The Pen Addict 118/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	118
Title:	CGI Hand
Release Date:	September 2nd, 2014
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 118
Audio File:	Audio Episode 118
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 118
Length:	5656 min <br />0.933 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 118 of The Pen Addict on RelayFM. This episode is brought to you by Pen Chalet, Squarespace, and Igloo. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined, as I always am, by Mr. Brad Dowdy. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. Hello, Brad. How are you?

Brad Dowdy: Hello, Michael. How are you?

Myke Hurley: I'm very good, sir. Very well agreed.

Brad Dowdy: You know, every now and then, I'm not saying like every week, every now and then, I kind of miss the nickname thing.

Myke Hurley: I miss it. I think I miss it every week.

Brad Dowdy: I don't miss it every week because I know it was starting to be, yeah, that was pretty good, Myke.

Myke Hurley: No, I miss the output. I don't miss the work, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. So maybe one day we'll sneak one in if you come up with something good.

Myke Hurley: No, I can't. I can't. I can't. Because if I start, then I have to just continue. You can't just throw one of them in there. Like, I feel like I can only do it at like special occasions like Christmas or like an anniversary episode or like your birthday or something.

Brad Dowdy: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I'll let you off the hook. But I was just thinking that. I was like, oh, we haven't had a nickname intro in a long time. But that's cool. We have even better intro music now. So it's pretty awesome.

Myke Hurley: It's ghetto fabulous.

Brad Dowdy: All right. So we got a little bit of follow up from last week. And one of the items was when we were mentioning the perfect pairings, the pens and paper that went together. I forget the listener or the tweeter who submitted it. But it was someone was using a palette vanishing point that they got from Richard Bender. And they got an italifying nib on it. And I said it was like an italic, you know, cursive italic type nib. So it's not. And I got a couple. He sent me a email or tweet right after. And my friend Thomas Hall sent me a tweet right after because I think he has one of these. What an italifying nib is, and we'll have this link in the show notes. It's a basically a double sided nib on a fountain pen to where the if you're in the standard writing position on a fountain pen, it'll write an italic line. If you flip the nib, yeah, you flip the nib over like you're writing upside down with the nib upside down. It writes a fine line. So the nib grind is actually done on both sides of the nib. So you can write with have a wide cursive italic line writing normally, flip it over upside down and you get a nice, smooth, fine line. So that's pretty interesting. And especially in a vanishing point.

Custom Pens

Myke Hurley: So my mind has been blown. I want one of these. It's kind of neat. Is that they custom by Richard Bender?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, it's like, I guess it's his invention, if you will. He had a customer. You read through the article. He had a customer. Basically, he had a customer. There's an old some old classic nibs that used to do this. And at the top, he shows some some old Parker and Schaefer nibs. And, you know, we do they he would kind of mimic those. And now now he will do that grind now that he's practiced it and got it down. He will actually perform that grind for you on a pen. There might be some certain restrictions like it. I imagine it has to have a pretty good amount of tipping on the end of the pen just to be able to accomplish that type of grind on both sides. But it's certainly interesting to to have and to play around with.

Myke Hurley: Man.

Brad Dowdy: So that is pretty cool. I wanted to mention that because in retrospect, as soon as he mentioned it, I was like, you know, I have heard of that. So let me let me do a little bit of research on it. And so everyone should go read about that because it's kind of fascinating. Have you ever used one yourself? I have never used one. I've never used one.

Myke Hurley: I would like some accounts of what what the experience is actually like. I mean, I feel like the fine experience would be less than.

Brad Dowdy: Like your normal fine experience.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I feel like it's I just feel like it can't be as good because you're kind of holding the pen upside down. Like the surely you can't put the same amount of pressure to draw the ink. But I'm interested.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And there's some other pens that actually do this right now. Not it's not their intended use, but I know people use the Pilot Falcon, the flex nib pen. It will write upside down pretty well and get like a super fine line. So not not all fountain pens will do that, but some will.

Myke Hurley: It's going to be scratchy, though. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So it'll be interesting to test this out maybe one day. That's on the maybe one day list. I'm not like super, super all over it, but it's very interesting. Nonetheless, it might be worth having, you know, just having around. So when we left last week's episode, you were in the midst of a dilemma. Why don't you want to give a little recap in case anyone missed it?

Myke Hurley: So for anyone following along last week, you'll remember that I had to speed out of the office one day last week and left my Edison Pearlette behind by accident. Not on purpose. I love the pen very much. And I got into work on Monday yesterday as we're recording this Tuesday, 2nd of September. I was very happy to see they were just waiting on a desk for me. Someone had clearly picked it up and they'd put it kind of like in my laptop dock at work. It was just sitting in there resting for me.

Brad Dowdy: Someone was looking out for you. Seems like it, actually. Seems like it. I told you it would be there. I didn't think that would vanish.

Myke Hurley: Because people had used my desk because we hot desk. Yeah. But not everybody has the same size laptops, so they don't all fit in the docks. So I'm going to pick it up and put it in there. It's kind of good that nobody tried to jam their laptop into the...

Brad Dowdy: That would have been good. See, I think... Actually, I think the fanciness of the pen probably saved you there. If it was a Pilot G2, it'd be gone.

Myke Hurley: It'd be gone. Yeah. Without a shadow of a doubt. I think that was what I said. I feel like you'd see it and you'd know not to take it.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: Especially anyone that sits around me because they know it's mine. And you couldn't use it at work. I'd have to... Oh, yeah. ...scenarios. I walked up somewhere and just give them my pen. Yeah, exactly. There's no way this is yours.

Brad Dowdy: I think about those scenarios sometimes in my head. Like, if I go to a meeting and leave one of my pens laying out on the desk that I wouldn't normally leave out on the desk, I'm like, man, this thing better be back or there's going to be an inquisition going on.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Like, dude, that ink is orange. Just give it up. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: You can't get over this. No.

Edison Pilot

Myke Hurley: But yeah, I was very happy and kind of relieved to find it in there. However, I have not been using my Edison Pilot this week. Why is that, Michael? I have been getting some real use out of my Lamy 2000.

Brad Dowdy: You're hooked. Oh, my God.

Myke Hurley: Seriously, man, this pen is so good.

Brad Dowdy: I'm really glad you like it.

Myke Hurley: It's so good and it feels so good to hold. But just the use of this thing is it's just fantastic. I love it. I really love it. I've noticed that the piston filler is a little bit sensitive on the end.

Brad Dowdy: How so? Getting loose or?

Myke Hurley: Not loose, but if I kind of hold it by the end, it has the ability to just not open up, but it just doesn't stay flush. And I'm weird about that sort of stuff, so I have to make sure that it stays completely flush. Like, I can unscrew it quite easily.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I've not noticed that in particular. But I don't know. You're left-handed, so that's probably why.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's probably why. That's the source of all of my problems. But maybe also in this scenario, why I love it so much. Seriously, this pen, man. So I have it in medium. I don't know if I mentioned that last week. Yes. And I've just been an absolute joy to use. I genuinely love it so much.

Brad Dowdy: And this has the Fuyugaki in it, too? The orange? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a really good combo. I still haven't bought that ink. I just need to... Someone sent me a sample, and I still haven't inked it up, and I need to do that. Yeah, you do. I've been a bad ink sampler recently.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm super happy with it. Like, it's just so awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And where did you get that pen again?

Myke Hurley: Oh!

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: Funny you should ask. Funny you should ask, Brad. Because I got that pen from our fine sponsor, one of our fine sponsors of this week's episode, the fine folks over at Pen Chalet. Awesome. Now, this pen is actually still available at the special offer that we spoke about a couple of weeks ago over at Pen Chalet. So there's one thing about that. We'll talk about how you get that in a minute. But, you know, one, you should definitely go and get it. And two, seriously, they've still got some available. How is that? What's happening, guys? Go over to Pen Chalet. Buy it. Buy stuff. So let me tell you about Pen Chalet. They are a fantastic company that sell amazing rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils. You name it, they've got it. They are an authorized reseller of all of your favorite brands like Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, and Kaweko. They run special discounts twice a month. They have closeout specials every two weeks. And they do special deals for pen addict listeners all the time. They have fantastic customer service, super reliable. I've had a couple of queries in the past with orders that I've made or I wanted to add a gift card for someone after I've made the order. They were able to get that in the straight way, responding lightning quick. They are always making sure that they're keeping their catalog up to date. They're adding new stuff all of the time. Every single month they're adding new things over at Pen Chalet. And as well as all the brands that I mentioned earlier, they sell limited edition pens and all the accessories that you're ever going to need, like carrying cases, pen holders, refills, fountain pen converters, and so much more. There's free shipping on orders of over $50 in the continental United States, but they also sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. Pen Chalet has super low prices on excellent quality pens, and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go over to penchalet.com, that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, and use the code penaddict at checkout. That's going to get you 10% off your order. You want to do that, so you're going to save 10% on any order you make at Pen Chalet when you use the code penaddict, or one word. But what you really want to do is, on the homepage, you'll see a little link at the top that says podcast. Click that link and enter the code penaddict. You're going to find a bunch more cool special offers there. You can still get the Lamy 2000 at an incredible discount when you go over there. It's like 40% off or something incredible like that. And we have a special offer this week, another fantastic offer. This is on the Kaweco AL Sport in the colors raw and silver. Raw is the super shiny one, and silver is the more matte silver one. Now, this deal is purely while stocks last. It's on a first-come, first-served basis. The Kaweco AL Sport usually sell at about $80 for retail, but Pen Chalet are going to discount this by 25% to $60. And then, don't forget that when you go to checkout, always enter the code penaddict, and again, it's going to get you an additional 10% off. So, in this case, the final cost of a Kaweco AL Sport will be $54 with free shipping in the United States. So, make sure to get the extra special deals just for Pen Addict listeners, including the Lamy 2000 and the Kaweco AL Sport, that you click the button on the top of the Pen Chalet website. Enter the code penaddict, and when you've added all the things that you want to your cart, enter the code penaddict as your offer code at the end, and it's going to get you an additional 10% off anything that you buy over at penchalet.com. Thank you so much to Pen Chalet for their continued support of the Pen Addict and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: So, this AL Sport deal is kind of ridiculously good, as actually all the Pen Chalet's deals are. They're all really, really good. But I love the AL Sport, and the two colors that are available are my number one and number two favorite. I've owned the gray matte, or what do they call it, silver matte. I've owned the raw, which are the two available. I've owned the black matte, and I've owned the blue. If it tells you anything, I gave away the blue, and I gave away the black. So, I have two left, and it's the two that are available. The gray matte is my number one. It's the best. And then the raw silver, or the raw aluminum, it's really, really cool. It's one of those that you have to use it. The more you use it, the more banged up it gets, and the better it looks. Like, it looks really bad when it's new, almost. And you're like, oh, I'm going to scratch it up, ding it up. But actually, the more you use it, the more that finish really gets baked into the pen, and the better it looks. So, I'm down to those two. And it's kind of funny that those are the two that are available on Pinchelet. They are easily my favorites. The gray matte one is the best. So, and pro tip, for all you Kaweco fans, and I mentioned this before when I did the Lilliput review, if you own multiple Kawecos, buy a spare nib, and get it modified to how you like, and you can move that nib from pen to pen to pen whenever you ink up a Kaweco. A Lilliput, AL Sport, I move this one Curse of Italic nib I have into all my different Kawecos. So, that's an excellent, excellent tip right there. So, you can get one nib for your entire Kaweco lineup. So, even fits on some of the full-size pens, the Dia 2 and Student and some of those like that. So, the number five size nib. So, there's my pro tip for Kaweco.

Brad Dowdy: All right. We got, I mentioned last week that I thought I might break out my Hobonichi in preparation for the new 2015 lineup that just launched. That's not going to happen.

Brad Dowdy: I took it out for like one day, and then I ended up using it, not using it for like the next four days in a row. But, there's something really cool that Hobonichi has done this year that is going to fit my needs better. They're offering up just some basic notebooks with the Tomoe River paper. And what they've done is they've designed two styles. With Hobonichi's planter styles, the Teco is the one that most people get. And they also have one called the, oh, I'm totally blanking, the Cousin, which is a larger size. So, they made two, what would you call these, compatible notebooks to go with these planter sizes. So, their whole Hobonichi's deal is the system, right? You get the planter, and you get the case, and you get the accessories, kind of like a Midori setup. So, with the Hobonichi, you know, they want you to buy the planter and then have the case to go in the planter. Now, they've made these extra separate notebooks that will slot into the different planter sizes. So, there's the A5 for the Teco, or I mean, excuse me, the A6 for the Teco, and then the A5 for the Cousin. And then they offer, for the Teco, the A6 is three memo pads of 48 pages of the Tomoe River and in a grid, in a graph pattern. And that's it. It's just like a blank pad, like a field note size, Myke, with the Tomoe River paper. And then for the Cousin, the one that they have is A5 size, and it comes in a two-pack of memo pads with the Tomoe River paper, same amount of pages. So, this is really cool. And I have ordered some of these this weekend. So, I don't know. It might be a few weeks before I get them. But I will definitely be reviewing these, and this is awesome to have the Tomoe River paper in just a plain blank graph notebook.

Myke Hurley: And one of the things about Hobonichi is the covers that they do as well, right?

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah, that's a big deal for them. I mean, they actually put a lot into the covers.

Myke Hurley: Tell me about them.

Brad Dowdy: Well, they just do a lot of different patterns, a lot of different styles, a lot of fun styles, a lot of bright styles.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, they have pin loops, pockets. They have accessories you can buy into them, you know, like business card holders. And they just want you to kind of have this whole setup like the Midori. Sorry. Now, people have asked us. We did a, with my Hobonichi Lux Vest Purse is telling me it's Techo. Techo? Oh, yeah. Hobonichi Techo. Is that better?

Brad Dowdy: With mine last year, we made a sample case. Jeff made me a sample case for Christmas for NotCo. And so, a bunch of people, I showed that off to a bunch of people. They loved it, want to know if we're going to make them this year. I'm going to tell you right now, we're not going to make them this year. So, I hate to disappoint everybody, but we are so busy. So, it's definitely on the radar for future years. It's not going to happen this year. Oh, my God.

Myke Hurley: They make a Tweed one.

Brad Dowdy: They make a bunch. So, yeah. Their cover lineup is pretty cool. And actually, last year, other companies like North Face made specific covers for these two. In conjunction with Hobonichi. So, I remember almost getting one of those last year because they were really cool.

Brad Dowdy: So, the Hobonichis are out. I think everyone's aware if you're a Hobonichi fan. And it's a killer product. And, you know, it's time to order the next version. So, while that's not on my shopping list, the planner, the memo books are. And I've kind of had another couple things to my shopping list, Myke, that I just want to tease a little bit. And we're going to talk about this when we kind of get into the main topic today, which is the buying process. During this buying process I went through in the past couple weeks, I found two more pens that I've added to the wish list. So, number one is the Sailor Sky Pro Gear Special Edition. If there's a pen design that speaks to me more than this one, I'm not sure what it is. It's a blue demonstrator with silver furniture and it's Sailor.

Myke Hurley: You love a Sailor, Doug.

Brad Dowdy: I do love a Sailor. You know I love a Sailor. Excuse me. There he goes. He choked me up there. I don't see any way that I'm not buying this pen. Like, I need it like a hole in the head, but this is too good looking. This is right up my alley.

Myke Hurley: The Sailor Sky Special Edition. I don't see it.

Brad Dowdy: You mean you don't see it as a good pen or you, like, literally don't see it?

Myke Hurley: I don't see it. I don't see why you're that crazy about it.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, this is... I just like... I like blue demonstrators and silver hardware.

Sailor Pens

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, that's me. That's my style. Seems so expensive. And it's very expensive.

Myke Hurley: I will always love that they do one called King of Pen. I love that the Sailor... This is not the first time we've seen this. So, they have three sizes. They have slim, standard... These are like the body sizes of the pen. And then they have King of Pen, which is the big one. And I just love... And it's... The retail price is $1,000. You need to be King of Pen to buy King of Pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. The King of Pen is pretty insane. I don't know if I'll ever own a King of Pen because it doesn't do that much more for me. I like the standard size.

Myke Hurley: How big is King of Pen?

Brad Dowdy: I've never held one. So...

Myke Hurley: I bet it's probably the sort of size as my Franklin Kristoff.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, easily. Yeah. It's probably like a... Like the big Pelican. The M1000 Pelican.

Brad Dowdy: So, the second one.

Myke Hurley: This thing.

Brad Dowdy: That is going on my list. Oh! It's the Pelican... I've been talking about this a lot on Twitter with a bunch of people. The Pelican M101N Tortoise Show Red Special Edition Fountain Pen. This is a... It's stunning. But it's gold, though. It's a beautiful pen. It's gold. We're going to talk about that, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: We're going to talk about that. Okay. So, yeah. It's not my preference. It's also very expensive.

Myke Hurley: I really want one of these, but I looked at that price and I can't do it.

Brad Dowdy: I'm not sure. This is like... I'll have to see what size it is. It looks more like the size of the Pelican M400 sizes. I haven't done any comparison to see what the actual size is, which is on the smaller end of Pelican scale, which would be the same size as the M205. This one's a stunner, but it's also a stunning price. So, it's $520. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And basically, it's... The links to these pens that we're talking about are in our show notes for today, which you can find at relay.fm slash... Penaddict slash 118. And the chat room, they're helping themselves out with these links. They're doing a very good job. Sorry, guys. We need to get better at this. The chat room, by the way, we do stream this show live at 5.30 Eastern time. I think I got that right.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, 5.30 Eastern.

Myke Hurley: 5.30 Eastern time on Tuesdays, typically. However, we're moving to Monday from next week for a couple of months. Yep. The schedule is at relay.fm slash schedule. You can actually subscribe to the schedule if you like. But you can always go there every week and see when we're going to be recording. I try my best to keep it up to date. Yes. So, this is a red, kind of like it's got red plastic for the cap, for the grip, and for the piston, the bit that you turn on the piston. But then the body is a torta shell pattern with a yellow clear demonstrator portion, too. Yeah, it's like an amber. It's an ink window. It's an ink window.

Brad Dowdy: It's an ink window.

Pen Design

Myke Hurley: It's a nib window. What am I talking about? And it has a lovely swan engraved on the top of the cap. It looks like the cap is made of some pelican. Why did I say swan?

Brad Dowdy: I have no idea.

Myke Hurley: Why would that even jump into my mind?

Brad Dowdy: That's something I would do. That's my job.

Myke Hurley: That's very peculiar that I would do that.

Myke Hurley: It does look like a swan, though. It's not standing up. How are you supposed to know it's a pelican?

Myke Hurley: So, what material is the cap made out of, do you think? Does it say here?

Brad Dowdy: Just an acrylic, I'm guessing.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I forget acrylic.

Myke Hurley: Very, very nice. Very, very good-looking pen. I'm talking about it so much because I can't stop looking at it, so I'm closing the tab. I know, that's hard.

Brad Dowdy: The price gets me, though. That's steep.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, at 50% of the price, I would have bought one already. Yeah. I think.

Brad Dowdy: And I don't know how many they do for their limited editions. I have no idea. I don't know if they even publish that information, but who knows? Great-looking pen.

Myke Hurley: Never seen tortoiseshell on a pen before.

Brad Dowdy: Mm.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I am a fan. Right, should we take our second break of this week's episode? Let's do it. I think that'd be a good idea. I want to welcome back our friends over at Squarespace. They are supporting this week's episode of the Pen Addict Podcast. Squarespace are the only one platform to make it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, and online store. For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code INC at checkout. A better web starts with your website. If you want to be just like Brad and have your very own pen blog, well, you can do that. You don't have to worry about any of the tricky parts. You just go over to squarespace.com and get started with one of their fantastic and beautiful templates. You can very easily build your own pages with their fantastic drag-and-drop page building system. It's super simple to just drag-and-drop elements all around the page, all within your browser. You can see the changes you're making real-time. If you want to add a gallery in, well, you just drag-and-drop a gallery in. If you want to add your Instagram feed in, you just drag-and-drop the block that contains all the information there. You just type in your username and password. It connects with Instagram, and your Instagram pictures will show up in a little gallery. Maybe you want to put some social links at the bottom so people can find your Twitter and your email. You can drag all that in, and you can make your website look exactly as you want it to. Squarespace take care of everything, from web hosting, image hosting, and even podcast hosting, if you want to be the next Panatic podcast. But what if you want a store, like Nock? Well, you can run your store on Squarespace just like Nock do as well. They run their own site and their store all on Squarespace's platform. Every single Squarespace website features Squarespace Commerce built right in, so all you have to do is enable it, and you can set up your own store and start selling physical and digital goods immediately. They integrate with Stripe for payments and loads of awesome services like ShipStation to help you run a fantastic business. Squarespace take away all of the pain from building your own personal or business website. They have fantastic templates that you can choose from. Get started today, and they're going to look good on all devices because they have responsive web design built right in. They have fantastic apps to help you manage your site and stats on the go. They have 24-7 award-winning customer support over live chat and email with teams located in New York City, Dublin, and Ireland. And believe it or not, you can get started right now with plans that start at just $8 a month. This also includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. So start out with a free trial right now with no credit card required and start building your website today. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code INK, that's I-N-K, to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for The Pen Addict. We'd like to thank Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of Real AFM. Squarespace, a better web starts with your website.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so our pen blog of the week is Incofile. It's at Incofile.wordpress.com. We'll put it in the chat, put it in the show notes. And this is Margana, who has been doing this forever. I mean, I think like 2008, I think, when I looked at her blog. She does a really good job. She's a real hardcore fountain pen user, so she's always talking about different inks, different pens, mostly of a fountain pen slant. And she's real active, posts a lot, posts every week, multiple times a week, active on Twitter. She's super nice, and she does a really good job on her blog. And she actually just did a post not too long ago, my short list of favorite fountain pens. And she put out one, two, seven pens. It's five pelicans and two platinums. So I thought that was pretty funny. So she's got a good collection and a great site. So if you have not been checking out Margana's site at incofile.wordpress.com, get on it. Thank you for being awesome, Margana. I haven't talked to her in a while.

Myke Hurley: Thank you for making up for that.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yes. All right. So I put this in, the show notes, thinking that we would finally have a scribble pen moratorium, but it was really too early to go moratorium on it. But I'm getting burnt out on it for sure. And a couple other people have picked up the mantle. We've put in a link in the show notes to where you can go to a site called dropkicker.com. And, whoa. Sorry. Where the person there has kind of latched onto the, I guess, the scribble problems that they've had. And one of the first things that they posted was, the title of the post is Scribble Pen Video More Deceiving Than Originally Thought.

Scribble Pen

Myke Hurley: So before we go on any further, there is a secondary video to the original one that's been posted, which apparently shows a more full demo of the pen in action. Now, what you want to do is also go to the show notes for this week's episode, relay.fm slash penaddict slash 118. And you'll find a link to a YouTube page, which has that video on it. Go and watch that video and then come back. So we will wait here for you. It's in the show notes. Go and watch the video.

Brad Dowdy: Pause. Go to the show notes. Watch the video. Come back. It's like two minutes.

Brad Dowdy: There are so many flaws in this video that I didn't even catch the first time, but it's really bad. When you read about it and someone tells you they're there, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe they did that. But basically, they edited this video so poorly that they've colored in sections and then they move to the next section and the section that they had previously colored in is not colored in any longer. So they definitely did not move through the color range as you would expect this pen to work. That's what everyone wants to see. They want to see you pick out one color, color with it, draw with it, switch to another color and keep going. How does that work? They've never been able to answer that question. So it's really strange. So one of the interesting things that came out of this post on Dropkicker is in the comment section. It's about the ninth or tenth comment.

Brad Dowdy: There's a guy named Matt. He's a team member at Tilt who is the crowdfunding platform. He said they're actually looking into their project. So I thought that was pretty funny. So did you have any comments on this video, Myke?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So the video is intended to show the pen in action. This is the video that they were asked to put on Kickstarter, right? Right. I mean, so there's a couple of parts that I want to point out. So what Dropkick is showing is how, like, when you see the pen apparently being used, there are some issues with the, like, there's some continuity issues with what stays colored and what doesn't from frame to frame. There's also, like, a thing where, like, a CGI hand is in one frame to the next, clearly showing a bit of a problem in the editing. But there was a couple of parts that I wanted to point out as well. So when it shows the person drawing on the paper, it's so clearly CGI. Like, it's not in focus correctly in some instances, which is really weird. Like, I don't even know you could make this issue. But what it would suggest to me is the fact that it's not in focus is because it's been done by a computer. So it's just not as crisp. It's not actually ink on paper. It's pixels superimposed onto paper. And, you know, yes, you could make it look fantastic if you had the budget for it, which I clearly don't. But my thing that I know is that I can't believe they didn't bring out in this post. And I wonder if you saw it, Brad. So there are multiple points in the video where they're showing the pen being put against something. And it's got, like, an iPad. And then the iPad shows up with the color. Yeah. Every time they do that, there is a visible cut in the video. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So, like, something will jolt. Like, you'll see an arm. Like, all of a sudden, the arm slightly moves because they've stopped. Clearly they've stopped. They've changed what's on the iPad screen and then press record again. Yep. Like, it's... I look at it. Like, the app must not even work. They must not even have the color recognition stuff working.

Brad Dowdy: You know what they do have, Myke? Tell me. $200,000 of sucker's money. I know.

Myke Hurley: I can't believe it. I really hope that it... See, I know it's not now because they're using this other system. But I just wish it wasn't real people's money. I wish they were faking it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: And so, like, there's... I pulled a quote out. We've been in the design process for two years. And the scribble has gone through various design changes to get it to where we are now. A working prototype that's ready for use in home and business applications. You're lying. Like, because if you have a working prototype, you are not showing it on video. If you have a working prototype, show us a video, a live video of it being done. No editing. I don't want to see silly editing tricks. Show me a single shot camera of somebody using this pen. Because you clearly do not have a working prototype. If your working prototype is four times as big with wires hanging out of it, still show me it. Because then at least I'll believe you can do it. Because right now, you cannot make this pen. And we go back to the visionary with this, in my mind. When you do things like this, you put real hard-working people, you put their livelihoods at risk. Because you create a chilling effect. In that people will see things like this. They'll be bamboozled. A friend of theirs will be. Or they'll see it written about somewhere. Or they'll hear it on a show like this. Or read it on Twitter. When Brad gets really upset. And then people will just stop. And they won't back projects like Karas Customs Project. Or like... Is it a tactile turn?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Projects like those guys. Or like... So many of our friends that do things like this. Like you, right? With the stuff that you do. Or even when you go outside of it. Like if something gets... Let's say this raises a million dollars. Right? Or let's say it did raise a million dollars. And it turned out to be a total fake. Or they're like three years down the line before it's delivered. Or something like that. These things cause problems for Kickstarter as a platform.

Brad Dowdy: Agreed. Completely.

Myke Hurley: And then it starts to affect other people that are not even making pens. You know? Ugh. It... It just annoys me so much. I know. It annoys me so much. Because it's just lying. And I don't like that.

Brad Dowdy: I know. I told the chat room you sound just like me. I feel like it. And it's good. I needed you to do this rant. Because I'm kind of... I'm not over it. Because I want to see what happens. But I'm just like... I'm exhausted of it. Of just the talk. Because it's so frustrating. And you know. Spend so many cycles looking at all the stupid things that they do continually. One of the latest stupid things they added to their website. Is they put the future retail price on the page. And scratch through it. You know? Like it's a pretend number. And you can get it for $149. The future retail price of $399 for the pen. It's just laughable. So... And they... They... You know? Trying to sucker more people in. Getting more $149. So... From people. But it's... It's... I don't... From the beginning. I don't understand what makes people want to give them their money. Seeing all this. And I... That's the... That's the frustrating thing for me. So... So anyway. How about... I don't know. I don't want to go moratorium yet. But I'm kind of tired of talking about Scribble. Because they're just ridiculous. And let's... Let's talk about something that makes us happy, Myke.

Myke Hurley: So we have a great topic that we want to talk about today. But before we jump into that, let's thank our third and final sponsor for this week's episode of the Pan Addict Podcast. And that is our friends over at Igloo. We love Igloo. And they've been helping us out with RelayFM since the day that we launched. And we thank them so much for that. Igloo are an intranet you'll actually like. Igloo is built with you in mind. They have super easy to use apps like shared calendars, Twitter-like microblogs, file sharing, and so much more. All of these apps are integrated into Igloo's platform and are really simple to set up and configure for your own intranet. Everything that you're going to need with Igloo is built right in and everything is social. This means that when you upload a file to your Igloo, write a blog post, or maybe you share an image where your team can share it with each other, comment on it, rate it, and like it. This is just like the social apps that you're used to using every day. It's bringing something more fun and more human from your social internet life into your work intranet life. With Igloo's latest release, you can also manage the tasks that are associated with your content, like updating the images for that big keynote on Tuesday that are assigned to Barry, or delegating actions after a meeting to Maud and Steven.

Myke Hurley: Tasks is the latest app to be integrated into Igloo's intranet platform, and it was released just last week, two weeks ago, to all of their customers. Igloo's task management is designed with people in mind. You can manage your projects, personal to-dos, and everything in between in one unified view inside of your intranet. Igloo have really built something that will help you keep on top of your work. If your company has legacy intranet built on SharePoint or some old portal technology, you should give Igloo a try. Or if you want to be more connected, more social, and more productive in your workplace, Igloo is for you. Igloo is free to use with up to 10 people, and you can sign up today at igloosoftware.com slash penaddict. Thank you so much to Igloo for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. Show your support to them and us by going to igloosoftware.com slash penaddict.

Brad Dowdy: So I poked around the Igloo site last night at work just because I wanted to check out a couple things because they've been so gracious sponsoring us. And one of the things I found that they do, it's a long list of features that we haven't even talked about all these things. Like you can do internal blogs and internal chats and things like that. But one of the things that we actually use at our work that is good for like an Igloo implementation is the wiki feature to where you can add in documentation. And people can edit the documentation and things like that. It's certainly useful for smaller companies that need to create their own intranet. And it's just a really good feature. I love the ability to have like a living documentation site like a wiki. And it's something we use at work in a different product. I guess it's our own home-built product. But something like Igloo looks perfect for something like that. So I just wanted to point that out because I was poking through that feature last night and I thought it was pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: All right, story time, Myke. Everyone ready for a story? I think so. I am. All right. So this is how my brain works. And so I wanted to go through this process because it happened so quickly. And when I was done, I was like, what just happened? It was just like everything lined up perfectly. So I'm sitting around last week and I'm using... I haven't... Well, let me back up. First of all, I haven't really bought many pens in the past couple of months. Since my Nakaya purchase, my Nakaya I got for Father's Day in June, I hadn't really bought any pens. That was the last... I think that was the last pen I got. Anyway. So I've been kind of going through a slow patch of buying. And definitely while the podcast was on hiatus, I didn't buy anything. It just kind of worked out that way. It wasn't planned. So I was using the Franklin Kristoff Model 19, the Anderson pens model that you and I have. And you mentioned earlier how it's a large pen, right? So I was using it. I inked it up with one of the new Caran D'Aash inks, chromatics inks that I have not reviewed yet. And it's the blue-black ink. I forget the name of the color. And I was using it and I was like, boy, I really love the size of this pen. I need more pens. Need more large-sized pens.

Pelican Pens

Brad Dowdy: And I've always wanted a larger Pelican, for example. I have an M205 and M405 Pelican, which is both the small-sized ones. They're both the exact same size. They're smaller. I thought the 600 is the next step up. I thought that would be kind of a perfect size for me. And then the 800 is larger. And then the 1,000 I've actually held. And I think it's too large. It's a really, really large pen. So I was using this FC Model 19 and really, really enjoying it. Just the whole experience of having a larger pen, riding with it.

Brad Dowdy: I was like, I need to look at getting something larger. And that wasn't an immediate thing. I was like, just mental note. Start looking at some larger pens next time you're shopping for pens. So when you have a thought like that, the first thing you don't do is go to the Fountain Pen Network classified section. So there's tip number one.

Myke Hurley: It seems like an interesting place to go if you're not necessarily in the market.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm not in the market. And I click over. Because actually, I keep a shortcut link to the classified section. I check it about once a day. I don't know why. Just for grins. Because usually if I'm not checking it, Thomas Hall is emailing me. Hey, look at this one. Hey, look at this one with a link to the one in classifieds. And I've bought several pens from classifieds. And we're going to talk about that some more. So I click over the classifieds. You know, 29 times out of 30, I don't see anything. You know, I'll flip through like the last day's posts. And, you know, it's nothing that interests me. It just so happened, like within an hour or two of me having this thought that I need larger, I need a larger pen. And I click over to classifieds. And there's a Pelican M800 Brown Tortoise. So this was a special edition Pelican.

Brad Dowdy: And it's the 800 size, so it's very large.

Brad Dowdy: And it has the beautiful tortoise shell pattern.

Brad Dowdy: And it's got gold furniture. And I've never been a real gold guy. But I've always said, if there's one thing I will get gold on, it's a brown pen. I just think it really works well with brown. Like the Pelican Green Stripe and Blue Stripe or Solid Black. I don't, or any solid black pen with gold. I just don't like those at all. But something about brown and gold really works. I mean, it's just a natural combination, right? So I look at it. And I'm just assuming it's sold because it's a really good pen at a fair price. And it's an EF nib, which is perfect for me. The pen was bought from Richard Bender. So you know it came from a legitimate dealer. The nib was worked on by Richard for smoothness. So you know the nib's going to work good. And the pictures this guy showed were very good. You know, it's hard to tell in pictures. But you can tell by the way someone writes and the way they do the pictures. That the pen's in good shape. And you can tell it's been well taken care of. And you can tell it's practically brand new.

Brad Dowdy: So I was like, wow. It's a Pelican M800.

Brad Dowdy: EF nib. It's kind of like everything I would want in a larger size pen. And he's asking $400. I think originally these pens are like $5, $50, $600. So it's a pretty new pen. And it looks good. So now I'm considering it. On his classified, until you click it, in the main form page it says Pelican M800 Brown Tortoise and Knack. And then it's like cut off. So when I clicked in there, not only did I see that he's selling the Pelican M800.

Nakaya Pens

Brad Dowdy: It says and Nakaya Portable Writer.

Brad Dowdy: It's like, oh my. Well, you know, let's see what this portable writer looks like. So the Nakaya Portable is the first Nakaya I bought. It's the longer, larger Nakaya. And I bought mine. Mine is a standard. It's not a writer. Writer means it has a clip. Okay. So mine is just a smooth barrel, no clip. This one is for the same model with a clip. And it's the solid black one.

Brad Dowdy: Not only that. But there's more. There's more. Not only that. There is. It's a ruthenium nib and clip. Which is extra. And it's silver colored. Right? It's a medium nib. Which I don't have.

Brad Dowdy: And he bought it from nibsnot.com. So I know it came from a reputable vendor. And he just bought it in April. So it's like two or three months old. And if the pictures are any indication, he keeps these pens in perfect condition. So I've gone from enjoying my Franken-Christophe Model 19 saying, wow, this is a really great writing experience. I should find more large size pens. And see if I really like them. To about two hours later. I found this classified. That not only had one pen that is dead perfect fit for me. It's got a second pen that is a dead perfect fit for me. I mean, if the Nakaya had gold furniture, I wouldn't have bought it. If it had an extra fine nib, I probably wouldn't have bought it.

Brad Dowdy: You know, there are several things that would have made me not buy these pens. Or make an offer on these pens. But everything about these pens was exactly what I wanted. I was like, this post was made for me. Which is a problem. Because now, there's two pens. He wants 400 for the Pelican and 500 for the Nakaya. So I made him an offer. We haggled a little bit. And I bought him for less than. So he wanted 900 for the pair. I ended up getting for 850 shipped. So, the other thing that I was even looking. Is I did have some space credits too. To apply to this. So I was kind of shopping. But not really. Like, I knew if I found something, I would buy it. Because I had some money. Some play money. Some pen fund money.

Myke Hurley: What's space credits? I think we've mentioned this before. That's what you refer to your...

Brad Dowdy: My PayPal account.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so my PayPal account. That's kind of my pen fund.

Brad Dowdy: So since I hadn't bought anything in a while. My pen fund had some money. I didn't have enough money to buy it all. So I did pay for some of it outside of space credits. So I made arrangements with this seller on a Tuesday. We finalized everything. Sent him to PayPal Tuesday morning. I had the pens in hand Friday afternoon when we recorded this show. I had just gotten them in like an hour before we recorded the show. But I could not be happier with both of these pens. It's one of those purchases that went so fast that, you know, I... I mean, I tried to do all my homework, right? And this is why, you know, from episode one of the Pen Addict, from blog post one of the Pen Addict blog, this has all been like a... I don't know, just like a culmination of knowledge, right? Your knowledge base just grows and grows. And you have things you can... You're constantly learning. You're constantly building off things. And you're learning how to discern what pens are a good fit for you. What pen would not be a good fit for you? What makes a pen a good purchase? Why would you buy an aftermarket pen? It's just this huge learning experience that culminates in something like a purchase like this, where I had, like, you know, two years ago, I would just have... I mean, number one, there's no way I would do this. I would spend this much money or go through with a, you know, a classified purchase on Fountain Pen Network. I would just be too nervous that I didn't know... So, not that I would get ripped off, but, like, I wouldn't really like the pen. But it's part of this whole education that I've been going through in these past years, where I can... I don't know, it just kind of comes to a head, and you can kind of determine how... You know, what you think. And you could still be wrong. There's still room for error. But I am ecstatic with both of these pen purchases.

Brad Dowdy: It's... The Nakaya, compared to my other portable, is completely different. I thought they were going to be very similar. But the added clip and the weight that it adds to that, it makes it almost two completely different pens. And it's actually a much larger pen with the clip on it. It's heavier, wider. And, Myke, these Nakaya nibs are ridiculous. It's so good. The medium nib, just right out the gate, it's perfection.

Myke Hurley: What are you trying to do to me, Daddy?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's really, really, really, really good. And then the Pelican has this... Pelican's design, as you could expect from a German engineered product, it's spot on everywhere. The weight, the feel, the balance, the looks, the way everything all works together. The EF nib, I wouldn't want anything larger, unless it was a stub. But it's so smooth and clean and crisp. It was just a perfect storm of events that led these pens to me. You know, any other day, any other time, you know, that I would be thinking about purchasing, you know, a larger pen, this wouldn't happen. It was just this randomness that made me think, this is a really interesting story because the way it happened. I mean, this all happened within the span of hours. Thinking that I want to try some larger pens and finding something available that was perfect for me, and then having the same guy have a second pen that was maybe even more perfect for me than the first one, and being able to get them both, and them both being unbelievably awesome on top of that, I was pretty happy. I've been a happy camper.

Myke Hurley: So, what are these similar in size to?

Brad Dowdy: It's hard to say. I mean, I don't have anything similar in size to the M800 just because it's large. I mean, it's probably as long as the Franklin Kristoff, if not a little bit longer. It's much heavier, and it's much more dense.

Brad Dowdy: The Nakaya feels more like the Franklin Kristoff, but it's also longer, but it's more lightweight like that Franklin Kristoff.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. They're big pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they're large pens.

Myke Hurley: The image that you sent last week, which I've also put in the show notes so people can see that secret image that was intended for the chat room, they don't show that.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, it does not. There's no comparable size. There's no scale. You know what? I'll take a picture of the 205, and I'll tweet it out tonight. You have the 205 that you have. You have a 205, right? Yeah. Yeah, because you have the lines one too that you use, but I'll tweet it out just for a size comparison for some standard pens so you can get a view. But it was just, I don't know. It was strange. It was like a fate type of thing. It was very weird. It's not something that I would normally do, just go out and spend that much money on a whim, but it was one of those things I couldn't pass up, and the timing of it was impeccable. So I'm a happy camper. I will say that. Those are the only two pens I've been using since I've gotten them, so my other pens are jealous.

Myke Hurley: Oh, dear.

Myke Hurley: It's not just the listeners that you affect.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, man. But I wanted to tell that story because, like, I forget who said it. It might have been Shireen in the chat. She says, oh, no, it's Tech Relic. Now, this is addict behavior, Brad. We support you, man. I do. I feel like a junkie when I tell a story like this. I was like, it was like a high, right? It was, you know, it, I don't know. It was just the perfect storm of events that happened. It'll probably never happen again. You know, I don't troll, you know, the fountain pen classifieds all day because I don't have, you know, all the money in the world to buy whatever pops up on there, so you try not to be. But when something pops up like this, I was ready, and I'm happy that I was. So that's my story.

Myke Hurley: It's a good story.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And I'm sticking to it.

Myke Hurley: I think that just about does it for this week's episode of the Pen Addict podcast. If you'd like to catch up with the links that we've discussed today, you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 118. I'd like to, again, thank our sponsors for this week's episode, Pen Chalet, Squarespace, and Igloo. Remember, this show does record live. We record live on typically Tuesdays, but for the next few weeks it's going to be on Mondays. So that you can take a look at relay.fm slash schedule. But we do record at 10.30 London time, 2.30 Pacific time, and 5.30 Eastern time. And the next recording will be on Monday until we tell you otherwise. If you'd like to catch up with us online, I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter, and Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, and he writes over at thepenaddict.com. So we'll be back next week with another episode of the Pen Addict podcast. Until then, thanks so much for listening. Say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.