The Pen Addict 28/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	28
Title:	Nothing Rhymes With Orange
Release Date:	August 23rd, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 28
Audio File:	Audio Episode 28
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 28
Length:	3838 min <br />0.633 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 28 of The Pen Addict podcast, your weekly show where we talk about pens, paper, and the analogue tools that we love so dearly. I am Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always, by the man himself, The Pen Addict. Brad is like the Mars Curiosity rover of pens, in that he is rocket-fuelled, and everybody is in awe at the things that he does.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to have to put you on mute sometimes, the longer and deeper these intros go. You always outdo yourself. Hello, Myke, how are you?

Myke Hurley: I'm very well, sir. How are you?

Brad Dowdy: I'm good, I'm good. So, anything going on this week? Any news? With you, there is. Me?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you. A couple of days ago, I got a direct message from Brad at like half past seven in the morning. My time, which was probably like, who knows what time it was for you.

Brad Dowdy: 2.30.

Myke Hurley: 2.30, time for the dentist. Mm-hmm. 2.30. It's my favourite joke, that. There you go.

Taking a Step Back

Myke Hurley: And the blog post is called Taking a Step Back. This is what you sent to me. You sent it to me first, because obviously we do this show together. If you would allow me to summarise the post.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. Yes, please.

Myke Hurley: So, it's going to be in the show notes. It's on penaddict.com. Most of you have probably seen this by now, but if you haven't, I mean, I would assume that most of our listeners know that penaddict.com is the blog that you write, which is all about pens and that sort of stuff. It's where the name for the show came from. It's where the inspiration for this show came from. And you are changing some stuff up on your site, on the penaddict. You're removing ads. No more sponsors, no more ads. So, you clean the site up a lot to take care of that. And you're going to be scaling back the posts. You're not sure if you're going to do anything with your ink links, which probably takes up quite a lot of time, where you will link to things online that you've been enjoying about pens and such. You say that you've kind of always kept to around about four posts a week since the beginning. But now you're thinking about doing longer, more in-depth reviews and less just picking up the random pen from the office store and reviewing it. Would I be right in saying that?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. I'd say there's a lot of things that went into, I guess you could call this decision on kind of changing the focus of the blog. And a lot of it is outside in the real world, right? We've got lots of life things going on. And when I started this blog, my daughter was a year and a half and my son wasn't born yet. Now I have a six-year-old and a four-year-old. You know, responsibilities change, the time I have to spend, you know, doing the quantity of work I was doing on the blog for all these years. I've found it more of a challenge here. You know, probably, you know, most of this year, or at least the past several months.

Brad Dowdy: And so, you know, at some point, the biggest thing is I want to keep doing this. You know, I want to keep doing The Pen Addict. I love doing it. You know, I love the community that's been built around it. It's an awesome, awesome group of people that, you know, read and comment and email and tweet and listen to this podcast. And I would, like, if I quit cold turkey, I would miss that immensely. But, you know, what I noticed recently, you know, when I just recently moved houses, you know, a couple weeks ago or a week ago. And I just took a week off from posting just because there was no way I was going to have time. And it wasn't that that was the impetus behind this. But, you know, anytime I've in all the years I've done this, you know, I take a week off here and there for vacation to say, hey, you know, I'm going to shut it down, go to the beach and, you know, relax and whatever. But, you know, I always was anxious to get back going at it and, you know, was ready to go or had a bunch of posts preloaded. Even if I'd go on vacation, you know, I'd write a week's worth of posts and get them loaded and things like that. And, you know, when I moved this time and I took a week off, it's like I didn't miss it, Myke. I didn't miss posting to the blog. I didn't, you know, it was like it was the last thing on my mind. And, of course, my mind was was real busy and, you know, with the move. But I didn't also didn't want to make any type of rash decision. So this isn't a decision that's come just because of this these past couple of weeks. You know, it's it's been harder over the past few months to, I guess, get things going on the blog. And I think there's a lot of reasons why. And, you know, part of it's self-inflicted.

Brad Dowdy: You know, and I just some some some things have to change.

Brad Dowdy: So, I mean, the one of the biggest challenges or the biggest hurdles that I'm having right now is I feel like the uniqueness is gone. In the pen review space.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I for so many years, I would write I would literally I would post three pen reviews a week and over, you know, four and a half year span. That's a lot. That's a lot of pens. And it's not that I don't have anything to review anymore. There's plenty to review. It's just that it's all kind of running together for me. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, there's there's only so many different things I can continue to write about.

Myke Hurley: Because then, I mean, like at some point you're going to start writing reviews of a pen just because it's got a different color body or whatever.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. And which I which I've done. Yeah. I mean, there's been I've reviewed like I didn't look at it, but I've certainly reviewed like the Jetstream or the Sino DX, just the different colored inks, you know, same pen, different ink colors. Which, you know, was enjoyable for a while. But it's like after a while, you know. Looking in my my stock of pens is like, OK, what I want to review. Well, I want to review the light blue DX when I've already reviewed the, you know, the purple, pink, the blue, the blue, black, the orange, the yellow is like that doesn't energize me. Right.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So.

Brad Dowdy: And I also felt like.

Brad Dowdy: And, you know, I.

Brad Dowdy: Doing a pen blog. It's a product based blog. Right. We're not writing about. I mean, I'm giving my opinions on these products. Right. But it's still it's based around a product. And of course, around product comes, you know, advertising, promotion, sponsorship. You know, people want to, you know. Get their product seen. And.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I don't want this to sound as a complaint or or not, because I'm certainly guilty of this. But I was just start. I was starting to feel like my blog was getting a little bit spammy. And as far as.

Product Focus

Brad Dowdy: The. I don't want to feel like I'm pimping products. And which I've never I've never taken that tag. You know, I've never felt that way, honestly. But. The repetitiveness and seeing it in the same post over and over.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know. I was just I was starting to get more uncomfortable with those type of things just because. You know, I'm always I've strived to be transparent the whole time in this blog. And I have been, you know, and, you know, I tell people that want me to review their pens like you're you know, you're welcome to send me your pen. Number one, I may or may not review it. And number two, if I do review it, it may not be a good review. And if you accept those facts, then, yeah, please send me your products and, you know, I'll see what I can do. And I've always you know, I've always been extremely open and honest about my reviews. But I think looking around the whole state of the pen blogosphere, it's just it feels like just a huge product push.

Myke Hurley: Well, that's very similar to gadget blogging. You'll have a few companies that are maybe the bigger gadget blogs and they, you know, they just get sent stuff sent to them and they'll say whatever they want. But a fledgling blog may be more inclined to try and build relationships with these companies by giving them the reviews that they want. So it's probably quite similar to that.

Brad Dowdy: Right. And I am by no means my above reproach here. You know, I've absolutely accepted plenty of goods, plenty of sponsorship dollars, you know, in all kinds of products. So, you know, it's just it came to the point. It's like, do I want to keep being beholden to this? Right. And I just felt like I was churning out posts as opposed to, say, and like really doing heartfelt posts.

Brad Dowdy: So that so that becomes a chore at that point. Right. At that point, I'm at that point, I'm making widgets.

Myke Hurley: Somebody from the pen blogging industry. Yeah. I apologize.

Brad Dowdy: I'm not at my house and I don't know how to shut this off. This is not R2. No. I don't even see the phone.

Myke Hurley: Could be anywhere.

Myke Hurley: Oh, no, it's still going. We still got it. Phone's still happening.

Brad Dowdy: I think I got it. I think I got it.

Myke Hurley: You got it?

Brad Dowdy: You're not going to believe this. Do you know what was ringing?

Myke Hurley: What?

Brad Dowdy: A fax machine.

Myke Hurley: What?

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. My in-law's house.

Myke Hurley: That's definitely the pen blogging industry then.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They kick it old school.

Myke Hurley: You can only write to each other in the industry.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You know, it wouldn't be a pen addict podcast with some kind of diversion in the middle of a phone ringing or something going on. Still got to work on those bingo cards. So where was I?

Ethical Nature

Myke Hurley: We were talking about sort of the ethical nature of… Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And yes, that's a good way to put it. And by no means is anyone being unethical in this. And that's the furthest thing from the truth. I mean, you know, that's just the nature of the beast like you're saying with a gadget blog or any type of product blog. It's just that I have to feel when I'm writing a post that I have to be into it personally, engaged personally with the post. And I think recently I haven't had that level of engagement with the products I've been reviewing. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: I want to… I don't want to just be like a turn and burn blogger, right? I don't want to post for the sake of posting just because that's what I do. I don't want to just churn out, you know, product after product review, product review, product review and just be beholden to the machine, I guess. And, you know, it's kind of weird to say stuff like that because, I mean, this is stuff that I've been doing for years. I mean, and, you know, it's gone. The Pen Addict has been a real joy and it's been extremely successful. And it's more than I could have ever imagined from writing about pens, right? I still get new readers to this day. I was like, wow, there's really a blog about this? You know, I'm glad I found it. And, you know, and I'm not, you know, passing judgment on, you know, the whole pen blogosphere because, you know, I'm right there with you guys. I mean, I do the same things. But at some point, you know, I have to change some things up. You know, I've removed the sponsorships from the blog. I've taken down Google Ads. It's, I don't want this blog to be anything other than just, you know, my opinions on products that I use. And, you know, those opinions might be good. Those opinions might be bad. None of that thing is going to change. It's just that the frequency of the blog posts is going to change. And the, probably the types of products I review is going to change. It's just not going to be a firehose approach to product reviews anymore. And, you know, if that means that, well, it's definitely going to mean less posts, less review posts. You know, I might do more different types of posts. You know, I haven't totally fleshed that out. But I can't keep –

Myke Hurley: I still wish you would do video reviews.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, and maybe that's part of this change, right? I mean, you've been on that to me for a while. And I've always enjoyed doing that. And I always get a lot of good feedback on that. So maybe that would be part of, you know, one of the things I mentioned in my post is, you know, doing less frequent but more in-depth reviews. And maybe that can be a part of that.

Brad Dowdy: So it's a change. And, you know, the scary thing is, you know, the bit I wrote at the end is, you know, as I write this, the one thought in the back of my head is, is this the slow death spiral towards the end of the pen addict? And I hope it's not. And I don't think it is. But there has to be a change. Something's got to give in the way I go about things. It's costing me too much mental anguish to keep going as I'm going right now. And I'm starting to not enjoy it, not feel like I'm doing the reader justice with the posts, like I'm phoning it in because I have a feeling of that's what I'm supposed to do, right? Well, I mean, that's going to change. I'm going to, you know, go about it a little bit differently going forward. And, you know, if that costs, you know, readers or, you know, feed subscribers, you know, that's okay. That's nothing I've ever, I've ever worried about in the past. I do that because I enjoy it. And if people come and read it, that's awesome. You know, I'm not, this is not a money making proposition for me by any stretch of the imagination. So, you know, I'm not making my living off of doing this. So I want it to be fun again. And I've stopped having fun here. In the past few months. And I want to change that because I want the pen addict to keep going and growing.

Myke Hurley: I have been going through some interesting feelings in regards to this sort of stuff myself at the moment. And we have another show on the network called Enough, which is hosted by myself and Patrick Rohn of minimalmac.com. And on a recent episode, I think it was episode 162. We spoke, the episode was called Killing Time. And we spoke about, see, I'm stressing the syllables wrong there. It should be Killing Time. Right, right. Not Killing Time. We are killing. Like, it is killing time. That was the idea. Like, in the episode, I spoke about some changes that I've made with 17 Decibels, the podcast network, and some of the shows and stuff. Because I think there is an element, if you continue to do something over and over and over again, and it's a side project, for example, it starts to feel like work. There is an element that it becomes work. And it's important to keep it fresh.

Myke Hurley: And to keep things fresh like this, you have to make some changes. So I hope, and I'm very confident in this feeling for you, Brad, that it's just a case of you just need to change some stuff around again, and you will start to feel a bit better, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and I agree completely. And, you know, the only kicker so far is I haven't totally figured out that plan, but you know what? That's okay. You know, if I don't post tomorrow, the world's not going to end right. And that's not the position I used to take.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I felt like I was beholden to the blog. And, you know, I just, it's a mental change.

Brad Dowdy: But, yeah, it was funny. I wrote this post. Like I said, I've been thinking about it for probably about a month, not knowing what to do. You know, just kept plugging along. And, you know, it finally got to the point. I wrote this post and I sent it to you because I didn't want you to see this without me talking to you, you know, going, oh, my God, what is he doing? He's shutting it down. The show is ending. You know, anything crazy like that. So, you know, I showed it to you before I posted it. And about two hours later, I picked up my iPod, started listening to podcasts. And lo and behold, it was that Killing Time episode of Enough. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, this is exactly what I'm going through right now. And the exact discussion I'm having in my head. I was like, that was one of the most best episodes, most timely episodes. I was like, wow. You know, that was the timing was unbelievable because I hadn't listened to that before I'd written this post. I wonder if I would have written this post after I listened to that, honestly. You know, we'll never know. You never know.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's, you know, it's a challenge. You know, we do this, you know, on the side, as they say. We both have, you know, full-time jobs and other responsibilities. And, you know, the last thing I want to complain about is my stupid little pen blog. But, you know, sometimes it does, you know, you get bogged down in these other things and you need to take a step back. And I'm hoping, basically what I'm hoping out of all this is that I can press the reset button. That's what I'm looking for. Kind of get into a new workflow. Get into a new feel around the blog.

Brad Dowdy: And just go from there. I mean, the feedback I've received from readers and followers and listeners to this podcast has been enormously supportive.

Brad Dowdy: They've given me, you know, lots of encouragement. You know, given me lots of ideas.

Brad Dowdy: You know, things I can change, you know, going forward or things that might help. And so, you know, I'm definitely, you know, one of the things that I wrote about in the post was the Inklings post I did. And, you know, I started that so long ago just out of, I don't know, just at the time I started that, there weren't many pen bloggers, right? It was me and maybe a couple others. So, there wasn't a lot going on. So, I was always, and I was still new to it. So, I was always searching for new things. And I was like, well, if I, just like how I started the blog, you know, I figured, well, if I'm interested in it, maybe someone else is, right? So, I started linking to these things. I was like, hey, if you like, basically, if you like my blog, you might want to go read this stuff too. Because I'm finding some pretty cool stuff out there. And it just grew and grew and grew. And now when I miss doing Inklings posts, that's the few times that the emails start to come out. It's like, hey, did you not do that post on purpose? Or I was looking forward to that. Or, you know, I have my Saturday morning coffee with that post. And, you know, and spend an hour or two going through all the links. So, I'm going to keep that going because it's almost second nature to me right now doing that post. Because that's the stuff I read, you know, in my RSS reader every day. You know, I subscribe to all these blogs, find some cool stuff. You know, and search for other stuff on my own that's, you know, not in everyone else's feed reader. You know, I try to mix it up. There's certainly posts that everyone knows about in those Inklings posts. Then I try to find some things that you don't know about and expose people to other blogs and things like that. So, that's been a fun thing. So, I will keep that going for sure. So, hopefully, I'll have a new one up on Saturday. But, what I don't want to do to get into is, you know, a month worth of Inklings posts. You know, four Saturdays worth of posts be the only thing I post in a month. That's not good for anybody. So, I'm still trying to figure out what's going to fill in the gaps there. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Well, I am optimistic for you. I think it would be a good thing for you to just change stuff about. You might replace Inklings with something else, you know. You just need to just find what that's going to be. People should contact you as well, I think, if they have ideas, thoughts, that sort of stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely. There's a big comment thread going on this post that I've been replying to. You know, you can always go to penaddict.com forward slash contact or there's a button at the top of the page. The email goes straight to me. I reply to pretty much every email. It might take me a few days, but I definitely respond to everybody. You can always find me on Twitter at Dowdyism. I'm not going anywhere. I'll tell you that.

Myke Hurley: That fax machine is coming back there.

Brad Dowdy: I'm serious.

Squarespace Sponsorship

Myke Hurley: I'll tell you what. Why don't you mute yourself and I will do the sponsor. So I'm going to talk about Squarespace while Brad goes and unplugs a fax machine, potentially throws it out of the window. So I want to talk to you about Squarespace this week who are coming back to sponsor us again. They are a fantastic, faithful sponsor, Squarespace. I want to talk about a few things that I've really been enjoying with them a lot at the moment. On Squarespace 6, which is their brand new platform, which I am in love with. I've been spending a lot of time with Squarespace 6 over the last few days. I've been doing some work on my own personal blog at mikehurley.net. And I've been really enjoying their drag and drop interface. Now let me tell you a bit about this and a bit about content blocks. So Squarespace break their functionality down to what they call blocks. So you will set up a new page on your website. If you go to Squarespace, set up a new page, and you want that to be like your homepage. Like if you go to my homepage at the moment, you'll see that I have some text, an image, and my tweets come in at the bottom of the page. You can see my tweets displayed. So what I do is I set up a new page. I select add a new block. And I can select the text block. Type in like the hello stuff. Then select an image block. Drag and drop the image from my desktop on my Mac to the web browser. And it uploads it. And I can then, in the web browser, drag and drop. So move around and everything flows around. So, you know, originally I had the text above the image. But I wanted the image to be on the right. So I just clicked it and dragged it. And everything moved perfectly. Like it's excellent. I love the way that even in the web browser on Squarespace, you feel like you're using something that's native to your computer, to your machine, on your Mac or your PC. It's incredible. It's so powerful. I really, really love it. I spoke about the Twitter integration. So some of the, they have social media blocks now.

Myke Hurley: They have, so you can set up your account with Twitter into Squarespace. So it will show your tweets automatically. You can also have it tweet out automatically when you send any posts. Sorry, when you write any posts, when you publish posts on your site as well. Absolutely fantastic. I love it. I want you to go and try out Squarespace 6. Take a look at the new beautiful templates. Have a play around. Import your own blog. And I can give you a place where you can go to do that. You can get a two-week free trial by going to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels. And if you sign up one of their plans, which are starting at $10 a month for the standard plan, if you pay monthly, but you get 20% off and 25 or 25% off if you sign up for a year or two years and they have unlimited plans. And there's some great options, but they're very simple. You can find out more about them by going to start your free trial. But you can get 10% off your first order with Squarespace if you use the offer code 70decibels8 at 70-DEC-I-B-E-L-S-8 at checkout. That will get you 10% off. I want to thank Squarespace for their continued support of this program. If you have signed up for Squarespace, thank you for supporting us. If you haven't, go try it out. It not only will be a great place for you, it also helps support the network.

Brad Dowdy: Do you have Notification Center turned on?

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Sorry about that.

Myke Hurley: You noticed you threw me off, right?

Brad Dowdy: I totally caught you. I sent that and you started pause and I was like, oh man, I'm sorry about that.

Myke Hurley: Brad sent a tweet to Sean Blanc because Sean Blanc is a Mac blogger that is in our little friend circle. And he is currently considering a vanishing point. And I was talking to this to Brad before. And while I was doing the sponsor, Brad was sending a tweet. I thought he was direct messaging me to tell me something like the fax machine had eaten him.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And right when I sent it, I saw it pop up in my Notification Center. And that's right when you started pausing. I could tell your eyes were diverting. And so I apologize for that. I didn't think about that as I was doing it. This has been a very unprofessional podcast to me, Myke. I got fax machines going off. I'm interrupting your sponsor reads. It's not going well for me today.

Myke Hurley: Maybe it won't be your choice to keep the show going.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, really.

Myke Hurley: Maybe I'll just fire you. Okay. Bring it. Bring it, he says. Interesting.

Brad Dowdy: I know where you live. I was already in your house this morning.

Myke Hurley: Yes, apparently you were. Some people were saying you were keeping me hostage and stealing my retros, which I would never allow.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, just for the record, for those that don't know, I work third shift. So, you know, Myke and I are often chatting at 2 a.m. my time in the U.S. on Twitter. So I get questions like, why are you up and things like that. That's why. So, anyway.

Brad Dowdy: But, yeah, we'll have to bring Sean on in the future. Sean looks like he's getting bitten by the bug. And I was just sending him a warning. So all you listeners, go out there and follow at Sean Blanc, that's S-H-A-W-N-B-L-A-N-C, and tell him what fountain pens you like. He'll wonder where all these tweets are coming from.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes to Sean's Twitter. So, yeah, tell him. And tell him we sent you as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Sounds like he's got the bug.

Pen Enjoyment

Myke Hurley: Which is excellent. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, before we go this week, you do have something else, though, didn't you? You have a pen that you've been enjoying.

Brad Dowdy: I do. And, you know, this is not to totally get to backtrack to where we were. I'm hoping that the podcast will serve as more of an introduction and kind of an introductory review. Or I'll feel freer to talk about a lot more pens on the podcast, I think, than, you know, I've always been hesitant to write a review about a pen, have a review, have a conversation about it, and then discuss it on the podcast. I felt like I was kind of duplicating work. But in this case, I feel like I'll probably be doing less reviews, but I think I'll be able to talk about more pens on the podcast. And that's something I look forward to, if that makes sense. So, hopefully, we'll see how that works out. But that's just one of the ideas that I had in the back of my head that, you know, while I may be backing down a little bit on the reviews on the blog, I think it might be even better for the podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Like, if you have, like, a haul of stuff coming in, you've got a couple of things that you're not too excited about, save you spending an hour writing about them. Just take a couple of minutes and tell us on the show, right? I mean, I think that works a lot better for you.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And the other thing I would do is, you know, I would have so many products, I would hold them and not discuss them on the podcast, knowing that in a month, I'm going to have a review done on it, right?

Myke Hurley: Right.

Brad Dowdy: So, now, that will kind of free that whole deal up, and I think it'll be better for the podcast that way.

Myke Hurley: There's a thing about audio, and as I've done these shows with people, traditionally writers, and it's interesting to see how their opinions change to the way that they write. People get the audio bug. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's freeing a little bit, and it's still hard to explain without pictures sometimes, you know, when you're talking about, like, highly detailed specifics, but the conversation's a lot better, you know?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, if I don't, if something's not coming across clearly, I can tell you, and you can explain it better.

Brad Dowdy: That's exactly right.

Myke Hurley: You know, and you can't do that in any other way.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So, I've got good feelings about the podcast future, if you will.

Myke Hurley: Good.

Keras Customs Render K

Brad Dowdy: So. So, anyway, my friends at a company called Keras Customs, and we've talked about one of their pens before. It's called the Render K. It was originally a Kickstarter pen, and I helped them way back when they, I don't even know when their Kickstarter project was. It was last year sometime. It might have been last summer. But, you know, they send me prototypes, and I give them feedback. And so, you know, I'm certainly no guru, but they did ask for my opinion, and, you know, I told them a few things that I saw. And, you know, so I've always kept in touch with these guys. They do, they've made one of my, probably one of my favorite Kickstarter high-tech C pens. It's a good design, just a basically threaded cap with a clip, machine-milled aluminum. It's really nice. They do a good job. Well, they came out.

Brad Dowdy: Dan at Keras Customs had told me all along, you know, they're going to keep improving this line and keep making different products. And they've made a brass one. And that's really nice. But then recently they've come out with a bunch of colored barrels for the Render K. And Dan sent me one, and he told me he was going to send me something in the mail. And he told me, and I assumed it was going to be one of the color ones, but I didn't get to pick out the color or anything like that. And I don't know if he reads me, reads the Pen Attic blog frequently, but he scored by sending me the orange one, which is absolutely the one I would have picked out of the lineup. And I'll send you the link, Myke, for the show notes if you don't have it already. But these, it's an aluminum pen, and I don't know, I'll have to talk to Dan. And maybe that would be a good interview subject, actually, get Dan on the show, how they put the finish on here. But it's super bright and really well done. I put in a .4 millimeter Pilot High Tech C gel, refilling it. And I've been using it all week at work this week, and I've been taking it all over the office, dropping it, you know, using it. I mean, it's gone through some hard knocks this week with me at work, and it's been great. I love looking at it, and I've been real happy. They did a very nice job on this pen. And I know there's a few other readers and pen bloggers that are fans of the RenderK as well. You know, our friend Mary from the Pen Cup, who does awesome pen reviews, she's a big RenderK user.

Myke Hurley: The colors on the aluminum are stunning.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's why we've got to get Dan on. I'll have to work on that because I don't know how they do it. I'm not a manufacturer, but they're really bright, and they pop. And, you know, you can include that picture I tweeted out yesterday too. I mean, that's just with my iPhone sitting on my desk at work, and it's just like it's really, really sharp looking. I've been very, very pleased with it. It's my favorite RenderK so far, that's for sure.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'll put a link to the tweet in the show notes. I also have a link to the RenderKs as well. The colors, do you know what they remind me of? iPod Nanos.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they really do. That's a lot of those same colors. You don't see a lot of purple, pink, and orange aluminum barrels.

Myke Hurley: No, I mean, I'm intrigued at this one because, I mean, I'm not a fan of the original Hitek C. I like my Polito because it gives me a nicer barrel. Interested to maybe try one of these out. Yeah. How much are they?

Brad Dowdy: 45, I think.

Myke Hurley: 45, that's not too bad.

Brad Dowdy: No, it's not too bad. Especially, I mean...

Myke Hurley: It's probably quite expensive to ship, though. I don't know. Well, to here.

Brad Dowdy: You're right. I don't know. But, you know, they're just... It's the beauty of Kickstarter, right? I mean, it's just a guy in his machine shop coming up with a pin design, and now he pretty much has essentially a pin store. And he's improving on the product and making new products and making changes. And, you know, he's done a real good job.

Myke Hurley: Totally. I'm now looking at how much the shipping's going to cost on one of these.

Brad Dowdy: He's got a picture of the black one up there, too. Since the colors are so bright, I wouldn't have considered the black, but the black is actually pretty nice.

Myke Hurley: They do a non-trackable shipping for $20, which... That's not too bad. That's not too bad. I'm going to put this on my pen list.

Brad Dowdy: The think about it list.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. I like the look of these.

Brad Dowdy: Just for the record, with these pens, and I'm re-verifying it on their site, you know, they fit the high-tech C. They also provide you... What do you call it? Not a stopper. Like a plug. That will fit Parker. I know a lot of people use Parker refills. Parker compatible refills. They do provide a way to fit a Parker compatible refill in there. But that's about it. It's the high-tech C. And then with a little plug, the Parker refill will fit.

Myke Hurley: What weight does the nib size, does the high-tech C go up to? Five. Five. Yeah. It's still quite slim, but it's okay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's smooth enough. I mean, it still may be too slim for you, but the five is really wide for me because the high-tech Cs are really made for that fine line. I mean, it starts at 0.25 and 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I think I have the five and the Kalito, and it's thin, but it's okay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's doable. It's smooth enough, and there's not a lot of feedback or drag with that pen.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. It's a good one. It's a reason that people say it's the best pen ever.

Pen Comparisons

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. There's a... You know, there's... That's a... I got an email about a week ago, and that was pretty much the entire question. What is the best pen ever? Wow. What an impossible question to answer.

Myke Hurley: Do you have an answer? Like, do you have something that you would say you don't? Because it's too difficult, isn't it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's an impossible question. And, you know, I let her know, and I said, you know what? You know, there's some... Depending on what you're going to use, on what you're going to use the pen for, you know, that's obviously the key in answering this question. If you can tell me more of how you intend to use the pen, I can make a better recommendation. Now, if you want to go completely blind, and you want me to recommend something different that you haven't tried that might be pretty good, you know, I threw a couple suggestions out there. One pen that I do recommend a lot for people just getting into micro tip gel pens, which is really what the Pen Act was all about for years, is the Sino DX. Because that's not a Sino, or excuse me, a Signo that you can get easily on the store shelf. And the fine tip is really, really nice. And it's a cheap and expensive way to try something out, you know, a micro tip pen. So, you know, I usually mention that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Just a real... I mean, I'm not going to start mentioning, you know, $20 and $50 pens, and $100 pens, and things like that, you know, without good reason. But that's...

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Pen Recommendations

Brad Dowdy: Either that, or something like the Zebra Saracic clip. I don't throw people right into a high tech C. Almost never.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's a risky start, I think. Yep. Anyway, so I think we should wrap up here. It's been a different show. Yeah. A programming note. A little bit of behind-the-scenes-y type stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, give you a little bit of behind-the-scenes. You know, I like to kind of have a little bit of a brain dump, let everyone know what's going on with the blog. I've always been pretty open and honest, you know, on my blog about what I'm doing. Everything from how I do pen reviews to the decisions I make, you know, about the blog. So, you know, I feel like it's a community that's been very supportive of me, so I owe them nothing less than to be completely open and honest, and that's what I'm trying to do, and we'll go from there.

Myke Hurley: I think that, well, speaking from me as a fan, as well as a friend, I appreciate it. So, thank you for your honesty. Where can people reach you, so, if they would like to get in touch with you about any of these topics today?

Brad Dowdy: Sure. The quickest way to usually get me these days is on Twitter, at Dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, or you can email me, thepinaddict, at gmail.com, or you can also click on the contact button at pinaddict.com, and that'll shoot an email right into my inbox as well.

Myke Hurley: Super. Super. I'm on Twitter. I'm imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Get in touch. Always enjoy it. So, until next week, sir, try not to shut anything down.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. I got it. We need to wrap this up. I have some faxes I need to send.

Myke Hurley: Yes. Guess.

Myke Hurley: Get on that. Business. Time for business.

Brad Dowdy: That's right.

Myke Hurley: All right. Take care, buddy.

Brad Dowdy: All right. See you later.

Myke Hurley: Thanks for listening. Bye bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.