The Pen Addict 36/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	36
Title:	Would You Like To Try A Sample?
Release Date:	January 3rd, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 36
Audio File:	Audio Episode 36
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 36
Length:	3838 min <br />0.633 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 36 of The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley. Happy New Year to you all. I am joined, as always, by my good friend, the pen addict himself, the shining firework of pen knowledge, that is, Mr. Brad Dowdy. How are you, sir?

Brad Dowdy: Well, hopefully my pens and inks don't explode as much as the fireworks did on New Year's Eve.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. It was a New Year's-themed introduction for you today.

Brad Dowdy: And Happy New Year to you, Myke.

Stationery Resolutions

Myke Hurley: And to you, sir, and to you. So we're actually going to talk a bit about some stationery resolutions today, and we'll talk about that in a bit, right? That's going to be the main topic for the show today, but we've got a little bit of follow-up before...

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I just wanted to touch base on a really good email we got into the Pen Addict, to the 70 decibels address. So I'll let you give that address later. But it was basically from the perspective of someone who is new to the show, new to the Pen Addict podcast, new to pens in general, new to reading the blog, things like that. And I won't read the email because it's pretty long. It was a really good email. But it was generally saying, you know, I'm listening to these episodes, I'm new to this, and I find myself getting a little bit lost listening to some of the topics you guys are talking about, or some of the specific pens you're talking about, or some of the terminology that you're using, things like that. And, you know, Myke and I don't do it enough, or especially me, I don't do it enough. Sometimes I take for granted that, you know, everyone is kind of up to speed on some of the things we're talking about. I mean, I do, I definitely try to elaborate on new things or things that I'm learning about. I certainly don't know everything. It's a learning process for me, too. So, you know, one of the things I wanted to take away from this email is, you know, to try, and when I don't, you guys tell me, you know, send me emails, tweet me, say, hey, can you elaborate more on this topic? You know, you mentioned this term. What does it really mean, you know? When you're talking about, like, this email mentioned, you know, you know, is there different writing pressures that are involved when you're talking about writing lines? Or can you describe more of the paper density when you're talking about it? Is it porous? Is it glossy? Things like that. So, you know, I'm trying to elaborate more, get a little bit more in depth on the specifics we're talking about. So, someone who's picking this show up brand new can kind of grasp more of what we're talking about and maybe help them do a little bit more research on their own. Now, when we started this podcast, we did a couple of glossary episodes. I think episode one and two were kind of dedicated to that. Is that right, Myke? I know it was episode one.

Myke Hurley: Episode one was, I'm not sure about episode two. Yeah, episode two was about our favorite pens.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So, you know, we, I do try to hit on some of the basic stuff when I remember to, but I'm not the best, best at remembering to do that once, once my mouth gets to yap and I sometimes forget the path I was headed on. So, you know, I appreciate this kind of email and what you listeners want to hear from me and Myke. And it's good to know that you, there's some items and some topics that you need us to, you know, explain a little bit more, give a little bit more background. Is that kind of how you took this email, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I mean, I, as you say, we didn't really, we always said that we were going to do episode one, we was going to do some glossary, give some terms, because you were going to teach me some stuff as well, because I was very new to looking at pens in this way. And we always thought, oh, we refer people back to it, but I don't really think we've ever done that. So if you are new to the show or, you know, and you, you haven't listened to previous episodes, I don't really think most people go back and listen because why would you? But, you know, episode one is, is a really good place to, to, it's actually a good show. I recommend everybody listens to episode one. I'm sure me and Brad will sound very different to what we do now. Brad is always a pro. It's only me that's had to improve.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, absolutely.

Myke Hurley: There's, there's some good terms.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, how many, how many, how many awards did you win on the golden headphones, buddy? All of them. Okay, that's true. You do run it, so the ballot box is stuffed.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah, there's a lot of glossary terms there. But, um, the, the listener, Hua, who sent us the, the email, uh, they suggested a, a bunch of different terms as well. Um, you know, talking about trying to quantify as scratchy and, and smooth writing, things like that. And we're gonna, um, I spoke to me and Brad were talking just before the show and we're gonna do a, uh, updated glossary episode in the near future. Talking about some of these things. Like, for any long-term listeners, we always said that we would sort of do a, do an episode focused on left and right-handed writing and how that changes. I think we've ever done that either. And that's something that they mentioned. So, yes, it's, it's, we, we love the feedback because it helps us keep in touch with what you want to hear and, and to tune the show. And there's a few ways you can do it. You can, you can email Brad directly at thepenaddict at gmail.com. Um, obviously we're both on social networks. I'm iMike, um, on, on the app.net and Twitter. Brad is D-O-W-D-Y on app.net and put ISM on the end, so Dowdyism on Twitter. But you can, uh, also get in touch with us via the contact form, which Brad mentioned, which is probably the easiest way, to be honest, because you don't have to remember any addresses. You just go to 70decibels.com forward slash contact and you can just select the pen addict from the drop down list and that will find its way to us. So, uh, yeah, any of those ways we love to, we love to hear from the, uh, the pen addict community. Um, so get in touch and, uh, let us know what you think, what you want to hear.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I think just to, just to follow up the follow up, I think we've covered a lot of, in the beginning, we covered a lot of 101 stuff. You know, I, now I think it's, we need to like, uh, grow that a little bit and start covering a little bit more of the, the next level stuff. You know, we're not, I'm never going to make it, you know, too high end or too technical because that's not how I am with this either. I'm not, I'm not the hardest of the hardcore. There's so many people that know, have a, uh, a deeper knowledge, especially in fountain pens that we've been talking about more, uh, than myself. But I think, you know, we kind of, we started with the glossary 101 type terms and here's some of the terms you're going to be listening to. And I think we've, we left it at that and then continued to get a little bit more in depth with maybe, um, leaving out some of the explanations. So we'll, we'll definitely work on that. So that sounds great.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. Have you got any more follow up?

Brad Dowdy: Um, you know, I don't, I don't think so this week. I think, uh, I think I'm pretty much ready to, to get into the episode.

Myke Hurley: I did receive a tweet and I could look for it, but I can't remember off the top of my head, um, who it came from asking me about the, um, the, uh, the pilot.

Myke Hurley: What's the name of it? Uh, fifth. Oh yeah. What's it called? Fifth generation. What did he call it?

Brad Dowdy: The one we were just talking about last episode. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: The fifth something.

Brad Dowdy: That's the Parker. Parker fifth ingenuity.

Myke Hurley: That's it. The Parker fifth ingenuity. Um, somebody got in touch with me on Twitter and they asked if the refill would fit in a different pilot pen. Um, but from what I can see, the answer is probably no because the, the actual refill itself doesn't have like a screw or anything in it. Um, it's, I can only assume it's friction held in or you clip it in some way. Um, and I'm sure that's to stop people from, uh, from doing that, from buying like cheaper bodies and putting the refills in them. But yeah, there's, there doesn't seem to be a mechanism for it.

Myke Hurley: Does that make sense?

Brad Dowdy: Just looking at the, just looking at the picture of that one that looked like, uh, uh, I guess you could say it's just a, like a proprietary refill. I don't think it's going to fit anything but that pen.

Myke Hurley: I will find that tweet and I'll put it in the show notes because I actually took a photo of like a sort of closeup ish photo of it for, for that, uh, that listener who got in contact. Um, to, just to show them, um, you know, this is, uh, yeah. So you can see if that makes sense. Do you see what I'm trying to say? So they, I can say.

Pen Blog

Brad Dowdy: Oh no, absolutely. Because I mean, one of the things I've talked about since I started the blog so many years ago is, you know, people wanting, wanting to buy a Montblanc. And I was like, well, just go buy the refill and trim off, you know, an eighth of an inch and put in a G2 barrel. And there you have the, are you buying it for the, the writing performance or you're buying it because you want to show off your Montblanc? Well, if you just want to, cause you think it writes really well, just go buy the refill. Well, this would be the same case. If you could put this refill in a much cheaper barrel, you'd save yourself, you know, $150. But I, it, looking at it, it doesn't look like it's going to be that easy.

Myke Hurley: No. So, uh, I'll find that. I'm sure it was to Twitter and app.net, but, um, I will find it and I'll put it in the show notes. So if you want to see, um, the tweet and I'm sorry to the person, whoever it was that tweeted me and I've not remembered that or didn't have that prepared. Um, but yeah, if you want to see what the image and stuff, it will be in there for you to see. Cool.

Myke Hurley: So, um, before we get into our, uh, our main topic for this week, shall I talk about Squarespace quickly? Yes, sir.

Brad Dowdy: Let's do it.

Myke Hurley: So, um, our, our show, The Pen Addict is always, and has been for some time, sponsored by those fine folks over at Squarespace.com. Um, and they're continuing to support us into 2013. So let me tell you about Squarespace. They're a company that both me and Brad use because they are quite simply the best place to create a website. They give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website. Squarespace is a fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio. If you want to see a beautiful Squarespace 6 site, go to penaddict.com and you will see it. And also if you go to Brad's site from any device, so you're looking at it on an iPad or an iPhone, they have responsive web design built into their beautiful templates. It makes everything really clean and it makes everything scale perfectly to the site. Sorry, it makes the site scale perfectly to the size of the screen that you're looking at the website from. So it doesn't throw up like a random mobile optimized page. It just makes sure that everything is kept exactly the way that you want. And they use responsive web design to do that. It really is a very attractive thing. Um, layout engine is the name of Squarespace's page builder. This is how Brad built his page. It allows you to create custom layouts for each of your pages in seconds. You add blocks of content such as photos, videos, text, social media content, and tons more. They have great iOS and Android apps to let you view your real-time analytics that are built right into Squarespace. And you can also post, um, right to your site on the go from these apps too. They have 24-7 customer support, live online workshops to help walk you through step-by-step everything you need to know to build your site with Squarespace. There's no credit card required to try them out. Just go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels and you can start a free trial there. That also lets Squarespace know that you found out about them through us and it helps support the show. Squarespace is $10 a month for their standard plan and $20 a month for their unlimited plan. If you sign up for a year, you'll automatically get 20% off. And if you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. If you do decide to purchase, click enter an offer code below the pricing information at checkout and use the code 70decibels1 for an additional 10% off. So go check out Squarespace. Everything you need to make an amazing website. So there you go.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Thank you, Squarespace. And if I can tack on to you there, I love how my site looks on Squarespace. There's some tweaks I want to do. I might change the colors, but I generally like the layout. I think my site looks even better on my iPad and on my iPhone. It's crazy. I mean, they do a really good job. When I set up my site, I did zero to – I think I picked the font for mobile, and I think that was it for mobile devices.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's the thing. With that, because I use version 5 for the 70decibels site just because you don't even want to know how that site is held together. It's just terrible, the things that I've tried to do to hack it, but it works. But I had to make loads of changes to the previous – like their previous templates.

Myke Hurley: But the new ones, you don't need to at all.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. Just some – just, you know, design-type elements, you know, colors, fonts, things like that. And, yeah, it does really well. My site looks great, and my mobile sites look even better, in my opinion.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: True. Anywho, not to belabor the point, but, yeah, I'm definitely happy with that, especially since that took zero effort on my part for that to happen. It just happens.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. Indeed. So what are we talking about today?

New Year Resolutions

Brad Dowdy: We are going to talk about our New Year's stationary resolutions. And on the whole, I'm not a resolution guy. I've just never been. It's never my thing to say, okay, on New Year's Day, here's my list of resolutions. And, you know, I just always felt I'm just setting myself up to break those resolutions. You know, say what you will on my commitment there. But I've just never been a resolutions person. But I always – you know, I'm always thinking about any time of the year. You know, it does come up more around this time of the year. You know, some things I want to become involved in or things I want to try or things I want to do differently. And, you know, I never necessarily call it a resolution. But, you know, there's – any time is a good time for a change. So you can make your New Year's resolutions on New Year's Day or you can make a resolution on July 23rd if you want. But anyway, that's my take on resolutions. But I started doing something on – I put a picture in and I'll go over it a little bit more. I put it in the notes. A little bit before Christmas, I decided there was one thing I was going to change for sure. But with the way I do my notebooks and I'll talk about that in a minute. But – and I didn't even think about, well, let's do a Panatic podcast about what resolutions we're going to have or what changes we're going to make in 2013 for, you know, our stationary needs. Then our friend on Twitter who we both talked to a lot, Kanuni Rineshen, said, hey, you know, Myke and Brad, what are your 2013 stationary resolutions? I was like, oh, man, if that's not a perfect podcast episode, I don't know what is. And I don't know why I didn't even cross my mind when I was working on it a week or two before. But yeah, that's what it takes for me a lot is for someone to say, hey, by the way, this sounds like a pretty good podcast episode and I can usually take it and run with it. And all the listeners and readers are all smarter than me anyway, so I need those ideas. So thank you very much for that. And I was like – I replied and I said, oh, that's perfect, so let's do it.

Brad Dowdy: And the one thing that I had started to put in place before this topic even came up was I have a problem with notebooks. And looking at our notes, we both – it's funny. You know, Myke and I make our separate notes and copy them into our document. They're so similar. I mean, me and Myke are really on the wavelength, but there's some subtle differences in what I think we're each trying to do. For me, I need to consolidate the number of notebooks that I have active at one time. So I get – the reason why I ask our listeners for podcast ideas all the time is because I put my notes in so many different places I can't find them the second time that I need them. So, you know, be it digital, be it on paper. You know, I've had – you know, on my Mac, I've had – I've got Envy All. I've got it synced with Simple Note on my phone. I've had the Clear app on my phone with notes jotted down. I've got Envy Note. I mean, I've got snippets everywhere digitally. You know, we've tried Wunderlist in the past, putting things in. We've got, you know, Google Drive now where we're just kind of putting some updates in. So all this digital stuff and then obviously being the pen and paper fan that I have, I've got, you know, a notebook at work with ideas, a notebook in my backpack with ideas, a notebook in my pocket with ideas. You know, something like – I've got more quarter-used notebooks than any person should have. I mean, and it got to the point where I can't find anything. I've got quarter-used notebooks everywhere, all over the house, all over my car. I forgot I got another notebook in my car. And then I've got a digital footprint that's just strewn about all over the landscape. You pick an app and I've got some junk written in it. So what I'm trying to do is organize all of my notes into one place. And for me, it has to be on – I just have to use pen and paper for that. And so I've picked up – I've had it for a while and I never use it. I've got a rodeo web notebook and I'm going to use that as my everything notebook.

Brad Dowdy: That doesn't mean that it goes with me all the time. I'm still going to use one other notebook to carry in my pocket, which I do, you know, my dome paper, leather, you know, utility notebook holder that I keep in my pocket. But any notes I write in there that are, you know, idea-related, planning-related, scheduling-related, that's all going to get transferred to the one big notebook, which I'll always have readily available. It's in my backpack or something like that. But I've got too many notebooks and note-taking apps in play. And I need to consolidate that all into one space to where I'm not looking everywhere for a note or an idea. I mean, I've got all kinds of ideas, you know, whether – you know, I've got the blog. I've got the podcast. You know, those are separate lists of ideas. I've got, you know, wish lists and purchase lists for things I want to purchase for the podcast and for the blog. Those are other lists. I've got personal things that I need to take care of around the house or things I need to schedule. That goes in there. Everything's going to go in this notebook in some way, shape, or form. And that's just going to hopefully make my life easier to – when I say, you know, Myke and I talk on Twitter. It's like, what do you want to talk about this week? I was like, well, let me look at my ideas for – you know, that I've written down for podcasts. And I have to go six different places. And that's a self-inflicted wound. I mean, there's no doubt about it. I just – I've done a bad job in the past about that. So I'm going to move that all hopefully into one space where I can consolidate that and find everything easier. So that's kind of a big thing for me. And I think in that, the problem that I think I run into and you may run into it too is, you know, I buy a lot of stuff that I don't – I certainly don't need. But – and then I – secondly, I don't use it immediately when I get it. But then I kind of get Jones and I was like, oh, I bought this new toy. I got to get it out and use it, you know, start writing in this new notebook or something. And then I'll say, okay, I'll use – I used to keep, you know, one notebook for podcast ideas. Well, then I'd end up writing an idea down somewhere else or somewhere else digitally. And then next thing you know, I've got five of them going and that's got to stop. But, you know, hopefully I'll be able to use this notebook more actively, burn through it, and then start a new one. That's my goal.

Myke Hurley: So you're using the Radea one primarily as your – that's your notebook. That's what you're using, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. And I wanted something decent size. That's a – I forget what size it is. Maybe that's your standard journal size. It's a notebook and, you know, probably 100 and something pages. We'll link to it in there. But it's, you know, it's like your standard size Moleskine notebook. I can't use the Moleskine. The paper is just too bad for me. I like to use my fountain pens in the Radea web notebook. And I don't think I've ever reviewed this notebook. As a matter of fact, I guess I want a review on that because fountain pen inks work great in it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you should. I mean, I've been using a web notebook for about three months now, and I'm just about to come to the end of it. It's my work notebook. This is going to sound strange. If I had a choice, I would go for the web notebook again. When I say I've got a choice, I have here two unopened Moleskines. I have one that the fine folks over at Squarespace sent me, and I have an Evernote one as well. So I want to use those, I think, first. Right. Because otherwise this empty pile of notebooks, which I'm going to actually get to talking about in a minute when we talk about my resolutions, it's just going to get larger and larger and larger.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: So I need to start chipping away at some of these.

Brad Dowdy: Right, right. And that's kind of how I feel too. I just need to not get too many going at one time, and that's always been a problem for me. And if I have a new idea or, like we moved into a new house back in the summer, so I started a house notebook. Well, that's just one more quarter-use notebook. It needs to go all together and get all. I had a hard time finding the notes that I was writing down or remembering to do things because they were scattered all over the place. And that's a workflow issue on my part that I'm trying to resolve by keeping this one main notebook that everything goes into.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's a good idea. It's a good practice, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Excuse me. So after I did that a couple weeks ago, I started that. And that's actually been working well so far. It's only been a couple weeks, if that. And I've had no issues with that. Everything's going in there. I find myself keeping that notebook with me more often than I would have thought. And so that's working well. So my second, and this is definitely a resolution for 2013, is I wanted to get more into fountain pen inks. We talk about our pens a lot and which inks we're using. And no matter which blog post or which episode, which podcast episode we talk about, there's always talk about what inks did you use to fill it with? What inks are you buying?

Ink Discussion

Brad Dowdy: Have you bought another converter for this? And are you swapping out the inks? And how are you doing this? And it's all ink, ink, ink. And you know what? I'm jonesing hard. I've been for a while on inks, but I've always been a little hesitant about the frequency of which I use things, use inks, use different inks, and want to give them a fair shake before reviewing them and things like that. So I've decided that 2013 is going to be the year of the fountain pen ink for me. So I hope to get a deeper dive and more knowledge and learn a lot more about fountain pen inks because there's so much good information out there. I asked for everyone to send me their favorite fountain pen ink, and I got a ton of feedback, tons of comments, emails, tweets, everything. And a lot of my friends in the pen blogging realm, they do some really beautiful, beautiful ink reviews, and I hope to get there one day and expand my knowledge on that. But I think that's just kind of a next logical step. Like I'm starting, I'm past the dabbling stage in fountain pens, right? I don't have the knowledge or the depth of a collection that a lot of people do, but I'm definitely past the dabbling stage in fountain pens. And so I think the next logical step is to really expand on my inks. I did kind of a small review about the J. Herbin Grease Nuage ink, which is kind of a light gray ink, which I enjoyed. I liked it. I didn't love it.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, that was just kind of to kickstart and open up the conversation on what other inks people are using. And I kind of freaked a lot of people out when I wrote the post inadvertently, saying, you know, that I'm going to basically allude to the fact that everyone tell me all these inks, and I'm going to buy all these bottles of inks. And like my first two or three comments or emails were like, you're not going to buy all those bottles of ink, are you? You're not going to start buying bottles of ink and start using those, are you? And I was like, you know, there's lots of, there's companies out there that do samples where you can just buy a sample. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, everyone take it down a notch. I'm going to buy these samples first and then purchase the bottles that I like because, you know, my first list is already probably 30 something inks that everyone's been recommending. And I'm going to take some of the most popular ones and I'm going to buy samples of these inks to try. So I want it to be clear on that.

Myke Hurley: You would just be quite literally swimming in ink. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, man. Swimming in my bank account would be empty at, you know, 10, 20, some of them are even 30, $30 a shot for a bottle.

Myke Hurley: Is ink expensive then, bottles of ink?

Brad Dowdy: It depends. Like one of the, one of, one of the ones that I've been dying to review, this is, I mean, for a year or two, and I just haven't pulled the trigger because it is expensive. It's the pirate, pilot, Iro Shizuku. I think I got that right. Iro Shizuku. They run like in the upper 20s, I think, for a bottle of ink. And I forget the size, the milliliter size. But, you know, they're, they're pretty steep to get involved in. But that's one that people swear by too. So, I mean, it's got, it gets nothing but positive reviews for the color and the performance and things like that.

Myke Hurley: What was that, Brad? Sorry, I didn't catch the name.

Brad Dowdy: It's the pilot Iro Shizuku.

Iro Shizuku Ink

Myke Hurley: Oh, of course. No wonder I didn't catch it. Iro Shizuku. I'll find it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I'll send you a link. It's pretty much any, any site you pick, you'll, you'll find it. Yeah, I got it. I got it. The colors are beautiful. Look at these bad boys. Yeah, it's pretty much strictly, I mean, I think it's, I think they're all Japanese released. And then eventually the Pilot America gets some that they send to some of the vendors over here. But like a lot of times JetPens, since they source straight from Japan, they'll get the new colors first. And then sometimes, you know, a month or two later, they start trickling into some of the other stores around. But, I mean, they release like four colors every year or something. I don't know their exact release pattern. But they're hugely popular. And, you know, people are waiting with bated breath for those to, for the new colors to come in. Yeah, I need you. And they're always well-reviewed and well-received. So, and I've never tried one. So those are at the top of my list. But they're also like 30 bucks a shot.

Myke Hurley: I need you to review these because they've got a vermilion red orange, which is one of the most beautiful colors I've ever seen in my life. So you just get to renew to reviewing any of them. And then I'll know if I can buy this ink or not. And again, I'm going to talk about ink in a minute.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. So I did put a link in the page for everyone who was freaking out. But, you know, Goulet Pens does a great job with their fountain pen inks. And they do some great color swatches and post them on their site. And they have tons of ink samples. So I'm definitely going to shop around for a lot of ink samples before I commit to full bottle. So everyone can come down off the ledge for that. I don't have the storage. I don't have the use for that much ink. And I certainly don't have the money to spend on that kind of quantity of ink. So I will be going the sample route first. So thank you, everyone, for your concern.

Myke Hurley: So it turns out there was a good reason that I couldn't find that tweet that I mentioned where I sent the picture of the ingenuity refill.

Brad Dowdy: Because you sent it on app.net?

Myke Hurley: It was an email. So I've included a link to the actual image that I sent. I'm not going to start including people's emails. That's a totally different line. I don't know if I want to cross right now. So yeah, you will see the image in there. I will give extra points. You will receive 70 decibels points for the first person who can tell me what is in the background of that image.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, cool. I haven't seen the image yet. I'm going to go with Death Star Legos.

Myke Hurley: No. Although that's in the background of a lot of my life right now. But no, you will see it. The ink is resting on something, which has been on my desk for a while. So points to the person who can come up with that.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Free internet points.

Myke Hurley: Free points. All right. A million. You receive 1,070,000 points.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. Shop in the 70 decibel store with those.

Myke Hurley: Exactly. My turn?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Go for it.

Fountain Pens

Myke Hurley: So leading straight in from what you just said, I want to try more ink. And this is because I like fountain pens.

Myke Hurley: I'm actually going to group these two together because I have two here, two resolutions here. I want to find more fountain pens. The Twisby being one. Our good friend. Oh, dear.

Brad Dowdy: Stuart Haseley.

Myke Hurley: That's it. Stuart. He said to me just before the show that he was going to pay me for every mention of his name today.

Brad Dowdy: That is not why. Stuart Haseley. Stuart Haseley. Hey, we got a lot of ink to buy. Stuart Haseley. Stuart Haseley.

Myke Hurley: How much is that? We said we'd include his review, right, of the Diamond Twisby.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Let's hold off on that because he did the review. I read it. I loved it. Let's save that for another episode.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to put it in the show notes anyway, though. Okay. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Link to the review. But we want to elaborate on that a little bit.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because I have. Yeah. I want to. I still need to get one. But yeah. Reading his review has made me sure that I really do want to buy one. So I am going to get one. So yeah. That's. Let's say that's a pen I want to try.

Myke Hurley: So I want to. Let's say. Yeah. Get into more fountain pens. Find more new fountain pens that I've not come across before. I want to find those two. That. I think that would be quite cool. And I also want to try more ink. You know. I feel that these two things go hand in hand. So you know. I'd like to try out. Some of these inks that we've just mentioned here. I have. You mentioned the J Herbin. I have some J Herbin ink cartridges. That I got with a recent purchase. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. So I want to try some of those out. And just. Find better ways to deal with that as well. Because. You know. Every time you want to try out a new ink. You've got to clean everything out. You know. Right. So. I want to just find new ways to. To get. Maybe people want to contact me and tell me. You know. I'm sure everyone's going to say. No. Sorry Myke. You just have to wash the thing out every time. Which is. You know. It's frustrating. But there might be better. Better ways of doing it. I don't know. There might be little tips. People have got like about. An amount of ink to maybe put in a converter. Instead of using cartridges. And all that sort of stuff. So. As. As I got. As I think we've both got more involved. This year. With the actual pens themselves. Well. I know I have. You've always been this involved. I now want to get into what goes in them as well. And finding some real great ones there. I'm thinking about maybe getting another. A Lamy. Just. Do they do any higher end bodies of the Safari? Or should I just look at a different Lamy. Because we just expect the nibs to be similar.

Brad Dowdy: Well. The. The AL Sport is a direct relative of the Safari. It's the same design. But it's made up with an aluminum body. So. But it looks exactly the same. Except it's shinier. Aluminum. And they're about $10 more. So they're in the same. The same family. Outside of that. They don't make a higher end Safari.

Myke Hurley: What one was that? Sorry. The.

Brad Dowdy: The AL Star. Excuse me. I said AL Sport. I'm not Cuecos. It's AL Star.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. They look just like them. Yeah. So.

Brad Dowdy: So that's the. That's the base upgrade. Of the Safari. Then after that. You're getting into their other lines.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But I would expect. Similar quality. So yeah. I want to try some of those out. I want to try more inks out. I also want to use more notebooks. I mentioned I've got notebooks everywhere. I feel like I could use them more than I do. Especially because I want to this year. Get my first Field Notes Colors subscription. So if I'm going to do that. I'm only going to start doing that when I start using notebooks more. And I feel that I could use them a lot more than I do. So once I force myself into doing that. As a little reward for doing absolutely nothing of value. But just to reward myself. I will get a Field Notes Colors subscription.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. That's good to have a goal.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. Indeed. So there you go.

Learning Experience

Brad Dowdy: I think you. I mean we're obviously. You know. We're going down the same paths here. And it's been part of the learning experience. And the transition into. You know. Things that we enjoy using. And get a lot of. You know. Enjoyment from using. And then learning more about them. And finding more. And it's just kind of like this. This never ending cycle. I do have a. I have a random question for you. And it just popped up. When you. When you were talking about. Trying to find more fountain pens. Have you ever heard of a brand. Called Platinum. Or Plat. Apparently it's a British brand. It's not Platinum. Like. Which is the Asian brand. I don't know if they're Japanese. Or Korean. Or whatever. But there's a Platinum. P-L-A-T-I-G-N-U-M. I just saw. Both in the past month. Both Jet Pens. And Goulet Pens. Have carried this brand. So they must be making some kind of push. But it's apparently a British brand.

Myke Hurley: I'm at their website right now. And I. Don't believe. That I'm familiar with them.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'd never heard of it. Until. It was just funny. How I saw them both. Pop up on these two sites. Right around the same time. And I was not familiar with them either. You know. It's a. It's more of a budget brand. Pin. At least. I don't know what their full lines are. But both of them are stock in the same pin. And it's like a 25, $30 kind of entry level fountain pen. Looks very.

Brad Dowdy: There's a brand called Tombow. Looks very Tombow-ish to me. In their design. It's nice. They're nice looking pens. I've just never heard of them or used one. So I. Since it was a British brand. Band. I keep wanting to call them a British band. Gosh. But I didn't know if that was something that you had run across. Any stationers over there. Anything like that.

Myke Hurley: I don't. I don't recognize it. And it looks quite nice. It looks like a nice little pen. Yeah. With the. Platinum. Platinum maybe.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know the exact pronunciation. Could be way off. But yeah. It's an. It's an interesting take on platinum. But it's not. It's Platinum.

Myke Hurley: So they've got. Jet pens have two different models.

Myke Hurley: So I'll put those in the show notes too. In case people want to see. You can want to see them there. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: If anyone's. If anyone's used one of those. Tell us. Tell us what you think. Because I certainly haven't.

Myke Hurley: I would love to have another. Another budget. Fountain pen. A good quality budget fountain pen. To recommend to people. And to try out myself. You know. The Lamy sort of. Price range. And that level of quality. Which is. As we've mentioned many times. Is a very very difficult thing. To find.

Brad Dowdy: It really is. It really is.

Lamy Ink Blotter Tape Combo

Myke Hurley: I've just found. While searching Lamy. They do a. T52. Fountain pen ink. And ink. Blotter tape. Combo. Yes. How awesome is that? Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: So you can.

Myke Hurley: So like. You've got the ink bottle. And then you've got. Like blotter tape. To rip off at the end. To damp. Like to. To pat down the. Yeah. Clean it up with. To clean it up. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's pretty cool. I've seen those. Those are pretty neat. That's cool.

Myke Hurley: So. Lamy ink. And blotter tape. We're putting that in. Show notes too. For people. Anything else. We want to talk about today. So. Have I. Have I. Adequately resolved. For the year.

Brad Dowdy: I think so. I think so. I think it's going to be a good year. I mean. I think it's. The biggest thing is. It's going to be a learning experience. You know. For me. And you know. I think you as well. I mean. This is. It's kind of a new realm. And it's just. I don't know. I guess it's a natural transition. Almost. At this point. To. To the things we're using. And things we enjoy using. And. You know. It took me. A long time to learn about. You know. A lot of the pens I was using before. And I think this is just going to be. A continued. Fun learning experience. To. Learn how a lot of these inks. Deal. Handle some of our pens. That we already have. Or what new pens we come up with. And I think 2013. Is going to be a pretty awesome year.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. I'm. Very excited already. And I can hear my wallet. Crying out. In pain.

Brad Dowdy: Oh. For sure. For sure.

Myke Hurley: So. There we go. Thank you very much. For listening. To this week's episode. Brad. Thank you for joining me. I think people already know. Where they can find us. As we mentioned. Earlier on in the show.

Brad Dowdy: I think we have covered it. And if anyone. You know. Subscribes to us. On iTunes. Definitely please. Rate us. Or leave a review. We would greatly appreciate that.

Myke Hurley: Oh yes. Of course. We don't mention that enough. Yeah. It really helps people find out. About the show. Tell your friends. About the pen addict too. I'm sure that they'll love it. So yes. Thank you very much. For listening to this week's episode. Of the pen addict podcast. I am Myke. And he is Brad. And until next time. Bye bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye bye. Bye bye.