Editing The Pen Addict 182/transcript (section)

== Personal Picks ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. I'm, I'm interested to see what's going to happen with this last topic that we got some personal kind of one-off picks, you know, kind of the, the extra, extra things we're, we're looking at. So I want to get to that, but let's, let's talk about one of our, our good friends at Harry's.

'''Myke Hurley:''' For many of us, shaving can be a pain. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to our wallet as well as our skin because it can cause nicks and cuts and scrapes and razor burns. But shaving and shaving, changing the blades over very frequently. So you get the best shave possible can be really expensive. And this is what Harry's is here to do. Harry's make their own blades. They have high quality, high performing German blades crafted by shaving experts in a factory that they own in Germany. But because they own the factory and they own all the process, they're able to pass the savings back on to you guys. They offer a high quality shave at about half the price of other big brand blades. Harry's razors and Harry's blades and Harry's products will ship free to your front doorstep. And their starter set is an amazing deal for just $15. You'll get yourself a razor, moisturizing shave cream or foaming shave gel and three razor blades to go along with it. It's a real great set, which is a good thing to think about with the holidays coming up. On average, an everyday shaver saves $150 a year on blades using Harry's. And with Harry's, your satisfaction is guaranteed because that's so important to them. I love the look and design and everything about Harry's products. They've got this really kind of super cool retro Mad Men vibe to them that I really like. You know, I like to think that I'm Don Draper when I'm tidying up the edges of my beard. Because that's what I use Harry's products for, right? They have really great razors and they're really nice and they do a good job. And I'm able to kind of, because I keep a beard, but keep like the lines and keep my neck and everything and my cheeks and everything all nicely taken care of. I love their facial products as well. They have a great aftershave moisturizer, which is really good to use because it keeps your skin soft and moisturized after using shaving products. And they have their great foaming shave gel as well, which I really like. So you just spray this little gel on your hand and rub your hands together and it turns into foam. It's like shaving magic. You can experience a clean, close, comfortable shave for yourself with Harry's. Go to harrys.com right now and you'll get $5 off if you type in my coupon code, which is penaddict, of course, with your first purchase. That's harrys.com. Use the code penaddict to check out. You get $5 off and start shaving better today. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's like shaving magic. I like that. And that should be their new tagline.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They can choose that. They won't have to pay me any extra. They can just have it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Well, we've got stationary magic coming up now. So we have some personal picks where we did these kind of groupings before, all these different combos of, you know, if you have certain people who are into certain type of things, you know, hopefully we gave you some good ideas for that. But now we just have some random one-off stuff. So Ana, why don't you talk about what else is on your list for our gift guide?

'''Ana Reinert:''' I couldn't think of anything.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You, of all people? I know.

'''Ana Reinert:''' I know. To be honest, this has been a year where I feel like I've been really lucky with all of the things that I've gotten to do and all of the great stuff that I've gotten. That I've had some health issues and I've been getting better. And that has been sort of the greatest gift at this point. So I feel like I can't really ask for anything else right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's super awesome. I've been talking to you behind the scenes and I'm glad you're feeling better. Thanks. You're awesome. And I just want you to continue to be awesome. Thanks. All right, Michael, what do you got for your personal picks?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now I feel bad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' How can you follow that? So I'm just going to, well, the way that you follow it is by talking about somebody that's also very nice, which is Myke Dudek. Like, I have been really enjoying using the groove again. Like that, I was using some of the other ones. I was using the cube and stuff on my desk for a while. But I decided to pick up the groove, which is the one. It's got like nine pen holes and then a slot for like for notebooks. And I like having everything just nicely all in one now. So I have like a couple of field notes books and some of my favorite pens just on my desk all in one container or unit. So that's really good to have again. So I've been enjoying using that. So that's the top pick from me. Here's a kind of a weird one. I have been using a Wacom Intuos tablet for a while with my iMac. And I did it because I was starting to get some wrist pains. So I wanted to like change around some of the input methods that I use. And I was getting some pain in my right hand. Considering that I am left handed with this stuff, I figured, well, why not try and use a pen tablet? So I've been using a pen tablet for a while. And I've been really, really happy with the results of it. And I'm really enjoying using the Wacom tablet as a way to interact with my Mac.

'''Ana Reinert:''' You know, I actually started using a Wacom many years ago because I had a lot of wrist and elbow pain like right out of college. And I think it basically saved my design career because it did make a huge difference. I think like gripping like a mouse or whatever was really made me tense. But holding like a pen, you kind of you hold a pen differently depending on what you're doing, you know, depending on what kinds of motions. You can kind of move it around in your hand. You don't grip it as much. You kind of hold it loosely. But yeah, I do recommend if you if you can get get over the first sort of two weeks of awkwardness.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Have you tried doing it in your left hand at all, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, that's I'm 100 percent left hand with it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Oh, good, good. Yeah, because I can't imagine trying to do it in my right hand. I would look so ridiculous.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, that's part part of it for me was where I was getting pain in my right hand because that's what I was using to use a mouse with. So this enables me to rest that hand. And it's and I genuinely believe that if I wouldn't have made some sort of change and I would be in a bit of trouble right now. So I'm still getting the pains in my my right hand and my right arm are getting better. And I'm really enjoying using the Wacom tablet. So, you know, it might just be nice. It's just a nice way. It's a very different way to control your devices. And I think for pen addicts, it kind of fits quite nicely as a way to do it. Right. We're very used to moving in hands in that way.

'''Ana Reinert:''' And then the last thing, are you using a large one or a small one? Yes, I think it's medium.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think I went with I didn't I didn't. Yeah, I kind of that felt to me like because I didn't really know what I was buying. I'll go with medium. Medium sounds right.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Because I use a really big one at work and then I use a small one at home. So they're slightly different feel.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I also for the just the space on my desk, I didn't want to get anything anything too big because I kind of bought it blindly from Amazon. The model was recommended to me by a friend. And I just kind of took a look at what what one to go for. And yeah, that was what I went with. And I haven't looked back. I'm very, very happy with it.

'''Ana Reinert:''' Good. Good.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The last one for me is I'm only picking this. Well, I'm going to pick the Field Notes Arts and Sciences just because I feel like if I maybe keep talking about this enough that they'll actually make some kind of permanent book in this style format size. So I'm just going to keep mentioning Field Notes Arts and Sciences forever.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that's got to happen next year, right? I hope so. It just has to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I hope so. It's got to happen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So one of the one of the things that I want to try to do next year, I'm not a resolution guy or or anything like that. But one of the things, you know, I want to kind of add to my arsenal and Anna is partly to blame for this. Our friend Amanda, who's in the chat room side of the seas, partly to blame for this. A lot of people are partly to blame for this because I get these awesome letters from everyone in the mail that, you know, when I get something from Anna, you know, it's so detailed. And, you know, her handwriting is awesome. And the detail she has, just the envelope is awesome. And, you know, I get this cool stuff in the mail. I was like, oh, I can't do that. I keep telling myself I can't do that. So I'm not going to I don't know that I'm going to write letters next year, but I've got this postcard set that just came in from Princeton Press. It's called Keep Fresh Stay Rad Postcard Set. It's 100 postcards. So I'm going to start with postcards because these are like the coolest postcards ever. So it's it's 100 of them in a box and they are like this wonderful type, like hand lettered graffiti looking thing. And they come in different there's different groups of the cards. So like you get this little box and they're broken down into 10 sections like salutations, optimism, audiovisual affections. There's one called Strong Language, which is probably my favorite. So let me let me pull out one of these cards. Strong Language cards. So this one says, yeah, so this one says F-N-tastic. So things like that. What is this? S-H-I, you know, whatever. And then there's correspondence, introspection, encouragement. Let's let's pull out an encouragement here. Show enough. That's what this one says. And it's all this cool, like graphical type just for fun. You know, it's all these like graffiti looking cards. So I actually got my wife to buy me some postcard stamps today at the post office. So I'm going to start getting into this and just start writing random people postcards. And maybe I can up my up my game enough to where I'm comfortable, like writing letters and things like that to people in, you know, like Anna does. And, you know, you like go to the mailbox and there's something from Anna in there. And this is like, I don't even want to open this because it's so beautiful on the outside. But so I'm going to work on that next year because I think it's a cool thing to do. And my last thing is the KWZ Iron Gall ink from Van Espenz. They're stocking this ink. It's an unbelievably cool ink product. They're Iron Gall ink. So they kind of change colors as they dry. You know, the formulation of the ink oxidizes with the air, becomes a darker, more permanent ink. And they make colors that you don't normally find in an Iron Gall ink, like turquoise and gummy berry are probably my two favorite inks that I've been using here recently. They're so well behaved. I use them in any pen. They don't scare me, you know, with their Iron Gall properties, things like that. So if you're looking for something, someone, you know, you have someone on your list that's actually a real dedicated fountain pen user and is looking for something kind of neat that's off the beaten path. The KWZ inks, Iron Gall inks, I think are really, really cool and something worth looking at.