The Pen Addict 77/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	77
Title:	I'm A Lost Cause
Release Date:	October 24th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 77
Audio File:	Audio Episode 77
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 77
Length:	6161 min <br />1.017 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. This is episode 77. I am Myke Hurley and I am joined by a man who last week received a tattoo. He just went to a tattoo shop and he received just lots of little dots all over his arm so he can do dot grid whenever he likes this Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: That's good because that could have gone a lot of wrong ways.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I didn't really know where I was going with that.

Brad Dowdy: That's good. I'll take it. I'll take it with a little dot grid pattern, a little half sleeve dot grid. How about that?

Myke Hurley: Half sleeve dot grid. Imagine all the important work you could do.

Brad Dowdy: I'll work on that. I'll put that in the notebook for future tattoo sketches. How about that?

Myke Hurley: I think that sounds excellent.

Brad Dowdy: Alright, so how are you sir?

Myke Hurley: I am very well.

Brad Dowdy: Good, good, good. I am hanging in there myself. I'm coming in on two wheels. If you follow me on Twitter, I've been whining all week about I've been working out of town and I just got back about an hour ago from my house. Wow. To my house. So I'm glad we were able to get this in today. Me too. Because I knew I had to miss it Tuesday because I knew I was out of town then. I knew I was coming back Thursday. It was whether I could meet up with you this afternoon and I'm glad it's worked out because apparently we have lots to talk about and I was worried about that.

Myke Hurley: We have a real grab bag of topics today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but that's my favorite kind. Favorite kind of episode.

Myke Hurley: So where are we going to start?

Brad Dowdy: Let's start with some quick follow-ups.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Polar Pen Kickstarter

Brad Dowdy: One thing that came out was pretty much right after we recorded last week, if not the next day. The Polar Pen Kickstarter wrapped. Did you see the final numbers on this thing?

Myke Hurley: I'm looking at it now.

Brad Dowdy: $817,164 Canadian style.

Myke Hurley: Incredible.

Brad Dowdy: That's a lot of money. I know his goal was only $14,000. I'm wondering, you know, the guy's name is Andrew Gardner.

Brad Dowdy: I wonder how bad he's freaking out or what. Because being on having my own Kickstarter live right now, I know how stressful it's been just for the small amount that we've done comparatively to him. I think we've done a lot for, we've done way more than we thought we would do. And to see something like this is pretty nuts. One of the things I mentioned about it last week, though, was the first thing that came to mind was the Buckyballs desk magnets. And sure enough, it came out in Canada. I saw an article on CBC Canada. Someone on Twitter sent it to me and said, hey, Canada may not allow him to sell these in Canada.

Myke Hurley: Wow.

Brad Dowdy: Because of the magnetic hazard, which was the reason Buckyballs got taken off the market. Which I'll go on record and say, and I think that whole thing's bogus anyway. It's not a children's toy. You know, children can get a hold of a lot of things that aren't meant for them. It's not marketed as a children's toy. So I don't see any reason why this gentleman with the polar pin or Buckyballs or any of that should be removed from the market.

Brad Dowdy: But I don't get to make the rules, unfortunately.

Myke Hurley: You should get to make all of the rules.

Brad Dowdy: I should get to make all of the rules. I should. But anyway, we'll put a link in the show notes to this story that y'all can go read. And it's the Buckyballs story all over again. And I just wonder what's going to happen if the U.S. chimes in or anyone else makes a comment on this. So we'll see. It's going to be interesting to follow.

Myke Hurley: That would be really rough for him because he won't have enough money to refund everyone. Right. Because after, like, the tax and Kickstarter's cut, so people would lose money.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So he can't just terminate the Kickstarter and the money just gets reverted back into people's accounts. So this one's funded. Kickstarter fees are removed and Amazon payments fees are removed. That adds up to probably around the 9% range. So he's 9% in the hole right now. 9% of $817,000 is a lot of money. And that's like... If it had to all go back.

Myke Hurley: And he may have already spent some money.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, absolutely. Because he has like... On getting production ready. Yep.

Myke Hurley: He has like 15,000 of these things to make. Yeah. Oh, this could be a dangerous time for him. I wish him the best of luck.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I totally wish him luck, too. I think it's bogus.

Brad Dowdy: Anyone trying to stop a manufacturer from making a pin like this or a toy in the case of Buckyballs.

Brad Dowdy: But it's going to be interesting to follow just because it's kind of become high profile now. So we will wait and see. Unfortunately, I was right in my statement last week saying that this could happen and it looks like it might. So we'll see.

Myke Hurley: You say you know everything.

Brad Dowdy: No, no. I mean, it just kind of... Ever since I first saw that pin, that's all I could think of. It's just one of those things.

Myke Hurley: I feel bad for the guy.

Notebook Subscription Service

Brad Dowdy: I do, too. I do, too. Speaking of Kickstarter, we had a new project that launched this week that has drawn a little bit of interest. It's called Draft. Not to be confused with the Draft's iOS app, which I was like, how does this tie in? That would be a pretty cool tie-in. But no, this one's called Draft. And their title is A Physical Notebook That Syncs to the Cloud.

Myke Hurley: I find that title quite misleading, in all honesty. Because it doesn't.

Brad Dowdy: So they had a blog post. And I don't have it in front of me. Maybe you can find it on their website. Wherever it was that I read about this project yesterday, when it launched, some site did an article with one of the founders. And he said kind of the exact same thing that you're saying. They did some A-B testing on Facebook, and they had six kind of taglines. I didn't think this was the one that won. I thought there was another one out there that explained it a lot better. I'll have to find that article, or you can probably find it while I'm jabbering. But it was a – I don't know if it was boing boing. It was someone pretty decent-sized. Anyway, they had this interview, and they went through all these steps of how they came up with the tagline. Because, like they said the same thing you did, it's hard to explain what they're trying to accomplish with this. So what it is in layman's terms, it's a notebook, a paper notebook subscription service where they'll send you X amount of months of notebooks. Okay? So $29 gets you three months of notebooks. It's three separate notebooks. $50 for six months. $100 for 12 months of notebooks. All right? So what you do is you take your monthly notebook. You use it at the end of the month. You send it back to them. They scan it in. And then that becomes – all your scans become available for you to search online. Am I describing this right? Because, honestly, I didn't have too much research into it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that's what it seems like. You send it to them, and they scan it, and you get another one.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So you don't have to do the scanning or photo taking. Like when the Evernote Moleskine notebook came out, you took a picture of it, and it imported into Evernote. There were certain Evernote-branded notebooks with different things on the page that you could take a picture of and scan it in there. And it would end up in Evernote. This one, you're not doing any of the work except filling up the notebook.

Brad Dowdy: For me, something like this would never work in a million years for me because I don't fill up a notebook that fast.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because they send one like every month, right? Yeah. It's a monthly service. I'm sure you could just send it back whenever you're ready.

Brad Dowdy: But that's not what you're paying for.

Myke Hurley: Don't you pay for the notebooks to be scanned as opposed to paying? It's like if you pay for six months and get six notebooks, if it takes you a year to fill up those notebooks, surely they'll still be scanned if you send them in.

Brad Dowdy: I guess so, yeah. But I would rather, I mean, maybe it's not to their benefit.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, from the FAQ, one question. Can I wait to send the notebook back? Definitely. If you need to hang on to your current notebook for whatever reason, that's totally fine. Just send it in when you're done and we'll scan it for you then. And also, here's another one. What happens if I haven't completely filled my notebook by the end of the month? That's fine. We designed the notebook with enough pages, 60 front and back, so you should never run out of space. Simply send your current notebook anyway and we'll scan the pages you've used. Oh, no, maybe you do then. That doesn't make sense.

Myke Hurley: Because that doesn't make any sense. What happens if I haven't completely filled my notebook by the end of the month? That's fine. We designed the notebooks with enough pages so you should never run out of space. Simply send your current notebook anyway and we'll just scan the pages you've used. So, yeah, you do send it in every month.

Brad Dowdy: That kind of contradicts what they said the other, I thought. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. We'll have to do some more research on that.

Myke Hurley: The way to do this, in my mind, is instead of saying you get six months, you get six notebooks. Right. That's what it should be. What if I use more than one a month?

Brad Dowdy: I should pay for six notebooks worth of scans, not six months worth of scans.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, I mean, I know they're having to tie in the fees to all the back-end stuff that they're going to have. That's a lot of labor to do the scanning and storage and all that stuff. A lot of labor is tied into that.

Myke Hurley: So, there's obviously a lot of people are asking this in their comments.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: And they're saying it's something they're considering for the future. They're planning to do it soon after launch. It will start monthly, but we'll add an option to do buy requests so you're in 100% control of the timing.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. See, I don't even know that buy requests is even the best way. I think if you buy one notebook, it comes with the scan. That price is whatever that fee on top of the notebook price. That's what you get.

Myke Hurley: So, I did want to back this, but I can't.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, US only?

Myke Hurley: US only.

Brad Dowdy: It's just the notebooks themselves are not very expensive.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And then it comes in blank, dot grid and ruled. So, it's got some good choices. They say it's got some thick paper. I haven't read the paper specs, but...

Myke Hurley: They did say it on the video.

Myke Hurley: It's definitely going to be on their page to say it in the video. So, thick paper. Okay, great. They do say on the video they give the spec. I can't remember what it was, but I remember thinking at the time that's good. Yeah. It did sound like a nice, thick, sort of rhodia-like paper.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think the pricing of it's really good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, for what you get for this, I think the pricing is completely fair and actually cheap. So, if that's something you're into, if you're prolific, this looks like a good thing.

Myke Hurley: Or even if you're happy to just send them in, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, sure. Or even, yeah, if you want your content saved like that.

Myke Hurley: Like, six notebooks, potentially, $50. Like, I think that's pretty good. And then... It's a really good value. I think you have to pay for the shipping, though. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, first month shipping included. Gotcha. And also, just so you know, the draft app, the app that you would be able to view your scans... Yeah. ...is part of this as well. So, we should mention that. Yep. So, yeah. This seems very low-priced.

Myke Hurley: Seems like a good... And also, the really interesting thing that I think is that it syncs with Dropbox and Evernote. So, therefore, you can have it OCR'd. OCR'd and searchable in Evernote.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's a huge thing.

Myke Hurley: See? Yeah. That was why I wanted it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. If I ever do something like this, it's definitely going to have OCR recognition.

Myke Hurley: I feel like I should just get a scan of myself and just do it myself or any notebook that I choose.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I've threatened to all these years.

Myke Hurley: Stephen Hackett does that.

Brad Dowdy: I know. Every time someone mentions it, I bring it up and link to Stephen's post where he talks about how he sets all that up. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: And you two spoke about it on this show. Yep. When he filled in for me one day. I'll find that episode, actually. Okay. And I'll put it in the show notes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yep. Actually, I forgot about that episode. That was a good episode. But, yeah. I refer people to that conversation, to that post of his a lot just because I think it's a good idea. And people ask how you handle your filled notebooks. And for me, I just throw them in a bin. But, you know, I have had to dig things out saying, you know, I'm pretty sure I wrote this down once. And, you know, it would be nice to have some searchability backed up into that. So, cool. So, we'll keep an eye on drafts, too. Kickstarter's jumping again these days. It was kind of a lull there for a while. And now we're seeing some new and interesting stuff. Speaking of new and interesting, God, I'm the segue master today.

Myke Hurley: You really are.

Brad Dowdy: Speaking of Kickstarter, speaking of new and interesting. Speaking of new and interesting.

Myke Hurley: Do you want to say that any more times?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'm practicing my newsman voice.

Myke Hurley: Oh, it's good. I like it.

Field Notes Memo Book Holder

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Okay. I'll work on that. All right. So, before I drive us totally into the canyon, Field Notes has come out. With a, what do they even call on this? The Gentleman's Memo Book Cover. When it says Gentleman's, you have to say it in a different tone of voice. Gentleman's Memo Book Cover. So, they came out with a leather product last year. Last year when the Pony Express pouch came out. Yep. Yep. I never got one of those. Did you?

Myke Hurley: No.

Brad Dowdy: I thought that was the best product out of the whole lineup that came out. Even including the box. I just thought it was really cool. It's just kind of a mass storage holds three Field Notes. I never got one. It's pretty expensive. I mean, leather's expensive. But it's good quality stuff. You know, I've got my one leather dome paper.

Brad Dowdy: Memo Book Holder that I love. That's really the only one I need. Leather, you don't need too many of these. But this one has a few extra things. So, in this Field Notes Gentleman's Memo Book Cover. It has a pin holder, slot for a pin holder. It's got credit card slots. And, you know, it's kind of got the back pocket there. You can slide money and other paperwork in there, too. So, it seems pretty cool. The interesting thing they did on it is... Which they did on the Pony Express, too. Is they had their Field Notes... Oh, this is the Everyday Carry Memo Book Cover. Yeah. That I'm reading. Sorry, I'm getting them mixed up. There's two. There's a Gentleman's Memo Book Cover. Then there's an Everyday Carry Memo Book Cover.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the Gentleman's is not new.

Brad Dowdy: No, that's the old one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That came out with the Pony Express. I did...

Myke Hurley: I was confused. I did think it was called the... Well, they're calling it the FNB EDC.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So, it's the Everyday Carry Memo Book Cover, which makes a lot more sense for what it is. My apologies. But they've added the Field Notes logo, the famed Futura font on the front. And it looks pretty hot. I like the way this looks. I wouldn't pocket carry this because I don't like carrying... I like carrying my notebook in my pocket and I just can't carry a pen in my... I carry this in my back pocket. And I can't carry a pen in my back pocket. But this is good for like a backpack briefcase type of thing. I don't know. What do you think about it, Myke? Would you carry this?

Myke Hurley: I think I might buy one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. This looks right up your alley.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I could put everything in there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It looks...

Brad Dowdy: I'm seeing it. It's got two credit card slots and one pen holder slot. And then the notebook goes on the right side. Then it's got an extra pocket on the left side. You can just kind of slide stuff in the back side of the pocket. Kind of like a wallet pocket.

Myke Hurley: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's got the waxy surface. I like the waxy surface on these leather pocket notebooks. That's how my utility journal holder is. It's got that kind of waxy feel. I like that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. No. I'm thinking about buying it. It is... Okay. It looks good.

Brad Dowdy: We'll do it. And we'll get a full review by you on that.

Myke Hurley: I don't know when that will be, though.

Brad Dowdy: I'm not going to buy it just because I like the one that I have. This is not something... Like I said, this is not something I need two of and it wouldn't necessarily work for how I carry. But it sure is good looking. And I bet they will sell a bunch of it because there's lots of people looking for things like these. Notco.

Massive Review Index

Brad Dowdy: Sorry. And finally, in our follow-up section of events, I just saw this link probably... I think when I got off the airplane and was waiting for my baggage, something like this, a couple hours ago, I saw a link from JetPens from... There's a website that is kind of new on the block, I guess, in the past few months. And it's called PenPaperInkLetter. It's PenPaperInkLetter.com. I'll have a link in the show notes. And I've just been following it back and forth. There's been just kind of a slew of posts, just I don't want to say generic, but very few review posts kind of linking to some giveaways and doing some other things on some other blogs.

Brad Dowdy: And what they did recently was added a page called the Massive Review Index on their blog. Have you been able to look at this, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I've never even heard of this before.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I've never even heard of it before a few hours ago.

Myke Hurley: Okay, let me have a look here.

Brad Dowdy: You have the page pulled up?

Myke Hurley: I'm opening it as we speak.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, because my internet's going slow here.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I can tell.

Brad Dowdy: Sorry. The podcasting professional is going to shoot me by the time we're done with this episode because my internet is misbehaving. Yeah. So penpaperinkletter.com is not coming up for me.

Myke Hurley: No, it's not for me either.

Brad Dowdy: Oh. Oh, we fireballed it.

Myke Hurley: Just the two of us trying to get to it at one time is taking it down.

Brad Dowdy: All right, it's coming up now. Well, good. It's not just me then. It is some of you. Anyway, so what – gosh, I forgot his name. Now the site's coming up. I can't remember his name. The gentleman behind penpaperinkletter.com has decided to aggregate the white work. He's decided to collect every review of every product ever and link it on this page called the Massive Review Index.

Brad Dowdy: What are your thoughts on this, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I would have more thoughts if I could see the web page. Is every review that they have done on their site?

Brad Dowdy: Negative. Every review that everyone's done on their websites.

Myke Hurley: And how many websites are we talking?

Brad Dowdy: Well, he's just starting. So let's see how many he's got so far.

Myke Hurley: Like what websites are they including in this?

Brad Dowdy: All right, so – So you're in it? Yeah, Gourmet Pins, Susan Brown.

Myke Hurley: Holy moly, there's a lot of stuff here. Wow.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe that's why it's not coming up. So it finally came up for me.

Myke Hurley: So it's all alphabetical.

Brad Dowdy: Ish. It's kind of alphabetical by category.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, pen, paper, and ink. But I like that they've got – like as you're scrolling down, they throw in the alphabet a few times if you want to jump around. This is insane.

Brad Dowdy: This is insane. And it's barely scratching the surface.

Myke Hurley: It's a genius idea though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I don't know if I'm going that far. I don't know what to think about this yet. I think the jury's still out to be quite honest with you.

Myke Hurley: Why?

Brad Dowdy: Well, so this is presented as a resource, right? I consider this a resource. So this person's done all this work to build this resource. It's a great resource. If there's any monetization on top of this, I'm going to have a problem with it.

Brad Dowdy: Coming as a content creator. I mean I know he's just linking to my site. I got to think about this. I don't want to say anything that might come back to bite me in the butt.

Myke Hurley: I would say, I would say, to play devil's advocate, what about Inklinks then?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and I thought exactly about that. But with Inklinks, what I'm doing is sharing the current stories of the week, and then those vanish. Of course, they're still in the archives, but that's kind of a one-time shot. And it kind of goes through and points to things that I like this week. And there's some interactivity to it in the fact that I've put this together from reading different blogs during the week and sorting out the ones that I like the best and put some thought into doing it. This is a permanent resource that will be linked to continuously by the person doing this as, hey, come look at this. Look what I've done here. Here's all these people's content put in one place. Granted, they have to click the link to come through to my page.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, giving you the page view.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: So I don't think it's a... I mean, obviously, I'm not the one that's creating here, but I think that is okay.

Brad Dowdy: It probably is. It probably is. I just... It's weird. I don't know. You know how I am sometimes.

Myke Hurley: So my other question would be to you is, well, why don't you do this on your site then?

Brad Dowdy: I have no interest in doing it. Exactly. Because I don't...

Myke Hurley: But this makes it really easy for people. So the next time that I'm thinking about buying a pen, I could go here and see somebody's review from a trusted source, rather than just Googling pen addict to see if you've done it.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Yeah. You know?

Myke Hurley: So I think it's interesting. I think that I understand where you're coming from, but my other thought would be, okay, let's say they put an ad on this page or whatever. If a person comes through to your site, they may not have ever found it otherwise, and then you actually might end up with a new reader. Yeah, that's fair. And then more ad sales of your own. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I just look at it like, for example, I have a Tumblr that I link, that I collect content of that's tagged a certain way, like on Instagram. So through IFTTT, I've created a website that aggregates all this content, all these images, based on all these tags that I find. It's a private website that only I can see, because I don't want to say I'm putting together a website of all these links that I found on Instagram. It's not my content. Who am I to share a website and have an ad on it with all these other people's pictures on it that are tagged fountain pen?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, but then the difference is it's not linking. It's just flat out displaying.

Brad Dowdy: No, it links to every Instagram page.

Myke Hurley: Oh, it links to the page. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, but then people can't make that money on their own. So I understand where you're coming from, but I think it's slightly different.

Brad Dowdy: I think in the end it's fine. It kind of caught me off guard, put it that way. He didn't ask. I mean, not that he has to. I mean, but it would have been nice to get a heads up. Hey, I'm doing this.

Myke Hurley: That I agree with. Sometimes if you're going to do something like this, just a simple email at least is the right thing to do. Yeah. You know, so then you can, if you say nothing, then fine. You know, I'll take your denial of response as it's okay to do this.

Brad Dowdy: And then he's setting it up to rate people by the quantity of the reviews that they do. Yeah, it seems weird. Yeah. So maybe I'll shoot him an email. It would just have been nice to get a heads up that, hey, can I put, you know, several hundred of your links on this page and then point people to this massive review index that I created. Yeah. I don't know what my answer would have been to be quite honest with you.

Myke Hurley: I know you well enough, I think, to say that you would say no.

Myke Hurley: Because you would have had that reaction like you had instantly. Whether you would have ended up changing your mind or not, initially you would have, you know, it would have got your back up a little bit and you would have said, no, I don't want to do it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't know. Why am I so particular about that? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I just, I don't know.

Myke Hurley: It's okay.

Myke Hurley: You're allowed to be precious about your content.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And it's not that I'm, it's not that. It's just, I mean, people can link to my, people link to my blog constantly and do it all the time and do, you know, their own ink links posts and that's different. Like, I don't know. I look at this as something different than, you know, standard linking.

Myke Hurley: Sure.

Brad Dowdy: Anyway, we'll let it go because I, like I said, I haven't had that much time to think about it and I have an email dumb and I'll pull up his name now if the page loads.

Brad Dowdy: Heath Cates. So I'll be, I'll shoot Heath an email and see what, what's the, what's the deal going on here. So maybe I'll have more to report next week and maybe I'll have happy, fun, good news.

Myke Hurley: Brad goes on the email offensive again. First visionary.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I mean, I don't, I don't feel it's fair for me to talk about people without getting their input as well.

Myke Hurley: I agree with that. That's the, that's the gentlemanly thing to do. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, I'm, I'm open. I'm an open book.

Myke Hurley: Can I say again, just how much I love my Edison pearl?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, you can.

Myke Hurley: That's all.

Brad Dowdy: I saw it on the, what did I see it on the Instagrams this week or on the Twitters? You saw it on Instagram. Yep. That's a sexy pen.

Myke Hurley: I don't really have much to say. I just, I just freaking love that pen.

Brad Dowdy: I know. It's, I'm, I'm really glad you bought that pen and I didn't even think about recommending it to you because that's one that I would have wanted you to try instead of buying, you know, and we, we talked about it when it first came out and, you know, that's just something you'd want to try before dropping the cash on it. But I'm glad you got to try it. Just like we talk about all the time, people should try these things if at all possible. Sometimes it's not. And, um, boy, you have, uh, got yourself a winner.

Myke Hurley: I'm very, very happy with it. And I just love this, the ink, that orange ink.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to have to, uh, I'll, I might order that next week.

Myke Hurley: It, it, it's just such a great color and it just adds something.

Squarespace

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Speaking of winners, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: How about Squarespace? How awesome are they?

Myke Hurley: They're total winners. That's it. That's what they are.

Myke Hurley: So this episode is brought to you by the fine folks over at Squarespace. The all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio for a free trial and 10% off. Go to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho10. Now you've heard me talk about Squarespace and how they're always adding new features and they have their, I have 20 beautiful templates that you can start with at over 20, I believe, that have won awards, many awards. They have a 24 hour, seven day a week, award-winning customer service team too. Squarespace plans. You can get a Squarespace plan and start your own site online with their amazing tools starting at just $8 a month and that includes a free domain name. Now I want to talk about Squarespace Commerce a little bit and Brad, can I put you on the spot for a moment? Sure. So I think that I spoke a little about Squarespace Commerce last week and we've mentioned that it's something that you're going to be using for Nock. Yes. And I just wondered what was it about Squarespace Commerce that made you choose this platform?

Brad Dowdy: The short version is I gave Jeff the login to it who has never used Squarespace. Jeff is my business partner in Nock for those who didn't know and I gave him the login to that. I told him to look at Big Cartel and I told him to look at Shopify. He started using the Squarespace interface and said this is so easy. I said, okay, I don't even need to look at it. Let's do it.

Myke Hurley: And that's because, I mean, I'm putting words in your mouth. I have a Squarespace experience.

Brad Dowdy: That's what I was going to say. I'm used to the interface. I'm used to all this stuff but in this business partnership, Jeff needs to know all these tools as well. And you know, there's new things added in with Commerce and there's different things to build on and things like that but just the basic aspect and he had already, by the time, I think we did a 14-day free trial and I think the second day I just went ahead and paid for it because he had already built out like all the framework of all the sites that he wanted to see. So, I knew he liked it and never having used Squarespace before and he found it easy. So, that was all I needed.

Myke Hurley: So, from having never used Squarespace before to like two days later, you've got an entire website with a Commerce platform.

Brad Dowdy: Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. Now, it's not something ready to launch because we're not at that point yet but yeah, I mean, we have, you know, we probably have 10 product, 10 test products built out with full descriptions, SKUs, inventory,

Brad Dowdy: pricing, shipping, all that stuff just in the background. I mean, no one can see that yet until we make it go live but yeah, just playing around with it, we've built all that stuff out and no time flat.

Myke Hurley: the thing that you're going to find really difficult is being able to take payment though, right?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, that's another thing is because I, not that I have anything against PayPal but you know, PayPal is good and it's the biggest name in the game but Squarespace uses Stripe and the Stripe integration is just, I don't know, it's a few clicks of a button I got to sign up with Stripe, I've gone through the page, I hadn't signed up yet because we're not active yet, I didn't want to start my account or there's no additional fees or anything though, they take a, I think it's 2.9% fee, Squarespace takes no fees for that, I just pay them like my monthly hosting fee essentially is what it is for the commerce side of things and then Stripe takes, I think it's 2.9%, I'll let Myke verify that.

Myke Hurley: 2.9% and 30 cents on top 30 cents per transaction per successful transaction.

Brad Dowdy: Which is super competitive and I don't, looking at it, I haven't looked at a comparison chart but just in general it's either as good as or better than any other payment processor on the market so and it integrates right in with right in with Squarespace it's literally a matter of a click of a few buttons to set up that account so

Myke Hurley: thanks for that Brad so go and check it out for yourself if you're interested in starting your own website or even starting a commerce platform of your own so go to squarespace.com sign up there for a free trial and when you're done with a free trial don't forget to use the code TALLYHO10 it's going to get you 10% off whatever you spend at Squarespace so thanks so much to them for sponsoring the pen addict and for supporting all the 5x5

Brad Dowdy: yes thank you Squarespace

Myke Hurley: so finally oh go on

Brad Dowdy: oh no I was just going to say one more thing about Squarespace is Jeff and I can't wait to get this site going me too we're the Kickstarter has been awesome we're you don't want to say your idea is validated because really we haven't even started yet if you will business wise but we feel like things Jeff and I are so excited to fulfill this Kickstarter and open this store and be able to just explode all the ideas out of our head into a store which we can't do until we do all this Kickstarter stuff first the store is going to be the products we're going to be able to offer it it's going to be awesome that's all I can say I wish I could share more but the ideas in our head and the synced up wavelengths that we're on it's going to be nothing but good stuff I didn't know I would ever be to this point as far as being creative and business wise but I'm beyond excited for what is to come for NotCo

Myke Hurley: as are we all

Brad Dowdy: yes I just wanted to throw that out there anyway so what were you going to say

Pelican M205

Myke Hurley: so finally you've reviewed the Pelican M205

Brad Dowdy: yeah so what did you think did you read that review

Myke Hurley: yeah it wasn't what I was expecting yeah

Brad Dowdy: we didn't really

Myke Hurley: talk a lot about the pen

Brad Dowdy: yep I did that on purpose okay good yep I mean I don't it's hard writing a basic review for every product yeah you don't want it to get stale and not that I mixed it up on purpose it's just that I had more personal feelings about this pen than I did about you know a Pilot G2 gel

Myke Hurley: yep that definitely came across because I want one even more

Brad Dowdy: right and it's hard these are things that are hard to talk about and hard to write about how your personal my personal feelings about how I feel when a certain pen's in my hand I try to come across and I try to get that across and I try to say things that you know try to make people relate to that but it's a hard thing to do and that's was the hardest part about the Pelican M205 because if you just look at it in a picture okay if you put two pictures side by side and I show you this black Pelican M205 with black ink in it and a price tag that says $140 and that's in the left picture and I have a picture on the right hand side with a TWSBI 580 loaded up with Con Pecky and it says $60 what do you I mean what are you going to buy I mean I think you know if we if we did that AB test I think it's probably going to be about 80-20 TWSBI just from a picture alone and the price point right I mean maybe I'm delusional in that but so taking a pen that most people would say looks extremely simple and having to explain how good of a pen it is especially in relation to a pen that is more than half its cost it's hard to do so I hope that came across in the review and I think from the feedback I got on it I got a lot of tweets on this I didn't get too many comments there's a handful of comments on it I think that came across I think I was successful in what I was trying to share about this pen and that's what I you know I don't want to I want to share my experiences with the pens I don't want to necessarily tell people what to buy because I can't do that because we all have different tastes but I want to share my experience and maybe you can relate to some of that and maybe you can understand why a $140 pen is different than a $60 pen for certain reasons that doesn't mean you should buy the $140 pen that doesn't mean the $140 pen is better but there are reasons why it's a good pen and trying to explain that you know it can be a challenge you know especially for something like this and that's just kind of kind of the way it came out you know this was this pen's more about feel and and I don't know feel and I don't know just how it how I use it and how I feel when I use it as opposed to specs right this pen isn't about specs because it's going to get beat in some specs and I don't know

Myke Hurley: sometimes it's more about how it makes you feel and the heart of it that makes it special because if it was all about specs then there'd only ever be one great pen

Brad Dowdy: right

Myke Hurley: because I have a bunch of pens which some people consider to be their favorites which are not mine sure so look at something like the high tech C I don't like it but people a lot of people consider it to be the best pen ever made but it's so many things in personal taste and the way that you write with the pens like for example the vanishing point I don't rate that as high as you do anymore it actually falls below many pens that I have now it's you know

Brad Dowdy: yeah and that's the thing I mean your tastes change over time too and the more you learn the more things change you know the more you're able to take what you've learned and process that information and make you know buying decisions related now on the new information that you've gained over the years so I think that's happened to me a lot too so actually it was funny when I was out of town Myke Dudek sent me a message and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it I don't have it I don't have it right up in front of me but he basically said just out of the blue we were having a conversation about something totally different and he said out of the blue are you sick of reviewing regular pens that you find at the office supply store and that was it was like a one sentence little thing and I said absolutely freaking not I mean I'm excited about finding good pens and cool pens of any type you know I guess he was saying that I'm reviewing a lot of fountain pens recently and I am yeah so he says his exact message is do you feel like you're kind of over reviewing gel and other office pens my response was not at all so and the gist of it was I still like a good pen no matter what it is but what I find to be a good pen has changed over the years

Myke Hurley: yeah

Brad Dowdy: so and it's just a constant learning process and that's kind of what I was trying to share with this review and really with my blog as a whole you know I want to provide information and you know let people use that information to make the most informed buying decisions they can so maybe that's why I shouldn't be upset if all my links are on the massive review index or whatever that thing's called because maybe it'll help someone right Myke

Myke Hurley: maybe it will

Brad Dowdy: all right

Myke Hurley: I feel like I've turned your thinking

Brad Dowdy: you know me well enough to know exactly what I thought when I saw that but all I did was kept telling myself don't jump to any conclusions what are you doing you know don't be a fool oh man but yeah the M205 I would I'm going to end up with several of these pens just to be perfectly honest with you

Myke Hurley: the M205 or Pelicans

Brad Dowdy: the M205

Myke Hurley: why several of the same pen

Brad Dowdy: because they they make a demonstrator version this is this is the exact same pen that's the yellow highlighter one that I bought that I haven't even inked up yet

Myke Hurley: I don't know how you've kept that thing I've been

Brad Dowdy: so busy I don't

Myke Hurley: care Brad you should be highlighting all the Kickstarter money you're making I have been

Brad Dowdy: so busy but I promise I will ink it up this weekend

Myke Hurley: because I really am interested in that a lot

Brad Dowdy: yeah but it's the exact same pen as this one 100% it's just in a clear yellow plastic it looks so good though then they just came out with a green one this year and they came out with a blue one not too long ago that's still available so

Myke Hurley: just found it on the writing desk for 80 pounds yep

Brad Dowdy: yeah so

Myke Hurley: what do you think 80 pounds

Brad Dowdy: I paid under 90 dollars on sales that's way cheaper what I paid than yeah I

Myke Hurley: mean but once I've you know done what I need to do to get the thing here

Brad Dowdy: sure oh I know I know what I'm saying is it's a common enough pen even in your neck of the woods to where you might can find a sale they do go on sale from time to time so I don't know it's not going anywhere fast so you don't have to rush into purchasing it like I waited and waited and waited and and uh yeah I sent out a tweet saying hey lovinger's got these on sale I bought it within five minutes

Myke Hurley: I'm definitely not gonna buy it until you've reviewed it

Brad Dowdy: mm-hmm mm-hmm I'll do that soon

Myke Hurley: yeah I'm really interested in it though so obviously it's a different is it a different model M205 Duo

Brad Dowdy: yeah I mean the build is the same I think it's just that because it comes with the double broad nib and the highlighter ink so it's marketed as that

Myke Hurley: so I found it for a little bit cheaper on another website but I don't know if I can trust it

Brad Dowdy: all right well I'm gonna do something real quick and you said we can wrap it up but I promised all my Twitter followers I would answer their their tweets because I was I was worried I wouldn't have enough to talk about

Myke Hurley: I just found it for 50 pounds on Amazon

Brad Dowdy: yeah see that's the right price that's about that's closer to what I paid

Myke Hurley: now I'm thinking that I might as well just buy this pen right now yeah that's a good price that is pretty good right oh Brad what have you done how much is gonna cost me to ship it though

Brad Dowdy: at this rate you might have it inked up before I do

Myke Hurley: oh man okay

Brad Dowdy: oh this show so I'm gonna I'm gonna yeah we get that we get that email a lot don't we or that tweet actually we just got one a few minutes ago where'd it go yeah I heard it come through found the podcast two weeks ago already ordered far too many pins just got to the episode with your Kickstarter campaign broke yeah well thanks thanks Martin Walsh

Myke Hurley: well Martin as you can clearly see it happens to all of us

Brad Dowdy: absolutely

Myke Hurley: just listening to my co-host and I'm thinking I'm I'm just about to spend 58 pounds because I can get the special ink

Brad Dowdy: oh Brad hey we've both of us have purchased products on the air several times all right so let me get to these tweets because there's some good ones and I promise that I would do this I don't want to leave these hanging

Myke Hurley: okay

Brad Dowdy: all right because there's there's all all in all not that many of them but um where is the first one all right Dave Rhodes says any recommend recommendations for an ink on dark side of red pairing with the Lamy AL star and Rodeo Webby I am not a red ink expert but I have used a few um the Diamine Oxblood gets rave rave reviews for its color it's kind of a deeper darker red I got an ink sample of it I have not reviewed it yet I have reviewed Diamine Red Dragon though and that's super dark um and it looks wonderful so that might be the one to take a look at take a look at my review and see if you like the color of that for Diamine Red Dragon um I'll put that in the

Myke Hurley: show notes

Brad Dowdy: yep put that in the show notes you can find them at

Myke Hurley: fivebyfive.tv slash penaddict slash 77

Brad Dowdy: the official show mascot Kanuni Renishin says you're stuck somewhere and you're allowed one pen one ink and one notebook let's assume endlessly refillable for all what do you pick those are always brutally impossible questions so I'm gonna go papers I think oh god it's not that easy I was gonna say papers easy um boy alright notebook I'm going with the Doan Idea Journal large size um which I'll still contend is the best all around notebook ever produced from Mr. Chad Doan I love that thing um pen I have to use I'm gonna go Lamy 2000

Myke Hurley: wow really

Brad Dowdy: yeah

Myke Hurley: interesting I guess

Brad Dowdy: it's just

Myke Hurley: you're never gonna be upset with it are you

Brad Dowdy: yeah I hope not I hope I get a good I hope I get a good one

Myke Hurley: yeah I mean like more likely it's never gonna do anything to you that is gonna ruin things

Brad Dowdy: yeah yep and ink that's hard hmm I think I'll oof I'm gonna have to go Shinkai Hiroshizuku Shinkai which I put at number one it's just a good blue black I think I I get bored of colors too easily I like I love mixing up colors but for short time periods I think for long forever writing sessions uh my Lamy 2000 Don't Idea Journal and Pilot Orochizuku Konpeki I think I could be pretty happy there do you wanna get in on this one

Myke Hurley: if I'm gonna pick one pen one ink

Brad Dowdy: mm-hmm

Myke Hurley: I'm probably gonna go Konpeki

Brad Dowdy: mm-hmm

Myke Hurley: um what was the name of your one

Brad Dowdy: Shinkai

Myke Hurley: because I'm trying to find it for the the notes but I can't I don't know how you spell that

Brad Dowdy: I'll get it I'll get it for you

Myke Hurley: one pen well one pen is the retro 51 so the ink doesn't really mean anything

Brad Dowdy: yeah

Myke Hurley: um but then I guess I'm gonna just get the whatever the refills are what are they Schmidt uh mm-hmm uh well they call them the REF 5P the retro ones because they rebrand them but yeah so whatever is the standard retro 51 refill but let's say let's say fountain pen then just because you know I've picked an ink um I've I've agreed probably be hard pressed actually no I'm gonna say uh Twisby Mini

TWSBI Mini

Brad Dowdy: okay that's an awesome pen hey dude speaking of Twisby Mini as I run this show on for two hours did you see uh our friend Jeffrey Abbott's post on the pen on Monday

Myke Hurley: I did see that what's

Brad Dowdy: what are you up to yeah just uh

Myke Hurley: expanding the empire

Brad Dowdy: running things man but I thought that was a that was a good review I love that Twisby Mini I'm gonna have to buy that that model now I have the all clear one that black with the clear uh body that looks pretty slick it's the bad boy I've got yeah that looks better in person than I thought it would all right let me uh oh no actually

Myke Hurley: I haven't got that one I've got the clear one but it's got some black accents but it's not that one

Brad Dowdy: yep

Myke Hurley: so uh Jeff is another writer in your staff now yeah

Brad Dowdy: yes yes Jeff is Jeff is and actually he has a Twitter question oh he has a good Twitter question for us momentarily all right Amandine who is a field nut um which stub nib is the best Lamy or Twisby um that's hard because they're different actually the Twisby is a better writer if you're a cursive and you want a nice flowing it's more of a cursive italic stub nib where a Lamy is more of a just straight across firm stub nib and like the 1.1 Lamy is finer than the 1.1 Twisby and if I just had to pick one I'd pick the Lamy actually because I like that sharper thinner line um but the Twisby if you're just doing long writing especially if you write cursive you will like that better um also asked favorite light blue ink that's probably con pecky if that's light blue enough and I think Myke would agree to that

Myke Hurley: I'm a big fan of that ink

Brad Dowdy: yep uh Tony Scullambrini who is uh my friend uh Tony from Everyday Commentary the EDC blog he wants to know how the Topo Dome bag is working out it's working out amazingly well that's my everyday work bag um I did not use it for my trip I was gone I tried to pack it for my trip it doesn't hold it's more of a briefcase it's the Topo Mountain briefcase so think of it like that it's not gonna hold mass storage so I took my Topo Rover backpack which held I could jam things like my jacket and I had an extra notebook and just all kinds of junk in there that I needed more for a trip that I couldn't fit in the Dome bag but the Dome bag is my everyday work bag easily and I'm very happy with it loving it and stay tuned for a review of that one and maybe something a little more um all right ooh Mateus I'm gonna go with Mateus talk about the best green ink I like green but end up with terrible looking inks red and green inks are not my thing at all I have a few of each but the one green that I have used that has been spectacular is the Roar and Klingner Alt Gold Grun it is a killer shading ink it's not a traditional color it's amazing looking I would I would load that ink and I do load that ink in one of my daily carry pens it's that good and I'm not really a green person so that's a fantastic looking ink all right so here's Jeff Abbott's question this is for both of us what does your significant other think of your hobby you want to take that one first

Myke Hurley: try my best to hide it I have so many hobbies that she thinks is strange this is just one of them in all honesty like this is just one of the many peculiar things that I do that I'm interested in so she just judges me with the same amount

Brad Dowdy: so it's basically you get the roll eyes

Myke Hurley: it's not even so much that it's just like okay this is that thing that you like

Brad Dowdy: my wife used to be that way and I used to try to hide it from her but now she's like well help me find a pen that I like and did you get it you know what's this charge for 160 dollars for it's for a new pen oh okay so that's the phase that I'm in right now where I didn't even get like smacked around for that just a random pen charge on the credit card

Myke Hurley: I mean that's just because you know you just point highly successful Kickstarter campaign

Brad Dowdy: that's right so she has turned the corner into like actively active interest put it that way

Myke Hurley: oh I see

Brad Dowdy: okay this is what he does instead of feigning interest it's active interest yeah yeah yeah that buys

Myke Hurley: a lot of jewelry

Brad Dowdy: that's right that's right gosh now she likes that but she doesn't listen to the podcast no I'll get her to download though Brad Thornboro EDC fountain pen update what type and how do you carry still looking for a better field notes and pen combo for all situations I'm pretty much secure a pigment micron in my field notes for the majority of the time if it's not that it's going to be the otto graphic liner and if it's not that it's just going to be whatever fountain pen that I've picked up that day and think might work well in the field notes I don't use a lot of fountain pens in field notes so he's wanting an EDC fountain pen for that I mean any Kaweco model is going to be the way to go just for the size and they're so good the nibs are so good that I don't have a better choice than that honestly because I really use the secure pick or micron more than a fountain pen in my field notes my

Myke Hurley: everyday carry has changed significantly

Brad Dowdy: yeah it's a perlet

Myke Hurley: field notes and space pen just in case I need something to throw around but I'm using the perlet in the field notes and I've also got the vacuum with me as well and I carry those in my don leather holster that's awesome so it's a little too much to keep in my pockets all the time but I am

Brad Dowdy: yeah see I'm going back and forth with my carry right now I have too many things to ink up and test I try to carry minimal I'd love to carry just like three pens but I'm back up to like 10 or 12 right now I'm a lost cause but

Myke Hurley: tomorrow I'm going to a conference and all I'm taking with me is a blank field notes book and the Edison nice I just cannot get enough of this pen man I love every little thing about it

Disposable Pens

Brad Dowdy: ! and Elizabeth ! has wants to know thoughts on disposable fountain pens they're good if I mean if you're quantifying disposable as non refillable most of those are pretty bad but in theory I guess every fountain pen is kind of disposable in the fact that you can refill them forever but I think what she's referring to is just kind of the easy to access lower end of the market like pilot preppies excuse me platinum preppies pilot varsities things like that which are decent quality I really have no issues with them I love the platinum preppy for three dollars that's it's got a great fine nib I love that so I am not sure if I answered that right you can email me Ann Elizabeth because I like your name because it's the reverse of my daughter's name

Myke Hurley: I assume you mean it's Elizabeth Ann not written in exact reverse

Brad Dowdy: not in exact reverse because that would be

Myke Hurley: weird

Brad Dowdy: that would be awful definitely so Ryan Gray wants to know is it just fountain pins from here on no ! I covered

Brad Dowdy: this is a tough one Vaughn Johnson he's had several good questions over the years approximate total expenditures per month to feed your habit and let me go along with the very next tweet is from sometime guest reviewer Brian Draghi at Sketch Scape do you have a pin budget for each year do you keep tabs on how much you spend and is it more or less than you expected

Brad Dowdy: I try to be reasonable I'm also afforded the luxury of having my blog sponsored by JetPen so I get some of this stuff for free then I get other fortunate to work with other great vendors like Kaveco who send me products to test out

Myke Hurley: you're really trying with that aren't you

Brad Dowdy: I am because now I feel I feel dirty if I say ! the other way so !

Brad Dowdy: I don't go berserk buying every pin I want sometimes I have to wait months to buy a pen to fit in my budget just like that Franklin Kristoff it took me probably 4 months until I felt like I had the money to buy that one so I don't go crazy on buying pins but I don't have a strict budget that I follow I like this question this is from Jim Cant what is your single most valued sought after feature in a fountain pen let's take decent nib off the table see mike you were right we should have saved these for next week but you know twitter twitter um it's it's time based next week these people wouldn't care so mine is a good feeling section where i grip the pen if it's got threads in the way if it's got sharp ridges it's going to be unusable to me so companies that design the best sections are going to be my favorite fountain pens sorry i'm scrolling through my twitter feed i think we about got it here oh last one in from jim cant whether fountain pen or not or both what do you think is the most glaring omission and pens currently on the market uh pressurized fountain pen that's kind of a joke but still i mean fountain pens are not travel friendly so a more travel friendly fountain pen which relates back to the everyday carry type fountain pen has there been anything that's really stuck and i mean there hasn't it's it's hard to find a great road worthy travel pen i mean we all carry i mean i carry my fountain pens everywhere around town but if like i just traveled out of town for four days i didn't carry a fountain pen with me just because i didn't want to deal with it so i don't know how to solve that question um but that's that's one idea for sure you have any ideas on that anything in a pen you're looking for that you just can't get i don't know yeah that's a hard question but i think there's an answer to that question i just need to think about it more

Myke Hurley: i honestly don't know yeah there's nothing that i'm like looking for you know where i'm like oh i should have had this yeah because i wanted i wanted a really good mini fountain pen and i've kind of got two of those now

Brad Dowdy: yeah i know i've kind of expanded my my arsenal there too so i just still want a more like i said more road worthy fountain pen but i mean that's talk about being picky about something i would be totally picky about that maybe it's the twisby mini i don't know that could be one i don't know we'll see but anyway those were great questions if i missed anyone um let me know tweet me back say hey you missed my question and i will certainly answer it and thank you so much everyone for sending in these these questions i was begging this morning for a little extra content today because i wasn't sure what what i could put together but uh mike had my back as always so i roll yes sir all right i think we're done for the day sir cool

Myke Hurley: excellent stuff so if you want to follow us online you can do it in a couple of ways uh you can go to penaddict.com and knockco.com that's where you'll find brad he's also uh at dowdyism d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m um on twitter i am imike i am y-k-e and that is it for this week's episode of the penaddict you can find the show notes for today's episode at penaddict dot sorry five by five dot tv slash penaddict slash 77 thanks so much for listening we'll be back next week until then bye bye bye bye