Editing The Pen Addict 177/transcript (section)

== Karas Customs Inc. ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Standard fare, I'm flying with a Karas Customs Inc., but the Retro 51 refill version. I have the NASA Retro 51, just because I have one in my bag, two Sharpies, and the Colt Pens Mechanical Pencil. Nice. It's a pretty good kit. Yeah. Pretty standard fare, and I've got a couple of Field Notes notebooks and one of the .dash Notco books.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Nice. Nice, nice, nice. All right, and so in some of those books, you may have tested out your pen show in it. And, yeah, we still haven't verified that name, but we were talking last week about how we got those in, and you were disappointed in the colored leads that were available. And it didn't hit me until after the show and listening to the Erasable podcast with Anna on it talking about colored pencils. And then the same night, I got a Slack message from Edward's editor in the Pen Attic Slack Room that essentially said the same thing as Anna. So let me read this out to everyone, because it was not clear to me at the time when we were talking about different graphite hardnesses and the scale that pencils are measured on. So let me read this. It says the H, F, H, B, and B scale only refers to graphite and clay leads. The more graphite, the softer. The more clay, the harder. Colored leads are made of pigments and waxes, and each manufacturer has their own recipe. I'm not aware of any standard hardness scale, so you might just need to check with the colored lead community. That's not me, by the way, is what Edward's editor says. I can tell you about colored woodcase pencils, but I don't do much colored lead. So I thought that was a really, really good point. It's a completely different game, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, completely. I barely understand it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so it's just a totally different material. Listen to the Erasable podcast with Anna. She talks about how some of these different types perform. But basically, it's going to be, if we're going to find something to suit you better, it's going to be a word of mouth reading reviews type of thing. Because just think of the colored lead by Uniball as Uniball's recipe. It's going to come one way, and they're going to make it soft, hard, you know, dark, light, whatever theirs comes out to be, and per color, right? Because each color has a different combination, right? So red could be soft and light. Blue could be hard and dark, right? So we're just going to have to get recommendations, read reviews, try to find out what's the best fit for any type of colored leads, whether it be, you know, the leads for the pen show or in a colored pencil, right? So it's going to be some trial and error. And I'm going to order some things and play around with it, because I want a good colored lead for the pen show myself instead of the standard gray graphite. So I will work on that and see what I can find out. So what was the composition you wanted? The red you have is way too soft, right? It crumbles?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, well, it doesn't crumble. It's just too soft. Too soft. Yeah, it's way too soft. Like I can't, I cannot keep it at a fine point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah, so you would prefer it to be harder and probably maybe a little bit darker.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, exactly. Like the black one. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, I'm going to work on that because I want something for that too. And I started to order some things and then I started getting these emails and I was listening to Anna talk about this on Erasable. And I was like, oh, let me hold off and let me read a little bit more. And then we'll find something else. So Myke and I are open for suggestions for lead replacements for the pen show that will get us some nice colored lead refills for that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's frustrating. But I get it. But it's like, ah, why can't physics be different? I don't know. Like I don't know what it is that makes up the, like how it works out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, this whole show has been one big learning process, right? I mean, you know, we're just learning about the grown-up coloring thing. And, you know, we're getting all the information about that. And now we're learning about colored lead hardness and how to determine what that is. And hopefully, you know, we're on a mission to find some answers. And hopefully we can share those with everyone, you know, what we find. And that's kind of a fun part about the show because the community will jump in here. You know, someone will have experience with this. And they'll say, hey, try this or look at that. And here's why you should do this. And then you get information like this from Edward's editor. It's like, oh, well, duh, that's exactly how it is. And it makes us smarter, even if we don't sound it at the time.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke, the next link's for you, buddy. Yes. Bic is on a mission to save handwriting. And did they email this directly to you?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Not yet. I'm waiting for it. I'm waiting for my personal tutor to arrive or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this is just a general piece. And, you know, if you listen to this interview, there's an audio interview on this page. We'll link in the show notes. It says, Bic is on a mission to save handwriting. Does it need saving? And it's basically an NPR channel reviewed. Pam Allen, who is actually employed by Bic for their Fight for Your Right campaign. And she is a literary, a literacy person. She operates an organization called Lit World and, you know, works on handwriting, you know, with underprivileged kids and underprivileged areas and travels around the world and espousing those things. And, you know, she was doing that before she was employed by Bic. And Bic got together with her to kind of spread the word about this campaign about Fight for Your Right. And basically what it is, is, you know, Bic wants, obviously, Bic has their own motives, right? So you got to take this with, you know, a grain of salt. But it's still a valid point that, you know, Bic wants you to embrace your technology, you know, and technology is a tool. But it's not the solution, you know, for everything and that there's a place for pen and paper and there's a place for writing, especially for the young, young kids. You know, I'm concerned being a father of young kids, a second and fourth grader, that they don't value. They don't understand how important handwriting is, you know, 20 years down the line. You know, everything's digital right now, it seems like. And even in schools, you know, they're getting pushed to more digital things, which, hey, I'm a computer guy. I want them. I'm excited for that. I want my daughter to learn how to code. But when she's, you know, 25 and looking for a job and she can't take handwritten notes in a meeting because she's, like, stressing about writing and she's so used to writing something digitally, I don't want that to happen. I think it's important that this campaign, you know, gets into the schools and, you know, gets into people and gets people writing. And, you know, it's based around stuff we have talked about ad nauseum, right? We are very big believers in doing this. So I thought it was a decent interview. I thought Pam left a little bit on the table, if you will. She could have locked it down a little bit more. The interviewer actually did a good job of pressing her about why he should trust her and BIC being an employee of BIC. I thought that was a fair question.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because that's exactly what I thought when I saw it. I was like, of course you're saying this because otherwise you guys go out of business.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. That's exactly right. And I didn't think she nailed that answer. I thought she kind of sidestepped it a little bit. And that's okay. I mean, I don't like to be put on the spot either like that. But it's worth a listen. And this isn't about the interviewer and Pam, but it's about, you know, BIC. I appreciate BIC putting, you know, their advertising dollars in a fight for your right campaign. So I think it's important. So I haven't seen anything about this, right? I would have never seen this if someone didn't email me this link. You know, I don't know where they're running these ads. You know, how they're trying to push this platform. I certainly haven't seen anything about it. But I'll keep my eyes peeled just out of curiosity and seeing how they're trying to deliver this campaign. Because right now I'm just seeing the talk about it and the launch about it. But I'm trying to figure out where the action is. That's what I haven't figured out yet. So I'll keep my eyes on it.