Editing The Pen Addict 172/transcript (section)

== EDC Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Impetus behind this post is Tony is as deep in the gear world, you know, uh, knives, flashlights, um, moderately pins, um, as you know, we are deep in, in the more traditional pin world, you know, fountain pins, roller balls, gels, inks, things like that. So he sees a different side of things. The gear world was very, very competitive. It's very. Litigious. Um, it's very, um, knockoff is not the right term, but let's just say the big, the big players, um, you know, definitely, uh, borrow from each other, uh, at will. Liberally. Lots. Yeah. Liberally. And there's lots of infighting between brands and fans of brands. Like that. We don't see the level of argument in the pin world as we do see, but in the gear world, at least from, from my point of view, and Tony could obviously answer that better, but talking with him, it's like a, it's, it's a big thing in, in, in that type of world. So he did a post basically for all intents and purposes, ripping the EDC pin style with the, the overbuilt over gaudy, just kind of ridiculousness of the EDC style pin just for fitting the EDC type pin model that, um, those types of consumers expect, you know, lots of, you know, additional things on the pin, you know, such as, you know, glass breakers or, you know, just a lot of design work in the grip that may not be necessary. And, you know, just real high level materials that maybe don't necessarily need to be in a pin and huge bolts and just all kinds of things that you see in what's in like the tactical pin realm. That's like way overkill. And his point being, it boils down to the writing experience and all of those pins have a horrible writing experience, right? I mean, that's just, they're built, they spend all this, um, expense on the materials of the pin and it still writes like crap. It's the old Montblanc problem that I talk about. Right. And when I say that, I refer to the Montblanc roller balls, you're paying so much money for the materials of the pin and it's going to write poorly. You know, Montblanc fountain pins are a different animal. They write wonderfully. But if you're paying $300 for a roller ball, you can have a better writing experience for three dollars, buying a $3 jet stream a lot of times. Um, and that's what we talked about last week with like the cross star Wars pins, right? If you're going to pay $400 for a roller ball and it's, you can get that refill for $3 and have it in some other pin, the writing experience is poor. So Tony went on and, and he, he's, this is, you know, he, I learned him my vanishing point way back in the day and he became a fan of it. And now that's like the pen he carries. Um, and he doesn't expect fans of like the EDC type of pin to carry a fountain pen, much less a vanishing point, but he's trying to point out things that I've pointed out for years to where the writing experience does not always equal the cost of the pen. And people, um, in the EDC community who are extolling the virtues of these tactical pens are completely missing or completely ignoring the writing aspect of those pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Cause these pens are made to look in a certain way and to, to have a certain thing about them, but not about the actual performance of the pen or how they write in any way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So Tony's quote on this in the article is the trend in EDC pens is pretty silly, massively heavy overbuilt pens designed to withstand cannon fire, but can't write worth a lick. So if you're using this type of pen every day, you're using your, you're, you're basically doing a disservice to yourself from a writing perspective because you're probably not going to use, you probably don't need the things that it's overbuilt for. You need it to write every day. You don't need it to break out of a car window. So, you know, if you're trapped, you know, okay, maybe I can understand a nice to have in a bag, whatever emergency type thing. But from a writing experience, it's, it's pretty poor. It's a good article worth writing. Um, Tony sent it to me, uh, ahead of time. He just wanted to see if he was like really out of line. Um, and I said, I wouldn't change a thing. Um, it was exactly what I believe in. And he said, well, just make sure to come back for the comments because he gets, again, the EDC crowd is, you know, very, um, set in their ways. And vocal about them. Yeah. And vocal about them and super argumentative. And they did, they did pretty good. I mean, there were some people that agreed with Tony and some people that disagreed. Of course you want people to disagree with you. Um, but you know, it's all about kind of like a little bit of an eye opening and a little bit of an education and a little bit of an understanding of something maybe you didn't understand before, you know, maybe, you know, you're buying this one type of pen. You don't realize, you know, what you're missing out. Um, you know, look, not like ignoring other types of pens. So, you know, he's Tony's not saying everyone should carry a fountain pen, but you know, if you're buying a pen and you're using it for writing, you should consider how it writes, not just what it looks like and what it's made of. So it's a good article. Um, it's worth not only reading that, reading through the comments to get some thoughts on, um, you know, what the fans of Tony's blog are reading, because we actually don't for as similar as Tony and I are, we actually don't have like a lot of crossover. Like, uh, there's probably a few readers of the pen and act that read everyday commentary and vice versa. Um, like I don't see a lot of the same commenters and things like that over there. So it's good to, uh, good to check out. I thought it was a good article and, uh, Tony did a good job on that. So, uh, well worth your, your 10 minutes to check that out and read because it's a lot of what I believe in and what we believe in, um, you know, on this show. So that's my take trolling for hate, Tony, Tony, um, he's not afraid to, uh, speak his mind. Yeah. He's not afraid to poke the tiger in the cage and that's okay. I respect that. And, you know, disagreements are wonderful, but it's all how you handle those disagreements, right? You know, I mean, we don't want everyone to agree with us all the time. That would be boring. So it was good to see. All right. Tell us about one of our good friends.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode of the pen addict is of course, brought to you by the great people over at lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology, and creative skills for a free 10 day trial. Visit lynda.com slash pen addict. That's L Y N D A.com slash pen addict. Lynda.com is for people that want to solve problems. So maybe, you know, you're looking to learn that thing that you've always needed for work that you've always struggled with a little bit, you know, maybe that's Excel or maybe that's getting things done, right? You want to be more productive. You know, we talk about using the, these daily planners and stuff like that. And then there are people like me who like to use apps and getting things done can really apply to this type of way of, of being able to, to organize your life and stuff like that and getting things done can help you there. Maybe you're curious about stuff. If you've always been interested in learning Photoshop or Illustrator to do some design work, or maybe you're just looking to make things happen. You want that promotion, right? So for that, you want to learn boardroom tactics. You want to learn negotiation skills. You want to learn body language stuff. You want to get better at your job. You want to be a better leader, a better manager. All of this stuff is available to you if you are a subscriber to the lovely lynda.com. Go and feed your curious mind by watching videos and fantastic tutorials from experts, top experts who are super passionate about teaching you. And all of their courses are broken down into bite-sized pieces. You can watch them from start to finish or consume them in any way that you like. You can stream them on demand. So you can watch these in the web browser so you can follow along with their great transcripts. Or if you want to learn on the go, maybe on the bus or in the break room, you can watch and download these courses to your Android or iOS device so you can learn on the go. You can take all these bite-sized chunks and these great video courses and you can create and save your own playlists of the courses that you want to watch. You can customize your own learning path to share with friends, colleagues, and team members as well if you like. Your lynda.com membership will give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics, all for one flat rate. Whether you're looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, go ahead and visit lynda.com slash penaddict. That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash penaddict to sign up for your free 10-day trial. Thank you so much lynda.com for their support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Thank you, lynda.com. All right. So in the chat room a moment ago was our good friend Shireen from the Atlanta Pen Show that came and visited us. And she had a great question. I can't remember. It was on Twitter. She asked yesterday, which I never really thought about because I'm fascinated with all like the desk porn type stuff that, you know, a lot of our friends do, like the suite setup and, you know, a few other sites, you know, where you see people's desktop setups and, you know, what their computer setups like. And, you know, a lot of them include pen and paper. But she said, what if you were setting up your dream pen work area? Like she's just moved into a new place and she's thinking about setting things up. And if you had a dream pen work area, which in my mind, you know, I take that as seeing like not just a writing desk, but also, you know, have all your, you know, whatever accessories and things you need. And I thought about this for a little bit. And what I came up with was if I was creating like my dream pen work area from scratch, I would want like a huge, like probably like six by eight area, a very large area. And I would want the top to just be like butcher block, just flat butcher block, nothing on top of it. And then on one end of it, I'd have, I do enjoy having like the, the cutting pads, you know, that I use, like, you know, that gridded pad that you see in some of my pictures, like you can use X-Acto knives on it. And it, it doesn't affect it. And so I'd have that on one side and then I'd have a desk drawer underneath for paper. And then off to the side, I'd have a shelf with ink. And then I would just have a few pens, you know, probably on the desktop as well with most of them stored off. So what I'm looking at in my head for like my dream pen work area is open space. Like I don't need, like my desk now is packed with pens and paper, like on the top of it, physically on the top of it. And I don't like that. It's a little bit claustrophobic. Like I just don't have a really good area to put it at. If I had a separate cabinet to the side where I could just have ink and pens there and have my desk area open. That way, when I'm ready to do work, a lot of things come on top of the desk, right? I'll have paper. I'll have different pens. I may be inking. I may be cleaning. You know, I may be modifying something. I may just be writing or reviewing. And then when I'm done with that, that gets all put back into the drawers or into the shelf. And then the desk is back to being this huge open space and pretty empty again. That's like the kind of work area I would enjoy for myself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know why, you know, I like my I'm not a clutter person. Like my office desk is like the cleanest in the entire office. Everyone makes fun of me because everything is neat and orderly in its place. My desk at home is not as much just because I don't have a necessarily good system to keep all the stuff I want handy right next to it. But if I was setting up for scratch, that's kind of the feel that I would like. Do you have any kind of like thoughts on this, Myke, for like if you were just setting up like your pen work area? Like I didn't notice I didn't have any computer or I had nothing digital in that area. Right. I want to pull the paper out of a drawer, throw it on the desk, make a complete mess on the desk and then put it all away off the desk. Right. That's the kind of workspace I like. Like what would you what would you be thinking of for something like this?

'''Myke Hurley:''' First off. So this is my dream scenario. Right. This desk is writing desk. I don't have a writing area, by the way. It's just part of my big desk that I have. It's where I put my stuff. It would be built by Dudek.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think we could I think we could work on that because it sounds like, you know, kind of what I would I would like that, too, with the butcher block top.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I want Dudek to build it out of walnut. I'm going crazy on this one. So I can put in there like slots for field notes. He can put he can drill in holes for all my pens. Right. A big circle for my all my pencil cup and stuff like that. And then it would have it would be a desk which would be all flat, but would have a raised area like a light box type thing, you know, but just that shape. So I'm not leaning like doubled over to right. Like I just can sit more straight with my with my lovely scenario. But it will also have on the left hand side a padded area. Right. For me to rest my left hand because I'm left handed and nothing is built for me. And yeah, so that that was my kind of my ideal scenario. And obviously we lost the drawers and storage space. And it would be just beautiful. And I would have little ink wells and everything. It would be a very quaint and beautiful thing. And maybe I would have on that on that the raised area. I might have like leather. Right. Like some nice piece of leather, maybe green leather to be all traditional looking. So it's got that kind of that nice padded feel to it when I'm writing. Like writing like writing on a banana skin with a biro. If you've never done that, by the way, get a biro or a cheap ballpoint pen right on a banana. It's singly no pen and paper can match that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've done that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's what you want. That's what you that's what I'm after.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, I like it. I like it. So now the only thing I haven't considered is would this be like if we're going like big dream? Like would our desk be like somewhere else? Like in like not at our house? Like would we?

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I wouldn't want all my stuff to be outside of the house, man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Can I have that?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like you would need like Fort Knox level of security.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, that's cool. That's a pretty neat exercise. I like thinking about stuff like this. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, like my desk, like my dream desk is so different than what I have right now. Like it's like not even close. So, you know, maybe I'll have to work on that one day. It's good to have those dreams and plans and ideas. But I do like your thought about getting Dudek to make it and integrating some of his stuff right in there. That'd be pretty cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So this next link, I got an email from Eric Lowenthal, whose daughter's actually in this class. We got a link from a teacher's website. He's a physics teacher and his class. He sent them a link for the title of his post on his blog is called Notes on Notes. So we'll have this link in the show notes for everyone to check out because I thought it was that good. And I wanted to I wanted to read some of these points that this teacher is making to his students, which I thought or it's like everything that we believe in. So this is going to take a minute for me to go through this. And it's not that long, but it's like 15 different points. But it all kind of it all kind of syncs together. He says some notes on how to take notes in physics. This is all personal preference, but it has served me well. Number one, use a bound notebook, ideally with quad paper. Spiral bound notebooks fall apart and binders are cumbersome and the pages fall out before long. Bound notebooks keep you honest. So I like this guy already, right? He's saying specifically bound notebook, quad paper, the rest of this stuff. You're going to pay the price later. He says number two, use a new page for each new class or topic. Number three, write on only one side of the page. It makes it easier to read, particularly if you use pen, which can bleed through to the other side. I'm a big fan of this guy. Give each new page a heading and date. Number five, use color to highlight central concepts or put boxes around important ideas or equations. Number six, draw pictures that represent the problem. Label relevant things in the diagram. So now we're getting into sketchnoting, right? So he's telling them like what kind of paper to use, how to set up the page, how to transfer those concepts that he's teaching onto the paper. So he gets to number seven, don't use a laptop to take notes. You spend too much time getting down trivial details and will inevitably miss something critical. It's also way too tedious to include equations, pictures, graphs, calculations, and anything that really demands visual representation. The evidence is also pretty clear on this. Taking notes on a laptop is not as helpful towards understanding or remembering as taking notes by hand. And he actually has a link to an article that says don't take notes with a laptop. So number eight, keep a running page of the important equations or ideas, maybe inside the cover of the notebook. Label your formulas. So this is basically logging the important things, you know, either a content page or an index page. He's still talking about the big picture of setting up their notebook to help you study in the best way. Number nine, and I really enjoyed this one and it's something I forget a lot. And then when I remember it, I'm like, oh, I should be doing this all the time. If things are moving too quickly for you, leave space for omitted notes with a heading of what the topic is and then touch base with me or a classmate to fill in the gaps. I find myself doing this unknowingly. Like I'll leave a header for something I want to work on, leave a space and then work on something else. And then I can circle back when I have the time to give the thought to that previous note. Right. So it also goes along with his number 10, leave space in your notes. Don't cram them all together. Writing on one side of the page is helpful. So it says number 11, if you have questions but don't want to ask them in class, write down the questions in the margin of your notes and circle it and then seek out the answer during the break. I'm just loving these rules. These are so awesome. This is an amazing set of rules. So, you know, you have a thought separate from your notes, right? You're taking your notes. So that's why I always have, I don't write from left end of the page to right end of the page and take up that whole space. I always kind of have just by default a right column. But, you know, it's not a defined column, but I don't write that far over because now I can come back over and scratch down an addendum or a question and circle it or mark it. You know, that's where things out that live out on the right side of the page oftentimes have a question mark by them, you know, because I need to follow up with them. Exactly what he's saying here. He does say if taking notes on a laptop is really important for your learning, take images of the board and incorporate them into your notes. Some students like OneNote or Evernote for note taking, but other programs exist that may be worth considering. So that's he's saying that's like an ancillary thing, right? Take a take a shot of what's on the board, but incorporate it into what your handwritten work is. It's 13. He says, by and large, if it's on the board, it probably should be written down. For me personally, if I think it's important for the students, I will write it on the board. You'll find a lot of teachers agree with that. The number 14, he says, never be shy about asking for extra help. Even have me look at your notes. Sometimes I can tell where you went wrong and you're thinking simply by seeing errors in your notes. So this is tracking the whole system, right? There's a trail of thought that has worked its way through your notes that doesn't necessarily get put down digitally. Like if you're working in Word or something like that, you know, you don't, you probably might have a scratch paper on the side as you're working through digitally. And if you're just doing it on paper, you can see all that work process. Everything that you did wrong is going to be there, which is good. I mean, you don't want like the, I always felt like the digital, like the only the perfect answer had to go on the digital page. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But like all the work happened on like a physical pen and paper, a pencil and paper. So I think that's important. And number 15, he concludes, says, I am on your side, which he wants to, he really wants to help these students. He's given them the best way to go through the class. Physics is not easy. And I, yeah. And, you know, so his name is, his name is Sean. He is a professor of physics, astronomy, engineering, and the history of silence. So science, it's not silence. Um, this is good for anybody. So I always enjoyed, I was always good at taking notes in class because I liked setting up the page to where I could learn better from like that. So I thought this was good to see a teacher, like say, you know, you have all these digital tools available. They're going to be fine. They're going to be help you, you know, do your research, you know, learn more about the topics you're studying. But if you really want to learn this stuff, you got to write it down. Here's how you should do it. And here's why you should do it. And I just thought that was pretty cool to see from a high school teacher. And I think a lot of, a lot of teachers could learn from this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's definitely, I like it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I love it. I love it. So thank you for sending, sending that in. All right. So I want to, I want to, um, continue kind of on something I said about the, uh, the physics teachers recommendation. But I also want to talk about one of our good friends first before we get into that a little further.