Editing The Pen Addict 404/transcript (section)

== Unique Pen Case Review ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And that's the thing. That's why. I appreciated this product. And I did a review. Of it. A couple of weeks ago. And it's just this unique. It's more of a pen. I kind of. Call it like a pen sleeve. Maybe a pen canoe. But it's basically. Two pieces of wood. Where the main. Inner. Part. Is kind of carved out. To hold. I don't know. It holds about eight pencils. It's not. Huge. Huge. Capacity. On the inside. But it doesn't need to be. Like. Pencils are small. Skinny.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know. And they can. You can fit a couple other things in there. Like an eraser. But I just wanted to point this out. I've. I've shouted out. Frederick. And. And his work. At La Berlue. Berlue. A bunch. On Instagram. And on Twitter. Just because. He's very enjoyable. To talk to. He is. He has. A life about him. That I very much enjoy. Bringing out. And. I think his products are really cool. And he's going to keep working on new stuff. And he will let us know. As it. Proceeds. But this lives on my desk now. Right. It's like a desk piece. So you call it a pen case. Because it actually holds pens. Like storage. But it's really. Almost like a desk object. Like. I wouldn't really. Throw this in my backpack. And. Go out to. The coffee shop. And set this up on the table. That'd be a little bit. A little bit past my hipster. Cred. To do. But. It's a pretty great. Pencil case. For what it is. It's. Really. Really unique. And extremely well made.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What level is your hipster cred? I'm not sure.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean. It's decent. Like. I'm moderate hipster. I guess. Okay. You know. I'm a little bit past poser. I do have some. Some. Some cred. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I'm. I'm not all the way there. I mean. I'm wearing a. A. A. Backwards baseball cap today. That's not very hipstery. I don't think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm not sure what that means really.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm wearing shorts. And long socks that are orange. And purple shoes. Is that it? Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think you're back in. You made it. I think you did it. And a hoodie. I'm wearing a hoodie. I'm wearing a hoodie. I'm going to make you a different kind of hipster right now. I want to make you the kind of hipster that makes pizza in their back garden. I'm so excited. This episode is brought to you by Uni, the world's number one pizza oven company. They make surprisingly small ovens that are powered by your choice of either wood, charcoal, or gas, letting you make restaurant quality pizza in your own backyard. All Uni models are super easy to use and really portable as well. So you have to see for yourself, but these ovens will fit in any outside space. They can reach temperatures of up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit, 500 degrees Celsius, which enables you to cook restaurant pizza, quality restaurant pizza, I should say, in as little as 60 seconds. It is that high temperature that separates average pizzas you make in a home oven from the quality that you can get from Uni pizza ovens. It's at least twice the heat. I had a FaceTime call with Christian, one of the founders of Uni. Uni actually sponsored this show a long time ago when they were a very small company. They are now a very big company. They make lots of amazing products now. They spread out all over the globe. It's really amazing to see how they've grown, actually. It's quite an impressive story. But we had a FaceTime call and he showed me the Uni Coda 16, which is their new oven that can cook up to 16-inch pizzas. And it's gas-powered. It has this L-shaped burner at the back, so the heat is distributed evenly. But he made a pizza while we were on the call and it cooked so fast. I mean, they say 60 seconds. It felt like less. It was really very impressive. Uni ovens start from just $199 and they are free shipping to the US, the UK and the EU. We have two of the coolest models that they make, being the multi-fueled Uni Karu, which can use wood, charcoal or gas. So you can choose, depending on what you want to cook with. Or the Uni Coda 16. But they have many other products and accessories, from peels to cutters to tables for your ovens that you can check out. And get 10% off your first purchase of an Uni pizza oven, which is up to $50 if you get the Coda 16, by going to uni.com and using the code THEPENADDICT at checkout. Americans buy over 3 billion pizzas per year and consume approximately 350 slices of pizza every second. So why not make some of these for yourself at home? Once you try it, you're never going to look back. Uni is the best way to bring restaurant quality pizza to your own backyard. Go to uni.com, that's O-O-N-I.com and use the code THEPENADDICT and you will get 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Uni for their support of this show.

'''Myke Hurley:''' A couple of things. One, I want to personally raise those numbers averages a little bit during this quarantine. Of the amount of pizza you consume. Yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah. We need to push those numbers a little bit higher. Second, and you alluded to this, Christian has been a Panatic listener since I think the beginning. I know we started talking to him early on and it's like, here's this guy and he's got this idea and he's making these ovens. And I remember his first Kickstarter campaign and all this stuff. And to see his success over the years and he's just, it doesn't seem to have changed him. He's still the same down to earth cool guy. Like we talk on Twitter.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. He thinks over 50 employees now with offices in Scotland, in Europe and in Austin, Texas as well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes. So it's amazing to have watched Christian do this and like see like his dreams come true. And I'm just wanting to say I'm proud of him. And I think he's just an awesome dude. And he deserves like every bit of success that Uni is having right now. And they're just completely blowing up. So congratulations to him.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Christian and Darina, the founders of the company, and they're just wonderful people. And they have done like such an impressive job. Like their product offering now is amazing. Yeah. Super awesome. Super awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. All right. So I was thinking about topics for this week's show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' As you do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' As you do. But do I? Sometimes it's kind of difficult. Sometimes it's sometimes I know as soon as we stop recording one week what I'm going to talk about next week. Yeah. Sometimes I know the morning of the show what we're going to talk about. This one came in a little bit earlier that I kind of had this idea. And it's a really simple idea. And everyone's going to go, oh, really? He's going to talk about fountain pen inks. That's what he's going to do. But yeah, I'm going to talk about fountain pen inks because the more I dove into this topic, the more I learned a little bit about myself and the kind of times we're living in and the things that I'm appreciating right now. So if you'll allow me a story in the beginning here, Myke, to kind of explain like this is pure Brad rambles for five to ten minutes about a nonsensical topic. But that's why we have 404 episodes of the of the pen addict. But I almost stopped buying fountain pen inks like two years ago because it was just too much. It's like I was very happy with the inks that I have. You know, my blue blacks, my bright blues, some pinks, some greens, of course, oranges here and there. But I kept watching all of these new ink brands, new ink companies come out and I just it was overwhelming to me. Like what is happening in the ink market? And I had to take a step back. Like I stopped buying inks. We kept reviewing on the blog. I kept ordering them, you know, and I kept shipping them out to the reviewers. And I said, let me let them review them for a while. Like I need an ink break. And, you know, I've probably got I don't even know if I counted my inks is probably bordering 100 inks, you know, bottles of ink. And I was just like, I got to stop. It's just too much. I can't keep up with this, which I don't think I've ever said about any stationary item ever. It's like it's too much. I can't keep up. So that led me into my theme for 2019 was I just had this ink frustration in 2018. I was just like, I'm done. But the ink companies didn't care what I thought. They kept coming out with more stuff and it kept drawing me in. So I made 2019 theme the year of experimentation. And I chose that name because I was going to force myself to experiment with fountain pen inks. Now, the year of experimentation meant more things than that. But to be perfectly honest, it came exactly from me wanting to try more fountain pen inks.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't totally succeed in that experimentation. Like I started strong. I bought some weird colors. I wanted to try things that I never wouldn't normally try, right? Brands I've never used. Colors I would never use. Things like that. So I did okay in the beginning and then just kind of, you know, got out of the habit. You know, went right back to using blue, black and orange and bright blue. So I gave myself probably like a D grade on that. My habits of usage for inks just kind of stayed the same. And I was trying to break out of some of those habits. By the end of last year, my thoughts changed. I don't know how or why specifically.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But there just kept being more and more ink. Like from 2018 to 2019, inks just exploded even more. Like I thought we were at peak ink in like 2018 and I couldn't have been more wrong. And I was trying to avoid it back then. So when I saw that I was wrong about that, now I'm kind of like, I want to lean into it again. So I've started to be impressed by some of these new ink makers that are coming out. And seeing all these new shades coming out that I want to try. And seeing all these stories that are interesting. And those are the things that have always excited me about stationery. But it was the inks for whatever reason for a time period there, I was just overwhelmed. So I'm still using...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ink is so much harder to get a handle of in that regard. Because there's more of it. And it's harder to judge on the surface, I think. Right. You can't just look like you can at pens. It's way harder, I think. That's exactly right. Because like the bottles show you nothing. Even honestly, like swatching doesn't really help that much. Because it's dependent on the paper that you use, right? And the pen that you're using. Which is not the same for pens. You can judge them aesthetically by just looking at the finished product. Yeah. And go yes or no.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So that's why I love Kelly at Mountain of Ink for this. Because she really takes an ink and uses as many different pens, nib sizes, swatches, swabs, paintbrushes, paper. To give you a better example of that. And like the pen addicts never... I'm never going to do that because I would go crazy, right? I like too many other things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's a specialized thing. Yeah. It's specialized.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And she's the best.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What I like here is the fact that Kelly uses different paper. Yep. In the images that they represent. So you can like... You get a better idea of, oh, I used this type of paper. So I might... It might look a little bit more like this.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And a review she did this past week or a week ago that I put in refill kind of got me down this path of wanting to talk about this topic today. Because she did a review. I think it's called Diamine Classic Green. And on name alone, on general swatch color alone, I would have never even considered this ink ever to make a purchase. But I'm looking at her review and seeing how she presents it. I was like, oh, there's more to it than the name and the bottle shape. Della Mad Green?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No? No. It's literally like classic green. Okay. Diamine Classic Green, I think. Multiple Diamine Greenings. It was a very recent one, like within the past week or two. All right. I'll find it. And it kind of looks like British Racing Green a little bit, which is what intrigued me. It was like, I would have never picked this up. Like...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I still may never. I still may never pick this up. But it just got me thinking of how many decisions I've made just on, you know, the name and the bottle. And then that expanded into like my Aurora Orange ink review that I did on Monday. Yeah. Yeah. Which, where I mostly talked about the buying decision of choosing that ink. Even though I didn't pay for it. But you understand, like, my premise behind it. The soap process. Wasn't, here, let me tell you about all this orange ink and how it handles on these papers and how this does. Let me explain why I think this, someone would buy this ink or not. And, I don't know. I got an email or a text saying, like, that's exactly how I would have written this review too. Like, it's just, I think about these things in a weird way. But I enjoy sharing that thought process as well. As opposed to, here are the technical details of this orange ink. Right? So, that's how I've, a lot of times, I've reviewed things in a more storytelling fashion than a strict X's and O's fashion or details fashion. I think it makes sense.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I enjoy that. Because you make a good point in this review that, like, calling something orange, just that's the name of your ink. It's a bold move to make. Right? Like, you're not saying a lot. And, as you say, right, like, it's expensive and it's part of, like, a special edition. A little bit more in the naming, like, branding department would have gone a long way for what is a very nice looking orange.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. It's a great ink, right? So, I was thinking about all of that is if you just put the same ink in the same bottle and call it tangerine, my feelings are completely different about this. So, I get just thinking a lot about the marketing of the product. I don't know that. I guess that's one of those things I do because I have a lot of my hands in a lot of products. I also, you know, buy and review a lot of products. I want to understand what companies are thinking at the time that they're deciding on these things. I don't know. So, I find that conversation interesting where, you know, I lean on someone like Kelly to give me, like, the details of, like, is this actually technically a good ink or not? So, it's, I've found this weird, I'm in a weird place with inks again because now I want to try them all. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't, like, a year and a half ago. I, if I never saw a new bottle of ink again, I would have been fine. Like, I was really, like, upset at the ink market. I was like, stop. You're crushing me. I don't know what to do. And now I'm like, can I try them all? Like, it's a weird place to be. But I do have, I am going to continue to, like, experiment with inks, right? I am trying some of the new brands. Like, I put, I listed a couple that I've just gotten, I either have in or have on the way, like, Standard Bindery. They're a stationery shop in Australia. And now their inks are available at Van S Pen. So, I got a couple of those bottles in to try. Venta inks, which came out last year and I found super interesting. But I never really explored them. So, I'm kind of digging into them a little bit. But I still like every sailor formulation that's out there, whatever they're making it with Bung Box or Kobe or wherever, whatever specific stores they're making it. And I still like those inks. So, the one thing I have realized is I really don't want ink samples. So, no one should get an idea of, say, hey, let me send all my, Brad, my favorite inks in a bunch of three millimeter vials. I will lose my mind. I will buy bottles, meter them out over the time, you know, not get too many at one time. You know, and a bunch of these are going to other people to review. But I'm kind of back, oddly, on the fountain pen ink bandwagon. And the biggest takeaway is I don't know why. Like, what has changed that made me do this because the ink markets only exploded more when I was shunning it, you know, a couple years ago. It's only bigger now. And now I want to dive back in. I find that a little bit interesting. And I don't know if it's because, like, these weird times that we're in. Am I thinking about, like, the products I have differently? Am I thinking about not spending as much on a pen but I can get enjoyment from a less expensive product like an ink or a paper or pencils? You know, things like that. So I don't know if this is my new escape type of thing that just kind of happened based on the world that we're currently living in or if it's just, like, a product thing as a stationary blogger that I have found renewed interest in. I don't know. I thought it was interesting enough to talk about because I've had, like, a complete 180 turnaround just in a short period of time, really, like, about a year, year and a half of wanting to try all the inks. And I don't know. I just wanted to say that out loud because I don't have the answers, but I'm enjoying it. I'll enjoy any new stationary I get to use. But, yeah, I'm into inks again, Myke. And I'm going to keep reviewing them, keep talking about them, keep trying some new stuff. Maybe the year of experimentation never ended, which themes don't necessarily ever have to have it ended, right, Myke? Like the last thing as you want.