The Pen Addict 83/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	83
Title:	Something, Something Field Notes
Release Date:	December 5th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 83
Audio File:	Audio Episode 83
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 83
Length:	5656 min <br />0.933 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast on 5x5. This is episode number 83. The Pen Addict is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the High Priest of Handwriting, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, that's pretty good. I've been getting questions about the handwriting actually here recently again. Yeah? Yeah, it's something that comes up all the time, you know, how can I improve my handwriting, things like that. And that's a hard thing to discuss, you know, it's a hard, you know, there's no clear-cut way other than practice, practice, practice kind of stuff, so.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it's like, it's at least sort of 30% of the whole thing is the handwriting, right? You've got the pen and the paper and the handwriting. Yeah. They go, excuse the pun, they go hand in hand.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. Just like that, what was it last week? No, it was the show we had Anna on where that link on Reddit was about, you know, it showed up on the penmanship porn subreddit. So, yeah, it comes up from time to time. So, that's funny. So, how are you, sir?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm good, mate. Big show. Huge show today. Massive. So much stuff, including, including this. And you'll have to wait until the end of the episode to find out what that is.

Field Notes

Brad Dowdy: I can't wait. I can't wait. So, yeah, well, let's get it started then. We had some follow-up with Field Notes, a few Field Notes items this week. Just one thing I thought that Field Notes fans should check out if they haven't seen it already. It's worth a watch. On the Field Notes Facebook page, which Myke and I have talked about, it's a group page on Facebook. And pretty much the only reason I have a Facebook account, just to participate in that group, because it's pretty cool. So, Field Notes themselves did a contest where they were offering up three, well, it started out as three press sheets. Like, these rolled out big press sheet printings from Field Note covers that they were giving away to these readers. I mean, yeah, to the readers and the members of the group. And, well, that was cool in itself. They finally gave it away. And then Brian Bedell, who's been on our show before from Field Notes, did a video showing what the sheets looked like. And that was the coolest part of the whole thing. You and I didn't win, unfortunately. Nope. But, you know, mine would have gone straight into, like, a picture frame or something like that. But it was worth – I wanted to point out the video because I thought Brian did such a great job. Brian cracks me up. He's hilarious. I had a grin on my face the whole time I watched this video. He's really smart and funny. And it was cool to see what some of these test printings and print sheets from Field Notes look like. So, you know, if you're interested in that kind of stuff like Myke and I are and, you know, a lot of other people are, we'll put the link to the video in the show notes. And it's worth just checking out. You get to see Brian from Field Notes talk about some of the printing processes of the notebooks and things like that. So, that's pretty cool. Did you get to watch that video?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I watched it this morning.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was pretty neat seeing some of the old covers. And then at the end, he threw in a little extra test printing of some of the Ravenswing covers. So, that was kind of cool.

Myke Hurley: The – oh, it's gone out of my head. Something. I was going to say something, but now I can't remember what it was.

Brad Dowdy: Something, something, Field Notes.

Myke Hurley: Something, something, Field Notes. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. Well, we'll go with that. Yep. Have you broken out your Horizon Edition?

Myke Hurley: I have. And? So, I really, really love the way that they look.

Myke Hurley: I like the gradient quite a lot. And the blue colors are really, really striking. I like that the covers feel different again. I hope that that's something that they continue now. Like, the cover's got this weird – it's like shiny, but it's got kind of like the texture. It feels like it's kind of like bobbly. It's weird to describe. It's like a rough texture. My only sort of thing about these is they smell really strong.

Brad Dowdy: You think it's maybe the cover material? I think it's the paper because the paper's colored.

Myke Hurley: Because when I – smell it. It's got – it just smells like, you know, it smells like paper. But sometimes, you know, you will notice, all of our pen addicts will notice, sometimes paper just has a smell to it. And this is – it's got quite a strong smell to it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Well, I got – mine finally showed up. And I haven't – I've opened the envelope from Field Notes, but I haven't opened up one of the sets yet. So I haven't taken a whiff. But I did think that's going to be a new – it's going to be a new Field Notes meme. You know, smelling your Field Notes. Like, Aziza tastes the fountain pen ink. We'll be smelling Field Notes.

Myke Hurley: There's somebody that tastes fountain pen ink.

Brad Dowdy: Aziza from Gourmet Pens. It was on an Anderson Pens podcast one time. I don't know how it came up, but yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. I don't think, like, it's a regular thing. I think it was just kind of like a one-off thing that became a thing. Anyway, when I opened up the Cold Horizons envelope, I was impressed more than, like, looking at the pictures online with how they looked. They are really striking looking.

Myke Hurley: It's one of my favorites, like, to look at. I mean, I've not made – I haven't used – I've only used it a little bit. Like, I've not used it a lot. Like, I've broken out one, and I've been writing some notes that aren't sort of my daily notes. I'm still – I'm using one of the – what do they call it? The new black ones? Pitch Black. Pitch Black. I'm about halfway through a Pitch Black. So I'll be – you're probably picking up a Cold Horizon after that, like, and using it on a daily basis. So I really like – I love the way that these look. I think that they're some – they're maybe one of my favorite designs to look at. But it does have that little downside for me is that the paper smell is quite strong.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, well, I'll have taken a whiff of mine by next week. I should be ready to open up a new one. So I'll open up one of those and check it out because a couple of people aren't liking the cover. So I want to check that out for myself.

Myke Hurley: I love the way – I just like that they feel different. I like that there's a difference in them. That's just fun for me. So I had one of these yesterday morning, and I was writing in it with my Edison Pearl. And I thought I was high because the fumes of the acrylic and the fumes from the paper – yeah, it was – my notes got a bit funky.

Brad Dowdy: Don't do that in a closed-up room, right? I'll try not to. We'll have to break down the door and rescue Myke from his pen and paper-induced coma.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it was fun.

Brad Dowdy: It sounds like it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it was interesting. It was interesting.

Brad Dowdy: So a couple of people asked me on Twitter, you know, aside from field notes, you know, what other notebooks are you using? What other paper products are you using on a regular basis? And I've gotten a few. I've talked about how I've been kind of behind on my notebook testing, but there's a few that I'm really, really anxious to try. One of them I have started trying, and that's the Hobonichi Teco, the planner I got for 2014. I've been waiting and waiting and waiting, you know, as we get closer to 2014 to start using this notebook. And what they did was in December of 2013, they did, like, these little half pages. It's not a full-type page, you know, until you get into 2014. But, you know, starting December 1st, they give you these little half pages, and you can start writing on them. Because I wanted to start using the paper, because it's that Tomoe River paper that I like so much to use with fountain pens. And it's going to be nice to have, like, a little planner or journal to use, you know, whichever fountain pen I wanted. So I started on December 1st anxiously and using, you know, kind of a wider nib pen. I think I used a Pelican nib, just a regular standard EF nib, which is, you know, sometimes wider than some of the Japanese EF nibs or F nibs that I use. And, man, that paper just handles anything you can throw at it so easily. It was, it's a real joy to write on. So I'll be having more. I'll do a review of the Teco coming up soon. I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to do it before I really start heavily using it or wait, you know, until, like, January's over after I've used it and see how it holds up. So I've had so many people asking me to review it or what's going on with it. But it's, you know, it's kind of not really useful until 2014. So I've been to limit on when to post that review. But I'm very happy with the product so far. One notebook that I think might crack the heavy rotation and might replace some of my Rodia use is one called the, boy, I'm going to butcher this.

Myke Hurley: Kyokuto?

Brad Dowdy: Kyokuto?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I think, yeah. Kyokuto. The FOB Coupe W Ring Notebook. And this came out at JetPens. It's been several months ago. And I picked one up right.

Myke Hurley: It's currently 40% off.

Brad Dowdy: They've got a deal at the moment. I think that's if you buy over $75 or something.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah, $75 minimum notebook. Wow, that's a lot of notebooks.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they always have that in place. That's always in place for notebooks.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Kyokuto Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: So I bought one when they came out and I haven't really used it. But this is the notebook that Ed Jelly uses for all his reviews now. And he raves about it and he told me I needed to get on it and start using it because it's really impressive handling all different kinds of inks. Normally, I'm not a wire-bound notebook kind of guy unless they're done like really right and really strong and really durable. Like the Dome Paper Idea Journal. That one's done right and it's perfect. This one looks like it could replace some of my rhodia pads just for review purposes and fountain pen review purposes and things like that. It's a great size. What's the standard size here?

Myke Hurley: I just don't like ring.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. When you get it in hand, it's so well made. It feels strong and durable that you kind of overlook the ring. And normally I'm with you, Myke. I don't... The ring is way down the list of what I would normally look for in a notebook. But this one's done right. It feels very strong, very durable. So we'll see. This one's... They're calling this a semi-B5, which doesn't make sense. The uncomfortable... Sorry. No, it's 7 inches by 9.9 inches.

Myke Hurley: Right. I find it uncomfortable to have the spiral right in the middle of the... Yeah, that's right.

Brad Dowdy: You're left-handed. I forget that. That makes a bigger difference for you. Yes. Truth to that. So... Truth. Truth.

Brad Dowdy: But... Yeah. I need to review this ASAP because I think I might cut over to using this notebook for some reviews. Because what I do is I've been using a Rhodia dot pad. But I have been using the ring-bound one of that. And I keep all the reviews in the same notebook without tearing them out. So that kind of helps to keep all my reviews together instead of having stacks of loose sheets, which I still have also. But regardless, keep an eye out for that one because I think that's going to be a good one. And I know Ed loves it. And just click over to EdJelly.com and you'll see all of his reviews now are in that notebook. And you can see how good it handles all of the inks and things like that. One more I'm a little more hesitant on.

Brad Dowdy: It's called the Life Noble Notebooks. They're from Japan. They're way more expensive than something like the Kyokuto or the Rhodia just to use on a daily basis. I have one and I'm going to test it out. I just don't know if it's going to be that much of a difference to accommodate the large difference in price that the notebook is. How much is it? They're around about $25 each. Just for like an 80-page notebook that I use.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the A4 one is $46 on Japan. Yeah. That's insane.

Notebook Prices

Brad Dowdy: Whereas the Kyokuto one I was just talking about is $13.50.

Myke Hurley: That's really expensive.

Brad Dowdy: I mean like $13.50 is expensive for a notebook. And then the one I bought I think was the A5 one which was $25 which is extremely expensive for a notebook. So we'll see. We'll see on that one. I mean it's going to be a great notebook. I just don't know if it's going to justify the price. That seems awfully, awfully expensive to me.

Myke Hurley: I just use field notes. Like I feel like people are asking me this question more and more often now as well. And I'm like I need to use field notes. Just because of the way that I use my notebook is different.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's not about, for me, it's not about like anything else other than portability. Right, right. That is the main thing that I look for now in a notebook.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I guess those questions are better for me because I'll do different things for the blog. You know, testing and writing on different papers for different reviews and things like that. You know, like I've been using the Dome paper for, you know, gel, ballpoint, rollerball inks. And I've been using Rhodia paper for fountain pens. So, but I do try different things and review different ones. So, and carry more paper than just the field notes. So, yeah, I'm always experimenting with that. So, I will have some more coming up on those soon. Awesome. For sure.

Myke Hurley: Should we take a quick break? Yeah, that'd be good. So, let's take a moment to thank our friends over at Squarespace for helping to support this week's episode of The Pen Addict. Squarespace are the all-in-one platform to make it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go over to squarespace.com and use the offer code Tallyho12. That's going to not just support the show, but get your time zone off. So, Squarespace, the things that we love about Squarespace, me and Brad use them both for our own personal websites. And Brad also has one for Knock Co., as you well know. We love the way that they look fantastic. The fact that we can use the beautiful themes that they have and we can tweak them and we can change fonts and colors and stuff like that as we please. And it's going to look fantastic across all devices. Like I spent some time a couple of weeks ago and I just overhauled my entire website. I just went to change the way it looked and just give it a totally different feel. And I was able to do that just in a very short space of time and was able to tinker to my heart's content. It was great. But it was all easy. Like when I say tinker, I wasn't going in and changing like HTML code or CSS code. I was just like moving sliders and changing selectors. And how does this font look? Click. Okay, how does this font look? Click. And then it just all updates live for me in the browser as I'm making these changes. That's the sort of stuff that I love. But if I'm in Squarespace and I'm playing around and I get stuck with something or I need help with something, well, I can contact their fantastic support team which work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They even have people in and working over Thanksgiving as well. So it just shows how dedicated they are to making sure that you can use your site as you like whenever you need to. I mentioned that Brad is using Squarespace for Knock Co. Well, he's able to do that because of their e-commerce platform that Squarespace have built. So if you want to set up a shop and sell things online, you can do so in just a few minutes. And not only will it help you actually sell products, but you can also manage all of your inventory and shipping information and stuff all through Squarespace Commerce. They have connected accounts, meaning that if you want to look at connecting your Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram accounts, just name to name just a few, you can do that. You can have your content from these services showing up on your website or you can push content out to some of them as well. I really love Squarespace. They're like the all-in-one place, like a one-stop shop for you to go and just get all of your website needs taken care of. So the best way for you to see all of this is to go and try it out for yourself. So go to squarespace.com. You can sign up for a free trial right now. There's no credit card needed to do that. Their plans start at just $8 a month and include a free domain name if you sign up for a year. When you do decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code Tallyho12. It's going to get you 10% off your first purchase. It will also show you support for the pen addict and 5x5. Thank you so much to Squarespace. They give you everything that you need to create an exceptional website.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was awesome to see how active Squarespace has been in development here recently. It kind of comes and goes. They're always working on stuff in the background and they don't release it until it's ready. They don't hand around and people will be pinging them questions and they're kind of elusive in answers. And then boom, they'll just drop something on you like the Squarespace commerce with the ship station integration.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, just like out of the blue. So that's something that I've been wanting for our commerce site. I haven't had a chance to play around with that yet, but that's a feature that is going to be. It's kind of a game changing feature.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: For them to add to that. So hopefully I'll be able to talk about that more. What is ship station? It's integrated. It's going to allow us kind of one-stop organization of orders and shipping. Like everything will be integrated to where an order will – someone will place an order and it'll come in and I'll be able to ship it and track it and contact the person who ordered it. Let them know that it's shipped and, you know, all the notifications and all the tracking. And it's just going to be integrated into the platform there.

Myke Hurley: Nice.

Brad Dowdy: So it should be pretty cool. It's going to be very useful for someone like us. So – but I'll have more about it once I get to play with it here in a couple months. And when we –

Myke Hurley: Do they provide – Do they provide shipment for you? So like they – how does it – like so if you need to – No, no, no, no. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: It'll be like a – you know, like I could self-print postage kind of stuff.

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: Like Indicia. Like it's integrated with Indicia, which is what I'm using right now for just for printing labels and shipping and stuff. So you just like – you fund your shipping account basically so you can just continually buy and print postage.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I'm just looking at it. It's $145 for unlimited shipments per month.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I'll have to look and see what all the breakdown is.

Myke Hurley: I mean because that just seems kind of incredible if that – anyway, if it's what I think it is. I don't know. Believe it or not, I don't ship products. No way.

Brad Dowdy: Learn to ship.

Myke Hurley: Okay. I'll get on that.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, you need to come over here and start helping me shipping some NotCo stuff. I think early birds are going out next week for all of you paying attention. I have to finalize something with the post office. I'm going to finalize that tomorrow and have early birds packed and shipped next week. So heads up there.

Brad Dowdy: And then we'll start with other stuff right after that.

Myke Hurley: Cool.

Notebook Systems

Brad Dowdy: All right. So this next topic encompasses lots of things that I want to talk about. And it's from a new blog that I stumbled upon from the Field Nuts page on Facebook. A gentleman by the name of Matthew Hicks. He decided, hey, you know, there's an infinite – he said there's an infinite amount of blogs out there and I've decided to give it a try as a hobby. I just made a post on how I use my Field Notes. Check it out. So I went and checked it out and I was like, wow. Okay. So this has – that little simple thing got my brain working overdrive for several topics. And this is probably something of a topic for next show. But I wanted to point out Matthew's post. One, because it answers a question that I get a lot of times. And this post details a Field Notes planner system that he's using. So if you've ever asked me about using your Field Notes as a planner and how to set it up – and this isn't necessarily a new thing. He's just kind of taken some things that have been done by other people in the past and updated them to fit him. Take a look at this – take a look at Matthew's post. He goes through a few things. One is just – he has like a general calendar in his Field Notes. He basically modifies his Field Notes. It looks like he just breaks out a ruler and goes to town setting up calendars, daily planners. And he also uses what's called a Spiral Dex, which you've probably heard me talking about Patrick Ng's Chronodex. You know, it's just another way for people to do time tracking during the day. He incorporates all this into his Field Notes, into a single notebook. He has a second notebook that he uses for tasks and like a bullet journal system. Then he uses a third notebook because he has a separate farm business where he –

Myke Hurley: I'm in love with this man.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. He has a third notebook for the farm business where he tracks all the daily ins and out of the farm. Then he has a fourth book where it's his brain dump book, he calls it. And then his fifth book is the one that he carries around in his back pocket. And it's kind of like the current brain dump and sketches and things like that. And then he keeps these all like tied up in like a Midori-style leather cover. So people – you know, this – a lot of people ask me about Field Notes as a planner. So go here to check out what Matthew does. And this is the first post on his blog. I thought he knocked it out of the park. So, you know, I wanted to give him some link love to check it out because I thought he did an exceptional job.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's a nice-looking site too.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. It's a really cool-looking theme. And, you know, this brings up a point that I wanted to – I wanted to just mention kind of in passing and see what the listeners – if the listeners were interested in me doing something like this in the future. Because I've had a couple questions recently about starting a pen blog or a paper blog or a review blog or something like that. And, you know, a lot of people reach out and, you know, say, you know, how do I get started? You know, what site should I use? What should I write about? How do you get products and things like that? I'm wondering if the listeners would like an episode just on, you know, like getting started in pen blogging, you know, that kind of thing.

Myke Hurley: I would, so yes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so we'll do that. And I've got an idea. I want to have a guest for that episode to talk about doing that. So I will work on that because I've been getting more and more questions about people wanting to start their blogs and should they do it and, you know, how do they go about doing it. And you should just do it. I mean, it's a fun community to be a part of and there's nothing really stopping you these days from just going to town and starting to write about, you know, pens and paper and inks and anything else you want to write about.

Myke Hurley: It's funny because only a few minutes ago I was remembering when we were first talking about Ed Jelly.

Brad Dowdy: Well, that's who I want to have on. Okay, then. I haven't told Ed that yet. So, Ed, check your calendar because I want to get you on to do a pen blogging episode. So that's who I had in mind.

Myke Hurley: In my whole nearly four years of podcasting, I've never heard somebody invited onto a show in like a prior episode. I've never heard. The invitation goes out via the episode.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so no one tell Ed. Let's see if he really listens to the show. Then we'll know. No one tweeted Ed or no one do anything like that. Let's see if he listens to the episode and accepts my invitation to come on and talking about getting started in pen blogging. So the onus is on you, Ed. Don't let. We had. I don't know if you were on the JetPens mailing list by chance, Myke. Yeah. Yeah. So they had a cool. They do this once a year. I think they did it last year and the year before. Well, they'll come out with an email, you know, around this time of year, which is perfect for Christmas and things like that, where they just kind of do, you know, like Google does, like the top search terms of the year. And, you know, all the big search engines do all that. And JetPens did in their latest newsletter the most wishlisted items of 2013. And, you know, it's a cool list. If you if you need ideas for pens or anything like that, go take a look at the list as a whole. But one of one of our listeners named J.L. Thompson, he sorted out the list and he filtered out the list for fountain pens.

Brad Dowdy: And just to kind of get an idea of what the most popular fountain pens were, most popular wishlisted fountain pens were. And it was an interesting result. So he sorted this by cost.

Brad Dowdy: And let me just kind of let me run through this list real quick. And you'll be familiar with most of these pens. And so the most popular wishlisted items of 2013 from JetPens in the fountain pen category were the Platinum Preppy, black. Platinum Preppy, blue, black. The Pilot Pettit 1, blue, black. The Pilot Pettit 1, black. The Pilot Penmanship, EF nib, black. Pilot Penmanship, EF nib, clear. Platinum Carbon Desk Pen, Lamy Safari, charcoal black. Lamy Safari, well that was fine. Lamy Safari extra fine charcoal black. And the Pilot Namiki Vanishing Point.

Brad Dowdy: So Jail's comment was...

Myke Hurley: It takes a significant turn at the end, doesn't it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So Jail's comment was, I'm amazed at, one, the number of Pilot pens that are popular, which just happens to be my favorite brand for fountain pens, roller balls, and ballpoints. Two, the fact that the Metropolitan is not in this list. And three, the price point jump from the low economy range pens to a premium range without any mid-range pens in between, like the Prera or the Platinum Cool. So yeah, Jail had the same thought that you had.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so good.

Brad Dowdy: It's super interesting, and this goes to a point where I'm at, and some of the conversations that I've had with other people that are like super, super experienced with fountain pens, wanting to kind of have a different conversation about fountain pens, whereas I'm wanting to have the conversation about this list of fountain pens, because these are the ones that are people... You can tell from this list that people are just... People are trying this out, right? They want to see, well, do I like a fountain pen? Is fountain pen... Or fountain pen's going to work for me?

Brad Dowdy: You know, maybe it's something I like, maybe it's something I don't like, but I can take a $3 risk or an $8 risk, and then I'm not really losing out if I really hate it. Excuse me. So it's an interesting list in that aspect, that it's all of these low-end pens, and then it jumps right into the Lamy's, Lamy Safaris, which we recommend a lot, and then it goes straight into the vanishing point. It's pretty funny.

Myke Hurley: I mean, the only thing that I can think is that the vanishing point gets additional press, maybe? People talk about it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think so, just because it's such a unique pen that no one else has really been able to pull off. I mean, there's other retractable pens like the Lamy Dialog 3.

Myke Hurley: It kind of makes me sad a bit, though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just an engineering technical thing that Pilot has nailed, and not everyone else has.

Myke Hurley: I just, I don't know. I just don't like that it jumps to that pen on this list. There's just something about that to me where I'm like, it's really expensive, and they're, in my opinion, far superior pens for like half of the price.

Price Range

Brad Dowdy: Sure, and that's why I always talk about that range, that price range, that $50 to $100 price range in fountain pens is quite a variance there. You know, that's why I talk about the Twisby 580 so much. I think that's one of the best value pens around, you know, $55, $60, something like that.

Myke Hurley: I think that a vanishing point should be in all Penetics, like Arsenal, right? Because it's so cool. Yeah, I think at some point. But clearly this list is reaching further than Penetics, or you would see the Prairie and the Metropolitan in there. Mm-hmm. I don't know.

Myke Hurley: It's good to see that the Safari's in there. Yeah. That's good. I'm happy about that, but I don't know. I don't know. I just see it, and I'm like, that's so much money to be spending, and then to think that that $140 pen is selling more than the Prairie is a concerning thing to me.

Brad Dowdy: Well, it's not necessarily a sales list, right? It's just the wish list, wish listed item. It's not the top sales items. This is a wish list item.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that kind of changes my argument a little bit, but I will still stand by some of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No, I think most of it was valid, until just that point. I just wanted to make sure you realize that. But I was kind of surprised that Metropolitan wasn't on there, to be honest. Even I had that Metropolitan on my wish list just because it sold out so fast, and I couldn't get the one that I wanted, so it was on my wish list forever, just waiting for it to pop back up.

Myke Hurley: Why are people wish listing a pen that costs $3? Yeah, I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know.

Myke Hurley: Maybe I don't wish list properly. I don't know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I don't know. I just use it as a future purchasing list, you know, but yeah, it is kind of funny to wish list like the Preppies and the Pettits because they're $3 and they're always in stock. The Pilot Penmanship is a great one because they sell out of it all the time, and it's so popular because the Pilot, the nib, the EF nib that Pilot uses fits on the Prera. So I recommend always buying the Penmanship, taking the nib off the Penmanship and using it on the Prera. So I've bought like three Penmanships, but I've never used one because I get them, and I take off the nib and put them on something else. Is it a better nib? It's the best way to get that nib.

Myke Hurley: Is it a really good nib then?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's just extra, extra fine, and you can't buy an EF nib on the Prera. You can only buy an F nib. Ah, I see, I see. So pro tip right there. But yeah, anyway, I thought that was something cool to look at, and we'll have the link to the full wish list in the show notes if you guys want to check it out. So I thought that was some interesting things to ascertain from that list. So pretty cool, cool stuff.

Brad Dowdy: So we got a second sponsor today, Myke.

Myke Hurley: We do indeed. We have the great people over at Doxy have come back to sponsor another episode of the Pen Addict, which is excellent stuff. So let me tell you about the Doxy Flip, which is a new type of scanner. It's not for going paperless, but for capturing your creativity and history anywhere. Doxy, the Doxy Flip is a retake on the traditional flatbed scanner of the past of two twists. First, it's super small. It's about the size of a book, and it's battery powered, so you can take it anywhere. But secondly, the Doxy Flip flips over to allow you to capture old photo albums, books, and pocket notebooks with a transparent scanning window underneath that lets you see right through to what you're scanning, so you can easily line it up and capture your original thoughts. The Doxy Flip is perfect for field notes and Moleskine notebooks, index cards, and everything you've bought couldn't be scanned with a traditional sheet-fed scanner. The Doxy Flip is now available for $149 from getdoxy.com, and while supplies last, you can buy from Doxy directly and get a free limited edition Doxy Field Notes notebook with textured French 80-pound cream cord tone covers. I recently scanned my second notebook with the Doxy Flip. Again, it took me 10 minutes. I loved it. I loved it. I got the little preview. I just thought how simple it is to then just use to take those notebooks in the software. So once I've popped the SD card out, put the SD card into my MacBook Pro, used the software that Doxy has to just sort of take all of those, show them to me in one big image. I can flip them around as I need to to make sure the orientation is correct, staple them together into one book, ship them out to Dropbox and Evernote. I love it. I'm so happy that I have one of these things. And if you are a person that is as embedded in the paper lifestyle as us all pen addicts are, especially if you're a Field Notes user or you use the smaller notebooks, it's really good for that, then it's a definite recommend for me. But even if you do use larger notebooks, they do this stitching thing, so you can scan different sections. So you can scan one half, scan another half, and then stitch the images together, which is really, really cool too. So go to getdoxy.com, that's G-E-T-D-O-X-I-E.com, and you can pick yourself up at DoxyFlip, which is a great stocking stuffer for the pen addict in your life, or if you just want to buy a present for yourself.

Brad Dowdy: Excuse me. Yeah, because our friend and my business partner, Jeffrey Brookwicky, got one of these for himself for Christmas. So yeah, it's a cool gift, and it's a great scanner. It's completely functional for what I need to do with my notebooks and things like that. So yeah, perfect.

Myke Hurley: A couple of weeks ago, I needed something. I was at work, and I had taken some notes in my previous Field Notes notebook that I needed, but that notebook is in my archive box at home. So I pulled out my phone, opened Evernote, and just scrolled through the PDF document and found the note. That's awesome. So it's exactly what I wanted it for. I now have it for that, and that's what makes me happy. It kind of makes this part of my life go full circle, that I'm able to have the convenience of technology with the feel of the pen and paper.

Brad Dowdy: That's cool. That's exactly how it should be used, that archival type stuff. You don't need your notebook every second of every day, but when you need it, you want it, and to be able to have it so easy like that is awesome. Yep.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So it's arrived.

Brad Dowdy: It's go time.

Myke Hurley: The Visionaire is here.

Brad Dowdy: I feel like we should play some intro music.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is, you know. I mean, I can play one of these sounds, which is a whole other thing, but there you go. It got in there.

Myke Hurley: Right, so it's... I honestly don't know what to say. Because I don't... The build-up of this is so large. So what I'm going to do... I've taken some notes. Okay. That I'll go through.

Myke Hurley: The packaging was weird. It came in an envelope. When I opened the envelope, there was like a thank you note slash card, which is then all like crumpled up. Because it came in an envelope.

Myke Hurley: Fine, whatever. I mean, shipping is shipping. Like, don't send it to me in anything. It's going to cost you too much money. I get that. It's just a point. The tube that the pen comes in like a sort of a cardboard tube, which is fine. I mean, we've seen this in a bunch of places. Like the Retro 51 does it and stuff like that. And then there's like this little velvet case, which is inside. A case like a little bag. And then inside the velvet bag was the pen, which was wrapped in like a plastic sheath. And I found the plastic weird. Like, it just felt like an inattention to detail.

Myke Hurley: The way that it felt to me was they arrived in plastic and he shoved them in these velvet bags and put them in the tubes. And I said, if you've got the velvet bag, take it out of the plastic. Right. And the only reason that I mentioned things like that, and there might be a few other things along that sort of line with the attention to detail, is that that is the impression that Morgan has given about this product. That it is premium. And that there has been a fine attention to detail taken. Like the cartridges, I didn't use the cartridges, and I'll get on to why I didn't in a minute. But they send a little box of cartridges that comes with the Visionaire. And it's just like, it just looks terrible.

Myke Hurley: It's just like a little box, and it just says Visionaire on it. And it says like fine writing instruments on the side. And I'm just like, I don't, I understand what you're trying to do, but it's not all come together. And I actually have some images. I've taken some photos. Okay, great. So I'll make sure that they find their way into the show notes somehow.

Myke Hurley: So yeah, I'll think of a way to do those. I really thought of how I'll put them in. I took just some photos of my sort of unboxing experience.

Myke Hurley: I'll think of a way to do that. But yeah, so you'll be able to see the images. I have the Chrome version. Okay. So I'll go through some of my thoughts like that as I was writing them down when I sort of started using this pen. So it's got a really good weight. It's weighted really well. It's not too heavy. It's not too light. It feels solid. And the actual build, the actual material that it's made from feels relatively solid. Not high end, but solid. And I do consider those things a different. It looks very professional. Like this is the sort of pen that I would expect to see in the hand of my boss's boss. It's very simple, very sleek. It just, you know, it just looks decent, you know, real slight aside. I was in a meeting a couple days ago at work, sitting around a big table and there were people in there that were honestly three pay grades above me. one of them was using a Bic that the end had been chewed off.

Myke Hurley: And the, and the other guy was using a Bic as well. I'm like, guys, seriously, anything, just anything will do instead of this. That's amazing. To be a pen addict. This is really hard for me, Brad, talking about this pen because of how long we've been discussing it.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. I mean, it's almost not fair.

Myke Hurley: There really isn't much to say. Like, I don't have a lot to say. The ink flow is okay.

Nib Size

Myke Hurley: The nib feels like it's medium, but it's impossible to tell because it's not marked in any way. But it feels like a medium nib. It just is iridium point Germany on the nib. There's nothing to me anyway. I'm sure that, you know, there are smarter people than I that can work it out by something. it's relatively smooth.

Myke Hurley: These were sort of my initial impressions. Like, you know, it was relatively smooth and I was writing with it and I was quite impressed.

Myke Hurley: I was expecting it to not feel good at all. But, it was kind of, you know, it was fine. Like, it was, you know, because of the way that we'd sort of, this is the wrong word, but it's anyone can think of, the way we'd sort of vilified the project. I was expecting it to be horrible and disgusting in every single way. Right. but it wasn't.

Myke Hurley: I used, it came, it comes with a converter which, and I filled it with Hiroshi Suku ink.

Myke Hurley: Oh no, I filled it with Fuyugaki, which is the orange, the orange ink. And I wanted to do that because I didn't want the experience to be tainted by using the potentially cheap cartridges that it came with. I wanted to give it a fair shake by using good ink, which in my thing, my sort of mind was the right thing to do. So they were my initial feelings that it was perfectly fine.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. And that's what I've said all along. And then, I've said the same thing for months, you know.

Myke Hurley: So then I was taking some notes a couple of days ago and I thought I'll use the Visionnaire and I could use it for like a minute and I had to change pen and I have no idea why.

Myke Hurley: I think that there is a mismatch between the way this looks and feels to how it performs. Right. And the actual look and feel of this pen is nice. It's actually pretty decent for me anyway. You know, in the way that it is weighted. But I kind of found it because of that as I was using it I couldn't help but compare it to other things.

Edison Pen

Myke Hurley: And considering I used the same ink in my Edison I had to switch to my Edison because I just did not want to use this pen. It's actually became for me uncomfortable to hold. it's really slippery and there's no grip at all. There's no grip portion.

Myke Hurley: So it's like a chrome and it just sort of felt like it was not secure in my hand as I was writing for long periods. And by far and away the worst thing about this pen is what I expect some people will think is the best thing which is the resistance that has been added to the cap. it's not possible to easily remove the cap with one hand.

Myke Hurley: I'll open it and close it. I don't know if it will give you any indication.

Brad Dowdy: It sounded hard to put back on.

Myke Hurley: It is extremely difficult. And I can see it's been added to make a premium feel. But it just annoys me. I can take a screw cap off of a pen with one hand. This one, for me to do it, I'm concerned I'm going to break the nib because I have to kind of force the pen nib to one side to get some traction. To do it with one hand. It's just in my opinion the worst part of the pen.

Brad Dowdy: One of our Twitter followers, Glenn HK actually mentioned that and I hadn't heard that before. He says when he's putting the cap back on it's like the nib itself is rubbing the sides of the cap.

Myke Hurley: That could be possible.

Brad Dowdy: Which is bad. It's

Myke Hurley: like an ordeal every time I want to put the cap back on. do you have any questions for me at all?

Visionaire Pen

Brad Dowdy: I do. A couple questions come to mind. You've answered them. These were the questions that popped up when you were talking about it. You have the Visionaire. Do you have any other pen that you currently own that you can even compare it to? Is it similar to something? Is it worse than something? Is it better than something else? how does it rate with any other pen that you've used?

Myke Hurley: The disappointment level. Remember the Platinum? Kind of

Brad Dowdy: like that. Okay. Nice looking but not super functional.

Myke Hurley: Perfectly fine but not to the levels that we expect. Gotcha. That's kind of my sort of if I could put it in one line the Visionaire is perfectly fine but just not to the level that we would expect. Like for this money and just as a pen addict it's just nowhere near Brad. It has not met the brief.

Brad Dowdy: Have you had any of the some of the people we're talking about like overly inky like nibs like the ink flow wasn't good like it was almost you know like seeping through the nib it just wasn't kind of making a mess type of thing. Did you have any of that?

Myke Hurley: I haven't had any of that.

Brad Dowdy: A few people were talking about that. So I mean I think it's obvious definitely not worth 37 bucks or whatever right? no way.

Myke Hurley: I wouldn't want to buy it for any amount really like right there is not that I wouldn't want to own this pen like it's just not it doesn't do anything it doesn't do anything for me.

Brad Dowdy: Like even if you spent five dollars on it or something it's just going to sit there on the desk and not be used because it's not a good writing but it's not a good experience when you pick it up.

Myke Hurley: It's not a good experience but then it's also not an interesting one.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. That's that's a good that's a good point.

Myke Hurley: It's like I have some pens that are also not fantastic but they're interesting or I have pens that I don't even really use that much but they're interesting to me. This is none of those things or like for example this is nicer to write with in my opinion in a Fisher Space pen because of you know it's a fountain pen and I always find fountain pen superior but the Fisher Space pen has its interesting points which mean that is a better pen to use. This doesn't have either of those things for me really. Yeah I wouldn't own it. Like I have do you remember that pen that I bought called the AG Spalding?

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Yeah the wood barrel one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah which was kind of uncomfortable to hold because they do like this weird sort of like leveling on the grip area and I never use it really but I love that I own it because it is fantastic to look at.

Brad Dowdy: Right.

Myke Hurley: And so I don't regret that decision at all but I do regret buying this because it doesn't give me anything. It is so like when I say it's professional looking it's because it looks like a C level executive's pen right. So it's just understated but but made out of a nice looking material and isn't garish in any way. You know like when I put my 540 ROC down on the desk people are like what is going on here? Right? Yeah. But yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: All right well I mean I got to say that's about what I expected I guess. I mean I've said you know from the jump that everyone's going to get a perfectly fine pen it's just not going to be you know one it's not going to be worth the money for sure and two I don't know how it's going to function in relation to what you can get for you know something like a pilot metropolitan you know that would be way more impressive of a writer than a pen like the Visionaire so you know I'd like to say hopefully we can put this to bed but I doubt that's the case since our friend Morgan has popped up with another Kickstarter campaign that we're not going to link in the show notes but I could safely say I would avoid it at all costs.

Myke Hurley: Because this one like it just looks badly made.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think it is what I thought it is the whole time. I mean I think it's exactly what I thought it was going to be and I have not heard one thing that changes my mind about it at all.

Myke Hurley: So in regards to the Visionaire which is quite this is quite somber because it's just like a if you have any questions send them in and talk about it next week. I mean I would be surprised if anybody had any questions more than what we've covered. Yeah.

Matthew's Review

Brad Dowdy: Let's put Hey Matthew's Visionaire video. Matthew did a video review. Put that in the show notes. It's like a 10 minute review and it kind of goes through the same things that you went through. Actually except I think his is worse. His is actually physically broken.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. His review is much harsher than mine I think partly because of that. Some of the stuff that he was saying I didn't agree with but all in all it's a very good take.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And you can see like the cap stuff that Myke was talking about in Matthew's video. So yeah. So like I said you know I want this to be the last time we talked about it but I'm sure it's not. But I mean I think as more and more people get their pins I think we'll probably see more and more people talking about it. And you know I think yeah like I said earlier it is what it is. And it's exactly what I thought people would be getting and it's unfortunate that Morgan has been able to get away with this. but you live and you learn and hopefully you know I've seen some positivity coming out of it. Some of the people like I've read on the Fountain Pen Network a couple of people that backed the Visionaire for their first Fountain Pen saying that you know I wish I had listened to other people. I wish I had done some more research. And you know in the interim you know I bought something like a Lamy Safari and now I see what you know people are talking about and what how a Fountain Pen should be and how it should write. and you know I'm disappointed that I bought this other got suckered into buying this other pen. There is a thing

Myke Hurley: about that though is if somebody buys this and it's their first Fountain Pen this is going to be perfectly fine and will also potentially prime them to buy more Fountain Pens. Yep. Because as I say it does you know a decent job but it's just not a very good one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah I just hope it's an eye opener and you know gets more people into Fountain Pens you know that something good could come out of it but yeah you know I think people are realizing pretty quickly it's not it's not anything special like it was it was touted to be. Are you going to save it for signing your first child's birth certificate?

Myke Hurley: Is that something that he actually says? Because people keep mentioning this. yeah he does

Brad Dowdy: yep he sure does it's an heirloom pen man

Myke Hurley: it's embarrassing

Brad Dowdy: yeah all right let's end it on that so we don't embarrass ourselves

Myke Hurley: yeah I might be for the best I just feel like dejected I know because I really didn't want it to be like this and it just annoys me it just really really it just frustrates me I'm angry I'm angry about it now

Brad Dowdy: I get really frustrated about it a lot

Myke Hurley: I really really freaking care about this stuff like so much like this is such an important part of my life pens and paper and doing this show and this the stuff that's happening on Kickstarter is not just good for consumers it's good for the community that is built around pen and paper and this show and I honestly believe like our listenership on this show is growing more and more and more all the time like I can't believe that it continues to but it does and I think that it's because of things like Kickstarter and the incredible projects that are there that get people interested and intrigued and then when something like this happens it just detracts from everybody else because it doesn't affect most of the consumers but what it does is it puts a perceived value against the quality and this pen is not worth however much it was I paid for it like $37 or something it's just not worth that and it frustrates me that there are people like trying to make a living that can't so or trying to make a living and really struggling and they're trying to sell better stuff at similar value cheaper value or a more expensive value but the value of this pen is probably as much as he paid for it which was if correct nothing and if he did do everything that he said that he did and paid for things exactly the way that he did then somebody really needs to sit down with him and have a serious conversation about this stuff because he has clearly gone into a business that he knows nothing about and he really needed at least someone to help him it just really angers me you can probably tell I'm really annoyed about it because it just this sort of stuff devalues what me and you love so much and that's I think the last thing I have to say about it

Brad Dowdy: I think you knocked it out of the park right there I'll let that stand on its own I agree 100% with what you said and the passion and emotion you said it with I couldn't say it any better

Myke Hurley: if you want to catch up with me and Brad online thanks by the way you can do so in a couple of ways we're both on twitter brad is at dowdyism d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m ! I am imike at imike i-m-y-k-e I have no doubt that you'll be talking to us this week you can find Brad online as well he writes at penaddict.com and don't forget notco.com as well and we'll be back next week thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the penaddict we do actually love you all and until next time say goodbye Brad

Brad Dowdy: goodbye Brad bye