Editing The Pen Addict 6/transcript (section)

== Lamy ABC Pens ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I also dug up – remember we was talking about the Lamis as well last week? I have one of their ABC writing pens. Yep. Which are like part wooden and part colorful plastic. Yep. And I found that as well. And they're pretty cool. They just look cool. Those are cool. They're obviously meant for kids, but never mind.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And I think that goes back to that whole getting the handwriting started young thing. I really enjoyed that topic. That was a good topic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Indeed. Right. So, we've spoken – I've rattled on far too much about what I'm using. Let's get into the real meat of the discussion today.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. So, I get an email I'll kind of kick off the multi-pin discussion with just to kind of get a general idea. And then I'll also talk about a little multi-pin background for those who aren't familiar. Like we were talking beforehand. You're not familiar with multi-pins. And this – like you said, this is going to be a problem for you because now you might want to go buy a multi-pin. And that's the whole enabler problem I've had ever since I started the pen addict. I tend to cost people money and I apologize for that. Let me get to this email. This is from one of our listeners, Roberto. He was talking about multi-pins and wanted to see if we'd cover this topic. And what he says is, I want to get your thoughts on a particular topic which you may want to use for a podcast episode. I have discovered about myself that when I take notes, I tend to want to add color to highlight different types of information in my notes. For example, I tend to write to-do statements in blue with an open box before it. And he gives an example. And he says, this way I can quickly glance at my notes and visually separate regular notes, which are in black ink, from to-do items, which as he said were in blue. Finished to-do items then have a red check mark through the box. I feel that this definitely helps me find information more quickly when skimming the notebook. As such, I tend to use multi-pins to more easily switch between the different colors as opposed to using different pens. My two main complaints about multi-pins are, one, most tend to look and feel cheap. And two, I dislike the click noise they make when switching between the colors. The click is not a deal breaker, but it's definitely an annoyance. I want to get your thought on multi-pins, what do you think of them, and are there any that you would recommend?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' When Roberto sent that email, I realized, just kind of mentally thinking back through the episodes we've done, that I really haven't talked about multi-pins, and that's actually a very regular thing for me to use. So I find it odd how it kind of slipped my mind here recently, but I can relate to Roberto completely. You and I have talked about how we take notes before, right? And how you'll have a list or a group of items, and you might have arrows running over here to a different section and different things like that. And this is kind of what Roberto is talking about. Instead of taking like three, you know, pilot high-tech Cs, a red, a blue, and a black, and having three separate pens sitting there and picking one up for, you know, to write down the note and picking a different color up to write down the to-do and then picking up a different color to mark it off, the multi-pins come in perfect or are perfect for this type of work. And that's exactly how I use them as well. So, you know, multi-pins have gotten to be a really big market because they've really changed the variety and the different types of things you can do with the multi-pins. Everyone knows the old classic Bic four-color multi-pin. Everyone's probably seen that. That's the type of pen I'm talking about when I talk about a multi-pin. It's a single-pin barrel. And in the case of the Bic four-color, it's got four ink cartridges that the classic Bic had black, blue, red, and green. Are you familiar with that pen?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, just, you know, you can find it in grocery stores. You see them all over the place, and they've been around for decades. And, you know, it's just, that's kind of, that was kind of the, I don't know, who knows if it was ever the first multi-pin, but that's kind of the original, right? And everything's based off that. Well, nowadays you can get, you can go from just to have a two-cartridge multi-pin, three-cartridge. You can have three-cartridge plus a pencil all in one pen. There's four and five ink cartridge pens. There's four cartridge plus one pencil. I mean, there's just.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And massive ones as well that have like 12, which I remember having as a kid.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And actually, one of those ones that I had as a kid as well, it was an eight or 10 or 12 different pencil.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's weird. Multi-pencil. It had eight different, I can't remember the quantities, and it was either Pilot or Pentel made it. I'll have to look it up, but it had eight different colored LEDs or whatever that number was. So it was a big, fat honking, single pencil. And there's even multi-pencils out there where you can, where you'll have a 0.3 millimeter LED, a 0.4 millimeter LED, a 0.5 millimeter LED in one single barrel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, that's pretty useful for artists and stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. For artists, you know, engineers that want to have all those things handy in one single barrel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, it's obviously good for portability. It's good for, you know, using things like Roberto does, using different colors to denote different things when you're writing or taking notes. I think he's generally right about most tend to look and feel cheap. For the most part, that's accurate, but we'll get into a little bit of that a little bit more. What I think is the fatal flaw with multi-pens, which doesn't keep me from using them, but people tend to complain about this more than anything, is that they run out of ink quickly. Well, that's kind of part and parcel to it, right? You can't fit the same amount of ink in a multi-pen as you can in a single cartridge pen, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Otherwise, they'd be even bigger than they already are. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you'll be, you know, it's like you'll be writing with a banana or something, just a big old block writing around the paper. Yeah. I mean, it just, it's not functionally possible. But it kind of bugs me when people complain, oh, I love this multi-pen, but the ink runs out so fast. I'm like, well, that's kind of the deal, you know? And rightfully so, it can get expensive to constantly buy refills if you find one you like. So, excuse me, that's kind of the, you know, the intro on multi-pens. But to talk about what Roberto was looking for and some that I would recommend, let me go through some of my favorites, and then we can kind of talk about recommendations later. My go-to multi-pen, and I think a lot of people that read The Pen Addict and listen to this podcast probably already know the answer to this, and it's the Pilot Hi-Tech C Colito. So, I love the Pilot Hi-Tech C ink, so having that available in a three, four, or five cartridge barrel at one shot is just really perfect for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We've talked about, I've referred to in my past career, I worked as a Unix engineer in a data center. So, I was always writing all kinds of notes about, you know, either just, you know, file system notes or networking notes or things like that. And the multi-pen came in so handy for that because I would just break down my notes. I'd take, you know, my three-color Hi-Tech C Colito. I tend to use, I tended to not use blue, black, and red in my multi-pens because I would use that in my standard pens. I would go for like, if I was using a three cartridge, I'd use a blue-black ink cartridge, a light blue ink cartridge, and a yellow ink cartridge or something like that. Just some different colors because...

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, would you swap these out?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, one, I would swap them out, and two, I'd have about four or five different barrels loaded.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, like, so I can make sure I'm following. So, you would maybe buy the Hi-Tech C as it came and then buy other Hi-Tech Cs and, like, in different colors and use those inks because you probably, I mean, it'd be awesome. It'd be good, but you probably can't customize the, like, from, you probably can't customize straight from Pilot what colors you want. You actually can. Oh, wow. That's awesome, then.