The Pen Addict 241/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	241
Title:	Art Makes People Mad
Release Date:	January 25th, 2017
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 241
Audio File:	Audio Episode 241
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 241
Length:	7777 min <br />1.283 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 241. Today's show is brought to you by Blue Apron, Squarespace, and Casper. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Mr. Myke Hurley. Hello. What's going on?

Myke Hurley: I'm excited.

Kickstarter Campaign

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm excited for this show for a lot of reasons. It's going to be kind of a crazy show. So, the topics are... Varied. Varied. With varied opinion.

Myke Hurley: So, I'm looking forward to that discussion.

Brad Dowdy: That always makes for a good podcast. So, yeah, this is going to be a super, super interesting show. Lots of good stuff to talk about. Lots of new products on the scene. Lots of new things I'm into. So, first off, we have a little business to take care of, don't we?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we've been teasing the Kickstarter. The current plan is that the Kickstarter campaign will be live before next week's show.

Brad Dowdy: Fingers crossed. It's going to be close. Yeah. It's going to be close on the dates, just because there's Kickstarter approvals involved, and you don't know when that officially will happen.

Myke Hurley: But we are going to be submitting the campaign to them in the next couple of days, so we'll be waiting. But before next week's show is the plan, maybe during, we don't know when we're going to get approval yet. So, keep an eye out for it on Twitter, at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. We'll be tweeting about it, but of course we'll have links in the show notes next week. We're very excited. We've got some really cool stuff planned that you're going to get to see. You know that it's for the two shows, but the reward that we have this time around is pretty sweet.

Brad Dowdy: It's pretty cool. So, we got the mock-up over to Myke this morning, and you were pretty excited about it, and so was I. I made interesting Giphy comments about it. So, yeah, it was pretty lit.

Myke Hurley: There is a piece of business, an unfortunate piece of business that I need to get to in regards to the pen show. We're going to be off the numbering this year. It's not going to be episode 250. The pen show's dates have slipped. That's right. That's right. And so, we would have to take basically three weeks off between now and then, and I have no plans for that. So, it looks like it's probably going to be episode 253.

Brad Dowdy: Well, it was a good run. I mean, it was just luck the first time. We made it happen the next time, and at some point it's going to be off.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So, there you go.

Brad Dowdy: So, we won't be featuring the number in, you know, all numbers are the same anyway.

Myke Hurley: It had to end at some point, because it was eventually just going to become more and more tricky, and I decided to not plan it out in any way this year and just see where the chips fell. Right. And, yeah, it would mean that we'd have to take weeks off, and we can't do that. Yeah. Out of our control. Yep. Nope. So, unfortunately, episode 250 will be at the end of March. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: When we have a topic list like the one we have today, we can't really take a week off anyway, because we end up having three-hour episodes.

Myke Hurley: People probably wouldn't complain about three-hour episodes, but I don't think they want us to take weeks off either. Yeah. Agreed. So, one of our favorite Kickstarter campaigns is back again with a new skew, and that's Curse of Logic. Can you explain the art of Curse of Logic? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, this time, Linda and Prissa and everyone behind Curse of Logic has taken the textbook style that they've used before that my kids used, and they finished both of theirs, and then they've added in some coloring aspects along with the writing. Yeah. To where you can learn cursive as you go, and then there's also some cool pages of artwork mixed in, also with some cursive features and just some really nice-looking stuff. And, yeah, I mean, this is Instaback for me. I get two every time, one for each of my kids. They love it. I love it. I love supporting what Linda and Prissa do. They're wonderful people. We've had the pleasure of meeting them a couple of times. They've been to the Atlanta Pen Show. I've seen them in D.C. So, they're just wonderful parts of the community. They do a wonderful service for everyone, spreading the cursive word and anything I can do to help support them and their mission, I am all about.

Myke Hurley: So, the way that this works is you have the usual cursive, like, test areas. Yeah, like the practice areas, the training.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: But the coloring aspects, it's not just like it's also got a coloring component. You're actually using cursive and writing in the coloring areas and coloring around them. It's a really, really unique way to do this. Because when I first saw it, I thought that they were kind of just, like, jumping on the bandwagon, right? That it was just, like, cursive and then you just color in a page. It's like, well, that's not really great. But this is a really, really fun way to bring those two things together. And it looks like from the pictures that it's shown, you can create some absolutely beautiful things, including a starry night. I see that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and so they've integrated the motions and the letters into the coloring aspects of the book, which is cool. Like, my kids will just eat this up. My daughter will probably finish it, like, the first weekend.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no, this is really great. So, go back to Kickstarter if you're interested. At least go check it out. So, they've got a cool stretch goal that they want to get to, which is if they get to $15,000, they're going to be able to afford to print these in the USA, which I think is kind of cool. So, go support them. That is cool. Go support them. It's a great thing. They're doing something great.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so they've already hit their funding, and they have, like, 28 days to go. So, they were looking for $5,000. They're at $5,500 right now. They'll hit $15,000. No problem.

Myke Hurley: Last week, we were talking about the very, very appealing Platinum 3776. I think it's called the Nice Lilas on Nice Lilas. I'm not sure which. Which is the pink with the rose gold. Pen Chalet have got a pre-order up. I have put my name in the hat for a pre-order. I think you just give them your information, and then they'll contact you when they've got them. Like, they just have a list, and you can just buy them. Pen Chalet are not sponsoring this episode. But, you know, I recommend if you listen and you want that pen to get it from there, because you'll still be able to use the current discount code on that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they're our life sponsor, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yes, that's true. I had no thought of them like that, but yeah, I guess so. So, the retail is $250. They're selling it for $200.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so we were joking last week about, you know, well, when are they going to get them? And I think it dropped, like, about the time we hung up. It seems like we started getting tweets that afternoon. Like, hey, look what happened. And then we're like, yeah, we totally did that, which is so untrue. But it was just funny. The timing of it was great.

Myke Hurley: Yep. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these.

Brad Dowdy: It's a beautiful pen. It's a beautiful pen. I'm passing, but it's awesome.

Myke Hurley: So, here's the thing. Like, I want the Platinum nib, right? Because I want to spend some time with that nib. Because that's the kind of thing that I'll be looking at when it comes to Nakaya time. Right. So, I can get just some feelings of that. But also, you know, so many people talk about this pen being such a great pen. And just in that color way, I kind of can't resist it.

Brad Dowdy: Right. It's worth owning a 3076 in some way, shape, or form. And this is a non-boring version. This is a fantastic version. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. So, I look forward to you getting that because I want to hear about it. Yeah. I took a little field trip this week. I'm excited about this because I actually read an article on this. Seems like late last year or something. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Then I never brought it up to you. So, what have you been doing?

Myke Hurley: So, at the All Festival, the All Conference that I went to. I keep calling it a festival. I don't know why, but it's a conference. I met a guy there called Matt. And Matt was providing the paper for all of the welcome packs and stuff. And we got to talk in and I found out that he works at a company based in the UK called GF Smith. And they're a paper supplier. You may have used some of their products and you don't even know, right? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: They're kind of famous. I mean, they're a well-known brand, especially in the UK.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. They're a pretty huge deal. So, the reason I thought to bring this up was I was looking through the pen ad yesterday and I saw that Susan, I think it was Susan, right? Yes. That she had reviewed the Moo notebook that I think we'd spoken about a little while ago. And they use GF Smith paper inside. So, they use their color plan paper, which is the big product that they make. So, they have set up in the UK or in London, in like central London, something that they're calling a show space. And it's basically like a showroom slash art gallery slash sales office thing. So, Matt invited me down to go and take a look. And I've included a link to an article that was in wallpaper about this because it shows some great photos. So, you should go and look at it. This place is incredible. So, it's like they display all of their products. Like they make these. I didn't know they even did this. Like they do framing. So, like you can go to their website and you can, I think they call it Make Frame. And you can like upload an image and they'll put it in a frame. Oh, cool. But they also do the same with photo books as well. So, you can have like these beautiful photo books printed from them. So, they have something called Make Book and something called Make Frame. And, you know, they're not cheap. But they're really good looking stuff. So, they have those on display. They have like these displays that are focused around where their paper comes from. So, like they show all these like blocks of wood. The three different types of wood that they use to make the paper. And then they have all the dyes and all that sort of stuff. Which I thought was kind of cool. So, like it shows you a bit about like what goes in to their stuff. And like why they are different. Like there's all these like little plaques about like why their paper is better than others. Because of this and that they do. And it was really interesting. Like because Matt was kind of taking me around and giving me a little tour. And was explaining all this stuff to me with like the passion that he has for the paper. Then they have this long wall which has all of the colors that they have. Oh, cool. My gosh. Some of these colors are like they are like colors I've never seen before. Like how vivid some of them are. Like they're just they're really awesome. Like super awesome.

Brad Dowdy: The pictures look really cool.

Myke Hurley: So, like you see that big color thing that goes across the wall. They're all boxes that can be taken off. And then there are samples of the paper inside.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And they also had this like history area. Where they had all these like framed parts of their history. Because they're a super old company. And they had this one part like this one part of their archive. Which was a copy of a letter that they sent to their customers during the Second World War. To apologize that they couldn't meet their orders. Because the factories were all destroyed. And they in the letter apologized for any inconvenience. It was like the most British letter I've ever read. It was incredible. And then downstairs they have this like installation space. Which is these rolled up tubes of paper. And they're all just like and it looks like a wave. But all of the rolls are only secured by like this small poster tube right at the bottom. Which has sand in them. So, you could totally knock them down. Oh, man. Like I don't think if you knocked one down you'd get too much of a domino effect. But you could take out a few of those if you weren't paying attention. Yeah. But yeah, I thought it was really cool. It was nice to see this sort of stuff up close. Like I didn't really know about this company before I met Matt. But now I keep seeing their names pop up all over the place. Like you remember I was talking about those paperboy notebooks. Right. They were consulting with GF Smith on the paper that they're using. And like I keep seeing the name pop up. And the more I've kind of looked into them and I can see just how much of this stuff they make in the UK. It's kind of awesome. It was a fun thing. It was a fun thing. I think you have to make appointments like if you're in London. But you can at least go there and look through the window.

Myke Hurley: Because it's like it's a showroom. Yeah, I got the special VIP experience.

Brad Dowdy: I'm sure they have to have just a serious amount of corporate clients. Oh, they do. And they're all the constantly. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. So. That's why it's there. It's like for them to show clients like new clients and current clients their product. And it's a permanent thing for them. Mm-hmm. Like it's not just like a pop up. Like this is their new building. Right. I really liked it. It was fun. So go look at the pictures. And there are more pictures online. You can Google around and stuff. But I really enjoyed it. And they seem like a really cool folk there. So. So there you go. Awesome. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. You can use the offer code INK at checkout and you'll get 10% of your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. They let you easily create the website that you need for your next idea. And with a unique domain and award-winning templates to show everything off. It's going to be awesome. But this is just the start. Squarespace is flexible enough that it is an all-in-one platform. It lets you do anything you want. If you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, a site for your restaurant. Maybe you want to create a website for your band. Maybe you have like a small group that you want to create a website for. You know like maybe some kind of community project. It doesn't matter what you want to do. Squarespace has all of the tools that you need. Everything's drag and drop. They have these like little blocks that you can drop in to enable different code. Or maybe you want to put a calendar or a map or a music player. Or you can drop in things like inventory stuff from your store. It doesn't matter what you want to do. It's all drag and drop. It's super easy to use. There's nothing that you need to install. No patches that you need to worry about. No upgrades needed. Squarespace have got you covered. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support. They let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name to show off your new website. And all of their award-winning templates are beautifully designed with responsive web design in mind. So you can show off your great ideas perfectly on any size of device. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month. But you can try it out for free. There's a free trial. No credit card needed. And you can just go to squarespace.com to find out more about that. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code INK at checkout. And you'll get 10% off your first purchase. And show your support for The Pen Addict. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting RelayFM. Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website.

Brad Dowdy: One thing that Squarespace does, if I may, real quick, before we go into the topic. The reason why I went with them before they were even the sponsor of the show is, like, I don't have to install anything. Right? I do no of the code work at all. I can. I can do extra stuff if I want to. But they just make things happen. Like, we'll get an email saying, hey, we're turning on SSL certificates for everyone. And you can get yours. And your site can be HTTPS secure site. All you have to do is go click this button.

Myke Hurley: Now, let me tell you. Because we had to get a certificate for RelayFM. Because our website isn't hosted on Squarespace. It can't be. Our blog and store is. But the main website. We needed a different thing for that. But we had to get an SSL certificate for the full website. For the RelayFM site. It was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. And so, yeah, I agree. And, like, the same. They just put Apple News stuff in, right, as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, I went over and clicked the toggle button. And that was it. So, they're really good about staying out in front of stuff. And, like, the Apple News stuff, too. I don't have mine fed through the proper Apple News format right now. It took me so long to get set up on Apple News. Just with the RSS feed. I didn't want to break it right when I did it. But then I'll go over and switch over to the Apple News stuff soon as well. Since the Pen Addict is now available on Apple News.

Myke Hurley: Look at you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Baron Fig Askew

Myke Hurley: All your late break-in Pen News can be consumed. All right. Let's talk about the Baron Fig Askew. You think? We should talk about this? I think we should talk about this. Okay. Okay. This is Baron Fig's second limited edition confidant? Correct. It feels like we just had the first one. Were they monthly? What are they? Like, I'm not being silly. Like, what are they?

Brad Dowdy: They're quarterly. But as we will talk about later, there's always something new, right? There's something, like, every month and then in between. So, there's four subscription products, which puts you on a schedule of once a month for the entire year. And then they drop in things like Codex, which is the app in between. So, it feels like, you know, every other week we're getting some Baron Fig thing. They are unstoppable.

Brad Dowdy: All right.

Myke Hurley: So, the Askew is a blue confidant and the confidant is their hardcover notebook. Yeah. And it is a ruled notebook. But the ruling has been hand-drawn by an artist who is named Debbie Millman. She's a New York-based artist. She's always had the dream of hand-drawing a ruled notebook, a lined notebook. So, she's collaborated with Baron Fig. And so, this notebook, they call it Askew because the lines are Askew. And they say it is a ruly slash unruly pages. So, some of the pages are regular lines. But some of the lines either don't exist on the page. It's just a scribble in the center. Or the lines are, like, super thin and all over the place, like, all wobbly. Or sometimes they're just, like, regular thickness. But there are these huge gaps. Or they swirl. You have to go and look at the pictures to understand this because you've never seen a notebook like this. Now, I want to see if you can answer a question that I have about this. Is every single notebook hand-drawn individually?

Brad Dowdy: I can't work that out. What do you mean? I mean, the pages are printed. Like, but the pages, so if you're going through the number of pages in the book, say the normal, which I would consider the normal lined pages, you know, just the ones with the straight lines across. Those are not the same print on every page. It's a different print on every page. Yeah, yeah.

Myke Hurley: No, I know it's different on every page, like, the different lines. But everyone's book is the same, right?

Brad Dowdy: My guess would be yes. Okay.

Myke Hurley: Because what I couldn't work out is if, like, she was drawing differently in every book. And that, like, they had a limited edition of 1,000 or something.

Brad Dowdy: No. Because you figure she had to draw probably 150, 200 pages anyway.

Myke Hurley: I don't know how long they've been working on it, right? Yeah, but yeah, it would have been crazy. It would have been crazy. But I wasn't sure. Like, it wasn't completely clear.

Brad Dowdy: Everyone has the same general setup in their book, would be my guess. But I could be wrong.

Brad Dowdy: So, okay. So, I get a text yesterday morning from you.

Brad Dowdy: Basically. Go ahead. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: All right. I need to start off with what I think is a genuinely good thing about this notebook. I applaud Baron Fig for doing something new, different, and creative.

Myke Hurley: I have been quick to criticize them in the past that their limited editions have not been limited enough for me. You know, that it's just like, oh, here's a different color. And that was it. And we've made that. And, you know, you said that they said to you they're working on some cool stuff. And I will say that this is, and I don't, and I sound like I'm making a joke, but I'm not. I'll get to how I, my other side of this feeling. It's very original. Like, I've never, ever seen anything like this before. I have never seen, like, a hand-drawn line or grid or anything in a notebook. Like, so the idea of it is completely original, and I applaud that. But the blue color that they have chosen is beautiful for the notebook. Wow. Like, does it pop as much as it does on the website? Like, the color of the notebook?

Brad Dowdy: It's the best-looking exterior cover and ribbon that they've done.

Blue Biro Theme

Myke Hurley: Oh, for sure. They really have nailed it. Because, okay, so this is the thing. They went around a theme, and the theme was, like, the blue biro, like, the blue pen, the blue ink, right? And they have nailed that with, like, the red, like, the red is, like, the red of the lines, you know, like, the red lines that you get in a regular notebook, and then the blue is, like, the blue lines. Like, I applaud the coloring and the theme and everything.

Myke Hurley: This notebook is an art piece, and that's kind of cool, right? Like, it's a piece of art. An artist worked on this, and there is, like, an idea to it. Like, I really like all of that. Like, that this is, this notebook is a piece of art. And I have some notebooks like that, right, that I consider to be art, that I'm not going to use or I'm not going to use in a normal way. They are a piece of art. And that is exactly it. For me, that is all this notebook is, because this notebook is unusable.

Myke Hurley: I do not know how someone could use this practically. Like, if you have a, if you get this notebook and you're, like, this notebook is going to be where I write my song lyrics. It's, like, okay, that's a cool thing. Like, you can, you know, you're, like, you're making a specific use for this notebook because it's kind of, kind of kooky, right? And you're going to, like, maybe write some poetry in there, and you can write the poetry along the lines, and it will, I don't know, make it a little bit more of a fun experience or something, right? But if you are somebody who has subscribed to Baron Fig to get your notebook that you take your meeting notes in, you cannot use this notebook. Like, there are just going to be pages of this notebook which you could never use. And, like, all of them, none of them are straight. Like, I would find it very distracting to write in. Like, for example, I would never take a blank piece of paper and draw lines on it and then write on the lines. Right. Like, I would never do that. And that's what they're selling me. And one of the things that I will pose here, because I know that a lot of people really like this and, like, will say, like, hey, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, you've been up there. I will bring Field Notes Expedition into this conversation. Because Field Notes Expedition was super cool, built around an idea, and had some features that I think are cooler, because it was, like, this paper which was unbreakable. But everybody says that they're one of the worst editions, because they're basically unusable unless you have a specific pen, right? If you don't have something like a Fisher Space pen, you can't use the Expedition Edition. But you can still use them if you have that pen. Like, it doesn't matter what pen you have. Like, this is a book that you cannot use in a regular way. Again, like, if you pick a specific way that you want to use this and go for it, awesome. But if you're expecting a notebook that you want to write down your, like, if I, you know, with my Field Notes, if Field Notes gave me, like, a notebook right now that I couldn't use, I would be annoyed about that, right? Like, in the way that I was annoyed about Expedition. But at that time, I wasn't a subscriber. So I could only be annoyed about it in theory. I bought those because I thought they were cool. But if I, you know, it's like I didn't like Ambition. And not Ambition. Is it Ambition? The one which was, like, the three different ones and one of them was, like, a diary. Yeah, like, Gilded. Yeah, I didn't like that because that's not how I used my notebooks, right? Right. My Field Notes are not a diary and a ledger. And, like, I don't like it when they do that. Because, you know, I like to use my notebooks in a way, especially when I'm subscribing to them and they come to me blind. Right. Like, this line, this is a lined notebook, which I really don't like. And the lines are inconsistent. I think it looks super cool, but I am not a fan overall. Like, I like to either use my products or buy products that I know I can use. Like, I know I'm a collector, but I can use my stuff. And I don't think that this is that. But, again, I want to bring this back. And I applaud them for being creative. But I think they were a little bit too creative, I think. I think they went just a bit too far. Like, if they would have just had hand-drawn lines that were maybe, like, a little bit wobbly, that's fine. Right? It's like, again, it's like you're being super creative with it. But there are just pages in this notebook that are wasted. Like, you cannot use them. So, that's my feeling on this.

Brad Dowdy: I can't disagree with anything you've said. But I love this notebook.

Myke Hurley: Right, but I get this. I totally get why somebody would love it. Right? Like, I 100% get it.

Brad Dowdy: Like, I thought we'd be on the opposite side of the spectrum. Like, where this is like Bizarro show today.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this definitely is more like something that I would like than something that you would like, for sure.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. I would think that you would think I would annihilate this notebook where the exact opposite is happening. So, I got this on Friday. They sent me out an advance copy. I opened up the box, and I see the exterior packaging. And I see, like, it's all this ballpoint scribble. I'm like, oh, this is going to be cool. And I didn't know what to expect when I opened it. Then I opened it up, and I was like, what the heck is going on here? And then I started reading about it. And I was like, I don't know what to do with this. But I couldn't stop looking at it. Like, I didn't know what to do. But I was like, okay, this is cool. I really appreciate that they did this. This is, like, a huge risk for them. This is, like, some very strong opinion that they've put out there in the world.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's the point to put it. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You know, but that's what goes into the business. You have to take a stand on a product and put your opinion in the product that you sell, right? So they did something crazy like this, and I love it. I do see a huge issue from the subscriber perspective. If this was outside of the subscribers, I don't think it would be getting the gruff that it's getting to where someone could buy it or not buy it. But people got forced into this, right? Yeah. I think that's where a lot of the consternation comes from. I texted Joey last night or tweeted him. I said, how's your inbox holding up, buddy? He's like, oh, man, it's been a day. So they know. I mean, they chose to do this. So and I appreciate the fact that they did this, even though I would say the majority. I purposefully put out a tweet and an Instagram post yesterday to get feedback on this to see where the popular opinion lies. It's probably 75% negative to 25% positive. That's unofficial.

Myke Hurley: But I would say the 25% of people that love it probably care more about it than the people that dislike it. Yeah. If you love this, I reckon you like really love this. If you dislike this, most people, maybe except for me, are just like, oh, that's just silly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it's definitely a no middle ground product. There's no one saying maybe.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This divides you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. What I have seen a lot of is a lot of people saying the art project, like you said. I've gotten that many, many, many times. They see this as an art notebook, not a functional notebook. And they expected a functional notebook from the most functional notebook that they sell, the confidant, right? That's the one that they built the company on. That is the Moleskine replacement.

Myke Hurley: Right. That's what Baron Fig began their company to be. And where are they used? They are used in offices and meetings. Right. Like you would look like a child if you sat down at a meeting table with this notebook. Right. Because it would look like you had taken a blank notebook and drawn your own lines on it. Like this doesn't – like if I was – I'm sorry. Here we go. I'm taking over. Like if I was a subscriber to this to replace my meeting notebook in the bank, like this would be wasted. Like I wouldn't be able to use this one.

Brad Dowdy: I agree. I 100% agree with that aspect. I don't want them to stop doing this.

Myke Hurley: No, I want them to keep going. Like I said, this is such a great idea. But they went just a step too far. Right? Like I think they were so close. But the thing is though, like if you're listening out there, Baron Fig, you know what you're doing. But I love the fact that you – there was a fine line with creativity. Right? And I think that you're just past it. Like if you would have just had the lines drawn on there, it would have been fine. But it's like it's the ones where it's like too much. I think it doesn't work. But as I said, the idea – like if they would have like built it around the blue ink, like that idea with the color was fantastic. And maybe like to just have lines printed inside in the color of that like biro ink. But instead like they were like – it was too much for me, man. It's too much for me.

Brad Dowdy: So Baron Fig stands for certain things, right? Their mission is to inspire thinkers.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Not everyone's going to get inspiration from this.

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: Because they're going to freak out when they see it because a lot of us are OCD about what we look for in a notebook. We can't – we have to have our check boxes and everything lined up straight and correctly. But for those who can see things a little bit different, this is kind of, you know, a way to engage your brain into thinking differently. So we got a tweet and actually Jacqueline just showed up in the chat room, which is funny because I'm about to read her tweet. She says, first take is – this is an ambitious addition. Baron Fig's mission is to inspire thinkers and not all thinkers are stay in the lines kind of people. I think looking at it that way is important.

Myke Hurley: I agree. I mean, I agree. I think this product should exist. I don't think it should be part of the subscription that arrives in people's homes.

Brad Dowdy: I agree with that. I don't discount the – that part of this equation. I understand that. I would – it's definitely a better standalone product to me. But then again, what do you want from the confidant when, you know, I'm saying, well, let's not hope they're just skins of everything. And the first one they come out with isn't even a skin. It's an exact duplicate of a product they released earlier. So it's like, what do you want?

Myke Hurley: What I want from them is not to make a blue notebook. I want a blue notebook for a reason. Right? And it's like, okay, what do field notes give me every time? They give me, like, a different color and maybe something different with the paper. But they have a theme. And the theme is carried through it. Right? Right. So, like, you look at lunacy, right? Lunacy has a hole in the front and they put an extra page in to show you the moon. And then on the inside, they created the paper that was that kind of gray paper. It was like, you know, the color of the moon. Right. Right? That's not insanely different from the craft. Right? They just didn't put a hole in the cover.

Brad Dowdy: It's usable as you would normally intend to use the product.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But it also has a theme to it. Right? Right. And I say, I feel like that they can, that field notes do go too far, but they don't go as far as Baron Fig has. Like, so say something like the ambition. Right? I could still use that. But just, I would have to ignore the way that they have intended for it to be made. But I can still write in it normally. And I'm not going to look like a wild man when I'm sitting at the table. Right. But I feel like that this notebook cannot be used normally. You would have to ignore the lines, which I don't really know if people can do that. Right? You've got lines on a page, you've got to ignore them. I think that, like, if they would have gone with, like, this book is about celebrating the blue, right? Like, the blue ink that is in our pens. Right? Yeah. Like, it's celebrating a blue ballpoint. Then they could have, like, created a notebook that is blue. It has blue lines inside. And it maybe comes with a little thing that you can put your notebook in and strap it to the front of the book. Right? Like, and it's about celebrating the blue ballpoint. Which is, like, I think that's, like, 50% of what they were going for. But I think the other 50%, the art project part, was too far. Like, let's say the last five pages of the notebook were like this. That would be fine.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Or the, I could see the whole page, the whole notebook being like it, as long as it's, like, the same print line on every page. Yeah. It's the same spacing or whatever.

Myke Hurley: And do you know what they also could have done? They could have just had this, like, they could have just had somebody just do them with a ruler. Like, these were hand-drawn. But they were done straight. And I know, look, I'm not trying to, like, jump on this person's creativity. Like, this lady, Debbie Millen, who wanted to make this book. Like, I get it. I get it. Like, this is about, she is creating art. But this art is being forced on people to use. And I don't, I just, I feel like that they were close. But they went, as I said, just a little bit too far, right? But as I said, this is a completely different notebook to the other stuff that they make. Because it has, like, this new theme to it, which I really appreciate. But I think that they let the creativity hurt the usability. And I think that you've got to balance that. And I don't think this is balanced well enough. And I know that they're saying it's like 90-10. Right?

Brad Dowdy: So, I took him to task on that. He, Joey said, okay, 90% of it's standard, 10% of it's wild. And I took him to task. I said, you can't say that because the. The lines aren't standard. The lines aren't the same on every page. He's like, you're right. I can't say that. They're, you know.

Myke Hurley: What they mean is, like, 10% of pages that aren't lined, right? They've just got scribbles on them.

Brad Dowdy: 10% of the pages are unusable.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. It might be a bit too much. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I'm really, I'm really conflicted on this one. I am. Like. Yeah. Because it, it's like, because, I don't know. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, let's wrap it up on this. Yesterday was its first day. The subscribers got theirs probably the day before or yesterday. I've had two or three people tell me now. I hated it when I opened it up. Thought it was ridiculous. I don't know what I'm going to do with this. I used it. And now I love it. So, I mean, this is a direct quote from Gaming Trent on Twitter. I hated it at first. Then I used it last night for a brainstorming session. Now I quite like it. Conducive to creativity. I have another one in my Instagram feed. That's along the same thing. I, like, hate. Like, they hated it when they got it. Then they actually used it. And said, oh, I get it. I can do something with this. Is it what they expected from their Confidant subscription? Probably not. Is it better as a standalone item? I would vote yes. Yeah. Is it going to cause people to freak out? Absolutely. But there's room for this notebook. I love it.

Brad Dowdy: Will I use it every day? No. Will I buy another one? No. Which I think is a problem. No one's going to be buying three of these. Which is what you would like as a business.

Subscription Service

Brad Dowdy: But I think just as a concept, it's great. Could it have been done outside the subscription service? That might have been a good idea.

Myke Hurley: I bet I would love one of these if I had it.

Brad Dowdy: I think so. I honestly do. That's why I thought you would like it.

Myke Hurley: It's because of it. It's just wrapped up in the fact that this is the subscription one. It's just too much. Yep. But I'm sure, like, if I owned one and used it, I would think it was really fun. Right.

Myke Hurley: But, like, just because I'm just putting myself in the mindset as to what would I use this notebook for. Right. And all of the things that you want to use a notebook like the Confidant for do not fit this. So I would have to find a new use for it. Yeah. But please, Baron Fig, keep being creative.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Please do.

Myke Hurley: Art makes people mad. And it also makes them happy. It has. Quite frankly, you created a piece of art here.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Well, we have to support art. Art's very important. We have to support it. You know my feelings on this.

Myke Hurley: I hope they sell out of it.

Brad Dowdy: I hope so, too.

Myke Hurley: We're not done with Baron Fig, though, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We're not done. I actually have something else I want to talk about.

Myke Hurley: All right. Let's take a break and thank Casper for supporting this week's show. Casper is the company focused on sleep that went out and created the perfect mattress that it sells directly to you. And why is that important? Because it means that they're able to eliminate commission-driven inflated prices. The prices that are usually used to pay for the mattress showroom. They don't need to do any of that because you just order their mattresses online. Ordering a mattress online, you say? Myke, that's crazy. No. Let me tell you why it's awesome. Because Casper Mattresses offer a 100-night home trial with free delivery and returns to anywhere in the US and Canada. It is a completely risk-free process. You order one of their mattresses. They deliver it to you. You try it out. If you don't like it, they'll pick it up for free. You can just return it to them and you get 100 nights to sleep on it to actually try it out. And this mattress is developed by Casper themselves. They had an in-house team of engineers spend thousands of hours developing this mattress. It's obsessively engineered at a shockingly fair price. It's made of supportive memory foam that has just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus, it's breathable design. It helps you regulate your temperature throughout the night. All of Casper Mattresses are made in America. And they now offer an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets to go along with it. You can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by going to casper.com slash penaddict and using the code penaddict. Terms and conditions apply. Thank you so much to Casper for their support of this show. Once again, that is casper.com slash penaddict and use the code penaddict for $50 off.

Brad Dowdy: So I told you about my Casper mattress. It's in our guest bedroom.

Myke Hurley: Uh-huh.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, I don't sleep in there regularly, but I had quite an event on Sunday night trying to leave Atlanta for a meeting with our Nock case manufacturer. You can follow my Twitter nonsense from that night to see that it was a long, frustrating night for me that ended up in a flight cancellation about 2 a.m. And I got home about 4 a.m. and I texted my wife. I said, look, I'm just going to sneak into the guest bedroom. I don't want to wake you up. And I'm going to need to sleep, you know, for the morning anyway. That way y'all can get up. The kids can run around and all this. And I'm so stupid. I just like, I get in there. I was like, oh, sweet. I get to sleep on the Casper mattress.

Brad Dowdy: And I slept like a rock. I mean, it was mainly because I was just dead exhausted. But I'm just so silly that way. I was like, oh, cool. I get to sleep on the Casper mattress. There's a silver lining, man. It was. It was awesome. I was like, oh, nice. I don't get to do this all the time. So, yeah, it was cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I slept like a baby till about noon. I got home at 4 a.m. Slept till about noon. So, I was good to go after that. Thanks, Casper.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Back to Baron Fig. Yeah. So, this was actually going to go in last week's show. It's just, it's a holdover because I wanted to talk about these next two topics. Actually, last week. But we had Tiff on, which was an awesome show. And I wanted to, you know, didn't want to distract from that too much. So, I decided to subscribe to more things. Which is a bad idea. But I was like, you know, if we're talking about all this stuff, I should just subscribe to it. So, I didn't subscribe to everything from Baron Fig. But I did. And I've always said this from the beginning. I just finally bit the bullet and subscribed to the Archers. I really want the pencils. I've been using a pencil more and more in my daily writing. I enjoy pencils. The Archer got rave reviews for its first release. I figured, well, instead of buying those, I'll just go ahead and do the sub. And see what they offer, you know, every quarter for the pencils. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. Then I got to thinking about the Squire. Which was the pen that, or the subscription offering that I was the most confused about. And I don't know that we talked about this aspect of it when we first were discussing the subscriptions. But if you think of it from your retro 51 colored glasses, if they offer a quarterly subscription. Oh, yeah. That's what I was thinking about. You would absolutely subscribe.

Myke Hurley: That's why this is the only one I'm interested in, personally. Because if they come up with cool versions of the Squire, I would want all of them. So, this is my current thinking. I've been putting some thought into this, too. I expect the first Squire to drop, probably in about 10 minutes. Some point soon. No, next week.

Brad Dowdy: Next week. We're doing a thing on that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I expect the Squire to drop soon. Because it's a Q1.

Baron Fig

Brad Dowdy: By the way, we're going to have Baron Fig on to talk about the Squire. It just so happened that this Askew thing happened, too. So, we're going to have them, Joey and Adam, or one, or both, sometime next month.

Myke Hurley: Uh-oh. I'm not going to be on that episode. I'm going to be away that week.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, they're good. They're open. They're open and honest. I know. I mean, just... We're in a business these days. You can't hide doing business online these days. Nope. So, anyway, I cut you off your Squire.

Myke Hurley: I look forward to having them on the show. Because I enjoyed having them on last time. Because the Squire, that's the one I'm interested in. If they turn out a Squire, like their first one, and it's cool looking, and it's funky in some way, right? Retro 51 style-y, then I will immediately subscribe. But I just want to see what their first one is. Because if their first one's just green, and they say, oh, we made a green one, then I don't know if that's going to be for me. But, again, I have to say, this is why we made a green one. And the green one has this little inscription on it in some way, right? It's like, okay, you're appealing to me. So, I'm waiting to see. A lot of this stuff is, I have enough pens, and I have enough notebooks. Give me a reason. That's all I want. And that reason for me comes in the theme. And if the theme agrees with me, then I'm all over it, right? Right. So, I'm excited to see what they do with a Squire. Well, I guess it's going to happen in a couple of weeks' time, I would assume.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. All right. Yep. Yep. That's right. So, at that time, I was going, I'm going to do these two subscriptions that I've been holding off on. The other one was Write Notepads when I saw the In the Pines edition. And I haven't bought their previous editions, but they do such a good job with design. Like, I love their design aesthetic. Their boxes and packaging, which, you know, are really, I'm not a boxes and packaging guy, but they do it to make you want to buy it. And the prices, I don't see how they do it for the price. It's a really high-quality item. So, I just ordered the In the Pines set because what they do with their subscriptions is they only open them up for a couple of times during the year, which I think is a really interesting concept because they can manage the numbers and the production well. So, it's like, I can't find, I went on the site. It was actually, they need to do a better job of noting this because I killed myself going through their entire site trying to figure out how to subscribe. And there was no information on that. I had to go to archive.org, find the old subscription page. Oh, my word. And saw that link saying the subscriptions will be back open in May or something like that.

Myke Hurley: Okay. See, I just looked at this and this is exactly what I'm talking about. Right? Like, these are stunningly beautiful, but they're not diverging hugely from their last ones.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, apparently, I think this is their first dot grid, maybe. I'm not a right notepads connoisseur.

Myke Hurley: But dot grid is not, you know, I don't know, unless they would dot it a random via a paint gun. I have no idea. They would dot it.

Myke Hurley: But these are really beautiful. They're beautiful. They're like a beautiful green and they've got, what is that, like a debossed silver? Yep. These are stunning. Like, I want to subscribe now, but clearly I can't.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, you can't subscribe. But when they open it back up, I will because I'm using pencils in these, like strictly pencils. And people are telling me, like, they're good for fountain pens. Like, they have some good paper. I'll test them out. But, like, this brand, the way it's set up makes me want to use pencil with them. It's a good paper. I've used, like, their Steno books from CW Enterprises.

Myke Hurley: Oh, these are so beautiful, Brad. Like, everything they do. I'm looking at all of the old ones.

Brad Dowdy: I know. Yeah, these are great looking. These are really great looking. I'm going to get in on this now because...

Myke Hurley: How are they only $10? $10.

Brad Dowdy: $10 is too cheap.

Myke Hurley: How are they $10?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. But I'm going to buy... How are they $10? They're their own printer.

Myke Hurley: Interesting.

Brad Dowdy: They are a print shop. So, there's no middleman to have the increase.

Myke Hurley: All right. Well, I'm going to get some of these.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, like, if I was Nock and I walked in here to do this, I couldn't get it for this price, right?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no. Of course. You know, I'm going to buy some because I want to buy them. I want to see how they are. And then if they're as good as they look, then maybe I'll subscribe because it's $10. Right. Which I can't fully understand.

Brad Dowdy: So, I'm late to the party. The Erasables have been on this train since day one. It helps. Johnny's in Baltimore, which is where Right Notepad's at. So, he's over there. He's, you know, up in there visiting the shop and getting all the news and info. He loves the...

Myke Hurley: International shipping is $20. Woo!

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'll get some. We can order some for delivery in Atlanta.

Myke Hurley: Shipping can't be twice the price of the product, guys.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's not their fault. Don't yell at people for shipping. Don't yell at people for shipping. I want to know how they're shipping. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Don't yell at people for shipping.

Myke Hurley: Some people ship things in strange ways, Brad. Like, there are... I mean, like, if they're... Is this US Postal Service? $20? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Paper's expensive to ship, man.

Myke Hurley: All right. Well...

Brad Dowdy: I mean, I can ship... See, look at you. Look what you've done.

Brad Dowdy: Now I'm going to go into shipping, Brad.

Myke Hurley: All right. We'll go into shipping, Brad, then.

Brad Dowdy: If I send somewhere close to... Somewhere, I think, between six ounces and... Six or eight ounces and a pound to you, it's going to cost me, like, $21 and change.

Myke Hurley: All right. So, but, like...

Myke Hurley: Why can Field Notes do it for $7? That's standard. $7?

Brad Dowdy: Because they're using a FedEx-specific service that's bulk and not shipping it through normal. You're normal. You're also getting an extended lead time for delivery on that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but I don't mind waiting for three or four weeks if it's a third of the price.

Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Neither Nock or write notepads has the capacity to do that.

Myke Hurley: You see, this is the thing, right? I mean, I don't know this. All I know is it's, like, it's three times the price of what I'm usually used to paying. Right. And I just don't know if I want to do that all the time, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Right. I agree. So, don't complain about shipping is my pro tip for the day.

Myke Hurley: I will complain, but, okay, it's not your fault, but I'm still going to complain about it. It's still too expensive.

Brad Dowdy: It's not the business's fault that shipping costs what it costs. Well, I'm sorry. You can choose to purchase it or not, but it's not our fault that it is what it is.

Myke Hurley: I mean... Look at you. You're getting so mad at me, but it's still too expensive for me.

Brad Dowdy: I'm very sensitive about shipping complaints.

Myke Hurley: I know. You can tell.

Plumchester

Brad Dowdy: So, last new product, which just launched during this show, if not earlier this morning. Plumchester, which is ArtSnacks' own art supply brand, now has their own website. They launched their brush pen back in the November ArtSnacks box, and they sent me an early edition of their Square sketchbook. It is totally kick butt. If you're an artist or like to carry a sketchbook aside from a journal where you want thicker paper, this is the best I've ever used. Granted, I haven't used that many sketchbooks. I don't throw watercolors at them, so I don't know the properties of that. But the construction, the materials, the style, the shape, and the price, I mean, they're 18 bucks. It's kind of a no-brainer level for me. Well, now Lee's killing me because they don't ship outside the US. Well, yeah.

Myke Hurley: For the same reason, I'm sure, right? Yeah, I'm sure.

Brad Dowdy: Paper is the worst. Paper is the worst item to ship. It is so heavy. I mean, we're going to have to do away with our free shipping levels at some point because we get killed on paper at Nock. So, this has turned into a whole other thing. Yeah, well. Paper is awful, awful, awful to ship.

Myke Hurley: It can still upset me, though. Like, I know you're getting angry because I'm getting angry.

Brad Dowdy: No.

Myke Hurley: But I'm just a clueless consumer, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: No. You're just angry because you can't buy a product you want, and it's shipping's fault. I understand that.

Myke Hurley: Lee just said in the chat room, email me, Myke. We'll figure it out.

Brad Dowdy: But that's, you know, okay. I appreciate that for me. Right. But no, Lee and I have actually talked about this, like, last month. We were talking about shipping.

Sketchbook Format

Brad Dowdy: Excuse me. But this notebook is really cool. A sketchbook, I should say. It's a square format, like, eight inch by eight inch. Awesome purple cover. Yellow band. I just put a review up on the site this morning. I'm very much in love. I don't need a lot of sketchbooks. This will be perfect for me. It handles every ink that I can throw at it, and it's fantastic. So, very, very happy with this.

Myke Hurley: That form factor, that big square form factor. I just, did I mention on the show that I bought Adina one of those write your own adventure planners?

Brad Dowdy: I think so, or I saw it in your Instagram or something.

Myke Hurley: So, I bought one of those for Christmas after listening to you guys talk about it on the show that I wasn't on. And they are, it is awesome. Like, it's this big square number. She loves it. She absolutely loves it. So, I nailed that one. That was good by me. But, yeah, they're really, really cool, these planners.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, one of the things I latched onto the most was the form factor of this. It's just the right size all the way around. So, yeah, it's really good. Plus, that color. So, yeah, it's killer. I mean, those are some of my favorite colors anyway. And they did a really, really good job on it. So, good luck with the site launch today, Lee. Yeah. It just got turned on this morning. So, they have the brush pens and the sketchbooks now available. So, y'all should check out Plumchester.com.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Go check it out. This is a great little selection. And I'm happy that they're starting small, you know, and, like, building it up from there. I think that's the right way to go. Like, curate a couple of products, develop them out, and work out how you want to go with it. I think it's a nice way of doing it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I've talked to Lee a bunch about that. And we'll get him. I told him we'll get him on the show soon, you know, after this gets going. And, yes, that's very observant of you. That's purposeful on their part.

Myke Hurley: I'm so sorry for complaining about shipping, everyone.

Brad Dowdy: You can complain. Just don't complain at the vendors. I can complain towards them.

Myke Hurley: Just not at them. It's like, this is a problem, but it's not your problem. But this is the problem. Right?

Myke Hurley: I understand your pain. The issue does lie in the fact that it isn't consistent. Yeah. Right? And I know it's because, like, you know, as you explained, like, depending on what you are able to ship out, depends on what, you know, it depends on the prices that you can get.

Brad Dowdy: Right? It's just brutal.

Myke Hurley: And I guess it's, like, super annoying for you guys when there is a company like Field Notes that can manage to do it their way.

Brad Dowdy: That is absolutely not annoying to me. That's never crossed my mind.

Myke Hurley: Well, I mean, just because it sets expectations.

Brad Dowdy: Right? Oh, well, no. I mean, that's an outlier, to be perfectly honest.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Well, I don't know anybody else. I don't buy paper from anyone else.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right, right. All right. We got a lot more to do here, mate. So, I think I need to eat. What do you got for me?

Myke Hurley: Blue Apron. Sweet. Blue Apron is back to support this week's show. They make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone, including Brad Dowdy, because they give you these fantastic recipe cards that talk you through, step by step, how to make their amazing meals. And they give you all these pre-proportioned ingredients so you have everything you need and just what you need. And you can make their food, all of their recipes, in 40 minutes or less. Blue Apron also know that when you cook with fresh ingredients, you support a more sustainable food system, allowing you to make these incredible meals. That is why they do everything they can to support it. They set the highest standards for their community of artisanal suppliers, farms, fisheries, and ranches. And they also do all of this and help make and build a community of home chefs. Now, this is a fun part of it. When you cook frequently with Blue Apron, you're going to learn skills that will make you a better chef at home. You'll get better at cutting food. You'll understand what certain ingredients are. You'll learn how much you like garlic or not, right? Like a lot of these types of recipes, they have things in them like garlic and onion and different like herbs and stuff like that. And you'll start to learn which of them you like and you don't like. And you'll be able to not only just choose these from the meals that you get, but also use this information that you've learned about yourself to help create better food at home. New recipes are created by Blue Apron's culinary team and they're not repeated within a year. So you will have access to cooking stuff like Thai chicken noodle soup with yellow curry paste and mushrooms, mixed mushroom and potato pizza with fontina cheese, spinach, and garlic oil, and creamy shrimp spaghetti with broccoli and mayo lemon. Check out this week's menu and get three meals for free with free shipping. Go to blueapron.com slash penaddict. Blue Apron delivered to 99% of the continental US. You can customize your recipes each week based on your dietary preferences and choose a delivery option that fits your needs. There's no weekly commitment, so you only get your deliveries when you want them. So once again, that's blueapron.com slash penaddict to get your three meals for free with free shipping. You'll love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with Blue Apron. We'd like to thank Blue Apron for their support of this show and Relay FM. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so now we have the sustenance to get through these ass TPAs, Myke. I've been saving these up. This is like a legit huge list, and maybe we need to save some for next time. But I definitely want to do this first one because it kind of relates to like what we've been talking about throughout this show. And this is from our friend Casey, a.k.a. Punky, in all the chat rooms and Twitters from the coffee-loving 2015 Atlanta Pen Show. Never forget Casey. So let me read this whole thing to you because it kind of needs to not be chopped up. He says, However, when I think about replacing it with another one, I always hesitate. It's not any flaw with the Midori itself, honestly. It's better for my fountain pen-loving ways, and the cover's more useful with the inserts. But more than that, I miss using my field notes. I have a ton of them that I want to go through, but more importantly, I feel like they're closer to what I personally like in a product. I have a great leather cover from One Star Leather. Shout out to Keegan. Hopefully I'll see you in L.A., buddy, to use them. So I won't be missing out on the cover. And if I'm honest, I'll probably be putting the Midori in a box and going back to the field notes for daily note-taking and work use. So all of that said, here's the question. Have you ever had to choose between a product that is objectively better for you to use and a product you want to use? And which way did you decide to go? That's a great question.

Fountain Pens

Myke Hurley: Field notes and fountain pens.

Myke Hurley: So it differs from edition to edition how good the paper is for fountain pens. I think maybe in the last 12 to 18 months, it has trended more along the lines of that field notes are fine for fountain pens. But there has been times in the past where they haven't been, right? But the paper's been thinner. And they've made the paper thicker over time, I think, to kind of help this, at least is what I believe. But I made that decision because whilst there are arguably many notebooks that are more suited to using fountain pens that are made for that, I love my field notes and I love my fountain pens. So I will use them together, be damned.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm kind of like Casey here. I want to use more field notes because I enjoy the format, the style, the aesthetic. They don't live up to the knock notebooks, in my opinion. But it's also because I got to design that myself. That's your notebook. That's my notebook. And I want to use other things, but I still, it doesn't matter that it is my notebook. I find myself using it because I built it because that's how I use notebooks, right? Yeah. And so I don't have to worry about fountain pens.

Myke Hurley: I'm not saying you're using it because you made it. It's like the reason you love it is because you made it. And that's why you use it. Like it is made for you. It's your specification of what a good notebook is. Like if you didn't use your own notebook, that's a problem. Right? Because you designed a notebook.

Brad Dowdy: So it should be exactly the notebook that you want. So I choose that way more than anything else because I enjoy it the most. But that's also, you know, for those other reasons. I want to use field notes more.

Brad Dowdy: But there's too much thought for me has to go into using them sometimes. What pen am I using? What, you know, where am I carrying it? Things like that. And so I stick with what I love the best. That said, I mean, I'm staring at three notebooks on my desk right now that are neither field notes or Nock. So I use lots of stuff. You know, lots of stuff crosses my desk. I have a job to do. But if I'm picking something up for a specific reason, nine out of ten times, it's going to be something from Nock just because that's the paper and style that I like and I don't have to question what I use with it. So that's a really good question. That happens a lot in our community. So this one actually. Yeah, I think we can get to all these because this is a quick answer. Honestly, this is Gabe. He says, hello, this is Gabe of Ask TPA from Congress fame. You remember that one? All right, Gabe. Can you remind the listeners of Gabe's first question? What was he asking about? I don't remember the question, but it came on congressional stationery with congressional stamp.

Myke Hurley: Yes, yes. It was during the paper ones.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was during the paper ones. And the note on it said, I had to say, like, I paid for this stamp and stationery with my own funds because for personal use, it was all kinds of crazy stuff.

Brad Dowdy: So he says, I have another Ask TPA question I think best directed at Brad. I recently purchased a Pilot Custom 74 with a medium nib as my first gold nib pen. I have to say that the experience so far has been decidedly meh. I don't write in cursive, so most of the merits of the nib's softness, like line variation, bounciness, et cetera, might be lost on me. I believe that Brad has said he enjoys finer and stiffer nibs. So my question is, do pins with stiff gold nibs exist? If so, is it something worth spending so much money on a gold nib when I'm basically looking for something that behaves more like a steel nib? So, yeah, there's two parts to this. Do pins with stiff gold nibs exist? Yes. Sailor makes the best.

Brad Dowdy: Platinum and Pilot dabble in them. They're harder to find. And Sailor has hard, fine, hard, medium nibs that are pretty normal in their product lineups. They're my absolute favorite. They are fantastic. I love those nibs. Both of my hard, fine Sailor nibs I bought off of people who hated them. So they're not for everyone. They're stiff as a nail. And that brings me to the second part of your question. Is it worth spending so much money on a gold nib when I'm basically looking for something that behaves more like a steel nib? That's a tough call, but that's an accurate statement. Right? So I love steel nibs so much because of their firmness. They just inherently don't have that softness or springiness of a gold nib. I mean, that's a personal preference at that point. But I find the gold hard, firm, or hard, medium nibs to be smoother. And I have a more refined line than with the steel. Steel, I get the firmness. I get a little bit more refined line. If that makes sense. I don't know if that makes sense than with the steel. So the problem is the money, you're not going to get that in the low-end pens always. Like, you're going to have to go to, like, the pro gear, like, the full-size pro gear, which is going to be, like, in the mid-250s. So, yeah, maybe you want to look at a steel nib or something like that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I don't have a preference, like, between steel and gold. Because I kind of, like, go with whatever feels good in the pen I'm using. Right? Like, I have some gold nibs. I have some steel nibs. And I'm fine with both of them depending on how they feel. And I guess that's because of this variance that you're talking about. How, like, some companies can make their gold stiffer and that kind of thing. I don't know. Because, like, you know, I have a couple of gold nibs. And the gold nib that I have on my sailor feels very different to the gold nib on my pelican.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Those are completely different. Yep. All right. Next one from Matt. This is a tough one. So we'll... These next two I put in purposely for Wisdom of the Crowds.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I really struggled with this one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, me too. And it's a great... It's a perfect question. I mean, it's exactly what we talk about all the time. So it says, You and Myke have helped me become a full-on addict in the last six to nine months. However, every pen I own so far comes from the less than $50 range. I have a couple of Ecos, a Safari, a couple of Preppies, a Nemesign, and a Metropolitan. I have discovered that I like wider nibs for the most part that are as wet as my current paper can handle. I would really like to make the jump to a higher-end pen but don't know how to get there. I know I like the style and idea of a pelican the best. I love the M400 you had this week, which I reviewed the tortoiseshell one and gave it away. And he said he's almost bought the white one several times. My issue is that I don't have any in-real-life pen friends and can't go to a pen show. How do I know if a pen is going to be worth the jump from $20 to $30 to $200 to $300 if I can't try it out? I would really love a broad M400 or M600 but can't justify the investment only to have to turn around and sell it again. Any advice?

Myke Hurley: Can I try first? Yeah. So I talk about kind of the way that I went through this. I think that maybe aiming at the pelican first is not a good option because you can't try anything out. Like, you know, like for me, my first expensive fountain pen was a vanishing point. And again, that vanishing point didn't end up working out for me. But one of the things that I got from that was I was able to try out pilot nibs on cheaper pens and work out how the nib performed for me. And then from there, I could maybe upgrade to something that had a bit more of a fancy body. And then from that point, it was kind of like a stepping stone process. But here's the thing that you're just going to have to bear in mind. It's likely that you're going to spend more money than you should because you're going to buy stuff that isn't right. But you can sell it, you know, if you want to. There are people that, you know, will take these things off your hands. And as long as you treat them kindly, then they might, you know, you might not lose too much money on it. But I think it's best to try and focus on a company that uses the same or very similar nibs across a line as like the first company that you buy something expensive from. So you can at least, because, you know, I was using Pilot Preras and learning how I felt about the pilot pens before I went and bought a vanishing point. And, you know, it's the same with like a Lamy, right? You can get used to a Safari before you go and buy a 2000. And they're not exactly the same. You know, sometimes they use different materials. But it gives you a good idea for how this company builds their stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So what Myke is saying, Matt, is there is no answer to your question.

Myke Hurley: The answer is get ready to spend more money than you expect because you're going to, because as well, if you find something you like, you're then going to still buy a million more things. Like, this is just the way it goes.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And so, I mean, that's kind of the conclusion that I came up to. There's no guarantees, right? There's no guarantee that you save up for the Pelican M600 and you like it, you know, depending on the nib. What I will say is if you want to commit big and at the trying to skip trying everything, you know, you stick with well-known brands, you stick with like their second level, their second tier pin. Like, I would look at a Pilot 912 as opposed to a 91, a 92, or a 74. I would look at the full-size Sailor Progear instead of the Progear Slim. I would look at the Pelican M600 instead of the 400 because all of those are because of size differences. You know, that second level of those brands is kind of the meat and potatoes pin. The first one kind of gets you in. Then you realize, oh, maybe I'd like a little bit bigger pin, a little bit bigger nib. You know, I would go for that second tier of pin instead of the first tier of pin. And if you're trying to avoid having to buy multiple pins, save up for the bigger pin, the first shot, and look at that second level of pins, if that makes sense.

Myke Hurley: It's really, it's tricky. It is tricky. I mean, one of the reasons that people that like this stuff end up buying so much is in pursuit of the perfect pin. Right. Right. And yeah, so unfortunately, if you want to go down that route and it's a route that you can go down, you're probably going to spend more than you expected. Whether it is that you buy two pins rather than one or 20, you know, depending on your appetite. But if you're at this stage, then the next stage is calling you. And the next stage is say goodbye to your disposable income. And cuss us repeatedly. All right. By the way, I just want to point out that I'm doing something that I've never done before, which is explicitly putting money aside for a pin. Like the Nakaya fund is building and it is going into a specific savings account. I've never done that before. Nice. That's good. So that's something you can do. You know, I've taken a little bit of money, maybe every couple of weeks or every month, but a little bit more, a little bit more. Also, it helps me put it off because I'm so scared. But it is going to happen this year. And now, because I'm doing this little saving thing, I'm breaking it away from the desire to buy it for myself when I do something important. Cool. So now it's just like I'm saving for it.

Nathan's Email

Brad Dowdy: Cool. I like that. I like that idea a lot. All right. Let's get to this last one because it's a pretty amazing email with something that I should be able to answer. But it's a really, really tough, tough answer. But this is a long email to get to a very simple question, but it's worth it. So this is from Nathan. I work at a job that requires me to use black or blue ink. However, there are some exceptions for certain positions outlined below. For some context, my job is a department head chief engineer on USS McFaul, a guided missile destroyer.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This is going to be awesome. Nathan is kind of a big deal.

Brad Dowdy: Nathan is kind of a big deal. I actually, I said, I want to read this email is amazing. I want to read it on the show. Am I allowed to say these things? So I got his clearance to read this email. So let me continue. Each department head usually has a specific ink color for less official or internal to the ship documentation. For instance, these are some common colors. So the captain writes in blue, executive officer in green. Combat systems officer, black. Weapons officer, black. Operations officer, orange or purple. Supply, purple or orange. Chief engineer, red. My question is, what are some good black inks for my fountain pens that have a hint of blue, but isn't noticeable unless you're looking for it? He says for red, for his chief engineer red pen, he uses Schaefer script red, which I have never used, but I've heard that's one of the best reds going. So he uses that in a TWSBI diamond 580 with a stock fine nib. He says that works really well for him. But if there's better ink or pen to suggest, I'd be happy to try that too. I wouldn't change that. Schaefer script in your TWSBI, seeing that sloshing around, that's pretty cool. And that's a really good red ink. Like for straight up red, that's got some vibrancy to it. That one gets very, very high marks.

Myke Hurley: So just so I can clear it up, he has to write with red usually. But there was some time, because that's his position color. But he also needs to also use blue or black as well for other things.

Brad Dowdy: He needs the black for official documentation, but wants some blue to come out in the ink so he can enjoy being the pen addict that he is, knowing that he's got something cool to write with in his pen, not just basic black. But it can't really show off the blue too much because then he'd get dinged.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but also like his internal memos though, he writes in red because he's a boiler like that. Right.

Brad Dowdy: So this was really hard being the blue black ink guy that I am because they all favor blue a lot. Yeah. Right. So you see a lot of blue. The one I came up with, which is probably a bad choice, that's the blackest, is Diamine Registrars. Iron Gaul inks, they're going to go down blue. They're going to oxidize to black. That Diamine Registrars gets really black and just leaves a hint of blue. It's a high maintenance ink. You got to take care of your pen. It could possibly stain. It's one of the stronger Iron Gauls. But I was thinking Iron Gaul inks for this. The other ones I came up with were some of the Midnight Blues. Like you have to look in the blue to find this, right? You can't look at black inks to come up with this. So I was using the Anderson Pens ink comparison tool. Some of the Midnights are close. They tend to the darkest navy blue. Like Diamine Midnight, Deatramentous Midnight. The darkest to me is the Cult Pens Diamine Deep Dark Blue. That's almost black. And then Sailor's Bung Box Silent Night. Again, these are not easy inks to get. But Silent Night and Deep Dark Blue are the darkest of the dark blues that I've tried. Miss Soup in the chat room is 54th Mass. Noodler's 54th Mass, which is a great blue-black ink. It might be too bright. As dark as it is and as awesome as that ink is, it's maybe one of the most popular Noodler inks. They do one called Air Corp Blue Black that is really more green tinted. And it's really hard to get a mostly black ink with just a hint of blue. That's why I've been thinking about the Iron Gaulds. But you've got to commit. If you're doing something like Diamine Registrars, you've got to use that pen. You've got to clean it out every couple weeks and just kind of keep it fresh. Keep it in use. And you will enjoy the blue going down, but it will dry black. And plus, being in the military, that's a permanent ink, right? So it adds to that permanence if that's also a quality you're looking for. So super interesting question. I'd love to hear if anyone else has any suggestions. It's just hard to get out of the midnight blue range darker without just being a black ink.

Myke Hurley: Could you tell me the name of the Cult Pens and the Bung Box ink again?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so Cult Pens is Diamine Deep Dark Blue.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Bung Box is Silent Night. Diamine also did the 1854 Blue Black. It was a limited edition. If that's still available, that's the blackest blue black that I've used. I mean, I don't use it because it's pretty much black. It's just it may not be available if it is.

Myke Hurley: All right. I'll put some of these in the show notes for people to go and find. Again, like some of them, some of them, there's no product pages, just reviews because they don't have product pages anymore. So, yeah. Good luck, Nathan. And thank you for the greatest Ask DPA. This is so awesome. And it does actually remind me of a very short story. I used to work for John Lewis, which is a department store in the UK. And I was told once that we had the chairman at the time. His name was Stephen Green. I think his name was Stephen Green. Or I'm getting that confused with somebody else. But let's just say that was his name. But John Lewis, their colors are green. And Waitrose, which is the supermarket that they own, all their colors are green. And he's the only person in the company allowed to write with green ink. Yeah, nice. It's pretty great. Actually, I think Stephen Green was actually somebody else. But let's just assume that that was his name. But whoever the chairman was of John Lewis at the time was not Stephen Green. That was not his name. They were the only person allowed to write in green ink. That's cool. Which if I, you know, maybe, do you know what I was going to say? Maybe if I owned a company, I would do that. Well, I do. So what color should I pick? I guess I'm going to say I'm the only person in Real AFM allowed to write with pink ink.

Brad Dowdy: Like, yeah, I was going to say pink. It's got to be pink, right?

Myke Hurley: I'm going pink. Not orange. I'm going pink. I'm going for California and Chernobyl. Because it also ties back to my roots of writing all of my English coursework in pink. Which I've told this story on the show before, right? Yes. Yeah. So I'm the only person in Real AFM allowed to write with pink ink.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So it is written. So it is done. In pink ink.

Myke Hurley: In pink. Thanks so much to our sponsors this week for supporting the show. Blue Apron, Squarespace, and Casper. But most of all, thank you for listening. Please keep your eye out for the Kickstarter campaign. You can find us tweeting about it. I am imike. I-M-Y-K-E. Brad is dowdyism. D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. We're both on Instagram. I'm imike on Instagram. Brad is penaddict on Instagram. You can also find Brad's work at penaddict.com and knock.co. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.