Editing The Pen Addict 291/transcript (section)

== Bags ==


'''Jim Cantore:''' So one of these days, and maybe the Ask TPA section will be named Ask TPA About Bags, because that's what we got this week, Myke. And I like it. Like, we're gonna... We keep talking about bags all the time, and I keep saying I'm gonna write more about bags and do things about... Do reviews about bags. And for now, we'll have to settle with some Ask TPA questions and see if I can help a few people out. But I enjoy your bag questions, so bring them on. I just don't know that I have all the answers in this area, but we're gonna give it a shot. So this is from our good friend Dave Ray, who has definitely been to the Atlanta Pen Show a few times to come see us, and one of the nicest guys on the planet. So he gets to go first this week. He says, Hi Brad, hope all is well. Got an EDC-related Ask TPA question for you that's just a bit longer than a tweet. I'm realizing that my daily carry pretty much falls into two categories, Business Dave mode and Dad Dave mode. In Business Dave mode, I usually stick to a Topo Mountain briefcase, Daypack, or Knock Lanier with my laptop and an A4 NemoSign pad. For Dad Dave mode, my Tom Ben co-pilot stays loaded up with wet wipes, extra kid clothes, a water bottle, and snacks. Then there's the overlapping part of the Venn diagram. I'm constantly moving my live field notes, books, pens, phone, mints, USB drive, and flashlight back and forth between those two bags. Need a recommendation for a small well-made pouch with pockets that can hold these common items. I'd like to be able to swap it between two main bags or just carry it solo when the bigger bags stay home. Keep up the great podcasting. Thanks, Dave. So Dave needs a bag and a bag. Favorite topic.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Bag and bag time.

'''Jim Cantore:''' So that was literally the first thing I thought of, right? The Lit Lab Teffa bag and bag in the A5 size, not the A4 big boy size. The A5 size has a nice middle pouch. It's got like a phone holder. It can hold a few pens. It'll hold your field notes. It'll hold your flashlight. It's kind of everything. And it's reasonably cheap. It's like 13 bucks. I mean, that's kind of where I went with this. But there are a couple of other options. Actually, Lit Lab makes a few other options. We'll put a link in the show notes to them. I haven't used those. But the bag in the bag is really good quality. You know, the A4 kind of gave us the idea for the Lanier. Kind of made our own bag. So the A5 smaller size is your good portable move it from bag to bag bag. So I really like that. The Tom Ben travel cubelet seems like it's a pretty good idea. It's more built out than a standard packing cube. It even has a shoulder strap if you need. I think it's a little bit overkill for a bag that's small. But it has all the internal pockets and storage plus the size to be able to move from the Topo Mountain briefcase into your other bags. The only other one I thought of, which you probably don't need. It's too big. But this would not be a bag in a bag. But the Tom Ben medium cafe bag would hold all those things. But it's a standalone bag with a bigger strap. But I think your options are the Lit Lab A5 Teffa or maybe the Tom Ben travel cubelet. Since you're already a Tom Ben fan, Dave, that might be a good option. So that's my question or my answer there. So we'll keep going. That's an accessory category, small bag, that there's a billion different answers for. So if you have any other answers, definitely let us know. So Twitless Dan from earlier in the show. You know Twitless Dan. Are you still using the Scapix mixture? So I, for a while, was doing a mix of Roaring Klingner Salix and Roaring Klingner Scabiosa. A one-to-one mixture using it in my pens. I haven't been using it recently. But it's only because the sample vial I made, like my four milliliters, I used it all up. And I just haven't mixed up any more of it. It was an awesome color. Something I really, really like to use. But it's not anything I've used recently. But I totally recommend doing it if you have those two inks. They behave wonderfully and the color comes out perfectly. I think it's an awesome color.

'''Jim Cantore:''' So Chiroho wants to know, I love my 823 as it's so phenomenal to write with. But when filling it, I feel as though I have to really push hard on the plunger. Much harder than it appears you do in your video. Is that normal? So I did just one of those quick little Instagram videos where I put the 823 in an ink bottle. And dropped the plunger to fill it up. You have to use some force. Like I had to, before I started videoing that, I had to make sure my hands were in the right place to apply the right amount of force to the pen. And to be able to fill it. But it makes a big snap at the end. So you know I'm pushing it pretty hard. But I don't know if it's harder or softer than yours. You know, I don't know. Any other 823 people, you know, have any issue with that. Maybe if you filled it a bunch, it could be that the vac filling, the plunger part of it might need to be lubricated with silicone grease. I've had to do that with a Twisby before. On a vac filler, on the vac mini. Or on, just really on the piston filler mini. At a certain point, it starts grabbing a lot more. So, you know, I don't know what to say. You have to push mine pretty hard. And I had to, I had to gear up to do that. All right, next up, we have I, Eric. What are some good inks for absorbent paper? I'd like to use fountain pens at work. But some of the extra fines are still a bit too wet, causing bleed through. So this is the traditional copy paper at work question. I want to use fountain pens. There's no perfect answer. You know, even that cheap paper, it varies. You can look at the Noodler's Bernanke series, the quick drying stuff, the Noodler's X Feather, which kind of is made to work around these things. But you're kind of stuck with blue and black. You know, there's no great colors necessarily to have for that. I find that basic company inks, like the Lamy basic colors or the Pilot basic colors, tend to work okay. They're not the best. But, oh, and Pelican is another one. The drier standard colors tend to work best. So if you don't want to buy a specific fast drying or non-feathering ink that only comes in black or blue, you can try like your basic Lamy or Pelican and maybe even Pilot inks for that type of paper. And you still might have some issues. It's just not a great setup. But keep playing around. You'll find something that works.

'''Jim Cantore:''' So Dilly wants to know, he's heading back to D.C. in March. Want to make it a yearly tradition to pick up a Farnes exclusive pen. Last year it was Stealth Gray Retro 51. What shall it be this year? I have no idea. But theirs is always a good one. They did a Cherry Blossom one about two years ago that was different from the flower one that you bought, Myke. I wish I should have bought it. It was around Cherry Blossom time in D.C. It was a Farnes exclusive. It was super pretty. I have no idea what they are up to for this year. But their exclusive is always extremely well done. It's always one of the best looking ones of the year. And I've never bought one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Good ideas and good executions is the typical way that the Farnes ones work.

'''Jim Cantore:''' So it's good all around. So Oscar in the chat room says Farnes does a Cherry Blossom one every year. So I'll have to take a look and see. So they may do multiple ones per year. But they're always really, really beautiful. Really well done. So they remind me of how nice that NYC one is for Gold Spot that they just did recently. They're wonderful. So Ed DeBille wants to know, Is there such a thing as water-resistant turquoise ink? And there is. So KWZ makes an iron gall turquoise that is absolutely fabulous. I actually have some I need to ink it up. And use it again because it's a really great color. Now you're not going to get like the pure turquoise brightness. But you're going to get a really cool color. And you're going to get water resistance. There might be some other things out there that I'm not thinking of. But that's immediately what came to mind. And it's such a good ink. It cleans well. It looks great. And I'm a huge fan. So Donut Jimmy, back to the backpacks, Myke. What's the best backpack for commuting with a 15-inch Windows laptop? Needs to be as waterproof as possible. Thanks. So this is a hard question because you can go nuts. And in the go nuts category, I always look at chrome bags for what they do. They just relaunched or added a, I should say updated their weatherproof collection, which has tons of bags. They're very expensive. So you have some trade-offs depending on how waterproof you want to go. So one is price. And the second one is weight. So waterproof, if you want like one of the big boy chrome bags that is waterproof, they are really heavy and really expensive. But they're at the bomb-proof type level of bag, right? I mean, it's a high-end bag. It's very expensive. It's very heavy. But it will meet your goals. Now, if you need a bag that can take getting wet but not necessarily sit out in the rain for hours, you know, the regular Tom Ben stuff, they use waterproof zippers on a lot of their bags. You'll just have to check and see which ones. The nylon they use for the exterior, the rain will roll off, you know, as long as you're not going to let it soak for an hour. It'll be fine. And the zippers have the waterproof zipper tape for it to not allow the water to get in there. So that's your more moderate level of weatherproofness. But if you want something like ultra-serious, intense, chrome is made for that. Their weatherproof collection. I actually had one of their weatherproof bags years and years and years ago. I had to get rid of it because it was so heavy. But it was a big, awesome, bomb-proof type bag. And it was fantastic. And I think their designs are really great.

'''Jim Cantore:''' So this next question I really wanted to tackle. And I thought about holding it for a topic for another time. But maybe we can just expand on it. So Mountain of Ink, Kelly does a wonderful job on her blog doing ink reviews. She says, as a blogger, how do you deal with internet trolls without getting discouraged? It's hard to answer that question directly other than saying, you know, you can't let it get to you. But that's like too easy to say, right? So I've found that just embracing the positivity of the community and brushing those people off is kind of the best way to go. So, you know, I'm fortunate to be in the situation that I'm in where I'm a white male and I don't have to deal with some of the crap that, you know, the females or the people of color or the LGBT have to deal with.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, being a white man and having a creative work, you're typically just criticized for the quality of the work that you do, right? Like that is the criticism that tends to be levied your way. If you're anything other than a white man, then people are effectively criticizing every single aspect of your life. So we do come from a privileged position in that people tend to be just criticizing what we do or like anything about us tends to be very limited to either like, I don't like you or, you know, like not so much just like horrific threats and no one's ever threatened me, right? Like I don't get anything like that. And I'm pretty sure it's the same for you. So just wanted to say that like we can talk about this, but like understand that we are coming from a position where the kind of criticisms and trolling that we get is extremely light compared to some other people in the world. Yeah.

'''Jim Cantore:''' Yeah. So, I mean, I try my best. I almost never respond to any of that. You know, I'll get called names from time to time and I like literally just scroll on or delete the email and just be done with it. And just understand that the community as a whole has your back, right? Like we're all in this together. We all want to see like the beauty and awesomeness of the community. And Kelly is one of my favorite bloggers right now. If you can tell by some of the things I write about her work and refill on the weekends, like I'm always fawning over her reviews. So, you know, I'm happy to talk about this and, you know, we can talk about it individually, talk about it offline. And just know that the community is really here for everyone in a very supportive, helpful way. And that anyone who's only interested in causing trouble, they'll be gone before you know it. And hopefully, you know, it doesn't get too serious. But yeah, this is a, it's a tough topic for sure. And we should put in, we talked about it a little bit with Aziza on the greatest titled podcast in the history of our show, Tahitian Black Lip Oyster. I will never forget that. I don't remember the episode number. I'm thinking 194. But if I got all that right, it'd be amazing. Go listen to that episode with Aziza. Because we, oh, it was close. It was close. So listen to that episode. We covered this a little bit with her because I know she gets a lot of hate thrown her way. And it's just unfair. And it's ridiculous that people don't have a better life than to be annoying on the internet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So just know that we're there for you. For me personally, it mostly doesn't affect me for longer than the period of time that I think about it. This stuff tends not to stick in my craw for too long. And the ones that do, like when there's like that nugget of truth, right? They're the ones that kind of keep stuck in your brain.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It comes with a territory, basically. If you're going to attempt to do something which is in public, this is just part of what comes along with it. This is just how it is. And then just the way that you decide to deal with it is whatever works for you. Some people want to fight. Some people don't want to fight. Some people are like me where I kind of sit in the middle where sometimes I'll fight, but most of the time I won't. It's kind of how it tends to be.

'''Jim Cantore:''' Sometimes I'll mock. That's not healthy either. I tend to avoid now like zero confrontation. That's my 28. I understand that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I totally understand that. But I don't necessarily subscribe to it myself because there are times where it's too difficult not to say something.

'''Jim Cantore:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Individual cases. But basically every single time they never work out the way you want them to. Every time. Yeah. You rise to it. It just never goes the way you want.

'''Jim Cantore:''' No. And then you have to think about it more. So I try to get past it. But yeah, it's a great topic and something we could explore more for sure. All right. Last one. Sister T says the first pin show of the year is in the books and everyone is ready for more. If you could organize your own pin show, what would you do differently? What is missing that you'd have in yours? So I kind of replied. This came in the Slack channel. I kind of replied a little bit that the BYOB podcast talked about this an episode or two ago where they basically relayed what they would like to see as a pin con more than a pin show. And that's something we've always talked about. Like what would be the perfect setup and it would be more convention style with a show aspect to it, right? Where you'd go and you would have like official schedule like seminars about different things. You know, not just necessarily repairs and calligraphy, the things that are already done, but, you know, different topics and, you know, more creative topics. And then from like a show floor perspective, I always wanted more local creators at these shows, even if they're not in the pin industry. Like, you know, leather makers or bag makers or, you know, arts and crafts type stuff more than just the pin show from the local environment. Not necessarily people that travel from show to show like the fountain pen people do, but more like if you're in Atlanta, you grab some local, like we know some bag makers, we know some artists. I would love to see a more local spin in each of these shows to show off, you know, the art and creativity and the makers of that particular area. So, you know, I think those are the kind of things I'd look at. It's super hard to get all that stuff off the ground. You know, I've looked at it for years and, you know, I'd love to have to make like the dream show one day and, you know, maybe it'll happen. You know, maybe it'll maybe it'll come through. But yeah, I think we could do something a little bit different. But I generally, you know, like the shows that we have now in the fact that we can go to someplace and hang out with some of our friends and kind of make it our own. That's my favorite part of the current shows. And, you know, maybe we can work on the dream show setting as the years go on.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. If you want to find show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash pen addict slash 291. Thanks again to our fine sponsors, the great people at Squarespace, Pen Chalet and Blue Apron for their support of this week's episode. If you want to find Brad online, go and follow him on Instagram. He's pen addict on Instagram. So you can play along with us next week. Brad is over at pen addict dot com and knock dot co. This show is part of Relay FM. If you only listen to the pen addict, go to relay.fm slash shows and take a look at some of the other shows that we have, because I bet there might be something in there that would still be of interest to you. We have lots and lots of varied, wonderful content at Relay FM. So I recommend all the great shows is what they say. We'll be back next week. Until then, thanks so much for listening. Goodbye. Say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. you

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[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]