.60. So, if you're just looking to see what these inks look like, this is a great way to try it for a bargain price. And there's a bunch of other things on there. What were you running to order?

Brad Dowdy: So, I didn't know Sailor made pen cases. Not only do they make pen cases, they make orange pen cases.

Myke Hurley: Do you think he just did this for me and you? I'm thinking he might have done.

Brad Dowdy: I'm guessing that he did. And I, like, I didn't even know this was a thing that existed. So, I'm pretty jacked on it, and I'm totally ordering it, literally as we speak on this. And, yeah, so, it's like, I'm just gonna do it. Like, that was very cool.

Myke Hurley: This is a $140 pen case, which you can get for $56.70. He also has field notes on discount, the current field notes on discount. He always does that. Which is incredible. And just so much more great stuff. So, you want to go and check all of that stuff out at penshalet.com. Thank you so much to Penshalet for their support of this show on RelayFM. I don't know how Ron does it, but I love that he does.

Brad Dowdy: I don't either. I don't either. So, I may have just ordered this twice on accident. We'll see.

Myke Hurley: Okay, great. If you have, then I'll take the other one.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, or I'll give it away. To me. We'll see.

Myke Hurley: I don't need a giveaway. There's nothing you can do.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so let me see what else is on here. Okay, all right. We can move on. I think I ordered it. I, honest to God, don't know.

Myke Hurley: Great.

Brad Dowdy: I either ordered zero or two.

Myke Hurley: But if I come up with one, it'll be happy.

Brad Dowdy: See, this is the thing.

Myke Hurley: It is so dangerous to order whilst we're recording. Like, when I was ordering that nib, I honestly have no idea if I ordered it even to my own house. I don't know where it is. Because you're trying to concentrate, but there's things you just know you gotta buy them. So, this is the thing to do.

Brad Dowdy: Well, we're kind of doing our job here, doing this podcast. Slacking off. And we're both just made purchases. Wow.

Brad Dowdy: We're awful. We are awful people, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Well, you know, this is how it goes, right? You know, the people, they say to us that we cost them so much money, but we do it to ourselves as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. All right. Let's see how many cases I work. I have to look before. You gotta check. Let's see.

Order Numbers

Myke Hurley: This is stuff that people need to know, because otherwise it's gonna be a cliffhanger. So, that's order number. Did you order one case? Did you order six cases? Nobody knows. Could be an infinite amount of cases. You may still be ordering cases. Just one? Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Unless more emails come.

Myke Hurley: As Tony says in the chat room, don't purchase a podcast.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Gosh. Especially this holiday season. We're living proof. Living proof of that.

Myke Hurley: So, you have started one of your resolutions.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I didn't list this out specifically, but this is something I've wanted to do on and off for years. And I've started and stopped many times because I could never find a way to make it work. But what I always wanted to do is track the pens and paper I use every day. So, you know, on Monday, what pen, paper did I use? What ink was in the fountain pen? If it was a fountain pen, you know, what pencil did I use? Anything like that. And, you know, I have tried to like track it just in a notebook. Well, we know my notebook problems. Well, that ends up being not the one notebook that I use or have the, you know, half of the week in one place, half of the week in another place. Can't ever keep it up and it ends up not working. So, I'm going to use day one. I set up an alert on that to remind me every night at 8 p.m. to write down what pens and ink I use. And then I set it up. You can set it up. I don't know. Do they call it a script? It's not really a script. But so I can set that notification up to where I click that notification and it fills out a new entry with the prompts that I've typed within that entry. So it's like I just have to fill in the blanks essentially. So like it says, today's pens, today's paper, today's ink, and notes. So like yesterday, I used the Palomino HB pencil and the Y Studio fountain pen. The paper I used were Nock dot dash note cards and Nock A5 notebook, which we just picked up from the printer yesterday. The ink in my fountain pen is Athena blue black. And the notes I had pencil used at Nock and the Y Studio at home. So these are the kind of things I want to track. Like I had a day on January the 2nd where I put today's pens, none, and then I put in notes I was traveling all day. I just didn't have the opportunity. So this is something I've always wanted to do. I've attempted it with the actual papers and pens. That ends up getting lost in the shuffle. So I'm going to try this digitally. I like it so far. We'll see if I keep it up. If I miss a day, that's okay. But I like having the prompt with the headers already filled out, if you will. So I think it's pretty cool. I'm happy with my solution so far.

Myke Hurley: And how are you like making yourself do this? Do you have like a reminder set for you to go in and check it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's why I said like at 8 p.m. every night it sends me a notification.

Brad Dowdy: Day one sends me the notification. Yeah, yeah. A reminder. So it just sends that to me. And when I hit that notification, it takes me to a new entry with these prompts already filled out.

Myke Hurley: Pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's very cool. That's pretty cool. Let me see what the, I forget what the setting is called in the actual app itself. It might be called scripts, but you can basically preload an entry, if you will, to say, or entry prompts. So you know what, you know, what you want to type or anything like that. Template. They have a template. template. So you can add the reminder for the day, date, and time. And then you can tell it to go ahead and tag it. So I have it tagged pins.

Brad Dowdy: It's going into a specific journal, which is the 2017 pin log. And then the template it uses, which is what I created in day one, is called today's pins. And it just lists out all the headers that I want to fill out every day. So that's something I'm, something I'm trying out. So we'll see. You know, I've generally failed at these type of things, which is why, you know, I don't also, don't always call them resolutions, but we'll see how long I can keep this going. I would like to do this, so we'll see. Yes, there are addresses showing at the bottom of each entry. So, you know, there's my home address for everyone.

Myke Hurley: Oh no.

Brad Dowdy: We can take that off.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'll make sure that's not in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: I think everyone in here probably has it already.

Myke Hurley: So sorry, everybody. Thanks, Dougie Doug. I imagine an image. It won't be in the, it won't be in the show notes. But Brad, Brad did a good job of painting a word picture for everyone, I think. I did. I did.

Brad Dowdy: So we'll self-destruct in one hour.

Stationery Gifts

Brad Dowdy: All right. So over the holidays, did you get any stationary stuff for Christmas? I know you got a drone for Christmas because I did see that picture, which was pretty awesome. No, I didn't. I didn't get anything. Yeah, I pretty much didn't get anything, which is normal. Like, I don't ask that much for Christmas.

Myke Hurley: Nobody buys me anything, right? Because there is a strong chance I've got it, you know, and it's not really something that I ask for, so.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I did get a couple of related things. I did get the Revenge of Analog book by David Sachs, and you should all check our friend Harry Marks' interview with David Sachs he did on his covered podcast. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And I'm just a couple of chapters into that. He, the chapter on paper was chapter number two, so I'm already past that one, and it's a chapter on Moleskine. It is very interesting. I won't spoil it yet for those of you who are attempting to get the book. I know it's been sold out in a lot of places, but I have lots of things to say about that chapter, but I'll give it a month or so, let everyone get past it, and then I'll finish the book, then maybe we can do a book report. And I've asked, I've talked to David, you know, about getting him to come on, so we might effort that in the future. He was totally open to doing that, so yeah, it's really, really good so far. I did get the extra field notes that Draplin released on his site that were part of the EEC, which is the Everything Else Enhancement Kit from the book that he did. Oh, okay. Those cool black and orange. Yeah, yeah, so that's what's in the picture there. Then I got a couple other DDC items, hat patches, socks, and I did get my Blackwing Point Guards, which, let's go ahead and talk about that now.

Myke Hurley: If you don't mind,

Brad Dowdy: we'll switch that up a little bit. So, last week's episode, I was mentioning that I was reading about them and how they weren't really working very well for people. I got mine in and I can confirm that they just don't work very well. Like, the name of this product should have been Just the Tip because that's all you can get into these things. It's not, it's not a love, it's not a hate thing, it's a, I can't recommend this product thing. Right? I don't think it really works for what they wanted it to do. They got so much feedback on this that they ended up having to write a blog post to explain their decisions in making this product and they say it's essentially working as intended. Which, if that's the case, I can't really recommend this product to anyone. Um, what they've tried to do I think was maybe too extreme. Like, I think they over-engineered this, if you will. This could have been a simpler product that worked better instead it's a more complex product that works poorly. Um, they talk a lot about the tolerances in this and if you can't, if you're making a product for your products and it doesn't fit those products, why did you do this? Like, I have a very hard time looking at this from a manufacturer's point of view that they push forward with this because you're only causing questions from your customers when they're relying on you to deliver a product that should work as they anticipate this should work. And, what the Blackwing point guard does is exactly not that. It does not work how people anticipate that a point guard should work. That's what caused all the problems. Do you think

Myke Hurley: they know this? Because the way that they talk about it in the post, they're kind of like, we made something different and it's meant to work this way.

Brad Dowdy: Like, they're proud of it. No, they absolutely know it because they talk about the tolerances in this and they say you can only get it over the tip right where the barrel starts from being sharpened and it's tight, it pushes down on the barrel, it modifies the shape of the barrel because it's so tight. you know, if you put in a circular item over a hex barrel, there's going to be some issues there where the products that work well, like the other point protectors work well, they're flexible tin and they have a slit in them, so they're adjustable to many different pencil sizes. This is a non-adjustable item for they're asking you to place on a product that even on their own products has variants, like the Blackwing 211 has no lacquer, so it's a thinner pencil than the Blackwing 602 which has a lacquered barrel, so they're going to fit differently on their very own products. This is just something, they've opened themselves up to be challenged every time someone purchases this product thinking it's one thing and then when they get it, it's not. And this is their answer to that. That's fine. I mean, it's just not, and it's a beautiful product. I wish it worked well. I wish it worked better than it did. It just doesn't. Comfortable shoes

Myke Hurley: in the chat room sums it up perfectly. It says it kind of sounds like, no, no, guys, you're all doing it wrong. We made it right. You just don't know how to use a pencil cap.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And it does read like that. It's like, we tried to do it and then we found this better way and this is a better way and we made the better

Brad Dowdy: way. It's really, really just not a good product. Like, I would never recommend for anyone to go out and purchase this because it doesn't work as a point protector should work. It just doesn't. I mean, they're dancing around it. I think they know like every bit of feedback they're getting on this is the same thing, right? Well, it's what am I doing wrong? Like, this is a very simple product. There shouldn't be a question of what am I doing wrong with it, right? You don't create products this simple to ship to people and have them be confused on actually how to use it. So, that's the way I see it. So, I got them in and it's the truth. They do not work. They, you know, it's just not functional. So, that's too bad because it's really pretty. I don't even, I'm not even opposed to the price. I don't know that you could make something like this work. They would have to, this is a redesign from scratch type of thing. Like, this isn't a, okay, let's widen this, let's do this, let's do that with this product. It's a scrap it and start over product.

Myke Hurley: There we go. All right, we were talking about resolutions a little bit earlier on in the show. One of the things that I was talking about was selling some of my field notes and I'm doing it. I'm putting them on eBay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I saw that yesterday. Like, I was surprised. You were actually tweeting me out. He's like, hey, I think I'm putting these on eBay and then I looked and they were all up there.

Myke Hurley: So this isn't everything I've got. I have a bunch of duplicates and some more stuff that I want to get rid of, but this is just stuff that I'm selling right now to go into the Nakaya fund. So there's a bunch on there. There's some rare ones. I really have put basically everything up that are duplicates except for the stuff that I really want. Like, I kept a selection of byline. I haven't put any of those up at all because they're like a daily use thing for me. I kept a handful of arts and sciences and a handful of night sky as well because they're my favorite editions. So I've kept those, but everything else I'm down to just one unopened packet of all of these, including stuff like a DDC factory floor pop-up limited edition, the roastery edition, the Starbucks one, the large one, the arts and sciences size one, which is made of wood. Yeah, this one and Field Notes, XOXO 2015 as well. So I've got them up there. Now, I actually still have some duplicates of these, so I have more that I'm going to do something else with and I haven't decided what at this point, but maybe I'll do giveaways or sell them for charity or something. I'm not sure yet, just because I have some extras that I want to get rid of, but they're in there. I think that there's some deals to be had, honestly, with some of these. So I started the bidding low because I'm not going to be that guy. You can go check them out. They're in the show notes. It's over at eBay and I think they ship basically worldwide. You can check the countries that it ships to because I'm doing this thing that eBay has which I didn't know about where it was shipped worldwide. All I need to do is send it to them in the UK and then they take care of the rest, which is kind of cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's kind of cool. So I'm proud of you just for starting to

Brad Dowdy: put together the details and put it out there. It took a long time. Yeah, it does. It takes forever. So that's always the hesitancy up front. So very cool. Good on you for doing it and add it to the fun.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, Tony says you should have been that guy. And I know I just don't want to. I really don't want to be the person that puts the field notes up for 50 pounds or whatever. It seems silly to me. So if you want them, go get them because there are some in there that you might not get for the price that they're selling at anywhere else. So go for it. How's the mod 3 going?

Brad Dowdy: It's not.

Myke Hurley: Okay,

Brad Dowdy: that's good news. So I kept it on my, so I loaded it and then I unloaded it with the thought that I'm going to go back and I'm going to commit to figuring this out. And so I sat down and I kept it at my desk for a few days, tried different things, putting it in and out, and it was just a frustration. Like, again, like the Blackwing point guard, I want things to work a certain way. I have expectations and this was not fitting me, how I use things. Like, it doesn't fit how I use pens and paper and electronic devices to carry them all in this type of device. So I am sending this to Susan, who's always wanted the mod 3 and she's going to review it for the blog and see if she likes it. So she wants to try it. She's like, you know, I see what you're saying about it. You know, I've always eyeballed one. So I'm going to let her do the review on it. So I'm going to ship that out to her this week. But I have already raised the white flag. I surrender on the mod 3. It is not going to work for me at all. I did see a cool case. Father Kyle sent me some pictures of one he's had for years, which is a different model that looked better than the mod 3, but I don't think they make that model anymore. So I won't link that in the show notes, but I'm already done. So, yeah. That's a shame. no, no, it's a it was valid. It was it was for research purposes. I had a theory. My theory is now proven, but you know, it's also just for me. Like it's a it's a personal thing, right? For me, it does not work. For other people, it absolutely works. and Susan, I think, will do a better job reviewing it than me.

Myke Hurley: That's fair.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm going to send it off to her and we'll get a review of it in the next month or two. So look for it then. And then we'll decide what to do with it. Like if I told her if she likes it, it's hers. You know, if she thinks she's going to use it and commits to it, it's my gift to her. And then we'll see. She may not. And so we'll see.

Myke Hurley: I just got some bids coming. I get push notifications of bids because I put the e-mail on my phone today.

Brad Dowdy: And there are bids coming in on the field notes. That's funny. I was surprised how many bids the workshop got so far.

Myke Hurley: Me too. I think maybe because it's like a full sealed pack of six. Yeah, maybe so. It's a more expensive edition anyway. Right. So maybe that's the case. Yep. Who knows? All right. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace. Enter the offer code INC at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. Maybe you're looking to create an online store. Maybe you want a store like Knock or you want a store like the Relay FM store. Guess what? They're on Squarespace. Maybe you want to create a portfolio for your artwork. Or maybe you're looking to create a blog like The Pen Addict. You've heard of that blog, right? Guess where it is? I hate that guy. Me too, but I love his blog and it's on Squarespace and that's why Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you do whatever you want to do. There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed. You don't have to worry about any of this because Squarespace have got it covered for you. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support if you need anything. They let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name for your idea and all of the award-winning templates that they have are beautifully designed. That's why they won those awards and they're all there for you to show off your great ideas and they look good on all sizes of device whether you're coming from a desktop or a tablet or a phone. Your site's going to look fantastic to whoever goes to visit it. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month but you can start a trial today with no credit card needed by going to squarespace.com. Then when you decide to sign up, use the offer code ink at checkout. You'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. We'd like to thank Squarespace for their support of this show. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

Brad Dowdy: So last week we talked about cold weather ink and pens and I gave some diatribe, nonsensical type of thing that was just kind of in my head. Okay, this kind of makes sense and but I wasn't sure.

Brad Dowdy: Needless to say, that was a call for help and the pen addict community delivered in such a way that it's mind-blowing. So our good friend Dave Ray in the pen addict select room drew this diagram and there's math and there's science and there's all kinds of awesomeness. Did you get a chance to even view this, Myke?

Myke Hurley: No, I'm looking at it now. I just assumed that you copy and pasted a bunch of stuff, he said. I had no idea there was all of this. There's images, there's little scribbles of pens and H2O density and calculations and formulas that I don't understand. Something's got a line through it. Oh, it's very confusing.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and the end result is it's a thing. The expansion and pressuring, pressurizing of the ink from the temperature changes, will push the ink out of the nibs. So let me read a little bit of what Dave's conclusion was and this is all based around math and science that we'll have a link to in the show notes. So he says the bottom line is you have a fixed volume at pretty much a fixed pressure. You go from controlled room temperature to freezing temperature outdoors and the existing air and ink both contract. This draws more air into the pen. Then you warm everything back up. The total volume, including the air you've drawn in, will be higher than the original volume. If the pen is nib up, the extra air drawn in will just flow back out. If it's nib down, then the expanding contents push ink out into the nib and feed. Depending on the feed's ink capacity and saturation level, some or all of this ink might end up inside of the cap of the pen or if you're writing with it at the time, burping out onto the page. So in some ways, this is actually worse than the airplane scenario, though the volume change, unless you're in Siberia and it's negative 40 outside, in which case you have freezing problems instead of burping problems, is a bit smaller. In the airplane, you have a single ascent during event during which P, which is something mathy, goes to about 80% and V and T stay constant. When you descend, the pen is drawing air back in. So, yeah, there's math, there's science, there's awesomeness, and it's way above my comprehension level, so I'm glad we have friends that are able to put this into two black and white terms. So it's pretty awesome. Oh, and there's Dave in the chat room as I'm butchering his whole explanation.

Myke Hurley: He's just laughing right at you.

Brad Dowdy: I know, right? We should have him on sometime just to math and science us to death. Basically, if you

Myke Hurley: don't understand what Brad just said, I didn't understand it. Take a look at the image to help you try and understand it. I still don't understand, but I guess what I've maybe taken from this is that you should be really careful.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, I'm gonna put this in Brad terms. Cold, bad.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: All right, and then switch back to heat, bad, after cold.

Myke Hurley: So it's the change.

Brad Dowdy: Make pindo boom. Boom, right? Yeah, yeah. Yep. Okay. So there's changes. There's changes. So thank you, Dave. There was a huge long conversation in the Slack channel about this. It was fascinating. I kept reading it over and over trying to get a better grasp on it, but I get the general points here that it's a real thing and the temperature changes is gonna cause some issues for you. So that is why we see pens leak and ink bottles explode when it's cold.

Mont Blanc Pen

Myke Hurley: All right, let's talk about fascinating for a moment, shall we?

Brad Dowdy: I thought we were gonna talk about exploding because that's kind of what my head did.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Now, I'll tell you what just happened. So there is a link in the show notes to a pen on appleboom.com and it's called the Mont Blanc Bonheur fountain pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Let's be clear. This is nothing to do with Apple Boom at all. Applebaum. Applebaum. They're selling it. This is just where I have the link to the pen. So nothing to do with them whatsoever.

Myke Hurley: Go ahead. So I open this page and I'm blown away by the pen that I see. I think it is gorgeous. It is a Mont Blanc. It is, what is the name called? The Volpen? No, the Bonheur. Oh yeah, there it is. I'm looking at the, that's the product code. I was looking in the wrong place. It's the Bonheur, the Bonheur fountain pen. And it is this pen which has a shape that I've never seen before. You know, it's kind of like it contours in the nib and then the end kind of, the pen itself, it kind of curves off into a black tip. It's white. I assume it's made of an acrylic or something. I assume it's some acrylic. Oh, precious resin, I'm sure. A precious resin, of course, of course. Not acrylic, no way. The nib has shooting stars on it. I'm like, wow, no wonder Brad has put this pen in because it's beautiful. Then I think to myself, let me just have a quick scan of this to see what this pen is all about. The Mont Blanc Bonheur fountain pen, a talismanic writing instrument for women.

Myke Hurley: Why'd you do this? Why? Why are you doing this?

Brad Dowdy: I'm glad you, I didn't put anything in the show notes and you saw the link because I reacted the exact same way that you did. I was like, wow, look at this pen. This is really cool. It's a unique design from Mont Blanc. It's got this cool barrel shape. It's got this great design. The nib is fantastic. And it's essentially Bic for her. Why are you going

Myke Hurley: to do this? It's so frustrating. Just to make this abundantly clear, we're not reading this and saying like, oh, we don't want this woman's pen. That's not what we're saying here. What we're saying is that is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to think that women need specific pens made for them. I guess for their dainty hands. I don't know what they're trying to achieve here. It's so stupid. Just make a pen that looks like this and it will appeal to people that like the way that things look. There are many women, I'm sure, that love something like a Karas Customs bolt. Right. Right. Which traditionally you would maybe say this is the man's man's pen because it weighs 16 stone and it has a bolt action. But no, it's just people like what they like. You don't have to box these things in. This is so ridiculous.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to read the full description. I didn't get any further, so please carry on. Well, because once you say talismanic writing instrument for women, I mean, that's when my head

Myke Hurley: explodes.

Brad Dowdy: My eyebrows raised at talismanic, right? I was like, oh. So then it continues, the Montblanc bonheur is an expression of elegance and freedom and accompanies women in daily life with a touch of glamour. Bonheur is the French word for a durable state of satisfaction and happiness. Oh, this makes me so frustrated. Let me just rewrite

Myke Hurley: this for you real quick, Montblanc, right? Okay, let's go for this. Let's go for this. The Montblanc bonheur fountain pen is a talismanic writing instrument. The Montblanc bonheur is an expression of elegance and freedom. It accompanies people in daily life with a touch of glamour. Bonheur is the French word for a durable state of satisfaction and happiness. That was fine. All I did was just make it for everyone. like the idea of like thinking that women need pens that have glamour in them because otherwise they can't use them. It's bonkers. It's absolutely bonkers.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So you found my frustration very quickly. It's like I love this pen. I think this is a

Myke Hurley: great looking pen for Montblanc. Not a terrible price.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And if it didn't have a metal section like I would like if it had a black section to go in there I would be like anxious to try out this pen for myself.

Myke Hurley: Like I never would now because I think it's so ridiculous what they've done here. Like right. It's this idea it's exactly the Bic for her thing right. Like it's creating a line of Bic that are in different colors because obviously they're the only colors that women can use. Right. And Glenna said does it have a shiny diamond in it. I'm really surprised it doesn't have like a cubic zirconia wedged into the something somewhere.

Brad Dowdy: Right. It's frustrating. I you know Montblanc just has that old school mentality and they just vomit this stuff out like this which is just

Myke Hurley: boggles my mind that like into that like in the modern day there isn't just someone who's saying to them really really are we going to do this even the distributors

Brad Dowdy: right. Right. Oh right. Right. But I mean well they'll just pull them like oh well you're no longer a distributor.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I know that like you know someone like Appleboom whatever their feeling on this is whether they like it or not like their hands are tied because they have to carry Montblanc and if Montblanc tell them to do this then they've got to do it. They've got to do whatever they're told. Right. But it's it's it's it's just such a good looking pen. Like this continues Montblanc's current trend right now of creating weird looking interesting things. but then they have destroyed it by by thinking that it needs to be boxed in to appeal to a gender. It doesn't make any sense to me. Like it doesn't you can make a pen like if you want to design a pen that you think is going to appeal to the female market because for whatever reason you think you can make something that will appear to women just for whatever reason make it but you don't need to label it. Right. Like if you think that this appeals to women saying it's for women isn't what makes that the case. Right. Right. It's like if you get this really ugly pen and you're like this is a woman's pen women are like I'm going to buy this because it's the only pen I'm able to use because it's for women.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So companies stop doing this. Just stop it. Ridiculous.

Myke Hurley: Just stop it. Say everything you want to say but just stop saying like this is a pen for women. This is a pen for men. You know like the way like use glamour and elegance in there. I like glamour and elegance in my life. You know I have pink ink in this pen right here. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'm a big fan of glamour and elegance.

Myke Hurley: That's what we're all about.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Oh God. Oh. All right. Let's make me more glamorous and elegant Myke. Hit me.

Harry's Razors

Myke Hurley: This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Harry's. Yeah. For decades big razor companies have relentlessly increased their profits at the expense of their customers. So Jeff and Andy started Harry's to fix this. They knew there was only one way to ensure quality so they bought their own factory in Germany and then by selling directly online Harry's are able to offer the blades at half the price of the big brands that you're used to. Harry's have new amazing five blade razors that include everything you need for a close comfortable shave. These five precision engineered blades have a lubricating strip on them and a trimmer blade. This comes with their weighted ergonomic handle a travel blade cover and they also have all the extras you need as well like amazing shave gel or cream. Harry's believes so much in the quality of their razors that they guarantee their quality and they'll give you a full refund if you're not happy. So Brad are Harry's continuing to make you the most elegant and smooth man that you can possibly be?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Absolutely. But I actually have a different Harry story this time. Oh you do? And this is an in-store shopping story that made me think wow I'm so glad I use Harry's right now. So my daughter and I were grocery shopping yesterday or Monday. I take that back. Monday. Monday night. We were at the grocery store and we're going down all the aisles you know big full grocery list and everything and I never go I rarely go down like the I guess we'd call it the shampoo aisle or the you know soaps and shave stuff and all that stuff because I just don't need that much from there. I use Harry's and you know and have all that so my kids needed new toothbrushes. So right next to the toothbrushes are all the razor stuff where it's all locked up you know all that security and extra stuff there and you know I just look at it and giggle and we're looking at toothbrushes and then my daughter looks up and goes oh daddy look we're on TV. I was like it's because the camera was watching the stupid razor stuff next to us and I just started I just started dying laughing I was like I'm so glad I'm a Harry's customer so I don't have to be on the security camera for the razor aisle. I just thought I hadn't noticed that before because I never go down that aisle. I just thought it was hilarious. So oh daddy look we're on TV and I just thought it was hilarious.

Myke Hurley: Go to Harry's dot com right now and use the code pen addict to check out to claim your free trial set and because you're a listener of this show you'll also get a bonus post shave balm added to your order for free. Harry's believes so much in the quality of their products that they want you to try them out for free. All you need to do is pay the shipping. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com code pen addict to get your free trial set and free post shave balm. Thank you to Harry's for their support of this show and Relay FM.

Brad Dowdy: So I got notification or I saw a tweet yesterday I guess from our friends at Baron Fig they dropped a new app in the app store which I just downloaded I found this late last night and just sent it over to you this morning so we haven't had a ton of time to play around with it but Baron Fig has a history of doing apps you know to go along with their analog products they have digital products they've done a writing prompt app in the past let me find that name spark is just like an index card writing prompt app you know give you different ideas things like that you know to either write or be creative or whatever then they did a note note taking app called Mosaic which I found to be really really nice work really really well but you couldn't get your notes out of the system and I don't believe it had sync whether that's changed in any future updates I'm not sure because I don't use it anymore but when I downloaded to test it I was like wow this is fantastic except I'm like completely fully pimped into just this so that's their history with apps and they came up with a new one called Codex which was released yesterday it's a notebook and document scanner library that's what they're calling it my first experience Myke went really really well it's basically it'll do what a lot of other apps do or your camera does it'll take a picture of your notebook and put it into their app you know it's more closer to something like scan bot which will detect your paper sizes right it'll it'll you know put a rectangle around the exact paper dimension and capture it that way and then it'll upload it and you're able to tag it which I love the tag feature and then you can then you just have a library of your notes it does sync it's set up for iCloud sync so it's an Apple only product for sync well it's like I said you could export your data afterwards you can dump the PDF get your data out of there so you can get in and out and the tagging I enjoyed so the pricing model and this is like the stuff I want you to talk about more and and I want you to talk about this app more than me because you do you're involved more in this world than I am it's a pricing model first 30 days is free then it's 99 cents a month to use or 999 for a year so that's what the setup is you can take all your notes with you digitally snap them as you go tag them sort them different things like that so what did you think about this app so my first

Myke Hurley: experience was different because I opened it on my iPad and this is an iPhone only application which I think fundamentally is a bad idea I think this should be across iOS because you could take the scans on your phone and then you can look at your notes on a big screen on your iPad so they currently all they have is an iPhone app that can be used on the iPad which is not a great experience because for example you can't use it in landscape so I think that's something that they need to fix quickly to have an iPad app I think it's very important especially when part of what you're paying for is sync that's kind of what you're paying for and all you can do is sync it to other iPhones yeah this would be super

Brad Dowdy: useful on your iPad I didn't even

Myke Hurley: consider that there's kind of what you're paying for is basically syncing and you can't sync it to anywhere right now all it does is just syncs to the cloud so you have a backup but that's backup not syncing right the syncing needs to go somewhere and currently it doesn't go anywhere so this is why I need you I also don't like and this is something that a bunch of apps I don't think are doing very well at the moment is the way that they talk about the subscription so you have three options you have I think it's $9.99 a year $9.99 a month or try it for free but when you hit the try for free button what it does is put you on a 30-day trial which will then put you on a plan yes now I don't think that these things a lot of developers are struggling with this right now and to Barron Frigg's credit it says cancel at any time at the bottom but I think it needs to do and this is a thing many people are falling short of right now and I don't know really if this is something that Apple can help improve probably but I think people need to do a better job of explaining that this is a 30-day trial which you will then be charged for now there's an app called Bear which I really like well that's just how it works you don't choose right it just says you're gonna go on a 30-day trial once that's over you'll pay this which I think makes more sense than try it free because you're trying it for free yeah but if you don't cancel it it will you'll end up paying and the canceling these subscriptions Apple sucks at this right now yeah to go to the app store you have to go to your iCloud account in the app store and you can then cancel them like that whole part is a mess right now which is a shame because more applications are going on this model I think the business model is good I agree with the business model for Barron Frigg I love that they're giving a trial but I think it could be made a little bit more clear what that trial results in which is paying right

Brad Dowdy: which is not necessarily their fault no

Myke Hurley: it's this is the mechanism right that's

Brad Dowdy: the mechanism that it's used but they can control the wording and that's what you're saying the difference is the wording between like this and

Myke Hurley: bear because it says cancel at any time which is great and I think it's really good that they put that on there even though it's in a slightly grayed out font but it's you know whatever you don't want that like fully up in your face but I don't think that when you read that that also means cancel the free trial at any time right you get right you know

Brad Dowdy: I think when you cancel it your free

Myke Hurley: trial stops yeah now see the thing is the the iOS system pops up to tell you you're going on a 30-day trial and then it's this but I really do believe that a lot of people don't look at those prompts sure and so I think it would be better for their customers if they made it clear before any buttons were pressed because also I downloaded this application not really knowing much about it and it doesn't tell you anything before you try and sign up so you download the app it asks you to create an account and then asks you to pay like I didn't even you just told me check out this app I didn't even know what the app did like I didn't look I just downloaded it so a little bit more I think would be would be nice for the first run experience okay I found that the auto detection works really well and like I was I was scanning a page that had a shadow on it so like one moment it picked up the part without the shadow then with the shadow and I just moved it moved the camera a little bit and it got the whole thing pressed the camera done and it was great and it did all the straightening up and stuff it looked great that was very well done and using tags is a really great sorting mechanism so you can use more than one tag for a note which is great so you can say something is like what right and relay FM for example if I wanted to do that that's really good but there's no way to give a scanner title which seems really weird like you can't name a page and tags aren't a replacement for names tags are a replacement for notebooks I think you still need to title things and I can't find a way that you can which is a very peculiar omission to me right like a tag is not a title right they're different things and I would say that I think this app needs optical character recognition OCR I think for an application where you're paying a subscription I don't think that sync storage and syncing is enough I think that they need to to find a way to build something like OCR in because that takes it from a good app to a brilliant app right then it's an ever note replacement you've got in your hands I think that what they're asking for right now I don't think it's a good enough solution like I could take photos or could buy an application you know I could buy something like PDF pen scan plus or scan bot which is just like a couple of dollars like one time then I could scan these things in and save them to Apple notes and Apple notes does all the syncing across all of my devices and I can tag them in the same way you just give them the tags and you just search and it'll come up I think that OCR would really elevate this product and make it something really worthwhile I think what they've got on their hands is an excellent 1.0 but I think that there's a lot of work that's needed here to make this a really compelling application in the world that they're going for because they are competing against something like ever note here and right now this is not competition for ever note there you go that's my feeling because ever note you can tag everything you can title everything and it does all the OCR they have a free plan right so you can actually truly try it out even though I have a lot of problems with ever note they had a bunch of security stuff recently which is super weird right that but you know I'm just taken into like what is the value for money here and right now I don't think codex has got it I like the design of it so my feelings the design is really good the idea is really good and the technology is great they've got a real good base of a product here and they're selling something which is a good business model that's like for the subscription which they can couple along with their notebooks right good it's all good quality stuff but to really make this like a real no-brainer for a lot of people they need an iPad application they need to do more I think to explain the business model to customers and they need to find some way to try and put OCR into this product which is not an easy task but my feeling is the the auto detection is so good that they've done one of two things they either have got some great engineers or they've licensed something and if that's the case then they can make OCR work yep there you go that's my feeling

Brad Dowdy: on it all very cool I have no no arguments there I did enjoy how how fast it was it was fast and snappy but to use it as a long-term solution I'd maybe need a little bit more to buy a subscription so we'll see you know also I'll keep fidgeting around with it definitely my favorite app they've released so far everything they release is very refined and clean and nice I appreciate that in the apps so I'm enjoying it so far and yeah it's I think it's something to keep an eye on and we'll see how it goes from

Myke Hurley: there I would recommend people go and download it and try the 30-day trial right but just be aware of that if you want to keep it or not just to give it a go because I think that it is an application that is well built within today's world like it is everything about it is smart like the tagging is a smart way of organizing right and yes stuff like that because I was so very surprised that they didn't have some kind of like tie into their products in here so like you saved everything in a notebook that looked like a confidant right and then you opened it up and then yeah so I think they did a really good job of keeping it a light touch which is not what I expected just because they have a physical paper product right I expected a little bit more tie in there but not that I thought that would be a good thing right I actually think that they've created a better system of like the tags and stuff like that because what they're doing which I think is great is it is like understanding what their products really are and most people don't keep them or don't want to file them away or whatever they understand that for many people they're making a product which the people in digital world can kind of get frustrated with because it's not searchable and stuff but like that's why I think that the OCR thing would really kind of just knock this out of the park like if they can find a way to do this like if they can find a way to put OCR in this I will recommend this over Evernote like that's what they're sitting on right here yeah a legitimate Evernote competitor for many people you know that that use Evernote in this way many people do right like scanning their documents in and the reason Evernote is used for this is because it's available everywhere and it has OCR so it makes it like a really compelling thing for people that save their notes in this way right but I think there needs to be something else that does this because I don't like Evernote's business model I like Baron fig's business model but I think it comes it needs to come with

Brad Dowdy: some more work right and thus concludes this week's episode of connected thank you for joining us Myke Hurley where can people find you our show notes this week

Myke Hurley: are at relay.fm slash pen addict slash two three eight you can find me I'm at iMike I-M-Y-K-E and go subscribe to my YouTube channel it's youtube.com slash user slash Myke Hurley or I think it's also youtube.com slash Myke Hurley who knows but there's a link in our show notes you can find Brad online he's at dowdyism D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M he is pen addict on Instagram and you can find his work at pen addict.com and it is a pen which is hilarious and also at knock.co and I will say once more thanks to our sponsors this week pen chalet Squarespace and Harry's they help make the episode possible but most of all as always thank you for listening because literally there would be no episode if you weren't here so I'm talking to you directly oh and by the way go bid on my field notes just go do that thanks so much for listening we'll be back next week until then say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad Just follow follow follow follow follow follow