The Pen Addict 117/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	117
Title:	We're a Perfect Pairing
Release Date:	August 29th, 2014
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 117
Audio File:	Audio Episode 117
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 117
Length:	5151 min <br />0.85 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello there and welcome to episode 117 of The Pen Addict podcast on RelayFM. The Pen Addict is brought to you by Igloo and Bloggo, and we're going to tell you about those fantastic companies a little later on in the show. 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, as I always am, by the man himself, Mr. Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Hey Myke, how's it going? Very well, man. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. It's Friday. It's Friday afternoon, Friday evening, where you're at. And it's a party weekend here in the USA of A. It's a three-day weekend, so we're about to get our party on.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Thank you to everyone for bearing with us for our crazy schedule changes this week. We had some unavoidable things occur, but I could not let a week go by without an episode of this show, so we were able to fit it in here at the last minute. And thank you, Brad, for being so accommodating.

Brad Dowdy: Absolutely no problem. You are so accommodating to me. It's easy, so I'm glad we can get it in this week, that's for sure.

Pen Chalet Subscription Box

Myke Hurley: And we will mention this, because this is a new thing for the show, and I'll mention it up top, because some of our listeners may not have come into contact with something like this before. We now stream this show live every week at relay.fm slash live, and we usually do it on Tuesday evening. But we have a schedule at relay.fm slash schedule that you can get to as well, which we have a calendar there so you can see. And you can subscribe to the calendar, too, if you like, and you can find out when the shows are going to go live. So basically, right now, as we speak, me and Brad are broadcasting this show to people listening in. And we have a chat room where you can get involved, and you can talk with other listeners to the shows. So currently, we have all the Panagic listeners in there. So you will now hear us mention and reference the chat room and stuff like that, and that's what we're talking about. It's the people that are currently listening to the show as it's broadcasting live. So thank you. Thank you to everyone who's persevered of us over the change. You know, we mentioned this already, but like I know that people have come and found the show since our first episode. And thank you for that. It seems like, Brad, looking at our numbers, we've got practically everyone.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it looks right. It's pretty cool. I see lots of familiar names and familiar screen names, if you will. So it's very, very cool. I'm excited for the chat room for this show. This is a perfect chat room type show. Excellent.

Myke Hurley: So should we jump into it?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, let's do it. So again, I wanted to thank you and all the listeners for the past, what, I guess it's been a week and a half now since Relay launched. The love that y'all showed us, you know, in iTunes and downloading and rating and reviewing the new Panatic feed has been super helpful. And I think it was a really good week just across the board for Relay FM. So that's thanks to you listeners. So I wanted to say a thank you. So I did a short article this week for our friend Matt Alexander of Need Edition, who runs a wonderful men's clothing wear. What would you call that? A monthly.

Myke Hurley: It's kind of like a publication, but it's like a publication in which they also sell clothes. It's a really, really interesting idea. So Matt sort of curates a selection of items every month and he writes like little articles. Or is the guys there, right? Because now he has the whole staff. Yeah. Used to just be Matt. They write like, it's like kind of like a periodical. Yeah. And they talk about all of the clothes, why they're a good thing to have, why they're in fashion, what's good about them and stuff like that. And they work with sort of bespoke companies and get special deals and stuff like that on a bunch of items and they sell them every month. It's a really, really great company you should check out actually.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So this month they had the Blackwing 602 was part of their offering.

Myke Hurley: They've sold like field notes and stuff in the past as well. Like this was kind of, I'm going to say it was my recommendation that Matt start looking at things like this for need because I think it's a really good fit.

Brad Dowdy: It's a great fit. And from what I've seen in the past, they've done really well. They've sold out of several of those type of things. So Matt asked me, they have a blog that they run called Imprint. So he just asked me to do a short little article about why we love pens or why we write or why people should write. And, you know, it's the whole analog versus digital battle, which I really don't see it's a battle. It's definitely something that, you know, can live in the same realm. So I just wrote a little piece about that. I linked it today on the blog and, you know, everyone's probably read it already. But for those who missed it, I thought it was a good little bit of insight to how I feel about pens and paper and writing and in this case, pencils as well. And if you also check out that blog, the article prior to that was Moises Chouyan doing a piece on the Blackwing 602 history. So that was a very good piece. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because as you mentioned, they were selling that.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. So they try to do timely articles to go along with their monthly launch items. So now this time of the year, usually it's usually earlier in the summer, but this one was a little late summer because of their schedule. But I know you and I are big fans of Edison Pen. And I know a lot of listeners are. So this is every year they do, I think since 2012, maybe since 2011. Brian Gray does a group pen buy to where followers and supporters of Edison Pen can get one of their signature line pens at a production line price. So the signature line pens, they usually don't produce as many of, they're more expensive. But he also offers up the option once a year for everyone to get in on a signature pen at a good price. So right now the 2014 Edison Pen group buy is active. It doesn't run for very long. So I wanted to put that in the show notes for anyone who's interested. I am going to pass this year. I'm not crazy about the colors and offerings, but it's a cool looking pen. The red wine is especially nice looking.

Brad Dowdy: It's just not for me with the gold. You can't switch out the gold furniture for silver, although that's going to come back to haunt me within the next few days. All the grief I've been giving gold pens. So I wanted to point that out to all of our listeners. Because it's a really good deal. And I've missed out, one I missed out a couple years ago on the Pearl. It was a really cool one. And then last year's I was on the fence and I ended up regretting not getting it. But this one I am definitely passing on.

Myke Hurley: I want to talk about the horror of misplacing. That's bad. So I haven't been at work for a couple of days.

Myke Hurley: And I had to kind of leave in a rush a couple of days ago from the office. And the next morning I realized that my Edison Polat is not in my Tashenberg glider. Which means I left it on my desk. And I won't be back in the office until Monday and I don't know if it will still be there.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, so you haven't been back at all. You just know that it's not in the Tashenberg glider. So there's only one place that it will be in and it's on my desk. Maybe.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, exactly. Myke, I'm going to tell you right now. It will be there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I have faith.

Myke Hurley: I kind of do as well. I don't think... Nobody would borrow it. And everyone around me knows that I'm the pen guy. I'd be surprised if somebody hasn't just picked it up for me. And it's just looking after it. But you never know. There's people that walk around the offices. It's a big office. You know, anyone. I don't know all these people. Exactly. It's a very interesting looking pen. It would definitely draw people's attention. So who knows. But yeah, I haven't really got anything to say other than like that is something that's happened to me in the past few days. And it's a horrifying feeling.

Brad Dowdy: Do you have one of those offices where if you're gone for a day and you come back and you're like chairs in a different position and like someone's like readjusted it? Oh, yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have to find desks either. I mean, we have places that we sit in. Yeah. But like I'm having some back trouble at the moment. So I keep rearranging the chair properly and then I come in and the chair is taken. Yeah. It creeps me out. How do you just spend all morning just rearranging the chair? Now you end up with a broke chair. Yep. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. Our friend Chris Gottlieb for our relaunch did a cool cryptic crossword for pen addicts.

Myke Hurley: An impossible crossword.

Brad Dowdy: An impossible crossword that I haven't done yet. Have you tried?

Myke Hurley: I tried. I tried a couple of them. I just couldn't. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: There's been some people that have gotten like a lot of it, if not all of it.

Brad Dowdy: And I'm trying to find – I put the link in there because I think it's about to end on September 14th. There it is. That's the date I was looking for. So you still got a couple more weeks. So I'm going to work on that hopefully this weekend. And, you know, maybe we can share some tips and some answers. But I wanted to put that out there for everyone who still – who missed it last week. And hasn't caught up with it. So did you get something new this week?

Lamy 2000

Myke Hurley: Yep. So we spoke about our friends at Pen Chalet last week and the fact that they were doing a special offer on the Lamy 2000, which currently is still available. Pen Chalet are not a sponsor of this episode. But go to PenChalet.com, hit the radio button on the top, enter Pen Addict as your password, and you'll get given the opportunity to get a Lamy 2000 for a significant discount. After you use your Pen Addict code, it'll be 40%. The reason that I'm saying this to you now is because – oh my god.

Myke Hurley: Like, seriously, this pen is incredible.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's unlike any other pen probably you own or have tried.

Myke Hurley: So let me tell you about something that I forgot and nearly made a huge mistake with. I forgot that this was a piston filler because you cannot see that seam. Right. So I unscrewed the bottom of it. Oh, yeah. To try and put a cartridge in.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Myke Hurley: Because I have an alarming converter. And I was like, why is this not going in here? Like, what am I doing? What am I doing wrong? And then I was kind of looking at it and I was like, I don't get this. Like, why is it not going in? And then I went into – I opened the box and I pulled out the little sort of leaflet that it comes with. And it shows – I was like, oh, I remember now it's a piston filler. And the reason I didn't think of it is I don't know any other Lamy pens that are piston fillers.

Brad Dowdy: Now that you say that, yeah, I can't think of one offhand.

Myke Hurley: Like, I've used a bunch of Lamy pens and they're all cartridge-based. So I just naturally assumed that it would be cartridge-based. Especially because they make their own line of cartridges as well. So it seems like there's enough of a reason there that it would just be a cartridge pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So you just – I don't want to hijack you totally, but you can unscrew it where you unscrewed it to clean out the barrel. But you've got to be super careful because there's this little metal ring in there. Yeah, oh, I know. But all about that. All right. Yeah, that thing will jump out on you and down the sink or in the carpet and you're toast.

Myke Hurley: Oh, it jumped out.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it jumped right out of there. But I was able to get it back in. But let me tell you, it's not easy to get in either. It doesn't just slot in. You've got to kind of squeeze it and push it. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Well, yeah. It's –

Myke Hurley: What is that ring for?

Ink Flow

Brad Dowdy: I don't know.

Myke Hurley: Because I don't like the little –

Brad Dowdy: It's probably, honestly, too – it's probably an additional seal mechanism, right? Because there's some ink. The ink will transverse those two sections of the pen right there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So maybe it has to do something with the ceiling. That's the only thing I can think of.

Myke Hurley: So I have never held a pen like this in my life. And you've tried to put this into words before.

Myke Hurley: And I can't do any better a job than you. Yeah, it's really hard. This – it's so strange. It feels like – and this doesn't sound nice. But it feels like – I was going to say a living thing, but that's not what I mean. A thing from nature.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. That's a good way to put it.

Myke Hurley: Like, it feels like – I don't know, like the texture of it. And I get what you mean about the warmth. It seems to take body heat. This is an incredible pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It totally gets warm. Hey, and Pig Palm in the chat is totally right. That's where that ring – it has the two flanges that stick outside the barrel. And that's where the cap clicks. That's exactly right.

Myke Hurley: That's what that is. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: But the flanges have to sit in their slots. I mean, it's a particular orientation that it has to fit in there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because I didn't like those little things. But now I accept them because now I love – hang on a second. Listen, guys.

Myke Hurley: Satisfying click. Yep. It's – yeah, it's – I love it. I've just been distracted by one thing that I forgot to mention. People listening in the chat room, you can suggest titles for this show. And all further titles for this show will come from chat room suggestions. Yes. And the way that you do that is you type the exclamation mark and the letter S and then you press space and you type whatever you want. And typically, people suggest titles from things that we've said. So if you've seen people in the chat room type exclamation mark S and then space, for example, it feels like a living thing, that's somebody suggesting a title. And at the end of the show – so this is only in the live part – once the show's ended, we go in and we pick titles.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Like the leader in the clubhouse is from Ethosophical. We got – you have to squeeze it to get it in there.

Myke Hurley: Hence – there we go. This is the type of thing that we will have now. We won't – and for people that are listening to the recorded and won't listen live, we won't continue to talk about it like this. It is because it's a new thing. And I should have mentioned that beforehand and I apologize. Yes. So let me continue.

Brad Dowdy: We're just trying to get everyone on the same page.

Myke Hurley: Let me continue talking about this, Pen. So –

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because it sounds like you like it a little bit.

Myke Hurley: So I know that you mentioned nib issues and I'm concerned that you've scared some people off. Sure. But I feel like you were doing the right thing. You were giving your account. Yeah. But we've had a few people get in contact with us on Twitter and they said that they've had no problems. And I want to reiterate that if you do have problems, I'm sure that the guys at Pen Chalet will try and help you out. Oh, no doubt. But this thing is – it's – I have not used it enough that I feel like I can make this claim and be 100% accurate. But it's potentially the smoothest pen I've ever used. I have – I have –

Brad Dowdy: What nib did you get?

Myke Hurley: A medium. Okay. It's like writing on glass but in a good way. Like it's effortless. I gave it to my girlfriend to try and her eyes lit up. She was like, oh, this is so smooth. I was like, yeah, it's really nice and it's mine.

Myke Hurley: I'm not taking this one. Yeah, because this is – I love this pen so much. I genuinely do. Do you know one other thing I love about it? The clip has like a little spring mechanism in it. So, you can press down so the clip comes away from the body and it clips the things.

Pen Design

Brad Dowdy: It actually took me a while to discover that. I didn't catch that right out the gate until one day I just happened to grab it by the end of the clip and it lifted up. I was like, oh, damn, that's just brilliant.

Myke Hurley: I don't see that enough in pens. I feel like that should be a more standard thing. Yep. I will maybe have more to report on this in the future if I don't assume that I just love it to bits because I do. And I genuinely think that people should go and try it out. So, go to penshelly.com, hit that button, type in the pen password and you can – as of recording today, which is the 29th, they're still on offer. So, the 29th of August is still on offer. I think you should try it out. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Sure.

Myke Hurley: So, would you allow me, Mr. Dowdy, to take a quick break? I will. This episode of The Pen Addict is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you actually like. Now, Igloo is built with you in mind. They have super easy-to-use apps like shared calendars, Twitter-like microblogs, file sharing, and so much more. These are all integrated into Igloo's platform and are really simple to set up and configure. Everything that you're going to need of Igloo is built right in and everything is social. This means when you upload a file to your Igloo or write a blog post about it, your team can share it, comment on it, rate it, and like it. This is just like the social apps that you're used to using every day. It's bringing something a little bit more fun and refreshing to the day-to-day. With Igloo's latest release, you can also manage the tasks associated with your content, like updating the images for that big keynote on Tuesday or delegating actions after a meeting. Tasks is the latest app to be integrated into Igloo's intranet platform, and it was released just last week to all of their customers with their unicorn release. Igloo's task management is designed for people, so you can manage your projects, personal to-dos, and everything in between. This allows you to see all of your tasks in one unified view inside of your intranet. Igloo have really built something that will help you keep on top of your work. If your company has a legacy intranet built on SharePoint or old portal technology, you should give Igloo a try. Or if you want to be more connected, more social, and more productive in your workplace, Igloo is for you. Igloo is free to use with up to 10 people, and you can sign up today at igloosoftware.com slash penaddict. Thank you so much to Igloo for their support of The Pen Addict and Relay FM. Show your support to them and us by going to that URL, which is igloosoftware.com slash penaddict.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, Igloo. Awesome. They're awesome stuff.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, Myke. Oh, Michael. Yes. So, we had a big, fun-filled episode planned for today, and then my good friends at Scribble had to go and ruin it. Ruin it for everybody.

Brad Dowdy: Because people really don't want to hear about this. But I think it's interesting in the fact that I have never seen, not just a pen project, but any project do so many things wrong, and then just continue to dig the ditch deeper. This is one of the most amazing projects ever, and it's fun to follow for that fact, because they just keep butchering everything they're planning on doing. So, what happened was, for those not up to speed, they had their big Kickstarter launch, I guess it's been about 10 days ago now, or a week ago, whatever.

Brad Dowdy: $336-something thousand dollars, but they didn't really have a product to show that worked accurately. So, Kickstarter basically shut them down until they could prove they had the product. So, they came up on their Facebook page and other places in Kickstarter updating, saying they were going to relaunch on the 28th. So, everyone assumed, I assumed, it would be a Kickstarter relaunch. The 28th came and went, and there was no launch.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know what made me think last night, while I'm sitting at work on my break, I go over to their website, which is getscribblepin.com, and I look up, and the page has been down for maintenance for a while. I look up, and they have pre-order now, they have 60 backers, and $22-something thousand dollars. I'm like, they've relaunched this thing and didn't tell anybody. And, I don't know what made me think to screenshot it, but I think it was really the, what made me think to screenshot it was when I went to pre-order now and saw all the high-end value, like there's a $10,000 level, and there's some things like that to make me think something was not right with this. That's what made me start taking screenshots. And so, then I posted them on Twitter. And by the time I posted them on Twitter, the people who were going to the site, the site had been taken back down again.

Brad Dowdy: And was down ever since, up until now, which we're going to talk about. So, I posted that, I posted the screenshots that I took, I posted it on their Facebook page, they eventually deleted my post from their Facebook page. Naturally. Naturally, without any response, because that's what they're good at.

Brad Dowdy: So, I put it, I reposted back up there and, you know, asked them to answer questions and not delete posts. You know, I'm really nice and stuff.

Myke Hurley: You're a crusader, though. No. They don't want crusaders.

Brad Dowdy: I just don't want people to get taken by this. And nothing that they do makes me feel comfortable about anything that they're doing. So, as of the launch of this show, of this Pen Addict podcast, Get Scribble Pen is back live. There's one backer so far. It's like they timed it to go with this episode. But, I mean, there's still, it's still a complete train wreck. I'm wondering if this is going to go back down because the video has been removed by the user. There's no video.

Tilt Platform

Brad Dowdy: There's, it's, they don't, they basically copied the Kickstarter over to, I guess this platform is called Tilt, Myke. Have you ever heard of the Tilt platform for crowdfunding?

Myke Hurley: I've never heard of them, no. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So, they have basically copied over their Kickstarter, which is fine. But they didn't answer any of the questions about where's the pen, show me how it works.

Myke Hurley: This company does seem to be, this Tilt company does seem to be pretty legit, though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah. No, I imagine that that part is legit. I'm just saying that the Scribble people, they have continued to not answer any questions. They are not returning to Kickstarter, which is, I don't know how much of a red flag you need than that.

Myke Hurley: We'll come back to that in a minute.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, they, they just continue to do everything wrong, you know, deleting people's posts on Facebook. Launching, I don't know if this is even going to be the live launch. This just may be them working on the website again and they're going to take it back down. But launching on a Friday afternoon on a three-day holiday weekend in the U.S. is not going to get any activity.

Brad Dowdy: It's just every decision they make seems to be the wrong decision. So, I just wanted to bring that back up. I don't want to harp on it too, too long on the Scribble just because it's really frustrating that people are still interested in this product after every misstep they have made so far.

Myke Hurley: So, I mean, originally you were like, were calling foul on the donations. But, you know, you could, they could say now and maybe you would, you could believe them considering they're now at zero that they were testing things.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, and I put a tweet out that said that. Yeah. I said, my money, my money's on, yeah. Yeah. So, which is, I can understand, I can actually, that's, I can legitimately understand that.

Myke Hurley: So, let's assume that they were testing things. But the problem remains that they're not doing this on Kickstarter and that concerns me. It concerns me greatly that they've taken it away because there's no reason that they should have to unless, unless Kickstarters block them. Right. In some fashion. I don't understand. But there's one thing that I wanted to draw attention to. So, there was one little tweet that I thought was interesting and I've saved it for the show notes. Which can be found at relay.fm slash penaddict slash 117. That's where you can find the show notes. And, yeah, so, it's our, it's our designer at Relay at Forgotten Towel. And he, you know, being in the field that he does and he says, he said to you on Twitter, I work in digital print, high fidelity color reproduction, and I can't see how this product can possibly do what it claims. Like, that's an expert in my eyes. Frank is an absolute expert. He's going to know. I mean, we could all see that that was the case. But to have someone with his skills say the same kind of tells you everything that you need to know, I think, about this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, and the inability to answer the questions around that piece of the product is really, really sketchy. Yep. Really sketchy. So, anyway, I think that's enough on Scribble. We'll see. We're going to record again on Tuesday on our regular schedule. So, we'll see if this thing stays live through the holiday weekend, which I think would just be, I mean, just from a business perspective, it's a horrible decision. People announce bad news on Friday afternoons, right? Mm-hmm. So, I don't know what the deal is with that. All right. So, before we get into, we got a quick sponsor. Then we got a topic we want to hit. I want to do something for our chat room people, which I told them I would do on Tuesday before we got delayed. And at that time, I had bought something new. I had not received it. And I told them if you're in the chat room, I'm going to tell you what it is. And I'm going to tease the people that are listening to the episode later that they're going to have to come into the chat room. So, I just sent the chat room an image because the two pins that I bought came in, and that's for your eyes only. And we will talk about them on Tuesday. So, that's my big chat room tease to get people into the chat room and chatting with us. So, you'll have to pull that. I don't know if you've pulled that up.

Myke Hurley: I have. I have. I'm excited to hear about it. And luckily, people that are listening to the recorded, they only have to wait a couple of days.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You would have had to wait a whole week before. But I didn't have them before either. So, I was just going to type in what they were. But I'm going to go through the whole process of me making this purchase because it was very fast. Huh.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: It was an interesting thing. So, anyway. A couple of beauties there, buddy. Yes. I'm very happy. Very happy so far. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm interested to find out the models because the images didn't really help with that too much. So, I'm excited to hear more about those.

Brad Dowdy: Yes. I was in a hurry. I actually meant to write those down and I didn't. But we'll just leave it at that. So, our pin blog of the week is a new blog. New to the scene. And she's doing an awesome job. It's called The Pinventory. It's a girl named Olivia. And she's been doing some great reviews, great pictures, great products. She's done a lot of fountain pen. A lot of fountain pen and ink stuff so far. And she does a really, really good job. So, y'all should all check out Pinventory. And it's a WordPress blog, Myke, which is something you kind of want to mention.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. So, do you want me to do that now?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Let's do that.

Myke Hurley: So, we have a new sponsor this week. And they're sponsoring a couple of shows on the network. And I suggested to them that I thought that they would be a perfect sponsor for this show. And I explained why. And I think as you hear me go through and talk about Bloggo, you're going to understand why. Now, Bloggo 2 is a fantastic new application for the Mac that quickly and easily lets you write, preview, and publish blogs, posts, sorry, to your WordPress blog. Right? So, my thinking was, when talking to the Bloggo guys, they've created an application that makes it really, really easy to create blog posts. Now, currently they work with WordPress. They're building Blogger and Tumblr integration in. They're doing that right now. So, in an update that will come in the future, they're going to be building an integration for Blogger and Tumblr too. But right now, if you have a WordPress blog, then you should be looking at getting your hands on Bloggo too. Bloggo makes it possible to write in a clean and simple interface. You can edit your pictures with its fantastic built-in image editor and then preview your posts in real time, showing you exactly how your post is going to look on your site before hitting publish. The built-in image editor that I just mentioned allows you to crop, apply filters, adjust brightness and contrast, and change the sizes of your images. This is all built in, making adding and editing images to your posts a piece of cake. Bloggo allows you to manage comments, manage multiple blogs, and work without an internet connection using their offline mode, which allows you to work on your next big piece or your next big pen review and schedule it to go live for when you have an internet connection later on. When you're writing in Bloggo, you can enter their distraction-free full-screen mode. This gives you a fantastic environment to get focused in and get your work done. They also feature really cool integration with Evernote. So, let's say that you're collecting your ideas in Evernote for a post that you want to write. You've got an outline in there, maybe a couple of paragraphs. When you can sit down at Bloggo and using their Smart Sync feature, it will make sure that it brings all of that content from your Evernote into Bloggo, where you can polish it up, finish it off, and publish it right there. The Bloggo team is super responsive to support, which is something that's really important to me and it's important to them too. They have a support community at support.getbloggo.com and they are at getbloggo on Twitter. As well as Bloggo and Tumblr integration, they've got feature support for so much more stuff coming in the future, including custom field support and multi-markdown support. Bloggo has been featured by Apple on the Mac App Store and has been nominated as one of Evernote's best new startups of 2014. So, if you have a WordPress blog, then you should definitely be going and downloading Bloggo right now from the Mac App Store. Because, and it's B-L-O-G-O and they're at getbloggo.com. Of course, the link will be in the show notes. Because, you know, you can hear about how having an application like this can really help you. It can actually make it easier to post to your blog. But also, like if the web browser crashes, you know, you can sometimes just lose everything that you've written. But with an application like this, you know, it's going to be saving as you go and all that cool stuff. So, go and see what all the fuss is about by going to getbloggo.com right now or search for them in the Mac App Store. Thank you so much to Bloggo for their support with The Pen Addict and RelayFM.

Brad Dowdy: I was pretty excited when you told me that they were going to be sponsoring this show. Because in the past, I had used MarsEdit years ago, which is a similar type of software. But this looks way, way better and nicer and slicker. And if I had a WordPress blog, this would be an absolute no-brainer purchase. I love using, like, the external editor that syncs up, that will push everything to my website. And from my experience, things like that have worked very, very well. And this looks like a great – I was actually excited about it until I saw it was just WordPress. But hopefully, like you said, they're going to be adding more platforms in the future. So, hopefully, it's a success. And I really, really like how this looks. And doing this type of thing is – it worked well for me in my writing flow and posting flow for the blog. So, I hope everyone checks it out.

Myke Hurley: If you've got a WordPress blog, no excuse.

Perfect Pairings

Brad Dowdy: No excuses. All right. So, Myke and I have been asked several times about a topic called – that we are referring to as perfect pairings. Kind of like me and Myke, right? Yeah. We're a perfect pairing. We're just – we're a perfect pairing. But people want to know, what's the best pen I can use for this certain type of paper? So, we put together a few things, and I got a bunch of feedback from a lot of listeners with some good things that I wanted to go over. But let me tell you about some of the ones that I find to be the most perfect or the most common thing. I use – I'll use almost any pen in any paper. But I tend – there definitely – I definitely have some tendencies for certain pens to go with certain papers. For example, in my field notes, my favorite pen to use is a Secura Pigma Micron. I just like that plastic tip pen in the field notes. It works great. It's a pen I can just beat up and take around, and I don't care if I lose it and things like that. And it works perfect for that paper. So, that's something I really, really enjoy. I also, at work, use the DONE Large Idea Notebook. That's the big boy mic with the super thick cover, and it's the very large size. And when I'm doing planning work at work, I'll take my Uniball Sino DX .38 millimeters. It's the UM-151 model. The brightness of the colors, the sharpness of the pens, and that DONE paper is like the ultimate combination for me. I really use a lot of gel ink pens in my DONE notebooks, and especially the Sino DX colors. So, that's a huge favorite. Since I love the Pilot Hi-Tech C, too, and my favorite tip size of that is .3 millimeters, it doesn't always work on other types of papers. Like, it's not the awesomest field notes pen. It works. It's not the best DONE paper pen. It works. I like a smoother paper, like the Morrowman Memosyne notebooks. That's another one I use, another combo I use all the time.

Brad Dowdy: Now, on the field notes portable style, I've started using our NotCo .dash cards mic, which I like, and our little fodder stack pouch, and the Pilot Juice .38 millimeter blue-black. That's kind of like, if I'm not using the field notes, that's kind of my on-the-go note-taking kit. The Pilot Juice is a really smooth .38 millimeter pen. I like that a lot. One I get questioned on a lot, and I don't use any more, but when I was a heavy Moleskine user, the best pen I found for Moleskine, and I answer this email several times a month, is the Pilot Precise V5 or V-Ball. The Pilot Precise liquid ink pens do a really, really good job on Moleskine paper. Like, I don't have great luck with gel ink pens and Moleskine paper, or fountain pens and Moleskine paper. But liquid ink pens and Moleskine paper, especially the finer ones, like the V5, which is a .5 millimeter, I really, really like. That's actually a really great writing experience for me. And the last pairing I put down is just the Tomoe River and any fountain pen. That's kind of a cheat, but that's just good stuff all the way around. You can't go wrong there. So I'd say out of that group, the field notes and Micron is the most used and my most perfect pairing. If I just had to pick one, that's always a winner for me. So what kind of things do you put together or do you kind of always have together?

Myke Hurley: So this is something that I struggled with a bit because I brought this topic to you because I'd have a couple of people, including my friend Ben on Twitter, ask me. And I gave him what I thought was a fantastic pairing, which was the Lamy Safari and the Rodia web notebook.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's really good. But he didn't like it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, he said he felt like he was writing on glass and that he didn't like that feeling. Yeah, I mean, I can see that. But that's one of the things that I love about it. So it's just interesting to me because the perfect pairings can still be like a personal preference type thing, which is why I wanted to kind of get a few from you and I have a couple and then to kind of get some listeners. Now, I think that the Lamy Safari and the Rodia web notebook are fantastic together because the Safari is super smooth and easy to write with. The web notebook just sucks up fountain ink. I found their dry times to be very good, even though the paper is kind of quite smooth. And I just thought that together when I used the larger pads like that, there wasn't anything better than the web notebook. So kind of, in my opinion, the Rodia web notebook is also a perfect pairing with the office. You know, like you mentioned that the Fodder stack and your index cards, they're a perfect pairing as well. So like .dash and the Fodder stack, they're a perfect pairing. It doesn't necessarily just have to be pen and paper, even though that was kind of the brief that I gave you. But that is like, that's another perfect pair, in my opinion. But I have a couple and I have two different field notes related ones, simply because I'm such a field notes guy these days. Like it is the only paper that I use. So I have found for some reason, I don't know why, that the Kuru Toga and the Arts and Sciences field notes go so well together for me. I just have the big field notes here and I use them when I'm recording sometimes to take some brief notes of like timestamps and stuff. Like if I screw up or something, I might write a timestamp down so I can deal with it in editing later or something like that. Or I want to put in a sound clip or something like that. I've got that big pad next to me. I have one of the Steno, Field Notes Steno notepads, and it would probably be a very similar thing there as well. But I have a bunch of these Arts and Sciences and I wanted to kind of use one up. So I've got one on the desk next to me. But probably, I think, potentially the ultimate Field Notes companion is the Fisher Space Pen. And obviously they saw this themselves, which is why they send their sort of like home branded version. And that's because they just go so perfectly in the pocket together.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's a really killer combo.

Myke Hurley: But you need a clip if you ask me as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. I've had my clip on and off my Space Pen. Actually, when I use the Space Pen refill, I go for a bigger pen instead of the smaller standard Space Pen. And I'm still using like the County Comm Embassy Pen as one of my big Fisher Space Pen refill holder, if you will. But still, I think that's not made for like what the Field Notes is made for. That's not a perfect pairing. The Fisher Space Pen standard and Field Notes, that's a killer combo.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, because it's the size. That size goes together. With the Moleskine, I would also, I would kind of suggest simple fountain pens. Like the Lamy Safari or the Pilot Metropolitan. Or a Rollable or Gel Ink pen. So maybe like a Retro 51 or something like that. If Moleskine is your bag, that's what I would go with. Moleskine really doesn't do well to fountain pens in general. Yeah. So I would go with something that's just simple in that regard. Just because then you're not going to go crazy and buy a really expensive fountain pen and expect to use it well with the Moleskine. Because most likely your results will not be favourable. I mean, people could say that about Field Notes as well, right? With many of the editions where they use the standard paper, not the thicker paper that they've used in a couple. That it bleeds through and it does because it's kind of not really meant for fountain pen use as much. I don't think Field Notes are much more built for like quick notes and stuff, which typically people don't take with fountain pens. However, a perfect pairing for me is just Field Notes and life.

Myke Hurley: That form factor is so incredible to me. Like I can have a Field Notes basically wherever I want to put a Field Notes. And I can walk around the office with one in my trouser pocket if I need to.

Myke Hurley: And they don't take up the entire desk when I'm trying to take notes. So they work fantastically for me. So I just use my favourite pens, whatever they may be in Field Notes and just, you know, and deal with it. And more often than not, they perform well. I mean, you know, there is bleed through, but it's never enough that I can't read if I write on both sides. So I deal with it and I have a great time with it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I think that's awesome. So let's get into some of the listeners' perfect pairings. Because there was a lot of interesting stuff in here and I wanted to make a comment on some of these things. Actually, the first one I got, Dave Rhodes on Twitter at Rocky Rhodes. His first thing, Rodeo Webby Lamy Safari loaded with Mont Blanc Irish Green. That's just what you were talking about. The web notebook by Rodeo is a wonderful, wonderful notebook. Works great with fountain pens. Dan Foster talks about the Loic Term 1917 large dot notebook and polishing vanishing point with binder, or bender, italifine. I'm assuming that's like a cursive italic fine nib. That's a really, really good combo. We got a lot of Rodeo Webby action. TWSBI 580 and Rodeo Webby from Eugene.

Brad Dowdy: Uniball Jetstream Ballpoint .38 and white unlined index card. I wanted to talk about this one. This one's from Ryan Ireland.

Brad Dowdy: This is the kind of perfect combo that I'm talking about. The Jetstream Ballpoint .38 is so fine. It's hard to explain if you've never used that pen. It's way finer than a .38 gel pen because that ballpoint line does not spread out like a gel ink pen. And using that on a small form factor paper, like you're talking about with Field Notes, how it's portable. You can take it everywhere and use any kind of pens. Using that .38 on a small index card like that, I think that's a killer combo. That's like one of my favorite ones out of all this thing. That seems perfect to me.

Brad Dowdy: But that Jetstream, I will say, that Jetstream .38 ballpoint is not for everybody. I've had people that have bought those after I've raved about them. They're like, oh my god, what did I buy? This pen's horrible.

Myke Hurley: I just know I wouldn't enjoy it. I just know it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that is not a pen for everybody, so don't rush out and buy that one. But I really, really enjoy that pen. So, Eric Dunlap is more love. Both TWSBI Mini and Rodia Notebook. I think you're seeing a theme here.

Brad Dowdy: Toto has the Kaweco Lilliput and the Passport Size Midori in his pocket. I think that's a good combo. I've been using the Lilliput more and more, even more so than my AL Sports that I use. I've been liking the size and portability of it. And I don't even have any of my AL Sports inked right now. I have my Lilliput inked, and I use that when I want a portable fountain pen. It's really, really good.

Rodia Paper

Brad Dowdy: Lots more Rodia, lots more Clairefontaine. It's good to get good paper, guys. We talk about that all the time.

Brad Dowdy: John Bemis, who has done a guest post here recently, or Bemis on Panatic, is Pilot Custom 74 with Sailor Shigur on Rodia Ice A4, top staple bound. I'm really enjoying the Rodia Ice Notebook so far.

Myke Hurley: That is so fantastic. He's so specific.

Brad Dowdy: That's why I read it. That's the kind of thing I love.

Myke Hurley: It's like, you know, give me any fountain pen in the world and load it with Hiroshi Tsukuku Fuyugaki, and I'm a happy man. Like, that is the best ink on the planet, in my opinion. It has quick drying time, and it is so striking. That orange is so beautiful and striking. I love it. I just genuinely love it. I should mention as well, this is too much for me to put in the show notes. The show notes would be insane. So maybe, like, listen back a couple of times and just go to Google.

Brad Dowdy: So one of the added bonuses of our live chat now, Myke, is we can get pronunciation corrections on the fly. So TM23 is Shigure. Awesome. Shigure. So that is... It says hashtag Japanese pronunciation bot.

Myke Hurley: Sailor Shigure on Rodia Ice A4.

Brad Dowdy: Ice. Ice. Ice. Now this next one is another one I want to pinpoint, and it's from Gooch, Mr. Blue Magister, who I know, who used to do some writing for me at Pen Addicts. So Mr. Brian Gushikawa.

Brad Dowdy: Uniball Signo 0.38 millimeter purple black on the Minma sign paper. On the what? The Morriman Minma sign. Someone give me a pronunciation on that one. That one's hard to say.

Myke Hurley: I... Surely that M is silent.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Nemo sign. Nemo sign. Nemo sign or Nemo sign. It's the Morriman paper that I mentioned earlier that's really excellent. But more importantly, this pen is way, way, way underrated. It's the Sino DX or the Sino RT. Comes in a lavender black 0.38, and it is awesome. Everyone should have that pen. It's really, really good. Gordon Tillman has been rocking out with a matte black vanishing point, diamine ancient copper, and tomo river paper. That's a really good setup. And I know a bunch of people in the chat room are using vanishing points as well. So... Vaughn Johnson says, copy paper and a big ballpoint extra fine. Both stink. So he needs to up his game. That's why we have this show, right?

Myke Hurley: Yep. Yep.

Hobonichi Teco

Brad Dowdy: Rob says, pretty much anything in my Hobonichi Teco planner. That tomo river paper is wonderful to write on. I might have to... I'm getting... I'm jonesing to kind of break out my Hobonichi just to see if I'm going to be stupid and order next year's version too. Because I only use this year's version for like two months. Don't do it. So... I know. I'm sure I won't. I'm sure I won't. Just try...

Myke Hurley: Just get a pad. Just get a pad of the paper. Yeah. Don't like... Get a notebook. Because you're only doing it for the paper and you didn't use it last year. You're not going to use it next year.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. So Brad Thornborough has a couple of comments here. He uses the Doan Utility Journal, Coveco AL Sport with EF Nib, and G Herban L'Etat Inc. Which I think is the brown ink. G Herban. G Herban.

Myke Hurley: Here we go again.

Brad Dowdy: Diablo Bon. But he goes on to say, also, the Doan Paper journals have completely replaced field notes for me. Paper is much more fountain gel pen friendly. And I can totally see that. So, you know, I don't... I almost never use fountain pens in field notes. But I think I'm in the minority. I know you do, Myke. And I know I've talked to Mary Collis a bunch about this. She does. And doesn't really have a problem. I generally don't.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, here's one for you. Tony Roman, who's a big... Yeah, Tomoe. Tomoe, I do know. I just continue to butcher that. Just like Signo, I always say Sino. I always forget that in my pronunciation guide.

Myke Hurley: I think Sino definitely makes more sense than Signo.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but I don't know. It's Signo.

Myke Hurley: It is definitely Signo. But I think they've got that wrong. I know that that might be correct. But I think that they've got that. They've made the incorrect decision there, if you ask me.

Brad Dowdy: And Tomoe, I usually just read too fast and just say Tomoe. Because it just rolls off my brain. But Tony says he's got the Lamy 2000 EF with Orochizuku Takasumi on Rodia, Dot Pad 16, and Webby. And last but not least, Miss Manda's got the TWSBI VAC 700. Hey, some love for the VAC 700. And a Leuch term for quick, on-the-go Fisher Space Pen and Field Notes. Just like you, Myke. So, these perfect pairs are always...

Myke Hurley: I like that Miss Manda is completely going in the opposites there. She's got, like, the world's biggest pen with a regular notebook and then the Fisher Space Pen with the Field Notes.

Brad Dowdy: That's good. You've got to have choices, Myke. Yeah, yeah. I'm ready for all occasions. I know. None of us would be happy with one pen, would we? Mm-hmm. We wouldn't have a podcast. It's true, then.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Well, I think we've killed the internet for today, Myke. It's been a thrilling ride with our chat room. This is going to be awesome. I'll have to get used to a little bit more, you know, reading and interacting and stuff. And I told them, and I'm glad you didn't yell at me. I told them that Myke's going to yell at me because I don't have a shock mount for my mic, and he's going to hear me typing all the time.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, we're going to need to fix that, aren't we? Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Hey, before we go, the scribble is all the way up to four backers and $711.

Myke Hurley: How many dollars have you put in?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, zero so far. I keep asking everyone in the chat room, all right, who keeps backing this thing? Yeah. So, all right, I don't want to talk about scribble anymore.

Myke Hurley: Well, let's see what happens Tuesday. If you want to catch the show notes for this week's episode, go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 117. Don't forget, this show broadcasts live typically on Tuesdays at – I'm going to my time zone calculator, which I promise I'll get used to this at some point. We broadcast at 10.30 London time, which is 14.30, so it's half past two in Pacific time and half past five p.m in Eastern time. Yep. Hopefully, that should be sufficient enough for you to grab your own time zone. It's 9.30 GMT, so you can set your times by the correct ultimate time if you would like. We'll be back next week with another episode of The Pen Addict. I am at imike on Twitter. I am yke and Brad is at dowdyism, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. If you cannot wait for more pen goodness until next Tuesday, go to penaddict.com and get your daily feel there. We'll be back next time. Thanks so much for listening. Bye-bye. Bye.