The Pen Addict 25/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	25
Title:	The Pen Is Mightier Than The Club
Release Date:	August 2nd, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 25
Audio File:	Audio Episode 25
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 25
Length:	4242 min <br />0.7 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Pen Addict podcast, a show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley, and I have been joined by the one and only, the Evel Knievel of the pen world, that is Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, sir.

Brad Dowdy: Wow, I like that too. Every week, it's something good. You're going to have to keep this up. How are you today?

Myke Hurley: I'm very well. I don't plan these, they just pop into my head. It's not what I can do about it. This episode, For Their Sins, is sponsored by Squarespace and DocuSign. I want to thank them for joining us. I want to thank you for joining me, as always, sir.

Sponsorship

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely, it's my pleasure. This is one of the highlights of my week.

Myke Hurley: That's very kind of you to say. Very kind of you to say, indeed. I like it because it allows me to verbalise an addiction that I can be proud of, Brad. I can shout it from the rooftops like that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a weird thing, isn't it? Because it's a very personal, internal type topic. Oh, let's see, what pen can I use today? It's not like you're sharing that with the world all the time, unless you have a blog like me. But most people are, yeah, it's a very personal thing. So yeah, it's fun to talk about it with someone else.

Myke Hurley: Yes, indeed it is. So what are we talking about today? What's on the docket?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I'm kind of getting the shakes, Myke. I'm going through a little bit of new pen withdrawal here. Oh, dear. You know, we've talked about, I don't know how much I've talked about it on the air, but I've talked about a little bit about how I'm moving, right? So I've been hesitant to start shipping a bunch of pens to this address, you know, knowing that I'm getting ready to move. If there's some delay or anything like that, you know, I'm within a week of moving, right? And I just keep looking at, you know, jet pens or I've had people send to me, you know, I did a Lamy Tipo review earlier this week and someone sent me a link to aluminum barrel Tipo on Amazon. I'm like, man, should I order that? You know, is it going to get here in time before I move? So, man, I'm shaking, you know, I've got my cart filled up at jet pens and things like that. I'm going through a little bit of withdrawal phase here on new products.

Myke Hurley: I know the feeling. It feels like many, many weeks, far too many weeks. It feels like years even since I purchased my last pen. It makes me very sad. I think the last stuff I got was the new retros. But I've got my eye on certain things and hopefully over the next couple of weeks I shall be making some purchases of my own.

Brad Dowdy: Do you want to spill the beans? Do you have anything specific you're looking at?

Myke Hurley: Well, I'm going to get one of those small retros. I'm going to try that out. Other than that, I mean, you know, I know I've got to continue my retro addiction, right? The retro addiction. I have to keep buying those. I mean, I want to get a couple of those. I'm going to look around some sites and just pick some that look quite cool to me.

Myke Hurley: And then, you know, I will also go on to jet pens and take a look. I like looking through the popular lists, like the top lists and stuff. Yeah. And, you know, just sort of picking out a few from there. That's what I did with the last time when I bought like a ridiculous amount of stuff. Just going through having a look at some things. I mean, the Lamy, is it the 301? Free something? What is that one? The really expensive one. The Dialogue 3? Dialogue 3. Yeah. The ridiculous amount of money one. I still want that, but I'm not going to buy that.

Brad Dowdy: I know, I kind of have a jonesing for another high-end pen.

Lamy 2000

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, I've actually, not the Dialogue 3, but another Lamy. I've been looking at the Lamy 2000, which is just a capped aluminum barrel fountain pen. There's a black body one, extra fine nib. I've been, that one's staring me down, calling my name.

Myke Hurley: Is that something that you're looking to grab? It's a nice-looking pen, this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's been on the radar for months. Oh, look at that. Wow, that's pretty. I've been, do I, of course I don't need it. And I'm just trying to justify, am I going to use it if I get it? You know, that type of thing. You know, we've talked about it before. You know, if you're going to spend that kind of money, at least me personally, you know, I don't buy pens to, you know, collect them and put them on a shelf and look at them. You know, if I'm going to spend that amount of money, I want to make sure they make it into my regular writing rotation and that they get some good use. You know, otherwise, to me, it's a waste because I'm not going to sit there and, you know, you know, hang it on a wall or something, if you will.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, I'm thinking about it a lot. And the fewer pens, since I haven't been ordering as many pens recently, I've been thinking about it even more. It's like, oh, well, you know, I haven't bought much stuff recently. So, you know, maybe I should break down and go for another big boy like that one.

Myke Hurley: So, you know. There's a beautiful show title in there, Brad. Break down and go for a big boy. I'm not even going in there any more than that. So, what is – I know you. I know you can't just think of these things. I know that, you know, you don't just on a whim, say, like me, you know, browse some top lists. That's not how you work at all, sir. Tell me what is in your shopping cart right now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Since I haven't been actually placing any orders, I've actually been putting things in my cart and adding to my wish list and things right now. I do have a few things in my cart just waiting for me to decide whether I'm going to ship them now and try to race them home to the address that I'm at or wait, you know, another couple of weeks and just go through some more withdrawal period.

Myke Hurley: But every time I talk to you, I get more and more concerned about your addiction.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I mean, yeah. My name is Brad and I am a pen addict.

Myke Hurley: Good morning, everyone. My name is Brad.

Brad Dowdy: No. You know, I've been looking at some of the new items in JetPens. One that's intrigued me for a couple of weeks now and it's been out there for a little bit is the – there's a Pentel Tradio fountain pen. And Pentel has had this Tradio – I don't know if it's Tradio, Tradio or the exact pronunciation. They've had this line for a while. Tradio. And just like a – it started out as a – what do you call it? Almost like a bristle tip.

Myke Hurley: I have one of these. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So they've made one with a fountain pen nib and I thought it looked pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Where is that? Is that on JetPens?

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I think I have one of these. Yeah, I have one of those ones.

Brad Dowdy: With a traditional fountain pen nib or with a plastic nib?

Myke Hurley: Oh, it's got like a plastic nib.

Fountain Pens

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, right. So that's what they were – that's the original one, right? So now they've come out with a real legitimate like steel nib fountain pen with ink cartridges.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I can't find that one.

Brad Dowdy: I'll send you the link.

Myke Hurley: Is it on JetPens? Did you see?

Brad Dowdy: It is. It is. And, you know, it's kind of an entry-level pen. You know, it's $26.50.

Myke Hurley: I've got one. Sorry.

Brad Dowdy: You found it?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I found it now. So it's just got the same sort of styling really, isn't it? But it just looks like a cheap – not like cheap, it's $26. But –

Brad Dowdy: No. So I thought that one's been interesting to me. Just to – that'd be a good pen for me to review. You know, I'm just kind of more curious about it just because, you know, that line's been around a while. And this is a big change in that line. And I'd like to see how it does. Unfortunately for me, it only comes in a medium nib. But I'm really willing to take one for the team and see how it is.

Myke Hurley: They got my email.

Mechanical Pencils

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yep. And then, you know, I reviewed a pen a couple weeks ago called the Pentel Sleechy Teco Mini Gel Ink Pen. It's a mini, mini Sleechy. And it's got a nice aluminum barrel. And when I ordered it originally, they only had one color, and it was a copper barrel. And I'm not particularly fond of that color, but it was too cool of a pen to pass up. I wanted to get it and review it. Well, they got some new barrel colors in, and I'm going to get this cool-looking orange one for my personal use. It's going to be a good everyday carry type of pen. It'll go good in my dome utility journals, like when I'm carrying it around in my pocket and things like that. Because it comes with a .3 millimeter Sleechy black ink cartridge. And that's one of my favorite ink cartridges in writing, nibs, styles. So it's a really good pen.

Brad Dowdy: And one of the other things I want to get is a mechanical pencil, which, you know, I don't use a lot. But I appreciate this one pencil called the Pilot Delphold Double Knock Mechanical Pencil. It's a relatively inexpensive pencil. You know, it doesn't have anything great like the Kurutoga, you know, auto-led rotation mechanism. Or, you know, it doesn't have that engineering style like the Rotring 600. But it's got this really cool – the whole, I guess, nib unit ejects from the – it's protected in the barrel, right? So you eject out the whole writing, the whole business end of the pen, the pencil. And then you can click out the lead. So it's a double knock. So you click it once to get the tip out and then click it again to forward the lead. And it's just kind of a – it's a neat design. It's really well done. And I've used one in the past and they got some – they have some new barrel colors that are translucent. So those looked interesting to me. So, you know, I've been going through filling up my cart with a few things. I just haven't hit the checkout button yet. And it's killing me like you wouldn't believe.

Myke Hurley: Sometimes listening to the things you want to buy is as useful as the things you have bought.

Brad Dowdy: Well, the sad part is I think about it a lot. Yeah. You know, it's like – you know, I try not – as much as it sounds like it, I try not to buy on a whim. You know, even if I'm going to buy something just to review, I want a reason to do it. You know, is this something different than I've used before? Or, you know, would this be something, you know, readers would be interested in? Is this going to be something I'm going to use personally for a longer period of time than just a pen review? Those type of things. So I actually do consider a lot of those things. And sometimes that makes it hard to pull the triggers. Like, you know, I don't want to be frivolous, you know, even though I'm fortunate enough to, you know, have my blog sponsored by JetPen. So I do have some freedom and some things that I can order. You know, I still take it – I still put some thought into it instead of just shotgunning the approach.

Myke Hurley: I feel like because you've mentioned the sponsorship, I think it might be important for me to note that, I mean, most of the – like 95% of the show notes, they go to JetPens. They do not ask for that. They do not pay for that. We get nothing for that. The network gets nothing for that from that perspective. Just in my opinion, they're the best place that I've found online to buy this stuff for great prices, good service, and they have the catalog.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. They have the most products available that suit my needs. Yeah. So, I mean, it's – yeah, I mean, that's definitely why, you know, at least I use them the most, obviously, just because – I mean, that's where I first started getting into some of the pens that I'm into because no one else carried them, honestly. I mean, and now there are other companies that do carry it, but the depth of the catalog, it's hard to shop somewhere else unless I'm looking for something very, very specific.

Myke Hurley: Plus, they have crazy Japanese stuff.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. Which is just awesome. Yep, that's what got me going, all those fine-tipped Japanese pens, and then just kind of branched out from there.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a section on JetPens called Asian Office. If you've never been to it – I never bought anything from there, but they're the most – the craziest things you will ever see, like elephant-shaped Post-it notes and stuff like that.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. There's some fun stuff in there. I actually don't have a lot of those items, but they're really cool. I love the animal-shaped paperclips. That's some of my favorite things just because it's not like cat and dog. It's like 35 different shapes or something like that. It was like, man, anything they can think of to make a paperclip form, they've done it.

Myke Hurley: Here we go. Here's some of them. Penguin, elephant, pig, bird, squirrel, paper airplanes, aquarium series, which includes alligators, butterflies. Strawberries, many, many more. Hippos. So, yeah, there's lots of stuff. I mean, it's a really random place. I should buy some stuff from there, actually, I think. Really good Christmas gifts. I stock in stuffers, I think. Yeah, exactly. A lot of that sort of stuff on there. So, we're going to talk a bit about penmanship, which is a really nice word, I think, penmanship. It is. It's got some nice connotations to it. But before we do that, I think it would be the right time to talk about our first sponsor. Now, we spoke about DocuSign last week. Now, they've come back to sponsor us again. Now, obviously, we love pens and paper here, right? That's what we love.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely.

Myke Hurley: But probably what we don't love is paper in abundance, legal documents. Who loves them? I mean, yes, you get to pull out the nice pen and put pen to paper and make that signature. But, you know, then you've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. And I'm talking specifically, Brad, about all the documents you've probably been signing as we spoke about VR House Move.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, yes, very much.

Myke Hurley: And, you know, as nice as all that stuff is, nobody really likes that aggravation. So, it would be so much easier if this could all be done online. And this is what DocuSign provide. They give you the ability to send and receive digital documents which you're able to sign online. And it would be legally binding. So, you can upload documents from your hard drive or from cloud services like Dropbox, for example. And then, you know, if you are the sender, you can go in and annotate all of the areas that you need to be signed initial to have your address stamped. And then you can send it out by email to the people that you need to sign it. If you are one of the receivers of the document, you will receive an email which takes you to a web page where you are shown through. So, you're entered into the DocuSign system. And it talks you through and walks you through step by step all of the elements that you need to enter. So, you need to put your initial here. You need to type your name here. And you need to sign here. And you can sign in a bunch of ways. You can sign on the trackpad. If you're in, you can open one of the iOS or Android devices and sign right on the screen with your finger, which is awesome. You can sign with your mouse. Obviously, that's not, you know, as precise as doing it with your finger. And then once you've signed, if you are, if you sign up for DocuSign or you're already a DocuSign user, that signature gets saved. So, in the future, you can just drag it straight into the document. The iPhone, iPad, and Android apps that they have allow you to access, sign, and send your documents on the go. So, if you already have documents in DocuSign, you need to send them out to somebody else. You want to get a copy of it. You want to, you know, you can get, you can access them all online, which is excellent. You can also print the documents as well once they're done, if you like. And then as the person who sends, you get everything sent back to you. Once everyone's signed it, the document is all sent around totally securely, all encrypted, and everything you sign is legally binding. People literally sign to complete their home purchases in DocuSign, and it is legally binding. You can help support 70 decibels and start your no-limit 30-day free trial at docusign.com. That's D-O-C-U-S-I-G-N dot com forward slash 70 decibels, 7-0-D-E-C-I-B-E-L-S. If you have documents, contracts, and stuff that you need signed, DocuSign is the way to go. I want to thank them for sponsoring this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. Tell me about penmanship then.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I put out a call on Twitter last night just looking for some show topic ideas, see if anything, any topics came up that I thought were interesting. And one came up almost immediately when I sent it out. A gentleman named Alan sent me a tweet, said, how about talking about how to improve your handwriting and penmanship? And that struck a chord immediately because ever since I've started, you know, penaddict.com, that's one of the things I always get asked about is, you know, how did you get your handwriting that way? Your handwriting is so neat. Oh, your handwriting is amazing. And all these – I've gotten comments on my handwriting since day one. So I figured it would be kind of, you know, fun, I guess, to kind of talk about how that happened and why it is the way it is and how bad it is now compared to about a decade ago when it used to be, you know, really, really good. So, yeah, I thought that was a very interesting topic because I do get asked that a lot.

Brad Dowdy: There's really no – for me, it really started kind of with the whole pen addiction and my penmanship is probably goes hand in hand because, you know, we've talked about, you know, probably in episode one, you know, how I got started, you know, using the pens, types of pens that I use and everything like that. And I can remember vividly in, you know, elementary school and middle school trying to find the finest tip pens I could have because I like to write really small. And, you know, of course, I'm not – don't really care that much about my penmanship, you know, when I'm in fifth grade or something like that. And, you know, you're forced to use cursive writing and other things. But, you know, I always still kind of printed my letters and things like that and wrote really small. So I always had – from day one, I've always had just kind of a decent baseline of my penmanship was never horrible, you know, coming up through school. You know, that's kind of something you can't get around because you don't know at the time, you know, how your writing is going to turn out right. Some people have horrible penmanship in school. Some have it really nice. Some have big flowing cursive. Some have nice print. And some of it's chicken scratch that you can't even read. But I'm of the belief that you can correct it if you think you have, you know, poor penmanship just because, you know, I had it – like I said, I had a good baseline of decent handwriting, right? And then as odd as it may sound, I went into two jobs after college that completely changed and fortified my handwriting style. The first job – and this is an item that not many people know. It's one of those – you know, if you ever fill out those – ever see those things on the blog that go around blogs, you know, tell me, you know, five things, you know, I don't know about you. Or whatever, you know, things like that. I was a golf professional for about four years when I got out of college. Hang on a moment. Assistant golf pro at a country club, right? Teaching golf and, you know, doing all that stuff.

Penmanship

Myke Hurley: That came out of nowhere, Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. But it's – you'd be amazed how that tied into my penmanship because, you know, you – when – and this is – I'm talking this is like in the early, mid-90s. You know, I'm an older gent. So this is a while ago and, you know, we didn't have as many of the computer-generated things as we have now. So when we'd have tournaments at our golf course, you know, they realized pretty quickly that I was the only one with legible penmanship to write the huge scoreboards. You know, I don't know if everyone's – if you're not familiar with golf or haven't been around. But, you know, at the end of a tournament, you know, there'll be just, you know, kind of a running scoreboard of the players as they turn in their score. Well, I was always the one that had the fistful of pens and manning the scoreboard. And I would have to – you know, before the tournament, I'd get a list of 100 names. And I'd have to put all those names up on a scoreboard. And this is presented to the whole tournament. So I was nervous about how it looked, right? And a lot of people who – at the time who did those scoreboards did calligraphy. I was never into calligraphy. And plus, that would take way more time than I had to do that kind of thing. So I just really worked hard at, like, refining just, like, a really neat block lettering style. And the type of pen you choose really makes a huge difference in your penmanship. And we'll talk about that more as we go. But at that time, it was using, you know, like large chisel tip markers, right? So I had a very sharp edge. I remember this vividly. You know, just – I would order these specific pens, had very sharp edges. And I'd write these huge scoreboards with all these players' names on them and have to post them up on a wall for everyone to see and, you know, write their scores in. So I developed kind of a style of lettering, which was all, you know, bold, capital letter type of lettering. You know, I didn't have a lot of differentiation between uppercase and lowercase. You know, I had – all the letters looked the same. If it was uppercase, it was just a little bit bigger, right? Right.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, that's a – you learn lots of things about me on this podcast. And that's one thing, you know, I mean, I've never had any reason to talk about, you know, me playing golf for about four years when I got out of college. Amazing. So – and that actually transitions into the job where I really learned how to write. This is funny. This is like a personal diary.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I feel like we're in therapy at the moment.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I know. So I'm – and what's funny is like the vividness, which I remember this stuff is – I don't know. And it's because it's a lot of it's around pens and writing and you don't realize it at the time. But, I mean, we're literally talking about, you know, 15 or more years ago where these seeds are being planted. So I'm a golf pro, right? And, you know, you don't – it's an awesome job for a single guy. But, you know, I fortunately met the future Mrs. Pin Addict while I had that job. But that required me to get a real job just to pay the bills. And so I got a job at a construction sales company.

Brad Dowdy: And part of that job required me to do some drafting. And like I said, back then we, of course, had computers, but we didn't – weren't using all the, you know, powerful CAD programs and things. So I had to do a lot of hand drafting as far as some designs and measurements and drawing, you know, drawing items, you know, to get fabricated. You know, a lot of fabrication type of models and things like that. So myself and the guys I work with, we did a lot of hand drafting. So we had, you know, all these special rulers and we were always looking for these really fine tip pens. Back then we used to – I can't remember the exact zebra model, but we found a zebra that was really fine tip and sharp and black. And what I did when I was at that job, because my handwriting had to be clean on that because I'm presenting documents for fabrication, right? So I can't really make mistakes in my numbers or lettering or things like that. Is, you know, when you look at huge blueprints and a lot of them use that architectural type or engineering type that, you know, looks like a font. I made it my goal to mimic that style as much as possible. And that's kind of where my handwriting is today. It's way worse than it used to be back then. Like I could – I used to be able to like kind of write in a blueprint architectural style and you couldn't tell if it was handwritten or, you know, printed off a computer. My handwriting used to be like that tight. Wow. And it's really – it was just – it was just practicing. I mean I would take – I would get, you know, a large legal pad and I'd just write the alphabet across the page looking at some of the – you know, some letters were harder to convert over into my handwriting than others. So, you know, I might have good practice, you know, like A, B, C, D, E, F and like G was really hard for me for a while.

Brad Dowdy: And I would literally write pages and pages of just letters trying to mimic this style and doing that plus, you know, working – doing that job every day for two years. I think I did that job for about two years. That's what kind of – that was the foundation for the way my handwriting is now. Like I said, everyone comments on my handwriting on my reviews at Pen Addict and I just can't explain how bad my handwriting is now compared to how it used to be.

Myke Hurley: Wow. Really?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. But also at that point I could go – I would go a lot slower and was more diligent, right? I mean I think the pace makes a big deal.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Brad Dowdy: So now my pace is very fast. You know, I write extremely fast and, you know, so my penmanship is still good but it could definitely be better. And, you know, Alan asked how to make it better. I mean I think the tips are obviously practice. You know, find a handwriting style of someone. You can find all kinds of things online. And you just have to practice mimicking that every letter, you know, every curve, every line. And just – it's got to get built into your muscle memory, you know. So it's just that repetition. There's some videos out on YouTube that I've watched. They're not – I mean it's a decent lettering style but it may not be your style but you can at least look at them to get an idea. I think they're called – gosh, what are they called? How to Write Like an Architect. I'll send you some links, Michael. I think you can probably just search for it and that probably comes straight up. But the guy did a video series on how to write like an architect. And I don't know that I would recommend his exact lettering style but you can watch the videos to see how he practices his lettering. And you can get some good tricks, tips and tricks from there. The second thing I would recommend on how to improve it is use the right pen. And that makes a huge difference. And you don't have to use the pen that you write with every day. I would recommend using something like a Sharpie pen like with a felt tip. I tend to get a more responsive, clean type of line that I can tell what my handwriting is looking like better with a felt tip pen like a Sharpie pen which you can just get off the store shelf. I'm not talking about the permanent marker. I'm talking about the Sharpie pen. When I'm talking about penmanship, I'm talking about my style, the printing style of penmanship since I don't write in cursive so I can't really speak to that. If you're wanting to try to write in a block print style like me, I wouldn't recommend a 1.0 millimeter gel ink pen. If you're trying to learn cursive and a bigger flowing type of writing style, definitely go for a wider gel ink pen. You don't want anything too small when you're learning and practicing because you'll probably get a lot of hand fatigue if you're practicing a lot. But something like a Sharpie pen, a felt tip, it's a fine tip but it's relative. It's still probably a 0.5 millimeter line or 0.7 millimeter line. But something like that allows you to practice and see your lines. Get a notebook out. Practice your lettering. Practice numbers too because they kind of get some of the same shapes as some of your letters. And what you really want to do is if you get stuck on a letter, just really repeat that letter over and over and over again because you can change the muscle memory in your hands. I've changed how I write a 4, how I write a G, how I write a W. There are some very specific letters that I've completely changed my muscle memory on that I don't write them how I used to. And it can be done. For me, it just took time and practice and I didn't know I was doing it at the time. But doing those things, the jobs I did when I was right out of college actually kind of laid the groundwork for the way my penmanship is today. And my penmanship today could use a lot, a lot of work. Personally, I'm not really happy with it. And I'll talk about it when I find a good pen. I'll talk about how great my penmanship came out. I was like, wow, this pen really made my handwriting look good. The last one I can remember was the Kuretake Zig cartoonist pen. I'll link you that review on the Pen Addict. I did that maybe a month ago. And, man, my handwriting came out awesome in that. And every review I do is, you know, I don't write any differently. You know, my hand angle is the same. The pace I write with is the same. I don't go slow thinking about every letter I put on there. I write pretty much as fast as the words come out of my brain into the pen. That's as fast as I write. So when I look at a review like that, I'm like, wow, that pen really made a difference in my handwriting. And, you know, that's a felt tip pen, kind of like the plastic tip pen, like a Sharpie pen. So I'll send you a link to that.

Myke Hurley: I already got it.

Brad Dowdy: You got it with the purple ink.

Myke Hurley: Got it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I made a comment in that review. I was like, wow, my handwriting really looks good on this one. So and that just goes to show you, you know, how much the pen does make a difference. So, I mean, because it's all my, I mean, my reviews are pretty much the same. Like I said, the pace of writing, everything. So the pen really makes a difference in how it looks. So I've rambled on enough about that. You know, if you guys have any questions, definitely get in contact or tweet me and email me. We'll go over that at the end. If you have any more questions about penmanship. And maybe I didn't explain it, you know, completely, but I just want to kind of give an idea of how my handwriting style came to be. And it was actually a, unfortunately, it's not a quick, quick process. It's definitely built up over the years. And there's highs and lows by just how much I, how much I was writing at the time. You know, when I was really doing it with a meaning and a purpose, it was, it was very tight and clean. And now, even though I am doing it with a meaning and a purpose, right, you know, doing pen reviews, it's not the same. Because I think, you know, my pace has changed and I don't have to have that complete clarity like I used to have. So I still have remnants of, of that drafting style and things like that in my writing today. But it's not as neat and clean as I would like it to be. And, you know, the only way to fix that is, is more practice. So, so that's kind of, that's kind of it.

Squarespace

Myke Hurley: So we're going to talk about me and my lefty way. Yes, I want to hear this. But I want to talk about Squarespace first. Cool. So Squarespace, they've come back again for August, which is excellent. And we love that they've done that. I love the support that they give us. But I also love their product. I've been a Squarespace user for many years and continue to use it. I've got my own personal blog running on the brand new platform that Squarespace have created, Squarespace 6. No credit card to try Squarespace out at all. You can go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels and you can start your two week free trial there. You get to take a look at the completely new design that they have, both on the back end and the front end. They've made the back end a lot more user friendly. You can, you can do everything in this new environment that they've created. You don't need to do things live to the site if you want, but you can if you like to, especially a lot of the design stuff looks really good when you can do the drag in and the drop in and the WYSIWYG and all that stuff. Everything is totally integrated with Squarespace. You're looking at design, domain, if you buy one of their annual plans. You're rock solid, never goes down hosting and 24 hour, seven days a week, award winning customer support. They have excellent resources online as well. They have a really great help knowledge base. I'm looking in there constantly when I'm trying to find something new for the site. I can go straight in. I mean, I had something I was trying to find a couple of days ago. I just did a quick search in a knowledge base and found an article for it. They have videos like tutorial videos that take you through being able to do things. I can need to do a URL redirect. And it's all very simply done. I wanted to make sure I did it right. And I was able to watch the video that they created. They have new templates, as we've mentioned before. They're absolutely new with this brand new version of Squarespace. They're beautiful, clean, and they let your content do all of the talking. You choose what one is right for you. You make the color changes you need, the font changes you need. And they're totally responsive. You know, when you add images or design pages with a new Squarespace, your entire site restructures automatically to fit on every device. And it maintains the beauty of the design that they've created for you. Squarespace starts only $10 a month. And it is the perfect package for any website, blog, portfolio, or more that you want to create. It's $10 a month for the standard plan, $20 a month for the unlimited plan, as if you're paying on a monthly basis. If you sign up for the annual plan, you'll get 20% off that. And if you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. And custom domains with the annual and biannual plans as well. As I mentioned, you can go to squarespace.com forward slash 70decibels to sign up. And if you do, you can use the offer code 70decibels8, because we're in August now. That's 70decibels8 at checkout. And you'll get an additional 10% off your first purchase at Squarespace. I want to thank them for their continued support of 70decibels. If you're thinking about starting your own presence online or you want to move over, because they have great importing tools as well, go check them out. If you enjoy what we do, then you should really help support them like they support us. Thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring. Thank you, Squarespace. So, me. Now, I am a lefty, which for a lot of left-handed people, not all, but for a lot of left-handed people, that is a problem straight out of the gate. Because you're kind of restricted to some of the tools you can use, I think, at times. And depending on how you write, it can make things quite difficult. Now, I write fast because writing for extended periods of time with the way that I hold the pen can cause wrist ache. I kind of stretch around the page and my hand is upside down to you right-handed people. So, my hand, my fingers are pointing towards me when I write. Right. Yeah. So, writing in that position, even though I've been writing for many, many years now, at least four years.

Myke Hurley: That was a joke, Brad. You're supposed to laugh.

Brad Dowdy: It was funnier when you had to point it out to me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I thought I better because you didn't laugh. So, I want to make sure people know that I've been literate for longer than that.

Brad Dowdy: Let me tell you something, not to totally hijack you, but you know why I wasn't laughing? Because I was taking my left hand and pointing my fingers towards me and pretending like I had a hook like you were writing. So, I was working along with you, Myke.

Myke Hurley: I am the Captain Hook of the paper world.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, that's why I wasn't totally paying attention to your humor there. I was pretending to write left-handed there for a minute.

Myke Hurley: So, because of that, I've had to make adaptions. So, my handwriting is fast, and because of that, it's just sprawl. I have terrible handwriting. But it's readable. My older brother, who is a right-handed person, has much worse handwriting than me. His is unreadable. I have slightly doctor-like handwriting.

Myke Hurley: You know? I don't know if that's the same in the US, but in the UK, doctors are renowned for their poor handwriting.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, very much so.

Myke Hurley: But, you know, it gets me through. If I write slowly, my handwriting is good. But I choose not to. Right. I typically, I've spoken about this before, I have a very peculiar habit of chucking capital letters in all over the place. I may have one word that is part capital or part block letters and part, like, I don't know. What's the technical term for non-block letters?

Brad Dowdy: I mean, uppercase and lowercase.

Myke Hurley: Uppercase and lowercase. That's the terms I'm looking for, yeah. So, I have some upper, some lower. Just randomly in words, in sentences. I don't really know what it is that does that. I've started doing that since I've been writing less, obviously, since I left school.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: Don't know why.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, just for a point of clarity, you use a printing writing style. You don't write in cursive or script.

Handwriting Style

Myke Hurley: Again, I mix.

Brad Dowdy: You mix that up too. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I mix cursive and print. Again, in the same words, I'm looking at, I wrote down Captain Hook of the paper world as a show title suggestion. And I've joined the C and the A. Then the P is on its own. The T is on its own. Then the A and the I are joined again. Very peculiar, Brad. I have very, very peculiar handwriting style.

Brad Dowdy: We need a picture of this in the show notes.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. What shall I write? Or do you want me to just, I'll tell you what. I'll just take a picture of the five show suggestions. Okay. Like the title suggestions that I've written so far. Just because that means I'm not playing it up for the camera, as it were. Right. You're getting my speedy scroll in all of its glory.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Exactly. And exactly.

Myke Hurley: So, I mean, I can't, when you were saying about writing on the, like the whiteboard for the golf, right? I can't write on whiteboards. Because I'm a lefty. Yeah. That's true. It's very difficult for me to do that. Like, I rub it all off as I'm writing more and more. So, like every word that I have to, like, kind of, I have to, like, poke at the board. So, I, like, hold, I extend the pen further than my hand. So, my hand never touches the board.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That just makes it worse, right? Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Us lefties have real trouble. But we get by. I would, you know, one day like left-handed people to be recognized as having a handicap. But I'm not sure if that will ever, if that will ever occur.

Myke Hurley: What can I say? To be, to be a pen addict and to, and to have such, such a handicapper's library, that's just not fair, is it?

Brad Dowdy: I know, it's not.

Myke Hurley: But there will be a link in the show notes for everybody to see my horrific handwriting.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah, I think that's, that's me.

Brad Dowdy: So, do you, do you, do you have any interest in making it better? Or, I mean, you just kind of getting by with, with what you got? Do you ever think, you know, let me, let me work on this. Is there anything I can do to, to, to make it better?

Myke Hurley: Typically, it's only me that sees my writing. So, I don't consider that a problem. And if, you know, I can, I can be neat. So, if I'm writing like a birthday card, you know, I will take my time with that. And then it's okay. But, you know, I've never had a job where people have needed to read extended periods of my handwriting. Gotcha.

Handwriting Trends

Brad Dowdy: And I guess, honestly, probably a lot of us don't these days, which is why, you know, you see these articles popping up in all the big newspapers, you know, is the lost art of handwriting, is handwriting dead, and all these things like that. So, that just leads to, you know, the, the less we use it, you know, the, the worse all of our collective penmanship gets.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. It's a shame, but. Yep. We keep, we keep the tools alive and the, you know, the essence. That's right. We care. What more can you do? That's right. So, Brad, I think we've come to the end of this week's episode.

Brad Dowdy: I do believe so.

Myke Hurley: So, people can get in touch with us in a myriad of ways. Like, if you have suggestions, like we, you know, we often ask for show suggestions. Feel free to send them in whenever you want, and you can hit us up on Twitter. I'm imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Brad is dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. You can also email us by going to 70decibels.com force-contact and fill in the contact form, or email Brad directly at thepenaddict at gmail.com. Thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. Sir, do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Brad Dowdy: I don't. Just have a good day and, you know, fill up that shopping cart and your wish list, and all your handwriting dreams will come true.

Myke Hurley: Let us know what's on your wish list, too. We'd love to know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that would be fun. What pens are you guys looking for? Exactly. We're always looking out for new things.

Myke Hurley: And those top fives, keep sending them in. Next week, oh, next week, you're going to be joined by Stephen Hackett because I'm on holiday, and you're going to do a special episode with him.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. I've already got some ideas for Mr. Hackett.

Myke Hurley: Excellent. I will look forward to listening to it, too. So you will hear from me in two weeks' time, but you will hear from Brad next week. Thanks very much for listening, as always. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.