Editing The Pen Addict 130/transcript (section)

== App Gift Guide ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So we're going to we have a huge, huge episode and pages worth of topics. So we want to get into it, Myke. Me and you and Anna are going to go through various categories in our holiday gift guide. So before we get into that, once you talk about one of our very good friends.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Drafts. Drafts is the quick and easy way to capture and share text on iOS. And it's become one of the app store's most popular productivity apps. And it's got even better with Drafts 4. In Drafts, text comes first. You open the app to a new blank draft ready and waiting for you to type. Drafts stops you from getting distracted when you want to post to Twitter or Facebook. It stops you from having to tap through multiple screens to send an email or an SMS. You don't need to navigate through folders or create files just to jot down a note, phone number, address or create a to-do. It's the one-stop shop for getting something out of your brain and to anywhere you need it to go. This is because Drafts has tons of output options that let you send the notes that you put into Drafts to services like Twitter, Facebook, Mail or Messages. It helps you quickly create a calendar event. This can be in the official calendar or in an app like Fantastical. It allows you to quickly save items and notes to Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Evernote. It also features support for advanced multi-step actions and JavaScript integration, if that's your bag, to combine all of these options into a single tap. So you can say, I want to do this, this, this and this and it will go and do all of them at once. Quite simply, Drafts can make any workflow shine. It's totally distraction free. It has a fantastic customizable keyboard. It allows you to add tons of cool buttons in to do extra stuff. Like I write in Markdown and I have a keyboard row that's dedicated to helping me with all the things that you need to write in Markdown. But you can do all this stuff for HTML as well if you need help with that. And there's a community that works on this sort of stuff. And they share all of these different extensions and actions into the action directory, which is hosted by the guys at Agile Tour just to create drafts. And you can get to it from the app. And it allows you to add even more functionality to drafts. It's really, really cool. I love this app. It's become my primary note-taking app on iOS. It's so nice to write in. They have iOS 8 extensions for the Today View and to share with as well. It's a universal app. It looks great on the new iPhones. It's great on the iPad as well. Go right now to agiletortoise.com slash drafts to find out more or just search for Drafts 4 in the App Store. Thank you so much to Drafts and Agile Tortoise for sponsoring this week's episode of The Pen Addict and helping us out at RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Thank you, drafts. Are you going to do an app gift guide on one of your other shows, Myke? No, but I probably shouldn't have done. Because we're going to spend a bunch of people's money here today. I figured I could at least listen to one of those other shows and y'all can spend my money for a change because I end up buying half the stuff y'all talk about anyway and all of our sponsor stuff to begin with. All right. So our 2014 Holiday Gift Guide. We have several categories that we hope kind of give everyone a good idea or you can latch on to one or two of these categories and get some ideas. Something for yourself. Something for a friend. Something for your family. Something for your non-stationary friends. So let's get this rolling with some pens under $50. I think that's a pretty good price point for gifts for Christmas and for the holidays. So, Ana, why don't you start us off? Because the very first thing you put in here is something I've never heard of and I'm already fascinated by it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' This popped up, I think, last week. Goulet Pens is starting to stock the Conklin Durograph. It's available in three different colors right now. There's a Cracked Ice and Amber. And the green one is coming, but it's not in yet. But from what I've heard, the tip of the pen is really nice. The colors are beautiful. And it's $44, which is a pretty sweet price point for a pen, even a gift pen. You know, it's not super expensive.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And a lot of people said they're really nice pens. So I've already been emailing Goulet, like, when's the green one coming?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' This looks like it should cost twice as much as it does. I mean, it's just a good-looking pen. It's very, very nice. And I hadn't heard much about it until you said it. I saw the show notes and I saw you put this in there. I was like, what is this? And then I started hearing about it all of a sudden. So I guess it's really just a brand new pen to the market, not just, you know, new for this show. It's a new creation by Conklin.

'''Ana Reinert:''' So that's super excited about it. And then on the other side of it, I thought I would make sure that at least one pen was accounted for that wasn't a fountain pen. And I just recently got the Pentel I Plus pen, which will allow you to put in three various refills. And it'll take Mechanical Pencil, an Energel, a Vicuna, or the Slickies. And you could trick one out for somebody as a gift, even somebody who wasn't sort of a pen geek. And they'd have a fun, cool pen to have for about $10.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I reviewed that pen not too long ago and I was pretty impressed by it. I love the Vicuna refills. And plus, I think this is the first pen that has the Energel as an option. I know a lot of people swear by their Energels. So for a multi-pen, getting the choice to use an Energel ink cartridge is kind of a big deal for some people. And I know they very much enjoy it. And it's a good pen. It reminds me a lot of the style fit, uniball style fit. And it's, you know, super, super compatible with all kinds of different Pentel refills. So that's awesome. All right. So I'm going to go with the Karis Customs Retract, but not the regular Retract. The new two-tone Retract. Because the moment I saw it, I said to myself, this is the Parker Jotter for this time. It's for our age. You know, not the 60s Jotter or the 70s Jotter that was so popular. Those two-tone, great-looking Jotters. And they've made some revamps of the Jotter in these recent years that I actually have a couple of. And I love that Jotter style. You know I love colored barrels. And having the two-tone Retractable barrel like this, I mean, it really reminds me of just a modern Parker Jotter. And I think it's a great look. I don't know. I'm going to have to get one of these for myself. So if anyone's listening in the chat room or anything, you know, on my Christmas list, this might be a good one. Maybe an orange or blue or something like that. And I would combine it with the Pilot Juice refill, which is my favorite. The Retracts fit the G2 refills. And my favorite .38 blue-black juice refill is the Killer Combo. So I love the idea of this Retract two-tone. So that's my pin under $50. And you can throw in the refill and you'll still stay under $50. So, all right, Myke. Kind of know where you're going with this one. But it's hard to argue with. So what you got?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, just before I do say my extremely obvious pick, the show notes for this episode are going to be huge. It's going to have everything in it in order. So you want to go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 130 for that. And even if you are in the chat room as we speak, and when I say that in case you don't know, we do actually stream the show live, and you can go to relay.fm slash schedule and you can find that. But if you are in the chat room and you go to that URL that I just mentioned, which is relay.fm slash penaddict slash 130, you will also see the show notes updating as I put them in. Oh, wow. I don't usually do that, but I'm doing it today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Crazy. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with. So what's your pin under $50, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Retro $51. No way. I know, crazy, right? I just, like, you can get these things for like $20, right? Some of them are like $21, some are $25, some are $30, and it goes up from there depending on the type of version you want. You go to JetPens, you pick one up for $21.

'''Myke Hurley:''' These things, I just don't think you can find a better pen. This is under $25, you know. I don't think you can find a better pen all around, in my opinion, for this price. Because they look fantastic. They're really distinctive. They're really interesting. They have an incredible refill. And you can get, like, there are so many different models, and you can get one that fits you personally. I love them. And this is, their naming has become quite difficult to follow. I actually can't. They have, like, a few different types of Retro 51 now. They have, like, the popper and the...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, they've extended the naming convention a little bit. It's getting a little bit long. Yeah, I'm with you on that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, what one is it? It's not the popper, is it? It's just the classic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, there's a popper.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I mean, the one that we want people to buy.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, just the Tornado.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Just the Tornado. Yeah. Just get the standard Tornado. This is the rollerball one. That's probably the easiest way, because the other ones can, like, sometimes I think ballpoints. But you want the rollerball. Absolutely fantastic. I love these things. And, yeah, you should go pick one up, because if you haven't got one, this is something that all pen addicts need, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, did you see the pinball limited edition one?

'''Myke Hurley:''' On JetPens? Yeah. Yeah, I'm not buying all of the limited editions anymore. I just buy the ones that take my fancy, like the crazy Christmas one that we found.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes, that Christmas sweater one is awesome. Oh, and Jimmy Reeks in the chat room said the ballpoint is the snapper. That's the word we're trying to think of.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There you go. Snapper. It doesn't make any sense.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But there's a popper and a snapper and all kinds of other things. So, Ana, are you still digging the Retro 51? I know you have the green one, right?

'''Ana Reinert:''' Yeah, I do have the green one. I find that the standard refill for it is a little wide for me, and I tend to muck in my ink. So, eventually I'll try to update the refill. But I kind of like to keep it around because lots of people are familiar with it. So, for me, it's a good comparison when I'm doing other reviews. How does this compare to a Retro 51?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. It's beautiful. Every time I buy a Retro 51, I always add in the Schmidt P8126 refill, which is the finer of the two refills that fit in there easily without hacking, modifying it. So, it's just a given that my Retro 51s will have the 8126 instead of the 8127 refill. But they're both awesome.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I should probably get one of those, too.