Editing The Pen Addict 242/transcript (section)

== Recommendation Engine ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Nah. Let's all happy. So, I have two things. So, for this recommendation engine project, I have pendb.com. Pendatabase. Mm-hmm. I have pendatic.wiki for our wiki. I have all kinds of domain names in here. All kinds of stupid stuff. So, more ideas than time. All right. Let's get on the next one. Because Stacy's in there in this chat room, like she was earlier. And this kind of goes along a little bit with what we're talking about. She says, I would love to explore what digital tools people use to augment their analog collections. There are a few nice apps for record collectors, for example. So, I've always thought, okay, what would an app be for pens? You know, that's always an idea that I have. You know, maybe this recommendation engine is an app thing. But more importantly, could I build an app that helps people discover new pens or what they like? You know, just almost like a pen 101 thing. And then have some kind of tracking in there. You know, that's what Dave Ray has tried to do with Index with the notebooks. That's, I'm guessing, what Baron Fig's trying to do with Codex for their notebooks. Yeah. So, there's a few of those things. I know Evernote would probably feature prominently in an answer to this question, right? Like, that's a really good collaborative to your analog tools application, wouldn't you say?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I couldn't agree more. I mean, I have problems with Evernote now. So, I don't use them. But they are, in theory, a great service. Like, I know that Stephen, for example, he scans all of his field notes when he's done with them. Puts them in PDFs. Which is the thing that I used to do when I needed the notes that I was putting in those things. I don't know what he does with them. I think he still puts them in Evernote. I know at least he used to. And that's the perfect place for something like that. Because they do the OCR on it, right? So, it becomes useful again.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, OCR is worth a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A lot, a lot. Yeah. If you can get it right, if you can get that done right, it's a perfect companion to analog stuff. Like, to notebooks. OCR and notebooks go together very well.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, I know a lot of people use spreadsheets for tracking pen and inks. I keep threatening to do something similar. But it would be nice to just have an app to, like, add pens, add inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, like those beard tasting apps or whatever. Yeah. You could have one for pen and ink. I thought you said beard tasting. And beard tasting. It's a subculture that I'm a big part of.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just what all the oils are for. That's why we're going to Chicago. I see. It's a beard tasting conference. Beard. Just pure beard tasting everywhere. But yeah, you know, to have just an inventory. Like, I used to, you know, inventory my DVDs and music. Just like Stacey's saying, you know, these apps are normal. Delicious library.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Books. The books have all kinds of tracking apps for, like, Goodreads and stuff like that. We don't have any pen or paper related ones. So all of you listening to the show this week, these are all ideas you can move on and steal them and chart your own path with. I think there's some validity to some of this stuff. And, you know, we can see what happens. Like, I would love to do more things. I'm just kind of maxed right now on brain cells with the very few that I have.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Lots. Come on. All right. Let's take a break. Thank our final sponsor this week's episode. It's our friends over at Harry's. For decades, big razor companies have relentlessly increased their profits at the expense of their customers. So Jeff and Andy started Harry's to fix this problem. They knew there was only one way to ensure quality. They bought their own factory. By selling directly online, Harry's can offer their blades at half the price of the big brands that you're used to. With Harry's, you'll pay just $2 a blade compared to the $4 that you may be used to paying at the drugstore. Harry's razors include everything you need for a close, comfortable shave. They have a weighted ergonomic handle, five precision engineered blades with a lubricating strip and a trimmer blade as well. They also come with a travel blade cover so you can very safely put it into your bag or top kit. They have all the extras you need as well, like amazing shave gel or cream. We were talking earlier about the pen shows when me and Brad stay in hotel rooms and typically they're full of Harry's products. That's the way that we roll.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Yeah, someone mentioned that. Are we going to get shots of Brad and Myke's room? We did that last year at the Atlanta Pen Show. The whole counter is just full of like each of us have like two or three Harry's products on top of just the razor and the blades. Yeah, they travel with me constantly. I'll be doing a lot of traveling this year. I keep a complete set of Harry's stuff just in my travel kit just for trips so I don't have to worry about it. One is none. Yeah. You got to have it, man. Got to have it all. I'm covered in Harry's so they keep me less hairy. Hey! You've been working on that one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Harry's is so confident in the quality of their blades. They want you to try their shave set for free. Just go to harrys.com right now and enter the code penaddict to check out to claim your free trial set. And because you're listening to this show, you'll also get a bonus post-shave balm added to your order for free. All you need to do is pay shipping. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com, the code penaddict to get your free trial set and free post-shave balm. Thank you to Harry's for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So we're getting a lot of related, somewhat related questions. This is again from Jacqueline. And I really wanted to touch on this one because it's not something we've talked about in a long time. And it's for you, the birthday boy, Myke. Hello. It's about the Apple Pencil. Are there certain scenarios where you prefer the Apple Pencil over traditional analog tools and vice versa? Curious how Apple Pencil fits into workflow similarly, different to analog. Not sure if the penaddict has an Apple Pencil, which we will talk about that in a minute. But this is actually a very relevant topic because we know we're all very techie people. You know, we talk about this is an analog show, but we all have digital lives. And the analog, you know, helps us lead our lives better, I'd like to think. But there's no doubt we all use digital tools to get the jobs done. So how has your Apple Pencil usage been? Probably, how long have you had it now? A little over a year? Is that accurate?

'''Myke Hurley:''' A year and a half. It's like 18 months. Yeah. So here's the thing. Using the Apple Pencil is never a nicer experience than using one of my fountain pens on paper. I never pick the Apple Pencil for the experience.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What I will do is I will use it when my output is different. So if I'm taking some kind of notes or drawing a sketch or a diagram of something that I need to be in multiple places or inherently saved forever, that's when I'll use the Apple Pencil. So, like, for example, if I have a telephone call with somebody and want to take some notes on it, it's very frequent. Like, nine times out of ten, I will take one of those notes. I will take those notes in an app called Notability, which I have on my iPad. And then with Notability, all the notes that I take are instantly shared to all of my devices. So it's there. I've always got it. The same when we were buying furniture, I used the Apple Notes app and Paper by 53 to draw some sketches of the rooms out with all the measurements and stuff. And I used those apps because it meant that I could draw them on my iPad and have them on my iPhone when we were in Ikea. And if I would have drawn that on paper, it would have been as big as the paper was. But because I did it on my big iPad, but then I had it shrunk down to the size of my phone screen. And it could also be manipulated easier and moved around and I could add things in and I could make it multimedia and add photos and stuff in if I want to. So that's kind of when I change and when I kind of switch it up. Because for me, it's about what am I trying to get out of what is the output intended for? And if the output is intended to be seen in multiple places, then I will typically pick the Apple Pencil for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I have an Apple Pencil. I also have a pen, pineapple, Apple Pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's a good song. And you can't take that away from me. But I have a funny story. And I think I might have told this on the story. I was in our local Mac store. Like where I'm at, we don't have official Apple stores, but we have authorized retailers. So like this is a chain in my region that's an official, essentially, Apple store. So I'm in there and I'm buying an iPad Pro 9.7 because that 12 is just way too big.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because I want to use the Apple Pencil for certain things. I want to try some things. And I'm in there buying that. And a friend of mine is in the store and he knows what I do for a living. And he says, isn't that a problem that you're buying that Apple Pencil? Like, isn't that like everything you're against? Just he's giving me this grief while I'm checking out the Apple store. And I'm like, you know, I mean, generally, yeah. But there's things that I can do with this that I want to try that I'm not so good at with pen and paper. And one of those things is sketching. Like, I really enjoy, like, I want to do like a bunch of the prototype work. And have it in paper by 53, which is what I've been using. I'm also open to recommendations. I've sketched more in that app than I've sketched in any notebook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I want to give you a recommendation. An app that came out yesterday by the iCore Factory called Linear. Okay, Linear. It's brilliant. I have no intention of using paper on my iPads anymore. It's exactly what I'm looking for.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, good. So I have, like, pages of backpack sketches.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, and they're all there. They can be transferred to my phone. I've been laying out a new notebook project and case project we're working on. All in there. Not in, not with, you know, pencil or pen and paper. For some reason, that works for me from a sketching perspective with the Apple Pencil. I wish I could explain why. I think it's the ease of the use of color on a tablet as opposed to a pen and paper. Not that I can't just draw the lines. And, you know, I've done tons of sketching on paper. For some reason, I get sketching on the iPad with the Apple Pencil. That works for me. So, yeah, it's just one of those things. I don't know why. I really enjoy it. But I don't do any writing with the Apple Pencil. You know, I'm not necessarily writing notes or, you know, doing it like you're talking about notability. But for the drawing stuff, I really, really enjoy it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that app that I mentioned is called Linea. It's L-I-N-E-A.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it looked good. I just glanced at it yesterday when I saw it launch. So I'll have to test it out.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's really, really, really nice. I like it a lot. It's $9.99. So it's premium price. But I think it's worth it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, I like the Icon Factory stuff. They do a good job. So that's probably cheap, you know. All right. This next question was great because I have gone through this exact same thing and had this conversation in my head, which I have a lot. And this is from Evelyn. She was in the chat room moments ago. It says, how long do you give a pen before you decide it isn't for you? Do you have a minimum use time, especially for one that you thought you would love?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I've come up randomly with, based on the past few years of experience, moving pens in and out of my collection that I kind of know after about six months. If I haven't used the pen regularly in six months, and that's not a hard, fast date or time, that I'm probably not going to use it regularly much thereafter. So it's then a candidate for me to sell. And that's kind of how I've been calling out my pens to sell. If it hasn't seen some action or regular action or even minimal action in six months' time, why do I own it? There better be a really good reason why I own that particular pen. And there could be a reason. There could be that it was custom made for me or some other reason. And for whatever reason, I'm not using it. And it might be just random that I haven't used it. But a lot of pens I'll notice. Like, if it's been about six months or so, and I haven't used them, and if I sell them, I don't really miss them. Like, it's worked out. For some reason, like, it seems like about six months. Because I'll always use it right out the gate when I have it, right? So I use it. I obviously bought it for a reason. Do I enjoy it? Yes or no. And then I'll clean it up, set it to the side. And then you'll know the first thing is how quick do you ink it back up again to get it back into use. And then things kind of fall into place from there. And all that seems to happen, like, in the first six months of the pen. Are you inking it up and using it a lot? Or does it see a lot of downtime? And that's kind of the range that I'm at right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'd say it's pretty fair. Like, I can't disagree with any of that. I think, like, you know, you have an immediate reaction to the pen. And then, you know, if you like it, then there's, like, a reaction that occurs over a period of time. And sometimes it can just die away. Like, just the honeymoon period's over. Yep. You know? Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, yeah, it kind of, a lot of the questions answer themselves after about six months. You know, you can look back and say, wow, I used that pen once or none over the last six months. That's probably a sign that I could do without. Mm-hmm. So, all right. I love this next question. It's from Caribbean Sky. In honor of IncoWriteMo, is there some hobby-related event that you wish you could participate in? Whether you don't have the time, don't think you're creative enough, don't know where to start, etc. So, IncoWriteMo started today. The month of February is International Correspondence Writing Month. It's where you send a letter a day to someone. And we'll put a link in the show notes to my contact page. My P.O. box is open to receive letters for anyone who needs to fill out their days for their IncoWriMo calendar. I'm happy to receive them. And is there a hobby-related event that I wish I could participate in? It's IncoWriMo. So, the reason is people are so generous in taking the time to send me letters, and I don't send any back. And I have never-ending guilt over that, even though I know that's okay. I can't respond to everybody. Well, I don't respond to anybody in letters. It's been a year probably since I've written a letter. And I even bought postcards. It's like, Brad, you don't have to write a letter. Why don't you write some nice little couple sentences on a postcard? And I haven't even done that. I don't know why. It's the time aspect more than the creative aspect. Like, I would love to do Inktober. I'm probably never going to do Inktober. That's just not my thing. My little sketches are for me. I do wish I could do IncoWriMo because I really want to give back to the people who have taken their time to write me. I save every letter I get. Like, I have a bucket full of, like, a whole bin full of letters just stacked to the top. It's awesome. And our listeners are amazing. And I'm super thankful. And then I never write back. And it's just like, oh, man. So that's the one. And I think it's a time thing. It's a little intimidating. Even, like, a letter a day is not much. But it's a lot at the same time. So it's a time intimidation kind of thing. I don't know. Do you have anything like that, Myke?