The Pen Addict 597/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	597
Title:	All I Can Think About Is Vibe
Release Date:	January 10th, 2024
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 597
Audio File:	Audio Episode 597
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 597
Length:	5353 min <br />0.883 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

From RelayFM, this is the Pen Addict, episode 597. Today's show is brought to you by Factor. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy.

Hi, Brad. Hey, Myke. How's it going? Pretty good, my man. Pretty good. How are you? I'm pretty good. It seemed like you were questioning yourself there for a moment. Who could tell? You know? Maybe not. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll answer for you.

You're doing pretty well. Thank you. I have some follow-up for you in regards to the Pilot Friction and the Sidekick notepad. I bought some Pilot Frictions. I used them. I erased with them.

I do not know how this person was making the dots disappear. My only assumption is they were, as I thought, like somehow pulling the top layer of the paper off or something. I don't know what they were doing. I tried everything to try and get the ink to disappear.

It wasn't happening. It was very funny to me that this person was explaining to me in emails what a Pilot Friction was. And I was kind of like, oh, you don't know about the other side of my life, do you? Isn't that funny that that still happens? There's some very, it's like you have some very silo-y type of stuff.

But there is like this weird like underground cable that runs between the silos that shares information. And you're like, oh, yes, I know of the Pilot Friction. And I took a picture of the, and sent to you the next day. I was still being met with the electronic billboard near my office, which had an ad for the Pilot Friction.

That's a pretty sweet ad. I'm not going to lie. I mean, they did, they paid money for that. Like, I mean, that's a nice digital board.

And that had to be like a 10 by 10. Yeah, that board was broken today. It had nothing to do with me. Because they knew you were coming.

They're like, oh, we cannot schedule this Friction. We can't ruin another episode of the Pan Addict. Well, good. Our long national nightmare is over. I'm still thrilled that you got the tribal tattoo Friction.

I have three of them now. Literally the worst Friction ever made for a really great pin that I will stand up for. That is a horrible version of that pin. It's very fitting, I think.

It is. It's the OG. It's the original. And I like, what were they thinking at the time? I guess they thought, I bet that they thought that like, this is just the thing we're going to try. And oh, I bet, you know, people want this kind of fun, cool art.

Like, this is an art pin, and you can erase with it and play around with it. And we'll just do this, this crazy, like, tribal pattern on these pins. And you know, it'll be like this super niche market. And now it's probably like a top line item, you know, in their business.

I just find that whole thing funny. I just don't know how you get, I genuinely don't know how you get to this design. Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, it's not even, like, thematically close to how I can understand why you would put this very strange pattern on these pins.

Yeah, it's like the America version of it. And it's like, how is this your launch product? It's so wild. America of like a certain time and place, you know, which is definitely not anymore. Yeah, so you have, if you show up with a bar bar tattoo, like the next time I see you, like in London 10, like if you're setting up like a bar bar tattoo, like I'm going to be worried about you.

It will, it will come off if I put my arm in the microwave though. True, true, true, true. It'll be fun, true. I have some follow-up from Austin who writes in to say, I heard you mention on episode 596, the last week's show, about wanting other digital tools, this is for you, Brad, for cataloging your pen use and collection this year.

I have been using an iPhone app called Penadex, P-E-N-E-D-E-X, and it's helped me a lot to track my use collection and when things need to get cleaned out too, might be worth a look for your needs in 2024. Penadex is made by Connor Rose, who is a RelayFM Discord member, at least has been.

I remember seeing them put it in there at one point. Yep, and Connor has sent me, you know, like the test flights and the early release of it, and I forgot about it, to be honest, because I wasn't using it at the time, so I didn't have it on my phone.

Practice proper app hygiene, people. And I need to go back and look at this and see if this will work for what I'm thinking about, because I would like a digital aspect of this piece of my year of recording, right? Tracking the type of pens and papers that I use, or pens and inks that I use.

So we're going to talk about this later, what I'm doing so far, but like this is the month where I decide what the digital piece is going to be. Right now I'm just doing the tracking piece, writing things down, analog style, and I'm going to be working on testing out a few things for that.

I've also heard from our friend Urban Hafner of the Fountain Pen Companion. They also have a tracking system built into Fountain Pen Companion, and while they don't have an app, you can, I can, I've, in the past, I've just, you know, done like the home screen app, you know, however you want to call that.

PWA. So it's called progressive web apps, but I always think it's like progressive web app with attitude or something like that, which I prefer to think about. But there you go. So that's on the list. Also, you will appreciate this, Myke.

So one of my friends heard, also heard the podcast, sent me a message, said, hey, I have this Notion database that, you know, I can send you for something that I use to track. You know, it's not the same, you know, this is a stationery, stationery friend, but they use it for tracking something else.

You know what they track, Myke? They track, they track the wrestling matches in their Notion database. That is a great use. But I will say, Brad, I'm in the bag, right, for Notion, both, I use it a lot and they also pay me now.

So fantastic. Right. I'm living my best life over here. Right. I caught this on Cortex. I was like, if I dabble into that, I will definitely hit you up for some more details. But I actually think Notion could be super good for this exact thing because it is just a database, right?

Right. But you could put all the information in there. You could have like ink colors and stuff as tags. Right. And then once that date is in there, you can represent it in various ways, right? You could have it as a list.

You could have it as like a Kanban. So you could be like, show me all of the pens I have that are with this kind of, or this color ink in them or whatever. Yeah. But then also you could use, you could ask questions in their AI of the database.

So you could be like, show me all of the pens that I am using that are fountain pens that have blue ink in them. Like you could do like, it would, it's a lot of data entry, but I feel like once the day is, it's always going to be like that anyway, no matter how you do it.

But I feel like Notion at least gives you the flexibility to do stuff with that data where maybe other systems, they're not, maybe not as flexible in that way. They like do it the way they do it and you just have your information. But because it's your database, you can essentially like choose what is your preferences for how this stuff could be displayed.

Yeah, I've definitely steeled myself for the impending data, you know, inputs and manipulations that are ahead of me. But like that's part of the deal I knew going into it. Like this has to be, this can't be singularly an analog thing because it, I would not end up getting what I wanted out of it.

So it's, it's a two phase thing and we're going to be testing all these things. And I'm sure we'll talk about it more and figure out what I'm actually going to at least stick with for the first few months until I get frustrated or hopefully, you know, maybe, maybe I get a winner right from the jump.

We'll see. We'll see. So, yeah, that's pretty much like starting like this week. I need to start dabbling with a few of the, few of the digital tools and figure out at least like, you know, just go through some one-on-one stuff. And can we do what passes like the basics test and then go from there?

So that's what I'm working on. You know who has passed the basics test, Myke? Lamy. Lamy has passed the basic test with the safaris, right? Like they're, one of my favorite pens of all time.

And I always want to discuss their, you know, trials and tribulations in the pen world. I'm a very, very big Lamy fan. Hashtag hire me Lamy. And we've got the first partial images of their 2024 safari limited editions.

These look like, and I'm compelled. I am hesitant. I'm of two minds here. So let's, we'll have a link in the show notes to go check out these safaris. And it's just kind of a front end picture, from like the ink window down.

So it's called, there's two models. They're doing a pair pink cliff and violet blackberry. Now, when I saw these images, I'm like, yes, I'm way in. Like these are my colors.

I'm way in on this. I like the idea. I like the concept. You know, I like the mix and match part of this.

So the first one in this image, it looks like a dark blue barrel. It looks like the petrol. With a shiny. Yeah. It's kind of like the petrol upper barrel. And then the pink, they've done a, they've done a couple of pinks before.

This looks a little bit more purple and magenta. It's fuchsia to me. Like it's, it's. Yeah. Fuchsia. I wouldn't call this pink. Like at first I was like, which one is between the two of them?

Like the names pink cliff and violet blackberry. Like I was like, I took me a minute of like, which one do I think is which? This has to be pink cliff, right? I feel like it has to be.

This has to be pink cliff, right? I feel like it has to be. Yeah. But the, the barrel's not quite as green as like petrol. It looks more navy, but like a navy matte.

It's a really good, it's really good navy. So then the second one has a glossy upper barrel. It's like a plum, I'd say, upper barrel. And then a violet grip section.

Well, I guess it would be black, blackberry, blackberry and violet. Hey, it looks like blackberry, you dingus. So yeah. And that looks like a shiny barrel with a matte section. And the other one looks opposite.

It looks like a matte barrel with a shiny grip section. So I love these, right? Like I, I love these. I want these. And I'm also not going to let them off the hook because this is barely one step beyond just grabbing a bunch of parts in the warehouse and putting them together and calling them a thing.

Right. Which I give a lot of grief to other companies about sailor for one. So I don't want to like forget how like I've given other companies hard times for describing parts. Like if they came out with just last week, we were talking about those Christmas ones they did.

Right. If they actually came out with those, I would kill those. Those, that would be terrible because those are literally parts pins, right? That's how they came up with that little concept for that Instagram post. Like, hey, we just grabbed a bunch of parts, mix and match them together, calling them, calling them what they, what they actually are.

And they weren't real products. This is a real product we're going to charge people money for. And it's basically taking, I think these are new colors. So that's where I kind of let them slide.

Got an image in the Discord, Brad, that Kate dug up from the Colt Pens newsletter, which is the full imagery of these pens. Yeah, I think the upper barrels are new colors. I'm not totally sure the grip sections are new colors, but they might be. So I think they've done good.

I really like these. You know, you know I like these. Like you look at these and you're like, oh yeah, Brad is going to love these. And I do. I just want to say like they're, they're on the edge of, of, of just picking something from the warehouse.

But it's good. I, this is what I wanted the strawberries and cream to do, to be right. Like I think they, they really let me down on the strawberries and cream one. That was two years ago. I guess they didn't mix and match appropriately.

I felt that that one was screaming for a mix and match because that is the imagery you have of strawberries and cream, right? That stuff, it goes together. So they kind of kept those separate. This one, we'll see.

So I think it's going to be good. I like it. I'm ready to see them in person to see what these colors really are. The big question I think a lot of people will have is, hey, are we going to get some inks with these? That will be, also be interesting, right?

Because they've done, you know, one of the most famous inks they've ever done is Lamy dark lilac. I could see a lilac-y type of ink pairing with both of these pens, honestly, even the blue and pink one. So we'll see. We'll see. So I, it's good. I, I, I'm looking forward to these.

I don't know. I am, I'm really tough on Lamy, right? Because I love them so much. And it's like, I almost want to see more, which is very unfair. Like I, I'm, I'm hesitant with my words because I do believe I'm being a little bit unfair. these are, these are very good and I will have both of them.

So there you go. All right, Myke, I got a new notebook in hand. Okay. You ready? I am. do you have the keep book by Studio Need? Our friends, Dan and Tom.

But I have some on the way. The Thoroughly Considered podcast. Okay. You have them on the way. - I love, so one of my little things that I like in stationery that is very minor, gets rarely talked about for a lot of people is useless. I love a notebook slip case.

Okay. That's one of my little things. And Tom and Dan did that with the pano book and still do it with the pano book. I should say, you know, when you finish the notebook, you go pop it in the slip case and the slip case has, you know, a little date and, you know, completion date, you can little note section.

I don't know. I just, it's one of those things that maybe a lot of people don't care about, or it doesn't check off a box on them. And it's certainly not something you, it's something you use twice once to take the notebook out of. And then once when you're done with the notebook to shove it back on the shelf.

So I like, I like a nice slip case. That's one of my things. Yeah, it's funny. There's an episode of Thoroughly Considered that we recorded yesterday that will be out sometime in the next few days. Yeah. I had to go double check.

Yeah. This was a conversation that we were having where like, basically I could not be more different to Dan on this. It's like, I have zero desire for this, like for a slip case. The notebooks look incredible, right? Like, and so I, I've bought them because I just want to appreciate what they have managed to accomplish because they look really good.

Plus I'm really interested to see what their super thick, like sketch paper is all about. But yeah, there's the idea of the slip case and even just keeping notebooks like this. It's just, it's just never a thing that I think about. It's one of those things.

So like Midori doesn't do slip cases, but they give you stickers, like a stick, the sticker literally says index. So you can like put it around the spine of the notebook when you're done. And I will never use this slip case while I'm using this notebook. And I have plans for this notebook, which we're going to talk about in a minute.

But I love the idea of slip cases. So yeah, I'm in the small percentage who appreciates the slip case. So the rest of the notebook is a hardbound notebook. It's in, what do they call their dimensions here?

Let's see. Where is it? Do we have a side? God, their product page is so good. All right. So they just have a size five by three by seven and seven by seven. So it's a little smaller than a five.

How do you feel about that, Brad? So we did an episode last year. I just want to know if you're going to give them as much crap as you give me. So I'm off the ledge on standards, right?

I will, if I'm making something, I will choose a standard size. I appreciate other people using whichever size they feel is best for their design. So I'm on record. Last year, I capitulated.

I did. I capitulated last year that I need to get off my standards bandwagon. It's fine. If I was making something, I'm going to make a standard international paper size measurement. And I'm okay with other people doing it. Mostly because my friends keep doing it.

And I'd rather keep my friendship than yell about A5 and A4 sizes. I don't think that I was released so quickly from your clutches. But nevertheless, here we are. Well, you take the brunt of my rage.

So let's just say you're the most accessible. Fair enough. I'm just closest. So yeah, I'm off the bandwagon. Unless I will say I'm going to hold one little percentage of forgiving everybody for this. If you tell me some scientific reason, like if anyone has some marketing that comes out that's like they have the scientifically proven correct size, I'm going to lose my mind.

So that will be a problem if that happens. But otherwise, yeah, knock yourself out. Make whatever paper size you want. So I don't know.

I'm laughing too hard at this now. I have a real thing about stationery. I'm not sure if you know this. Wait, you? I have opinions. I have opinions about stationery.

So my opinion about this notebook is it's not good for fountain pennings. There you go. So and I'm good with that because and I'm good with that for everybody who makes their own products. This this is not a hill I will die on. Not every notebook has to be fountain pen friendly.

They're making a product for their customer. Their customer mostly use uses their pens and their pencils, generally speaking. And if they don't use their pens and their pencils, they're being Studio Neats pens and pencils, the Mark one, the Mark two, Mark three. They're generally coming from the digital tools arena, kind of like with a lot of your Cortex customers.

They're a different customer than, say, if Brad was designing a notebook for a customer that reads the pen addict. Right. Yes. So I want that to be very clear when I talk about any product that I ever say, you know, it's not fountain pen friendly. That's not a negative.

Right. Like it's purposefully designed for their customer. And for example, they say I have plenty of Mark ones. They were kind enough to send me that. Oh, yeah. By the way, thank you, Dan and Tom.

They sent me three versions of the notebook. So it comes in dot blank and lined. They also threw in one of their the new Mark one, the all black one, the black steel. Oh, so it's designed to be used with this refill, the Schmidt P8126, which I love and you love.

And guess what? It's perfect. It's perfect for that. Right. So I had been looking for a notebook. One of the other like this is not this doesn't go in the resolutions thing or anything like that. This is just one of the ideas I've had from a listener emailing me about how they use their stationery.

And one of the things I was thinking about using or starting this year and having something a little bit different to keep my hands off my phone and use my stationery. Have you heard of solo journaling TTRPGs, Myke? Absolutely not. No. Yeah. So you're obviously familiar with tabletop games, with RPG games, you know, like all of this terminology and all of the style.

Well, there is a genre of a subset, I guess, of these games where it's a literal literal solo game you play by yourself and journal it as you go. So I've been looking into this thanks to some really kind emails. So I'm thinking about thinking about using I was thinking about using a notebook dedicated for a certain game that I've downloaded.

Right. The game's called Dead Ball. It's a baseball game. But it's basically, you know, text and dice. And, you know, I can create rosters and do all these things and simulate a game through dice rolls, through the rule sets that are created for this TTRPG.

And it's just a standalone game that I can play solo. So this is going to be my notebook for that. I'm going to hopefully going to start doing that this week or next week. And this is before I even received this notebook.

It's like, oh, I need to pick out a notebook to use for this. If I'm going to do these games, I just want kind of a, I want it separate from everything else. And this is going to be perfect for that because I will use mostly non-fountain pens for this.

You know, the Studio Neat Mark 1 with the Schmidt refill. My Uniball Jetstreams that I love so much. Pencils and drawing pens, right? When I did a whole little ink test in the back of my pano, not my pano book, my keep, my keep book to see, hey, what works well on this paper.

And I loved the drawing pen. Like I have my Kuretake Zig Mangaka, which is my favorite drawing pen. I just grabbed that, put that on the page. I was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly what this is.

So it's great for literally every type of pen and it's average for fountain pens. You can use fountain pens. Fountain pen writing is fine with the finer nibs. Like the wider and wider you get, the less enjoyable.

It is a little feathering, a little bleed through the back. But every other type of pen, which is who the notebook is made for, Myke, I will scream this from the rooftops, is perfect. So really nicely done, really good construction, design, layout. You know, they, with the dot grid notebook, they always add in the little corner markings, like for the people who are really using these notebooks, like for design and UI based sketches.

The most detail of their paper format. So if you like Studio Neat and their products and you've used things like the Pano book in the past, like this is a different expression of the same ideas that they've had running through the Pano book and the tote book. And now it's into more of a, I don't like the term keepsake, but this is a journal.

That's what they're going for. Oh, well, I guess it is. I guess it is the keep book. That's exactly what they're going for.

Like this one is meant to last. Yeah. So it's made for you to use, to beat up, and then to store it on the shelf and line them all up next to each other when you use the next one and the next one and the next one. And I think it's fantastic.

They did a really good job. And you know what? The price point's great too. So it's 25 bucks.

I don't know how they do it. It's perfect. It's right in line. I don't know how they're going to get those prices. I mean, I'm thinking I'm just making a very different thing, but like the price is like, I don't know.

I don't understand how you're doing it, but. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was pleased with that. So thumbs up on the keep book and I'm going to put this to the test and I'm going to have some pictures of me. I will probably, honestly, I will probably end up reviewing this notebook because one, I talked about last year, I need to review more notebooks, period.

Right. I get a lot of notebook products crossing my desk and how can I review them? And two, because I'm going to take this new little gaming journey and this is going to be the notebook that I'm going to use for that. And that's just going to be like a good thing to like write up and share some images of, you know, things like that.

So it's fun. Great product. Really good timing for me. And I'm going to have some to give away on the blog coming forward. So they sent me several. So you will see more of this.

I really like it. So good stuff. Myke, what is the last Retro 51 that you purchased? Do you know? Because we haven't been talking about them quite as much because there's always like, again, like our friends over at Sailor, there's always something coming up. You know, today it ends in Y, new Retro 51.

So I can't even think of the last one I bought. I know I got the... I don't know if I could tell you. Yeah. So I got... I was given the...

I'm going to butcher this name because I did not prepare for it. The Sega Hire waves from Rickshaw. You know, the wave pattern. Japanese wave pattern. That's a beauty. This one, Myke, is called Day and Night.

And Katie Classman designed it. And Katie actually reached out to me last week. I've known Katie for years going to pin shows and just being in the pin hobby. She sent me last week.

She said, hey, I'm designing... I designed a Retro 51. It's coming out next week. Can I send you...

Like, can I tell you about it? Can I send you the pictures? She sent me this picture. And this is her artwork.

And like, I'm just astonished at this design. I think this is one of the coolest retros I've seen in a while. Is there is a lot going on that is laid out perfectly in this pin. I'm having trouble describing this pin.

Other than to say, I don't know how Katie's artwork translated so perfectly to the layout of this pin. So it's basically like the transition from a sunrise to sunset. And not just in a basic fashion. You know, there's lots of artwork like the trees and the leaves and the swirling and the clouds.

I don't even know how this happened. But shout out, Katie. This is stunning. What do you think about this? Oh, it's a very special design.

I've actually just been searching through my email to try and find the answer to your question. But I like this a lot. It feels very reminiscent to me to Starry Night. Like the way that the sky in this image looks.

But this is, but at the same time, a very unique looking piece of artwork. Like it's, you know, I have feels like, oh, I can kind of line those up. It seems similar. But overall, the piece is very, very unique. It looks super cool.

Yeah. So I just think this one's a knockout. This one's a lot. Brad, I remember the last one I bought. Now that you decided yours, I figured out mine while we were thinking about what you got.

It was the latte one where I lost my mind. No, that was like two year and a half, two years ago. It was last January. No, it was like January 2022.

January 2022. Yeah. It was one of the greatest episodes in Panadict history. Gave it away as soon as it arrived because I was so fuming with the route that they took. We're not going to link that one to the show notes, but if you know, you know, and y'all can go find it.

It is literally one of the best episodes we've ever recorded. No, I'll find it. I'll put it there. They need to know what they did, you know?

Basically, this email ends in Brad gets emails. That's all you need to know about that episode is Brad got emails about that one from various people. Those people, here's what I'll say, Brad. If those people want to send another email, go for it.

Come on, come at me directly. No, no, it wasn't, it was not bad. It was like, oh, okay. My last retro that I bought was, I bought the, when they started the Pan Am series with the artwork, the Hawaiian travel artwork.

That's the last one. That's the last one I bought. I thought that was a really pretty one. So yeah, great job, Retro and Katie with this one.

And yeah, if y'all want this one, you should probably, probably go look at that pretty soon. 964 limited edition. So yeah, very cool. I just wanted to shout that one out because I love it. It came out. This is one of those emails I get where I was like, I just kind of had to like sit back and go, whoa.

That was, that was really good. Trying to find this episode now. I don't see it. I don't see it.

Maybe I, maybe I refused to link to the pen. Probably in January 2022. Yeah, I can definitely find it. Oh, you know, I've found it, I think.

What was the show title? Did we allude to it in the show title? I can't remember. I think we did. No, but I found an episode where it says stuff happens this episode.

All of it fueled by the mighty coffee bean. Episode 497. Let's take a break. Refresh this energy. Let's do it. You need one. You need one, but I'm going to make you read. I'm falling back in again.

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Our thanks to Factor for their support of this show and Relay FM. All right, Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. And it is another Instagram that I've been following for a while.

So it's penspaperplans. So pens.paper.plans. Angela put this post up that I caught a few days ago. And it is basically a layout of a page where it's a... Okay, so if you have your A5 planner and you have your two page per month, right?

So you have one open layout. They basically took every day of the year on this two page spread and did an ink sample. And it looks so cool. Oh, this is nice.

Yeah. Like it came out really, really good. And I just wanted to give them a shout out because of the time of year that we're in right now. And a lot of people are doing like ink a day or different projects per day. I thought this one really stood out for its simplicity in that, you know, you can get this whole view starting on one page.

And by the end of the year, you have this whole page filled up. So I just wanted to give Angela a shout out for this layout and share it to give others an idea of what you can actually do in a very simple fashion. You know, you don't have to overcomplicate things, right?

You just, you know, you just do something simple. Hey, here's today. And I just put a little squiggle line on there and like I'm good to go. So it's a great spread. I love how it turned out.

So shout out to pens, paper plans over there on Instagram. I thought it came out great. Very good. All right. I recently, well, recently as in two days ago, Monday. It's pretty recent. Pretty recent. Did another kind of, hey, this is a good review to start the year off.

And it was about pen storage. So I was fortunate enough to be sent a gigantic box from my friends at Luxury Brands USA of Girologio pen cases. So this is a brand I've heard of for the past few years. I've seen them at pen shows, seen a lot of people carrying them.

And they reached out to me last year and said, hey, can I send you some cases to review? And I'm like, yes. And I never know what to expect. And then I get like a microwave oven sized box at my door one day.

And it's like all the cases. It's by no means all of Girologio's cases, but it feels like it. It's like one of each and all the sizes. So I just wanted to share this review.

If you're looking for storage options, I kind of, I put all of them, all of the cases I had for review on loan. In this one review. So you can kind of see what a three pin case looks like versus a 12 pin case versus a 48 pin case, which is something we see a lot of at pen shows.

Right. When you see the tables laid out or Myke, you can go with the briefcase, which holds 96 pins. And I'm just kind of impressed by this. Like this should not be a thing. Right. This, this should not exist.

But the fact that it does and it works kind of flawlessly. I am just very impressed. This is not something I will add to my collection. I have my storage.

I got out my Toyoka 100 craft box was a perfect match for the 96 pin case. I could just take all the drawers out and went and put them all on my table and loaded up the whole thing in there. So what do you think about these gigantic cases?

I like them. I mean, they're very different in design across the sizes. Like just the way the products look feels quite different. Like the one that intrigued, well, there were two that intrigued me the most. One was the one where you could also put a bunch of notebooks in with it too.

And you ended up with this like, admittedly pretty chunky, but nice kind of all in one. And then obviously the briefcase is insane. Yeah. You have to be like, those are the two most specific cases, I think. Right. Well, you've, a lot of people have probably seen the other cases, the three, the 12 and the 48, I think are things people are familiar with.

But the case you called out the grab and go, which is the smaller one, holds four pins, notebooks. Credit cards. It's literally just kind of, you can put everything in there. And even though it is chunky, like you were talking about and thick, it's purpose built, right? Like if you buy that, you know what you're getting into.

And you know, like, I'm going to use this to put all my things in from pens to paper to whatever other notes and loose things. And, you know, even as far as down as like wallet type stuff, you know, cards and licenses and whatever you want to put in there.

And that's going to be my all in one, literally grab and go. Everything's in there. Or you have a unbelievable amount of pens that you want to store together, carry together. You could be, you know, someone who goes to pen shows and sells things like all of these, like this 96 pen case.

You could carry all of this stuff to a pen show and just literally open it up and pop it right down there on the table. And then when you're done, fold it back up and you're good to go. And it's all protected. It's all nicely done.

I was impressed at the, this 96 pen case, right? Like obviously the 48 is great. I've seen that product before and it's really good. Everything's nicely protected. A lot of people use the 48 pen cases to store some of their, their pens either at home or if they're taking them on the road.

But the 96, the 96 is just kind of blew my mind. Like I, I did not know this was a thing and I'm kind of impressed by it. So I just wanted to shout out, shout out these cases. If you're looking for this, right?

Like, you know, not every, this is not a product for everyone. This one, you know, everyone could use like, Hey, maybe the 12 pen case. Like if you're listening to this podcast, that might be a good option. but the, these larger cases, I've never had the opportunity to review anything like this.

So I wanted to, give them a shout out because it was kind of fun. Like I, I had to apologize to luxury brands for holding these so long because I was intimidated to get all of them out and all of the pens and do all this and take all the pictures.

So it took me a while to get to them. So very, very cool. The, that briefcase one, that's like, that's only for people that sell at pen shows, right? Like I can't, I can't work out who else is for.

Yeah. Like, okay. So if I had just a crazy amount of pens at home, right? And I needed storage, I would pick a bunch of 48 pen cases, right? If I'm, if I'm, if I'm restricting myself to what I've reviewed here, I'm going to buy the 48s all day long, right?

Like if I have 300 pens, I need to deal with and organize that are just kind of loose and not in other storage. And if I'm looking at the products in this review, I'm going to pick 48s just all day long. They're just easier to manage, easier to deal with, easier to sort.

But there is a certain type of collector. Like that's definitely like in the collector, you know, retailer vendor space. That is where I see the 96 coming in. Or you have like, or you're someone who's into like four digits quantities worth of pens that needs just mass, mass storage.

Like, you know, that, that case is, is, it's only for a certain segment of the market for sure. And even if you could fill up that case, I think you're just going to get more use out of the 48s, right? That's just a better way to organize, a better way to move things around.

But there is a certain scenario, I guess, where these, these 96s come in handy. And the way this one's designed, like it makes it really good for like a vendor or something like that to, to carry things around. But, you know, I wouldn't also, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be checking that back, you know, if I was flying, right?

That's something that's, that's a carry on. Like I wouldn't want to lose everything that was in there at once. So, yeah, if, if I'm picking anything for bulk storage, I would pick the 48s personally. But cool. So you have, you said you have like one of those types of 48 cases, right?

Yeah, I bought one of them. Put like your retros in there. I've done that before, but I bought it originally for going to pen shows to bring like large selections of pens to a pen show. Yeah. You see that a lot.

Like at the bars at night, you see the 48 pen cases everywhere. Yeah. Right. They're pretty popular, pretty popular. All right. Last little nugget in this kind of whip around episode today. I started my project planner last week.

I talked about what I was planning on doing for my year of recording. And I was instituting or creating a new notebook out of an existing notebook. My William Hannah disc bound system. And I finally spent some time to lay out the project notebook how I wanted.

So I have my different sections with dividers in here. So I've started the pen log, right? So the analog part with what go back to the beginning of the show, what we're talking about, the different types of digital systems. I might be implementing to track what I'm using.

I've just started writing things down so far. So that's like the front section. Then I have like, you know, a divider page. And then I have a whole section for spoke design, right?

Because I have different tasks that can go there. I have design ideas that can go there, right? I need a place where I can just like randomly sketch something or write out an idea or have like a task list that I need to talk to Brian about. And just recently, I did an inventory for our products.

And this was just a lucky happenstance. I didn't even consider this. So in the shipping department, I just have this notepad that I was just hand counting all the inventory to go back and validate everything at a different time. And it just so happens that this A5 page, I wanted to keep, right?

In case I made a mistake, I wanted to keep it for a little bit to verify, you know, just in case I made a mistake. And then I'll eventually just throw it away. And these A5 pages, I just stuffed in the William Hanna. I was like, wait a minute.

I can just hole punch them and put them in here. So now in my little spoke section of the William Hanna planner, my project planner, are now these pages I was just able to add in. I was like, oh, I've already done exactly what I wanted to do with this notebook without even thinking about it.

Like I didn't even consider it before that. So yeah, like now then I go into another section. You know, I need to plan for the London trip. You know, that's got its own little notes.

I'm keeping tabs of new stationery arrivals, like what has come in that needs to eventually go out or be accounted for as far as like review products go or giveaways, things like that. So that section's built in there. And then I have like a collaboration section where I want to have like a more freeform section of products I want to work on.

And then I can break those out into their own little dividers as well. So I've started building my project planner notebook. I'm happy with it so far. And now we just got to keep using it, right?

That's the whole goal of the goals. You got to use the things that you're building. So that's where I'm at right now. I'm very happy with it so far.

And I just thought my little epiphany yesterday of what I would normally do is stick a bunch of loose sheets of paper that I wanted to keep temporarily in just whatever other notebook I was using. And I was like, oh, well, I have a system here that is kind of built.

And it didn't even have to be. I was fortunate, I guess, that the page size was exactly the same as what I already have in A5. But it could be any type of page I could punch for a disk. And, you know, even if it only – so like the disks, there's eight disks.

Like even if I had a page that was only like four disks wide, I could still punch that, put it in my notebook for somewhere to keep. And, yeah, it's all safe and secure in here. And I really like where this is headed. Yeah, this feels like a good product to do this kind of work in.

Yeah, I have to have things that are removable. I never would have thought I would have been like a disk bound person or a binder person. Yeah. And it turns out, Myke. Turns out. There's a lot of good use to be had in these types of systems.

So I'm finding myself very much enjoying it. Do you want to hit an RSTPA question before we finish today? Yeah, let's see what we got. I'm very not prepared for what we have.

So let's try. Sarah writes in and says, My brother's getting married in May. One of my duties as the best person is suitably fancy writing implements for signing the marriage license. I'm not as familiar with standard pens and I need some help. The wedding vibe is simple but classy with a palette of hunter green, Vera Wang tuxes, and platinum rings.

My brother's a lefty. My future sister-in-law has a big cup of a rainbow of stabilo of fineliners that she uses regularly. I'm going to be using my Sailor Pro gear at Paris ski. Haven't picked out an ink yet, but I need some suggestions of what pens I can buy for the happy couple.

So Myke, I definitely have some answers, but I think I would also have a follow-up question for Sarah. I guess we're just signing the marriage license, so we need basic ink, right? I'm thinking blue or black, probably. I'm expecting some. So what I want to recommend, given the very good descriptive details that Sarah provided, is I think you can find some awesome Pelican rollerballs that are going to match the vibe of the hunter green, the tuxes, the platinum rings.

The way they design their products are going to be so classy and a really nice match to the overall aesthetic, which is like, that's what all I can think about here is vibe. But what vibe misses is what is the ink requirement for that marriage license. And if you're telling me it has to be a blue document ink, then we can't have this conversation about Pelican, you know, matching everything for the wedding.

And that's a different conversation that we probably need an email on, because then we could still stick with Pelican. We just need to make sure we get the right ink, right? But I'm feeling very Pelican-y for this wedding. That feels like the vibe.

That you would be able to find something pretty reasonable, right? As far as accessibility, right? You're going to be able to find something from this group that Pelican offers, from Pelican rollerballs or ballpoints. Or even fountain pens, if that's the route that's required for the ink purposes.

Yeah, outside of that, if there's more, like if we want to get very, very specific into the actual signing requirements, I think that's probably like an email Sarah and I need to have an email discussion we need to have. But this has Pelican written all over it to me, and I would be very happy with some of the different options that Pelican has, even some of the all-white and either all-white platinum trim Pelicans would be just perfect.

And then you can get into some of the green stuff too. So yeah, that would be cool. And I'll also ask you this question from Nicholas, who says, Since January, I started using a Midori three-year diary. I was wondering if you know of a product similar to the seed case that will have a better fit for this diary.

It's seven and a quarter by four and a quarter by one. I'm assuming that's inches, but I have no idea. Yeah. It's probably not centimeters. I don't know. Maybe it's a tiny diary.

I know it's going to be hard to find something as good as the seed, but I would like to protect the diary for the three years I'm going to be carrying it around. Number one. Shout out, Nicholas. Thank you for the nice, kind words about the seed. Guess what the seed was built around, Myke?

Something you made? A5 standards. Of course it was. Because Nicholas would be able to get an A5 notebook, but these three-year diaries are pretty sizable, thick. So I literally don't know other than something that Midori will make for themselves. So they will do, for a lot of their products, and I don't know whether they do this for the three years diary, but they will do some simple wraparound covers that I've used in the past for their notebooks, but their notebooks were like the traditional A5, and they would just make this A5 cover for it.

The seven and a quarter by four and a half is obviously a little bit of an oddity. So I can't think of anything offhand. If anyone else knows, let me know. But you're probably, what happens when you, this is my whole standards argument, not to relive the earlier part of the podcast, and like 50 other episodes we've recorded about me yelling about standards, this is why we can't have nice things that cross-pollinate between brands.

If you make a particular size notebook, and someone wants a cover, well, your only options are if that company makes the cover to fit their own product, and not every company does. Right? So Midori fortunately does. I don't think that for this product, like, I don't think it's fair to make that argument, because you could make it A5, but it's too thick is the problem.

Right? It would probably fit a one, but since it's a smaller notebook, it would probably fit like the one inch thickness. It just wouldn't fit it well. It would be loose. It would be loose.

It would handle the one inch thickness, but it would swim around in there a little bit. Right? So I would, so whenever I've had this situation, and I've desperately wanted a cover for a notebook, I would use a pouch or a sleeve. Right? So I'm not going to get a perfect fit for the diameters of my notebook, but I wanted to carry it in something.

I would find something thin, like, you know, the Lihit Labs bag and bags, something, you know, where you just more of a slip case, if you will. But to carry and protect it in like a nylon-y type fashion. So, yeah. But Midori actually does make covers. I would look into that first.

Nicholas probably already has, which is why we're getting this question, that they may not have one for this particular product. But that's where I would check. All right. If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer on a future episode, just go to penaddictfeedback.com and send in your ask TPA question.

But you can also send in your follow-up and your feedback on the show there, too. If you want to find Brad online until we're back next week, go to penaddict.com. Brad is penaddict on all the social medias. You can find him on twitch.tv slash penaddict as well, where he streams three times a week.

You can also find Brad's products over at spokedesign.com. I am at iMyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find my products at cortexbrand.com. This show is on RelayFM. We also have a bunch of other shows that you might find interesting, too, over at Relay.fm.

Thank you to Factor for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you to you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.