Editing The Pen Addict 618/transcript (section)

== Lego Build ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Are you still tired from our Lego build?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Oh, great, yes. Nice, nice, nice. All right, so we have done the Lego build for the year. This is a thing that we do every year for RelayFM members. Boy, have we. If you are a RelayFM member, it's in the crossover feed. Go to relay.fm slash membership to learn more and become a member and support this show. Or if you support any show, you get access to this. So, you know, it's just like a thank you to all of our members. So we built a Lego Spider-Man set. This is the longest build that we've ever done. We built continuously for nearly five hours. And also, different this time to last time, we made a video version, which is in the show notes of the audio. So you can listen, but you can also watch along, as Brad definitely told me to do some things that he refuses that he told me to do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I fully admitted. I admitted. Some of us are able to admit when we make mistakes. Some of us aren't. We'll let you decide, Chad. We'll let you decide.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I said that to my wife, that you told me this, and she laughed, and I said, I actually think that this is maybe a good reflection moment for me. But, you know, we'll see about that. So, yeah, that's available for RelayFM members. If you decide to support this show or any show, you will get access to that, and we will appreciate your support for another year. Thank you so much.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it was fun. It was exhausting.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But let me tell you, Brad, it took three days to get the video version to work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so this was an on-a-wim thing that Myke took on for all of us. So thank you, Myke, for doing that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Basically, what happened was I realized halfway through that our audio levels were not balanced properly in the streaming system. Because I used my streaming app that I used to stream, because it was just easy to build it. It was OBS. And you have to fiddle with the audio sometimes, depending on what the source is. And I realized you were a bit too quiet. And I was like, well, this isn't a problem, because we're recording our own audio. I'll just swap it over. And I found, like, I used Final Cut because it was a big thing. And also I found Final Cut has, like, an automatic audio sync feature. So if it's, like, takes the old audio and here's the new audio. The problem was Final Cut was effectively refusing to finish the export. And, like, multiple times export in this video, which took, on average, about six hours per export, it would get to, like, 90% and the app would crash. This happened, I think I maybe tried to do this export, like, four or five times over the space of three days. Until I eventually got it to work by exporting it and basically, like, just pure, like, non-compressed. And then I was able to use a tool called Handbrake to get it into a 1080 file to upload. But, like, it was, so it got to the point where it was, like, I had to publish it on Monday. And it was, like, oh, I had left it overnight to do this thing. I even had, like, the non-good audio version, like, uploaded to YouTube. And it was just a case of, like, well, if this doesn't work, I'm just going to have to press, like, publish on this one. But I came into the studio and found that it had happened. Because first I tried to do it on my MacBook Air, and that was not happening. And then I tried to do it. And then I tried a couple more times on my MacBook Pro. But I finally got it there in the end.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Final Cut finally found that 1x3 block. Yep. Finally found it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Flat 1x3 with a washing machine.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Are we ready to get into some Lego-looking fountain pens? Yeah, baby, let's go. Because I am. Let's go. I was so confused when I saw a blue and yellow Lamy Safari hit my Instagram feed about a week ago, sometime late last week. It was just this kind of bright blue with a yellow clip from a non-retail account. And I thought, okay, cool. Like, there's Lamy hacks are pretty popular, right? Where people will disassemble Lamy Safaris, especially with the Safari. They can be disassembled. People can swap the clips and the finial caps and the grip sections and just make their own colors. And it was just a single blue Lamy clip, a yellow clip, and, like, a bright blue barrel. I was like, that's a really cool-looking swap. Like, I like this one. And then probably – and I really didn't think twice because this is a pretty common thing in my Instagram feed, as you can imagine. Like, I see just weird stuff like this. And then probably, like, the next day, I started scrolling, and there were more images of this blue and yellow Lamy Safari. And they were coming from, like, real retailers that I follow. And then all of a sudden, there was a pink and red one that I was like, all of these are together. And this is Lamy Safari 2024 Special Edition? Question mark? Because we already had a special edition set.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Who says there can only be one special edition?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'm – yeah, I'm, like, wondering, like, what is happening with Lamy? And how much do I like this? And, you know, do I like these pens? And I'm still, to this day, like, five days later, probably after I saw this, can't totally wrap my head around what we're seeing here. Because it seems like such an outlier to me that they would have a second big release, let's see, four months after the previous big release. Although, I guess these don't have ink related to them. Like, the first big relief with Violet Blackberry and Pink Cliff, like, back in February, March timeframe, those were right on schedule with every other Lamy Safari annual worldwide release limited edition. And both of those colorways came with their own ink. And, like, that was the big release. And Lamy will do things throughout the rest of the year, right? They'll introduce new Safari colors. They'll maybe do some, you know, mix and match thing. And it'll usually just be, like, a singular fountain pen, right? Like, one fountain pen with a neat color. Or they'll do a region-based one. They'll might mix in some all-star colors. You know, they're not – this isn't their one and only release during the year. But I usually don't see – at least it's been a long time since, and maybe never – that they've done a full fountain pen ballpoint rollerball. And, interestingly enough, both of these, both the Pina Colada, which are the names – we'll get to these in a second – and Cherry Blossom both have pencils, which we'll talk about that in a minute. It just kind of blows my mind. And I'm kind of looking at it sideways a little bit. And on one hand, you know I love this, right? Like, this is the style of Safari I want to see more of, right? The color barrels with the bright clips. Like, they've done a good build, right? Like, mixing and matching the parts to make these builds of these pens to where the barrel's one color, is the primary color, and then the additional parts, the clip, the finial, and the grip section, are the alternate color. And both of these kind of fall in the same design. Like, the Cherry Blossom is a pink barrel with red accessories or hardware. And the Pina Colada is a blue barrel. I don't know why it's blue, but – well, that's maybe a different drink. And then yellow hardware. So, I mean, they're gorgeous. I love them. And now Brad flips the worry switch. It's like, Brad, you got exactly what you wanted. Like, 100% exactly what you want.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just found lots of images of blue Pina Coladas. Really? Yeah. I don't think I've ever had a blue Pina Colada. I mean, to be fair, I did have to say Pina Colada blue. And there's a tropical version which is made with blue Carousel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. That's my expectation. Like, this is a blue Carousel drink for sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think maybe they just didn't want to do a yellow cream pen. Yeah.