Editing The Pen Addict 544/transcript (section)

== Brad's experience on WNYC and public radio ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I was back on WNYC, which we had talked about after the first one. They said, let's have you back for a gift guide. You never know if that's going to happen. But sure enough, I was on the list and they said, hey, Brad, gift guide episode you in? I'm like, yes, I'm in. Just tell me when and where. And so we recorded that a few weeks ago. So if you want to listen to that, we have a link in the show notes. It's fun. This time we talked about last time how I never know what's going to happen. Like I can't prep for this, right? I have some gift guide ideas in my hand. But a lot of times, especially what happened in the first episode and same thing happened with this episode, Allison takes listener calls and then I just have to go. And like all of that was fine. But Allison got me this time in the beginning of our conversation. She does like this whole, you know, little setup on like the invention of the ballpoint pen. And she's like telling the story of like how the ballpoint pen was invented and things like that. So then she's like, we're bringing in our guest, you know, Brad Doughty from the Pen Addict to talk about pen gifts. So Brad, how was the fountain pen invented?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Jeez.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'm like, I did not prepare for this. This is not on my list.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That was like, hey, Allison, let's take a trip to Wikipedia together.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I just had to pull something, you know, just out of the ether, you know, and it was essentially a question like that, like to start with. And then after that, I was like, please get me to the listener calls. They're probably not going to ask me that question. So it was really, really funny. And like that really put me on my heels from the jump. But hopefully I generically answered it well enough. And then we got into the listener calls and the rest of that was fun. It's such a fun thing to do. I'm super glad that they called and we can thank the office ladies again. Certainly is why this is happening. So anyway, in case you missed that, Myke, I have that link in there for you to go listen to. It's always a fun conversation.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I haven't listened to it yet, but I want to. So I'm pleased you reminded me to do this today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, yeah. They do a little they have a little embed to where you can just play like the certain segments of the day. And if I link to that, then you can see like the the embed for just that segment. And it was like, I don't know, 15 minutes or something like that. So real short, real short little deal. So it's always fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Since then, I have been on and off on Panatic reviews just on the blog. Like, you know, we took some time off last week was my down week on the blog. So all the writers were off. I was off over vacation and things like that. So I wanted to get back into writing reviews. And so I published one Monday, which is a very interesting product. And we might have mentioned it on the show before just in passing. But Blackwing came out with a pencil extender and it's not normally something I'd just be jazzed to review. But I dislike this product's design so much. I was like, I guess I'm going to review this because I had very strong opinions about it. And by the time I get to writing the review, I kind of tamper those down a little bit. Like, I'm not out here to just like destroy products that are terrible. Like, if it's a bad product, like, I won't even spend my time writing about it. But this isn't a bad product. I just think it's a lot of weird decisions went into making this product. And I was trying to like wrap my head around why? Why does this product exist? I'm not sure I got there other than, you know, Blackwing wants to make sure everybody has some Blackwing accessories to use with their Blackwing pencils. And like, that's fine. Like, I even admitted in part of the review that if I was sitting in Blackwing's design office and we had this idea for this pencil extender, like, I would rubber stamp it. Like, I'd say, yeah, let's make this. But as a product, like, I like looking at products like this that just should not exist. This does not make their product better.

'''Myke Hurley:''' When I saw the image, like, yeah, when you get down to like that pencil that's like two inches, it's impossible to hold. So stick this like piece of plastic on the end of it and you can hold it like a regular pencil. Like, I saw it and was like, oh, that seems logical.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, there's traditional pencil extenders have been around for as long as pencils have been around, right? Especially when, you know, back in the day when pencils were actually probably a luxury to buy like a single box of pencils, right? That would have been like percentage wise a very expensive thing. So you want to use it right down to until you can't use it anymore. So you tape a stick onto the end of it and you end up, you know, continuing to write. Where I had an issue with this is the visual of breaking up like an iconic design into something uglier, you know? Like they didn't improve. They didn't improve the experience enough to ruin the aesthetic of what is one of the best, you know, aesthetically designed pencils on the market. So I don't know. It's I don't really technically have a problem with it. It works. It works fine. If you're a Blackwing fan, you're going to buy it. But it just it breaks the magic for me. Right. And I don't like products that that break the magic for me. And Blackwing is is, you know, say what you want about the company and the brand and the redo of it. They've built, you know, a great brand off a beautifully designed pencil. And it's a product that I love. And then this just kind of breaks it for me. So anyway, I thought it was worth spilling too many words on over the holidays and putting out as a review. And yeah, it's just a thing. So I think what my end result was, I'm going to keep this product, but I'm going to make it mine. I'm going to, you know, put some designs on this and maybe make it a little bit more fun. Like if I'm going to use this in a pencil extender, a Blackwing pencil extender, like I'm going to draw on it or put some stickers on it and make it at least a little bit more fun than just looking at this black stick sticking out the back of my Blackwing. That really just kind of ruins it for me. So anyway, that's me overthinking the minutia of stationary. But I guess that's why we're here. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wouldn't want anything else.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. We also had a post, Caroline, who writes a monthly meet your maker post for the pen addict, featured John Tello in December from Hello Tello Studios and Tesori pens, which I'm a newfound fan of. Um, so I just wanted to point that out because a lot of people might be traveling during the holidays and you're running behind on content and we don't publish like a completely full schedule during December. So in case you missed that, this was a great, uh, interview. All of these have been great so far. I really appreciate the insight that Caroline gets from the makers. And, um, I just met John back at the Atlanta pen show this year. So it was cool to see, you know, learn more about his story over the year and then Caroline get it down in writing by the end of the year. So I thought it was kind of a, kind of a good bookend for me personally, uh, just learning about John originally earlier in the year and then having the opportunity to work with him a bunch, buy a couple of his pens, have him participate in, you know, help us raising money for St. Jude, his own, uh, charity raising at, uh, scripting new stories, which I supported. So it was a really cool, cool way to, to go out the year on, on the meteor maker article. So I appreciated that. I just want to let Caroline know and John know that, uh, that was pretty cool. I enjoyed that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right, let's take a break. Thank our first sponsor of this week's episode. And that is our friends over at Squarespace, the all in one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. You can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services, and even the content that you create with Squarespace because they have got you covered. It is so easy to set up a beautiful website with their best in class templates. You can customize them to fit your needs. It's as easy as just browsing the category of site or business that you have to, or that you want to create to find that perfect starting place and everything can be customized in just a few clicks. But I think we're going to talk about this later on in the episode today a little bit, but I've been changing kind of some of my, where I am online in my life. And so I thought I needed like a new, like I wanted to create like a new, like Myke Hurley.net kind of landing page. And I just went to my Squarespace site, created a new template, customized it, and within like half an hour, I had exactly what I was looking for. It was like kind of like a little portfolio of these are all the things that I make. So, so easy. Then if I wanted to, like you can, get blogging. If you want to put a blog on your website, they have all of the tools that you need to share stories, photos, videos, updates, and more. You can categorize them, share them, and even schedule your posts to make your content work for you. It's so easy to do, so expandable. You can set up a store. You can set up email campaigns. Whatever you want, Squarespace has the tools for it. So head to squarespace.com slash penaddict, and you can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code penaddict. You'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict. And when you decide to sign up, use the offer code penaddict, and you will get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and all of Real AFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' On my Squarespace blog at penaddict.com, we had another guest post during the month that I think is worth checking out for a lot of reasons. Number one, Dennis, who writes at A Fleeting Ripple, is a new-ish blog over the last, I don't know, maybe two years or so. I've been reading a bunch of them. Does a great job. Really excellent writer. And I enjoyed their take on the vintage pilot vanishing point. Dennis had emailed me and said, hey, can I do a guest post on this that I want to do specifically on the vintage vanishing point? I was like, yes, please. Like, that was easy sell for me. And it's just a really good article. And y'all should all go read it because I actually learned some things that these very old vanishing points have a bit of a different filling mechanism and are not necessarily these modern pilot proprietary connections that you have with as far as, like, cartridges and converters go. So I thought that was interesting. So I learned a lot from that article. And if you want to go down the vintage pen route, I think a pilot vanishing point might be, like, a really good opportunity to, like, to say, you know, kind of broaden your horizons. Like, if you get, you know, if you have all of the bright acrylics or the interesting makers right now and you wanted to dabble a little bit in some vintage, like, a vintage vanishing point might be a pretty good place to start. And you actually don't even have to get into the vintage category with the vanishing point to find something cool. Like, the ones from the 90s, which Dennis is much older than that. But, like, the ones from the 90s, I wouldn't categorize as vintage. But they're a completely different pen than what the modern vanishing point is and some of my favorite designs. So I just wanted to put that in there as, like, hey, that's something to look at if you're interested in learning about, you know, where some of these modern pens that we use now came from. Looking at the vintage vanishing point might be a pretty fun place to start.