Editing The Pen Addict 50/transcript (section)

== Garage Notebooks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool. Yep. So I'm happy to see that. So, yeah, I had already got – I got the Garage series. I got some stickers, and I loaded up on the Idea Journals, which is the greatest product ever made, I believe.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Are you panicked buying them? I did. I bought four of them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's when I thought it was going away. So now I've got like six of them, and that's the big, honking, heavyweight notebook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I have one of these. I have one of these.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That literally may be the best notebook ever created.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow. That is quite a claim. I'm not disagreeing, but a claim like that from you is a very, very good thing to hear.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One of those things – when I find products that I like, I find myself, as I go back to them from time to time, if I set it down for a while and pick it back up to use it again, and I find myself looking at it from a construction perspective and a feel perspective, before I even start using it, like I'm staring at it going, wow, like over and over again, even though I've already used it for years, that tells me that I'm very impressed with the product. Does that make sense?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. I mean I like the Idea Journal. I can't really use it though because I'm left-handed, and it's just spiral bound is a difficulty. I mean yes, I could turn it upside down, but I'm just obsessive-compulsive enough that I wouldn't want to do that and be writing in the book upside down. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that would bother me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Did you get the large one or the small one?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Large. I don't like the small as much. Not even close. I use the large.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have the small one. Mm-hmm. But yeah, the loose-leaf paper is very interesting, and he sells like binders now. Yep. I think they're just plain binders, but it's just kind of cool that – yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. One-stop shopping.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, good.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a good deal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm really pleased that he's back in business because it's really good stuff. Really good stuff. Cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Very cool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do we have any other follow-up today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think I do because I had a big weekend this past weekend, so all my focus was in one place, and that was at the Atlanta Pen Show, so I don't think I have any more follow-up besides that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, so let's take a quick moment. We will thank our sponsor, and then we will dive right into the meat of the show. Does that sound good?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Sounds great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Brilliant. So let's thank Squarespace.com, who give you absolutely everything you need to make an amazing website. Let's thank them for being awesome and also for supporting the show. Squarespace provide you with a fully hosted, completely managed environment to create and maintain a beautiful website, blog, or portfolio. If you have something that you want to put online and either you don't have the experience when it comes to building websites or you just don't want to deal with the hassle, you can put something on the internet in minutes and it will be ready to go. You don't have to worry about hosting, scaling, integrating with social services, you don't have to worry about finding designers or worrying about code because Squarespace gives you all of the tools that you need to make an outstanding, world-class site with it looking beautiful, sophisticated, and professional, and you don't have to dig deep or spend extra money other than just a Squarespace plan. Squarespace provides you with some excellent features, beautiful themes. They're really clean, really stunning. Let your content do all of the talking. They have a drag-and-drop page builder called Layout Engine that allows you to create custom layouts for each of your pages in seconds, and you do this all within a web browser. It feels native. It's very, very impressive. They have fantastic statistics. They're built right in. They're real-time. They have real-time analytics right in the Squarespace platform, and you can view these on their iOS and Android apps, which are awesome. They can also let you post to your website on the go, too. They have a great blog importer, so if you have a site somewhere else, you can easily bring over your current content. They have award-winning 24-7 customer support and Squarespace commerce, which allows you to start selling physical or digital products online. They have inventory management, order processing, customizable emails, and much, much more. And all of these features can be painlessly integrated into any new or existing Squarespace site. There's no credit card to try out Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com 4-70decibels, where you can find out more and start a free trial. Squarespace plans start at $10 a month for their standard plan, $20 a month for their limited plan, and they have a business plan, too, for Squarespace commerce. If you sign up for a year, you'll get 20% off that price if you pay up front, and if you sign up for two years, you'll get 25% off. And don't forget to use the code 70decibels4 at checkout. This will show Squarespace that you found out about them through us, and will also give you an additional 10% off your first order on top of any other discount. So go check out Squarespace, everything you need to make an amazing website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Perfecto. As always.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I had a big weekend this past weekend. Big Saturday, I should say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You very much did, didn't you?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I had the Atlanta Pen Show was nearby in town. It took me about an hour and a half to get there, so that's definitely a reasonable drive and something I was greatly, greatly looking forward to as we talked about last episode. And last episode, just to recap a little bit, we went through kind of what my checklist was for the Pen Show, you know, what products I was looking for. You know, just kind of a pretty good list of things. So when I got there, I knew I'd be overwhelmed. There's lots going on, lots of vendors, lots of tables, things like that. So I wanted to kind of have a plan. And, you know, I had some of the products that I'd been testing out from Thomas, like the Sailor Pro Gear, Sailor Sapporo, Parker 51, Esther Brook. You know, some of those things were on my list. I also had on my list to get some Nibmock modifications done. And, you know, I guess I had a Pelican on the list. And, you know, just a few things just to kind of give me a basis to work around as I walked around the show. Like, okay, what am I looking for? What am I focusing on? So I think it went pretty well, I'd say. You know, I came home with four pens. And I'm sure we'll talk about them individually. But you want me to just kind of give a recap, just an overview of what the show is like for people that haven't been to a pen show? Kind of like when you walk in, like what do you see? What's going on there?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Please. I'd love that.