The Pen Addict 165/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	165
Title:	What Kind of Show Are You Running Here?
Release Date:	July 27th, 2015
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 165
Audio File:	Audio Episode 165
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 165
Length:	7171 min <br />1.183 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 165. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Build It Beautiful, and Fracture, photos printed in vivid colour directly on glass. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by the man with a plan who's on holiday with a tan, it's Mr Brad Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: Nice! I like it. I'm working on the tan, I am on holiday. I am a man. Last time I checked, some would disagree probably. But yeah, it's vacation time for me, so what's it for you? Just normal work day, dealing with me, things like that?

Myke Hurley: Normal work day, and I'm happy that you're taking a break, and I'm very thankful that you are here, even though you're on holiday, because you don't have to be.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, no, I plan, I don't want to say I plan around it, like it's an event, I enjoy doing this. We've talked about this before, we rarely miss, you know, when we do. It's usually a pretty legitimate big time reason, and we'll record early if we have to, but you know, I'm lucky in that when I travel, I travel close, and I usually travel to family's houses that have Wi-Fi. So I just throw the mic in the bag and have Myke Will Travel, and you know, my parents, my in-laws, they all know that I do this, so they're happy to accommodate me for an hour a day, once a week. So hey, it's fun, I'm glad to be able to do it. I did have a bit of a panic attack last night, though, as you will attest to, an early morning tweet to you, and as the Slack pen addict room will attest to, I think yesterday was the first time that I forgot to plan for the show. So what happens, my normal day would be on Sunday, I go into work at 11 o'clock Sunday night, so I usually have a kind of a set schedule on when I plan the podcast. Well, I didn't have to work last night because I was going on vacation, and it didn't cross my mind to plan for the podcast, and I didn't realize it. We left late for vacation, so I'm driving to where we're going, and it's like 10 o'clock at night, we didn't leave till late. It's about 30 minutes before we get to where we're going, and I looked at my wife, and I said, I didn't do any podcast prep for this week, and we record tomorrow. I was like, oh my God. So then like the last 30 minutes of the drive, I was shot, just racking my brain. What can we talk about? What can we talk about? So when we finally got in, I jumped in the Slack channel. I was like, hey, you guys got anything? And I got a couple of good things from there, so a couple of which we'll talk about. And you delivered quite handily, I must say. Props to you for dropping some good things in there and some stuff I needed to talk about anyway. So I appreciate your help. I appreciate everyone in the Slack room's help, and I think we have a pretty good show today, actually. We do indeed. We do indeed. So let's – you ready to talk about it? Yeah. So the biggest thing that happened last week, which I wanted to give a shout-out to Pen World magazine, they approached us at the Atlanta Pen Show. You've probably seen some – maybe some tweets and some things on Instagram. I just got the issues on Saturday myself, the hard copy. The article's wonderful. It's about kind of a new era in pen collecting and things like that. And when Pen World posts the article online, I'm going to share it with everyone so everyone can read the article. But it was a real nice article done by Reinhard Cargill, who worked with me and Jeff on doing an article about the pen addict and knock and how we all came together at the Atlanta Pen Show. So – and you were a part of it, Myke, and Ana was pictured in the magazine, and some of our shop was pictured in the magazine. So I just wanted to let everyone know that it's not the easiest magazine to get a hold of, so I will have a link to the article when they publish it online. They're going to publish this one online, which they normally don't do, so I'm going to work with them when they publish it, and we'll get some traffic over there. So, yeah, it was a really, really good article, and I can't wait to share it with everyone. So I'm glad it came out before the DC Pen Show. It was kind of a good timing thing, so I will certainly take it.

Myke Hurley: When you work with them to help them get it online, is there any way you can sneak in a different picture of me? Or just cut me out? I hate this photo of myself so much. I really do.

Brad Dowdy: You know what? It's not a good picture of you. No. Just for everyone who listens to this show, that is a bad picture of Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've put a link in the show notes. All I ask is please, everyone listening, I know it's a bad photo. Brad agrees. Please don't tell me if you think it's one. I just can't take it. But I guess we're like, you know, we've got one each now. You had your crazy drawing thing.

Brad Dowdy: I forgot about that.

Myke Hurley: And now I've got this guy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, but Myke's a sexy man. You know, we shared a room at Atlanta. I appreciate that. And, you know, I can vouch for the poor, let's call it a poor angle of the photo. Yeah, it is. So it's not good. Not good. Not good at all. So let's switch gears quickly and talk about something that is good. You got it in your hands, and I don't know if you know, but I got it in my hands as well.

Myke Hurley: Yep. So Mr. Dudek sent me this guy. That's my Relay FM block. Yes. Like what you had, what you talk about last week. So mine came in post. Those things were sweet. Did you have to pay any customs on it? No. Strangely enough, the box was huge. It was one. I don't know what you did shipping wise, but it came quick. Nice. So I had it like three or four days after you got yours. Wow. Do that magic. Yeah. But there was a little special extra in there. Ooh. A Karis box. And I opened it up, and I found I had a little Fountain K action hiding away inside of here. Nice. Nice.

Brad Dowdy: So what material is yours in? And give us your thoughts.

Myke Hurley: It's pure, like plain aluminum. Okay. So I did exactly what you would expect I would do. I immediately customized it. Yeah. How so? So I got my orange Render K cap. Oh. So now I have a part aluminum, part orange aluminum Fountain K.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So that's pretty sexy. I have to admit that's pretty cool. I should do that because I have the same orange Render K, which is one of my all-time favorite machine pens. I'm a big fan of the Render K. So I'm glad that they decided to come out with this Fountain K. I actually have the aluminum, the brass, and the copper. Dan Bishop gave me the full hookup for my impressions, and I really appreciate him doing that. And what's great about the Fountain K is it's a little bit more svelte than the ink. Like, right, they've made it to be a smaller diameter pen. So it fits a good kind of area, like for fountain pens go. Like, you know, it's different enough from the ink size-wise that, you know, I think there's a good market for it. My only issue, and I've shared this with Dan, this is not a surprise, that since it is a kind of a smaller footprint pen, the section isn't very large, and the threads of the grip are kind of in the way a little bit. So they're looking at that. You know, maybe they change it. Maybe they don't. I don't think it really affects the writing of the pen so much, but you do kind of notice it. And so, you know, that's something that they're looking into. So it hasn't launched yet, but I think it's going to launch next month. I think in August, I think they're doing Kickstarter on this is what Dan tells me is correct. So I'll be looking forward to that. I'm real happy with the pen so far, and I'll try to put some thoughts together on the blog here in the next few weeks if I can get off vacation.

Myke Hurley: I haven't – I can see what you're saying, but I don't find the grip to be an issue. That's good. It fits the way that I hold a pen perfectly. I agree. Basically, what you've got here is if you like the ink, you're going to love this because it's just more svelte. It's lighter. It's easier to hold. I really like the slight taper that's on the body of the pen.

Myke Hurley: I have no bad things to say. It's not a brand new design, right? It's like a mix of two designs. Right. Which is really interesting.

Myke Hurley: But I like it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this still may be my favorite Kara's design. It's the first. I don't know if there's something – just since it was the first that I'm stuck on that design. But I love the shape of the render K. I'm a huge fan of that pen. And speaking of which, this – they've kind of rolled out a separate – just a separate pen. Kara's Pen Co. has kind of rolled out a separate – you'd almost call it like a separate brand, wouldn't you?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I'm a little bit confused about this. So I hope you can try and help me with this.

Brad Dowdy: I don't know if I can. We'll have to get Dan on this. I knew there were some separation going. But if you guys haven't been following Kara's – and I actually missed it when they started putting it on Instagram and started doing some different things on the Kara's blog. They actually have an account called Kara's Pen Co., which is just focusing on the pen stuff. Like on the regular Kara's Customs stuff, you still get a lot of the other machine stuff that they do, which is their core business as well. You know, they're not just a – contrary to our belief, they're not a pen company. You know, but the pen business has gotten so big for them that they've started to do more focused things, if you will. So Kara's Pen Co. is part of that. And the first thing that they did was, you know, they're rolling out these small batches. Like these stonewashed render Ks are pretty slick looking. What do you think about those?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so this is what – the way that I've been looking at this is like Kara's Customs is still selling pens. Like the Fountain K is sold by Kara's Customs. Yes. But then they're also doing this additional thing, which is, as they say, it's like small batch, which is really interesting. And so like these are – it looks like obviously there's more work being done by hand on these, I suppose, to get this stonewashed look. And you can get all these different colors. But what I find interesting that they're doing is they don't seem to be selling these in traditional channels. Like so they've been posting pictures on their Instagram. And this is really interesting. I've never seen anybody do this before. And they're like, you have to comment on Instagram to say that you want one. And then you just PayPal them the money and they'll send it to you. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: So I talked to Dan when the Kara's – Kara's K. The Fountain K was coming out. And we're going to get him on the show when that is getting ready to drop on Kickstarter. So we'll ask him all this stuff. And he's already agreed to it. We just don't have a date set. You're not going to wake up one day and it's just going to be there like I normally do to you. But Dan will come on in the next few weeks. And we'll quiz him about all this stuff. And he can shed some light on what the Kara's PENCO is trying to accomplish. Because it's some pretty cool stuff. I got to admit. I'm trying to hold off on spending on anything until the DC PEN show comes and goes just to see what kind of trouble I get in there. But, yeah, I would like one of these stonewashed jobs. Pretty slick. Pretty slick.

Myke Hurley: Did you see the picture of my Fountain K? I didn't. I put it in the chat room. It's also in the show notes. Oh, look at you. I just took it while we were talking.

Brad Dowdy: Nice. Yeah. See? That's pretty cool. I have the exact same one. And what's funny is I was playing with the Render K and the Fountain K at the same time. I was, like, measuring up the sections. I had the ink all out. I was seeing what all the dimensions were changing and things like that. And I had them sitting right there all taken apart. And I didn't swap out those parts just like you did. You're more of a junkie than myself. So, here. Have a heart.

Myke Hurley: Thank you very much. I just hearted your picture. It was literally the first thing I thought to do. I was like, oh, I wonder if the cat fits.

Brad Dowdy: Because you've already done that. And I haven't. For all the Karis Customs pen I have, I haven't swapped any of that stuff around. And for no good reason. Because, you know, I love that kind of stuff.

Myke Hurley: I was using my steel color with brass section the other day. Yeah. I'm so pleased I made that decision. That's my favorite. Like, that. Oh, I love that. I love the way that pen looks. It's so special.

Brad Dowdy: We've talked about this before. And Dan has said as much, too. The steel anodizing on the Karis pens may be the single best color they do. It is. But it doesn't show up online. Nope. When you see it in person, it's jaw-dropping.

Myke Hurley: Like, when Brad says it doesn't show up online, it means that you can't see the pictures very well. Like, it's like a gray. It's like a gray-blue color. It's the closest way I can try and describe it. It's gray with a tint of blue in it. It's really awesome. Really, really awesome. Yeah. Really awesome.

Brad Dowdy: You know what else is awesome?

Knock Pens

Myke Hurley: Tell me.

Brad Dowdy: Knock. We're awesome.

Myke Hurley: Oh, I've heard about these guys before.

Brad Dowdy: That's as much as I can brag, you know. I don't brag very much with you. But when I asked for your help on this, to make the show notes on this, I open it up and there's like this whole thing on Knock that you've put in there. Because you know I never talk about it because it's not what I do.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. We don't. Every now and then, I think it's nice to kind of check in and see what you guys are working on. Because, like, it's all marketing and it's all related. I think it's interesting. So, tell me, like, you've got this new, I like the color name, Burple Tri Camo Tech Liner, which is all sold out. But it's like the blue and purple Tri Camo.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That thing is just wicked awesome. I love that pin. I'm a big fan of the TI2 Tech Liners, too. That's actually the last pin. That was actually one pin that made me spend my money when they came out with an orange one recently. So, yeah, that's our, one of our, that's our, that's Jeff's camo pattern that Myke Bond just makes for us. Myke Bond, the TI2 Tech Liner guy. So, Knock's the only one that has that pattern because Jeff designed it. So, Myke and usually just Myke and Jeff work on colorways for it. We'll have, like, the stock camo pattern and then we'll do some alternate colors like we did the blurple. It was such a hit, we'll probably do another run of those. I don't know exactly when, but it went within a few hours. I mean, it was gone. I love it. I really love it. It's really sexy. It's really sexy. So, you know, we're always working with Myke Bond to kind of do some things, you know, in and out. We don't want to overload that. And we got the new, we finally got a replenishment of our Render K, which is the red, silver, and blue one, which always sells really well. The G2 Render K, which I love. So, from a Knock perspective, people want to know primarily when are the folios coming. That's the question I get because Jeff and I tease them all the time. We carry them all the time. The design for these, we're going to do two versions of folio. We're going to have the smaller version, which holds the two notebook slots in the side, like the two pocket notebooks. That design is pretty much on lock. I think we've got that one down. We're working on the next size to hold the A5 pads. So, like it'll hold our new steno pad. It'll hold other A5 pads. But that's such a, that case is kind of a bigger deal to manufacture. So, we're trying to work with a partner on that. We're on our third go. We tried twice with one partner. That has failed. We're on our second partner for a third attempt. And it's looking way more positive. Just, we need some help making pieces of the case. So, to actually make this a success. So, that's in progress. We have some positive momentum on that. Instead of months of spinning our wheels, not getting the quality that we want. Jeff and I are huge, huge quality sticklers. And, you know, we spent lots of money with lots of vendors trying to get them to make our product that's acceptable to us. And so far, they failed.

Brad Dowdy: That's how good Jeff is. I just want to brag on him for a minute. That's how good, you know, he's training the people that work for us. You know, we really, really care about our quality. And so far, we haven't found anyone to match it. Except we might have someone now. So, our first run with them was super positive.

Myke Hurley: When I was in Atlanta, I was talking to Jeff about this. And he was getting really riled up. He does. Which is awesome. Because you can feel, like, the care. Which is great to know, right? But, yeah, he was getting super mad. Hey, I just, quick thought. Why has he never been on the show?

Brad Dowdy: He has. He has when we launched Kickstarter. But we'll do it again. Oh, yeah.

Kickstarter

Myke Hurley: Yeah, that was a long time ago. I want to have him back on. That was a long time ago.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we'll do it again. For sure. For sure. Because there's very few things.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah, I remember that. I interviewed you, too, didn't I?

Brad Dowdy: Yep, you did. Yeah. There's very few things that get him spun up. Making crappy goods is one of them. And he gets bent out of that. But, you know, for good reason. You know, we have a standard we're trying to fit and to work towards. And, you know, so far we've been unsuccessful finding someone that can also hit that. So, that's the folio status. I don't have dates or anything like that. If this works out with this company, we might see something by the end of the year. And I'll go ahead and say it now. It's almost certain to be a Kickstarter. I will say that because it's going to be very intensive. For the folio. For the folio, yeah.

Myke Hurley: For the two folios?

Brad Dowdy: Both of them, yeah. They'll be two sizes.

Myke Hurley: I didn't make sense. It's, you could basically call it a different company. Like, I know it's not. But it's the amount of work and effort. And it is different enough. Like, I think that makes perfect sense. Oh, I mean, I don't even know why we're justifying it. Like, there are a bunch of companies that do one Kickstarter, do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. We were just talking about Karas. They're going to bring all their products to Kickstarter. I think it's a great way of doing things.

Pocket Notebook Folio

Brad Dowdy: Yep, yep, yep. So, our second thing that Jeff and I have been teasing.

Myke Hurley: Yep. God, you guys are just the worst.

Brad Dowdy: So, let's start. Let's start this. Let's blame Jeff for this. All right? So, I'm just sitting at home. And then I pull up Instagram. And Jeff's, like, taking pictures of some case he's made. And I'm like, holy crap. What is that? He doesn't even tell me. But this case that he made, this is how good Jeff is. And this is what he does. He just comes up with this stuff in his head. Goes and gets the chalk and the scissors. And cuts out panels. Puts all this stuff together and goes, boom, check this out. Look what I did.

Brad Dowdy: So, I was like, this thing's crazy. You have to make one for me. Because we've been thinking about, you know, what's our next product going to be? Discounting the folios. The folios are going to happen one way or the other. So, not counting the folios. What's our next product going to be? And he made this case. Right now, he's calling it the half tower. I don't think that's going to be our name. Because it's a great name, though. So, I might eat those words. But it's basically a zip top. And in the, so it opens up. It doesn't zip open all the way. It's the width of, like, a folded high tower. Right? Or a lookout. It's got a zip across the top. Like a half zip. And when it opens up, one side's got three pin slots. And the other side has a pocket for your pocket notebook. He made me one with fabric scraps. Like, no panel on mine is the same color. Like, it's green, blue, orange, and white on the outside. And pink and mango on the inside. It's really sweet. It's a prototype. But the version he made me is... I wouldn't change a stitch on the product. So, he's nailed that right out the gate. That's probably going to be our next product. It's not... You know, we talk about these things. And people want them immediately. And hell, I want them immediately. But, like, this kind of thing takes time for us to get, you know, fabric cut in bulk. And, you know, lots of pieces and parts. Lots of moving parts. You know. So, it's going to be months before you see this. But, I'm... I'll go on record right now and say that's going to be our next product. It's that good of a case. So, I'll leave it at that. I'll stop bragging on us at that. But, I'm seriously thrilled with this case. So, we'll probably make a few more prototypes. Get them in other people's hands. Get them in some of our testers' hands. And go for there. So, what else do you want to know about Knock?

Myke Hurley: Well, Jeff posted a picture today. I assume that's a folio, right? Yeah. Because that's similar to what I have.

Brad Dowdy: So, this is the Pocket Notebook folio. Yeah. And this is the one we're pretty confident in the design of, you know. Like, this one's not going to change. We're still working on the bigger model. When you start getting bigger in, like, Cordura materials, you have to make sure the structure's right. So, it's been a little bit harder to get the A5 sizing to feel good. To feel like a solid product. So, we're working on that.

Myke Hurley: But the one that I have, I'm going to have to tease this before. I'm just going to say it. The one that I have is a prototype of the big one, isn't it?

Brad Dowdy: I don't even know.

Myke Hurley: I believe it is. Because an iPad mini fits in it.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Because now I have a big iPad. I don't use an iPad mini. I want a little one. So, I'll be a customer. Because I love the... But mine, the one that I have is like, as Jeff was saying, like, it's not even closer to final design. Like, there are a few things about it that would be changed. Which is why he had no problem giving it to me.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. And even that one I think he has in his picture, I think, was the first one he made. So, mine is even a little bit different than that one he has in the picture.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I love it. Yeah. That little guy, that's exactly what I want for traveling and stuff. It's really cool.

Brad Dowdy: It's really cool. It works extremely well.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Because it'd be good for a passport holder and that kind of thing.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yeah. It fits. It's got that slot in the back. Behind those two notebook slots, it's got a full width slot. It's perfect. It's right on the money. So, yep. It's really, really good. And so, that's what's going on in the knock world. I'm actually glad we talked about it because we haven't given – it's easier to do an update than, you know, 140 characters repeated over and over again or responding to Instagram, which we like to tease stuff on Instagram. I can't help it. It looks really – stuff looks really cool, and Jeff always shocks me and impresses me with stuff.

Myke Hurley: I'll ask you one last thing, though. Sure. How far away do you think you are from a Kickstarter for the folio? Like, if you were to put money on the table right now.

Brad Dowdy: November.

Myke Hurley: November. Okay. Cool.

Brad Dowdy: I think the half tower will come before the Kickstarter for the folio. Okay. It's going to be close, though.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: And November is a weird spot, too, for a Kickstarter campaign, but that's a whole other conversation. So, we'll see. It's almost like it needs to be October or it needs to be next year. Do you know what I mean?

Myke Hurley: November doesn't work so well.

Brad Dowdy: Well, with the way Kickstarter works, right? I can run a 30-day campaign. It takes me two or three weeks after that to get the money. It'll be after Christmas before we even start making cases. It's just a weird – people have a weird perception of, like, November Kickstarters. That's just – that's my opinion in how the Kickstarter world works.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it's going to get to a certain point. You're going to know if you're going to be able to do it, so you might be able to do it sooner anyway.

Brad Dowdy: It's good. We could. We could get ahead of that. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: I was being cautious there. Yeah. I would love it if it was October. I doubt it would be September.

Myke Hurley: That's not far away, though, to be honest. October is not far away.

Brad Dowdy: That's my point. That's why I said November would be, like, kind of like a pipe dream at this point.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Like, if I even think about how long it took us to put together the Atlanta Pen Show Kickstarter, I can't even imagine what something like this must take. Yep. Yep. That was, like, months. It felt like of work. Yeah. To even do that one, which was, you know, really low risk. Yep. Barely any, like, big work needed to happen beforehand, like, specifically with Nock to get everything ready. Yeah. So, it's tough. It's really not just entering some text in some boxes.

Fountain Pen Review

Brad Dowdy: Right, right, right. Yeah. And then you've got to deliver, man. Yep. You've got to deliver. Mm-hmm. All right. Speaking of delivery, let's get something in the mail.

Myke Hurley: Sounds like a great idea. This week's episode is brought to you by Fracture. Fracture is a really great company that have a really great product. They are transforming the way that people print and display their favorite images, and they do this in a way that I really love. A trillion photos are going to be taken in 2015, and Fracture is now here to help you rescue some of yours and proudly display them on your walls, on your desk. Get them out of those camera rolls, those timelines, those feeds, the pictures that you're most proud of, the pictures that you most like. They deserve a place in your home, or they deserve to be given to a friend. And it's super simple. You upload a photo to FractureMe.com, and they don't just make a print of it and put it in a little frame, in a little wooden frame and send it to you. They print this photo directly onto a piece of glass. And what you get sent is a piece of glass, which is lovingly treated and taken care of, right? You're not getting, like, a big piece of sharp glass. It's all, like, nicely softened around the edges, that kind of thing. They send you this, and basically your photo is printed directly onto the picture, and then a piece of foam back in is put on the back of it, so you can very easily hang it on the wall. It is so awesome. Fracture, put everything in the box that you're going to need. For some of the smaller square sizes, you can get a little stand to put it on. That comes in the box if you ask for it. Or they give you a little screw so you can put it in the wall. It just comes in there. It's nice and taped into the box for you, so it's all ready to go as soon as you receive it. Their order process is so simple. You just upload the file that you want, and then you just choose the size that you want. They have square and rectangle sizes, three square sizes. They're perfect for Instagram photos, podcast artwork, album covers, that kind of thing. They have five rectangle sizes, all the way up to 21 by 28 inch. You just choose the size that you want, and you just put in your information, and they'll send it to you. It's so simple. I'm so happy with how mine come out. The colors look so incredible, and they arrive to me in perfect condition all the way across the pond from Florida to England. I've bought them as gifts for other people. They're great gifts. Really great gifts. You know, send someone a picture of something that means something to the two of you, or, you know, like a family photo or something like that. Really, really great. Great idea. They are just fantastic, and at only $15, they're not going to break the bank either. That's where they start at, $15 for some of those square sizes, and you can go all the way up. But yeah, just starting at $15, you can get your own Fracture print. You'll also be helping support this show, and get 10% off for yourself, if you use the code PENADDICT, at checkout. The coupon code PENADDICT, or one word. Just go to FractureMe.com to get started. Thank you so much to Fracture for their support of this show.

Brad Dowdy: You know, I should drive down there. I'm on vacation. I'm about two hours away from them in Gainesville, Florida. You should go say hi. You could go say hey. Touch some glass or something. Yeah, touch some glass. Yeah, that'd be cool. Get a picture of my Instagram picture of my tiny beer, you know, made in glass. You know, my eight-ounce beer. Nailed it. All right, so do you want this orange pen I reviewed today on the blog, or no?

Myke Hurley: Oh, I do want it. I mean, I love my orange, right? And I think I prefer my orange, to be honest. But I do love this one as well.

Brad Dowdy: So you and I have the same orange pro gear, the solid orange one. I got this one on loan from Goldspot to review, and I picked this one out because I wanted to see it in person. It's so good. It looks fantastic. I hated to send this back. I might have to talk to them, see if I can get the blogger hookup on that pen.

Brad Dowdy: I've never seen, like, a demonstrator fountain pen that is so bright. And just, it's literally just jumping, you know, out of your hands. It's so bright. And the pink one and the green one are the exact same way.

Myke Hurley: This doesn't suffer for me with that issue that I have with demonstrators, you know, that they look cheap or whatever. That's true. I don't know what it is, but it looks, it just looks like the real deal.

Brad Dowdy: I think the pro gear is just, and I talked about this in the post, it's just, the pro gear is a really stout pen. It's not big. It's not small. It's just kind of right. And, you know, it's got a good diameter. It's got a good heft. And that carries over even in the transparent models like this. So, yeah, you want to throw that out there because that's a pretty cool looking pen. And I'm going to end up with one of those, one of these days for sure.

Myke Hurley: I just picked up my pro gear. That's a good pen. It's my number one, man. I do not own a pen better than this thing. It is as perfect as a pen could be. Great. I like that nib. That nib.

Brad Dowdy: They're nibs or something else. All right. So our pen blog of the week this week is an interesting choice and one I only caught wind of when we talked about the ink doc a couple weeks ago, you know, when we talked about the, you know, the video that we saw, you know, the handwriting video. And they went to the Wonderpins shop. And, you know, normally, I guess, retailer blogs, you know, some of them do a really good job.

Brad Dowdy: And some of them really kind of don't do anything on their blog. Well, I think Liz, it's John and Liz run Wonderpins, and I think Liz handles the blog. And what she does is not just talk about their products, but you go on there. Look at this. Yeah, they just got the emerald. They just got the emerald of Chavor ink. And so that's their first post on the blog when you go to the current thing. But if you scroll down, like you read through all of Liz's posts, she's got like soup recipes or talking about, you know, how she's doing different things at home, you know, cooking different things, not just straight about pens. And I love that. I love that approach. That's the kind of approach that kind of just sucks people's in and makes you want to be part of, you know, your blog, your shop, your community you're building there in Toronto, things like that. People get to know you on a more personal level. And I think that's a big deal. So I wanted to give a shout out to Liz for making such a great blog. And her handwriting is just, it's to die for. You know, she does a great job. And we actually even got a shout out on the podcast, you know, when we talked about the ink doc and, you know, giving them a plug, you know, the Wonder Pen site. So anyway, if you just browse Wonder Pens, checking out all the cool stuff they offer, be sure to check out the blog. It's really, really interesting. And I love Liz's tone and style that she blogs with. So that's our pen blog of the week. All right.

Myke Hurley: I want that J.O. Barn so bad. Yeah. I just went to Colt Pens again and it's still August. August, August.

Brad Dowdy: Even the U.S. retailers were saying August. So I didn't, I haven't seen anyone get them in stock besides them. So I was actually surprised to see that.

Pen Blog Discussion

Brad Dowdy: So when I was panicking about what we're going to talk about today, you know, which we've got a lot of topics covered already. One of the recurring question that came up when I said I was on vacation and I forgot to plan for the podcast. Well, what did you take on vacation? And that came, that came pretty hot and heavy. So I was like, okay, we can do like a bag dump from what I took on vacation. And, you know, I keep it pretty simple. I actually pare down a little bit. Definitely on pens. Um, I carried more paper than I normally do, but you know, let me, let me go through my bag dump real quick. And I have all these pictures. I did, uh, um, did a kind of a machine gun style Instagram post this morning where I posted four separate pictures, kind of capturing everything, kind of broke it down from the bag and then the inside and then broke down the insides, things like that. So the outside, the bag itself is the bag that has prompted me to put most of my other bags up for sale. Um, and it's called the Bogeer bullpup. Um, I actually bought this. I follow Bogeer. Um, it's Brisbane outfitters out of Australia. I follow them on Instagram cause they make cool stuff. And they put this post up on Instagram said, Hey, this bag's for sale. And they talked all about it and things like that. And I was like, wow, that is, that bag is like speaking to me. That's exactly what I want in a bag. So I reached out to him and we squared it all the way. And I bought it from one of their customers. Um, he had ordered a bunch of this wax canvas and a bunch of these buckles and had a couple of bags made for himself. And I think this was an, that was an extra one. So I was able to buy it from him. So I got this bag in and what a week and a half ago, I put up six of my backpacks for sale just because I, I have too many bags and this one is so good. It's just going to replace, it's just going to flat out. These other ones aren't going to get used. So I put a bunch up for sale. I've sold four of them. So I still got two more to go, but, and I might even sell a couple more. Cause I think I had about 10 or 12 bags at the time. So like I'm keeping my dome bag. That thing's great. You know, I'm keeping a bag called an a light shifter, which is a really good bag. I'm keeping this Bogeer. So I've really pared it down. Um, it's a great bag. It's just the right size. Fits me really well. It looks killer. Um, so yeah. And in the bag, I carried actually a lot of paper. I have the Baron fig work play edition, which I'm enjoying. I'm still kind of journaling, sketching in that the traveler's notebook.

Myke Hurley: Just quickly on the Baron fig. So, uh, I've, it's not arrived, but I've noticed an issue in the automated emailing service. Uh-oh. Well, it's like, I asked for mine to come to me. Uh, and then I got an email from them this morning. So I'm like, hope you're enjoying your Baron fig. I was like, you realize where you sent this thing to, right? Like it's.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They need to adjust the delay on the, on the foreign country, uh, email follow-ups.

Myke Hurley: But it was promoting their Mosaic app, which I then downloaded. So it worked. But my, you know, the thinking is you should maybe think about where you're sending it to like, cause it ain't going to be here for like another week. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So what'd you think about the Mosaic? Not to totally hijack.

Myke Hurley: I haven't used that. I'm waiting until the pad comes and I assume that they will work together in some way. Maybe.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. No. Um, so I've got that. I have the traveler's notebooks, which, you know, the Midori travelers regular size, which I am hell bent on using because I love it. And I've got like two notebooks. I'm putting down a bunch of ideas in, and I really liked the format. Um, but it's a juggling act right now on how much I'm using that. I also carried the knock half tower prototype that we talked about and I'm carrying a dot dash spiral pad just because we use that for everything. And like, you know, I'm on vacation with family. We'll play, play a bunch of games. So we'll probably have that pad out, you know, scoring games and things like that. Like, uh, our big family game is banana grams. Have you heard of that one, Myke?

Myke Hurley: I have heard of it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's like a kind of a, it's like a Scrabble offshoot where it's a little bit more wild and free. Um, it's not on a board. You kind of have your own little space in front of you. It's a good, it's a good family game. So we'll, we'll keep some scores on there. Um, and in my not go prototype, I brought three pins. I brought a vanishing point that I inked up with roaring cleaner blouse shorts. I have the Franklin Kristoff model 66 ice, which is the big one, the full size 66 ice with the, the brilliant Aroshizuku Kanpeki in there. And then I have my Newton Shinobi, um, of course, um, with Montblanc JFK. So I knew I was going on this trip and I had probably 10 fountain pens inked. I cleaned every single pen out that I had inked. And then I picked three to take on this trip. And, uh, those are the three I went with. So, um, it gives me some decent options.

Myke Hurley: So that's two tier ones.

Brad Dowdy: No, just one, just the Shinobi.

Myke Hurley: I thought that the, uh, the vanishing point was in your tier one.

Brad Dowdy: The only one of my vanishing points. It's a very specific vanishing point. I, this is the, this is the gunmetal one. Um, which is just like.

Myke Hurley: It was that ratcheted black one. I don't know what you call it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. A fast hit. There you go. We'll call it ratcheted though. If you want. I don't know whatever nonsense you, you guys come out with. I am. I am a nonsensical one. You, uh. So yeah, this is the gunmetal one. Um, so yeah, this has the extra fine, which I chose that just for things I might be doing. You know, like this is actually the pin I chose today for like show notes. You know, I need something quick and retractable. And if we play a game later, you know, I can just slam this thing out and go to town. And, uh, you know, I'm not going to break out the Shinobi or something else where my kids are going to be slinging ink across the table or something like that. And, uh, getting, uh, their grandparents mad at them.

Myke Hurley: So I'm sitting here saying the Shinobi.

Brad Dowdy: Uh-huh.

Myke Hurley: Because the more I see of it, like the more interesting it is. Like just sitting there like that with like the, the way that the, the ends flattened off. Like it's just so beautiful. So beautiful. God.

Brad Dowdy: Well, if I ever decide to unink mine for any period of time, I'll send it over and let you test it out. Couldn't take it. That's going to be hard. Nope. Well, it's barely. Can't take that one. Yeah. So maybe next year when you come, you'll, you'll, uh, I'll just make you carry it for a few days.

Myke Hurley: I'm happy to do that. I just don't want you sending it. I'm worried about, about you sending it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. No big deal. No big deal. So, you know, and I, of course I carry my laptop and I got my microphone and that's about it. I don't carry too, too much. Um, because I'm not going to be doing too much with this. Honestly, you know, if I would love to actually have some time to get in a review or two, but I didn't even bring any extra pins that I need to review. Like I need to renew, review the Shinobi and I need to review the model 66 ice, but I don't know that I'm going to even have time to, to get to those. So I didn't bring too much extraneous stuff. I'll bring some stuff where I can draw a sketch, write some ideas down, very few pins. And that's about it. Oh, my headphones were in there, which I'm wearing right now. So, um, so yeah, that, that, uh, was my, was my bag dump, uh, for this trip. It's, I'm pretty happy with it. It's pretty minimal. Um, all things considered, I mean, it's, you know, a minimalist would think it's way overkill, but for me, it's actually pretty minimal. Um, the only thing I hadn't talked about is the abundance of cords, uh, in the bag. And, oh, I do have two TI2 tech liners in there. Sorry. I forgot about that. I have one attached to the outside and I found one on the inside that I carry around too. So there you have it. I guess it is a lot of stuff.

Myke Hurley: Do you have a, uh, do you have like, um, like a fixed bag stuff? Right.

Brad Dowdy: Do you know what I'm talking about? In a CGP gray kind of way.

Myke Hurley: No, like when in your bag, in like the main bag that you have, do you have stuff that's always living in there?

Bag Contents

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So I have a pouch internal to the bag and that pouch always contains X things, right? The same things, you know, um, flashlight, a USB drive, uh, uh, microfiber cloth to clean my glasses. Um, you know, an extra lightning cable. Um, yeah. So there's a pouch in one of those inside pockets that carries things like that. Like just the stuff that I want to have, um, available in case I need it. So, yeah. Is that what you mean?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think so. Okay. Yeah. So, cause, do you want to know what I have in mind? Mm-hmm. Let me just grab my bag. Yeah. Oh. Let me hear a sweat. Right, okay. So, I've got my, uh, got my bag on the table here. As you can hear. Mm-hmm. So, this is just stuff that lives inside of my, uh, Doan briefcase. Mm-hmm. I have two field notes and one of the NotCo yellow guys.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Oh. Oh. There's an Android phone in here. I don't know why that's in there. I have a couple of Sharpies.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Just in case. I have one of my inks, but the ballpoint one. Mm-hmm. I have, uh, Retro 51.

Myke Hurley: And I also have my fountain pen ink as well.

Myke Hurley: Cool. They always just live in there. Okay. Although, I could probably take the, I'm going to take the ballpoint ink out. I'm going to put that back in the cube over there. Yeah. So, I basically just have a fountain pen, like a good quality fountain pen, and a good quality, like, ballpoint, the Retro 51, in my bag at all times. Gotcha. And I don't have to think about grabbing stuff when I'm just, like, out and about or whatever. Um, and the reason I carry the Fountain K, not Fountain K, the ink in here, is I want something that's durable, and I think I probably, like, withstand a nuclear explosion. Yeah. So, I like to keep that in there at all times.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, to circle back, I keep, from a pen perspective, I just keep a TI2 Techliner in there permanently. That's the only pen that lives in there. All my other pens are in cases, and they move from bag to bag as I need them. So, I don't have any other pens stuck in there besides one TI2 Techliner, which is actually attached to the outside of this bag because it fits perfectly. So, yeah.

Myke Hurley: So, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: That's the only writing implement because I used to keep, like, a pocket notebook in any bag that I used, and then I would just end up mentally losing track of where they were. So, I stopped doing that. And instead, you know, I just carry the notebook that I'm carrying with me, and it comes from bag to bag as I move around. So, yeah. So, that's it. I think it fits me well. I feel the more I talk about it, the more it sounds like a lot of stuff, but I feel like it actually fits me pretty well. And it's actually, air quote, minimal for me, if you will.

Myke Hurley: This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace. You know Squarespace. We love Squarespace. You can start building your website today at squarespace.com and use the offer code INK, I-N-K, at checkout. That will get you 10% off. Squarespace. Build it beautiful. When it comes to finding a self-for-your-place on the internet, I am a very big fan, as I know Brad is too, of Squarespace and Mr. Dowdy. I would like to change it up a bit today. Sure. And just ask you what it is that you love and why you choose to use Squarespace for both penaddict.com and for NotCo as well.

Brad Dowdy: So, from a penaddict perspective, I chose Squarespace because I am very busy when I'm not working on blog stuff, and I did not want to concern myself with constant updates and bug fixes and database upgrades and any backend. I didn't want to have to do any backend work when I'm writing my blog. It takes me enough time to create a post for my blog and take pictures and write it to where I don't want to have extra hours built into my schedule on the weekend for anything backend that needed to happen. Squarespace takes care of all that stuff. I just write poorly. I take pictures poorly, and then I post my poor output onto penaddict.com. But it makes it easy. It sounds crazy just to say. I chose it because it's simple. It's really hugely robust. You can do anything. I can make my site look any way I want. I can manage pictures any way I want. Links. I can write and mark down, which I'm very thankful for that. I pretty much write everything in that format now.

Brad Dowdy: It makes publishing a blog easy, and I don't have to worry about anything else other than my content and hitting publish, and that's why I use it. From a not perspective, it's because the commerce platform is that simple as well. We can upload our images, upload our SKUs, update our inventory. It's all kept up to date live. It builds out the pages for us, and it's all there. It all works with their payment processor, Stripe, which we love. It's all integrated seamlessly. We can add a new product in the span of minutes. As long as we have our photographs, our type up, we can build them out ahead of time, drag them to the live section when it's ready to launch, and it's just a go. So it really makes things simple, and there's so much depth to it that you can do pretty much anything you want.

Myke Hurley: And when Brad mentions this, like these great tools and these powerful things that you can do, these choices you can make, this isn't you needing to use a ton of content. These are all drag and drop WYSIWYG tools, right? You can see them on the page. You move them around. You click buttons here. You drag and drop things here. It really is incredibly powerful. But if you do know what you're doing, like if you're the type of person that really knows how to tinker with this kind of stuff, you can get in the code and play around as well. And even if you just want to make some small adjustments, you can do that. Like Squarespace is incredibly powerful. I think you're going to love it. And it's all backed up with their 24-7 support. They have teams located all around the world in New York, Dublin, and Portland. They're there 24-7. I help you. They have so much great stuff. I think you're going to love them. You should trust my opinion. You should trust Brad's opinion. We've both used Squarespace for years. There are just some things that we want to do, and we just don't want to have to waste time on them. We just get Squarespace to do them. Because to be frank, for me anyway, they're going to do them better than I ever could on my own.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I mean, talking about you.

Squarespace Discount

Myke Hurley: Yeah, exactly. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, you want to use the code INK. That's going to get you 10% off your first purchase and show your support for this show. You can start a free trial right now with no credit card required and start opening your website today by going to squarespace.com. Squarespace, build it beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: All right, so let's wrap up this wonderful episode, and it has been quite wonderful. I must say I always enjoy our Mondays together, Michael. Me too. Let's hit some Ask TPA. And this is a question we've covered before, but not recently. And I want to run it by you as well to see if anything's changed. And this is from our friend Reference Error, who is in the chat room today and is worried about what I'm going to say about him. But I'm not. I'm going to say something very positive because this was a good question. He asked, what, if any, GTD systems are you using or have tried in the past? So I like this question because I don't use any of them.

Myke Hurley: Yes. GTD is getting things done. It's a methodology created by David Allen. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: So pure GTDists is a hugely complicated deal. And you have to have an enormous buy-in to the system to make it work for you. And that's great. People swear by it. People love it. I love the thought of it. But I prefer any system that I've looked at. I've always looked at simpler systems. So I put down three that kind of suit what I do. And I don't use any of them. And I'm going to tell you what I do. So the first one that I found years ago is called GSD, which is getting S-H-I-T done. It's basically a play on GTD, which is actually a legitimate. It sounds, you know, in the name ridiculous. But if you look at it, it's a hugely simplified system. I mean, I must have found this five, six, seven years ago. And I've tried to implement it. And I think I kind of do parts of these things. It's a really simple, easy system to use if you're looking for something new. So GSD. We'll have a link to these in the show notes, by the way. The second one is the bullet journal. That's been the closest I've come to sticking with something. Here's my problem with the bullet journal, Myke. And you and all the listeners can tell me how stupid I am. If I want to try bullet journal and I don't start it on the first day of the month, I don't do it. Like if I think I want to give it a try and it's, let's say, July 12th. Nope, can't start bullet journal. Have to wait till the first. That's a weird mental block to have. Yeah, that's my mental block.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it doesn't matter if it's weird or whatever. That's the reason. So like for these things, they've got to stick. And if it doesn't stick, then.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So I end up not doing the bullet journal. The times I've tried it and set it up and used it, I was like, oh, okay, I can get behind this. So the third one is the Dash Plus system by our friend Patrick Rohn. This is probably closest to what I do.

Brad Dowdy: It's kind of a combination of the two things I've talked about before, but it's even simpler, I think. You know, it's just a set of marks that you use to kind of track your tasks. All I do personally is I do almost just a, I just kind of keep a daily running list and they have checkboxes next to them and they get checked off if they're done. And if the checkbox is blank, it comes to the next day. That's pretty much the only system that I use. Here's the problem I'm running into, which is why I've actually, this was a good question reference error, because I'm looking at these systems again, because I'm running into an issue right now. So here's my issue. I'm trying to plan out a lot more things with the pen addict. You know, I have my posts, I have scheduled posts, I have advertiser posts, I have guest posts, and I have writers posts, and I have all these things I want to do. So I want to have almost like a blog publishing schedule, which I can do. The problem is for my tasks, I have to schedule when I'm going to write the review, when I'm going to shoot the photography, you know, and when I'm going to upload it. So Aaron Manke calls it a due date, and it's not a D-U-E date. That would be the day I publish. It's the D-O date, the day I want to write the article and shoot the photographs, which is certainly not going to match the day I publish the article. It's going to be a week before, two days before, whatever. I'm having trouble planning my due dates. Like, I'm fine with, okay, on Monday I want to publish this, on Tuesday I want to publish this, Wednesday I want to publish this. That's great. But when am I actually going to perform those tasks? When am I going to do those tasks that are due on those days? And that's what I can't find a way to write this down and capture it. You know, there's some digital, you know, I kind of bounce around OmniFocus a little bit for this. I've actually found another good app called Good Task that I've been super pleased with. And it's pinning down the when I'm going to do stuff date for things that are due in the future. So I don't know that there's a pen and paper solution for that. Maybe that's a digital solution. And I'm in the midst of that right now because things are getting busier for me. Things are only going to ramp up for me. And I just want to plan a little bit better. Or, you know, hey, maybe I should have a reminder to work on the show notes for this podcast. You know, that kind of thing. You know, I know the podcast is today, but I can't plan for it today. I need to plan for it two days ago. So that's what I'm working on right now. So it's a good question in just that I've actually been thinking about this stuff a lot. I don't use any system and I don't know that I have an answer for what I'm trying to accomplish myself. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Myke. I know you're not a systems guy. You're not a systems guy. You're not a systems guy.

Myke Hurley: I feel like you're joking with me here.

Brad Dowdy: You're an omni-focus master. I know that.

Myke Hurley: So I have a question for you first. And you feel free to want to answer this honestly. Have you been listening to Cortex?

Brad Dowdy: Yes, but I think I'm at least one episode behind. Okay, well, that's fine.

Myke Hurley: I haven't listened. Because, I mean, that's why I obviously know that you messing around with me when you say it. Right. So my feeling about this, I'm sorry to say.

Myke Hurley: Oh, by the way, a moment ago, I meant to say this. I got a tweet from Thomas Hall saying that when I'm in Indianapolis later this year, I can try his Shinobi.

Brad Dowdy: Nice.

Myke Hurley: I love that guy.

Brad Dowdy: I forgot about that. That's perfect.

Digital Planning

Myke Hurley: I love pen and paper, right? Obviously. But I just don't think you can effectively run your life in this way with pen and paper. I'm sure that there are people that do. But listening to what you're saying, you and me are very similar like this. And you need the system to tell you what to do. Right. And pen and paper cannot do that as effectively as a computer brain. So I use OmniFocus. I don't use OmniFocus with a strong GTD mindset. That's what it's built for. It's built around the getting things done system. There are projects and contexts and all that kind of stuff. I use OmniFocus as a to-do list. So fundamentally, I don't even use projects. I just have my list of things to do. And I set tasks for into the future. So I might set one for later this week. I might set one for later this month. I might set one for later this year. And every day I use what they call forecast. I live in OmniFocus forecast mode, which shows me what's happening today, what's happening tomorrow. I can scroll down and show me every single day. And it shows them on a calendar. And it will also show me them in relation to my calendar events as well. That's what I use OmniFocus for. And also, it has a lot of tasks, a lot of functions in it that I really like. So I can very easily move things by a day or a week or whatever just by pressing a button. I can set repeating tasks. So a lot of my tasks, for example, my pen addict preparation task is triggered for every Monday at 5 p.m. This is the system you need.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It sounds like I need to explore this digitally more from a planning perspective. Like I can have, you know, my paper for like the day. And if I want to, you know, transfer, okay, today's work, I'm going to put on paper and I can manage it better. So I'm just looking at the computer, you know, once. But from the forecast, I like how you mentioned the forecasting part of it. That is just going to have to be done digitally. I don't think there's a paper solution for the forecasting that would work at all.

Myke Hurley: What you could do is like you could set up projects for each of these things that have like three or four tasks to them. But I don't do that. I just put three or four individual tasks in, like, which is what you're doing with the projects. But I don't link them together because I can work that out in my brain quite well. I'm fine with that. Yeah, I think I'd be fine with that. That makes sense. I think you should look at something like this again, because I think you're at the time now where you need it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's only going to increase. So that's why I'm trying to get out in front of it a little bit. And I'm not overwhelmed, but I'm like, you know, when I find myself forgetting to plan for the podcast that, you know, I've had a week to plan for. That's kind of like a red flag. I was like, crap, man, something I need to do something, you know, better just because I'm so busy. I need to just I need like a little, you know, little reminder that says, hey, don't forget this. Oh, yeah, I should go do that. Now it's time.

Myke Hurley: You had a systems failure.

Brad Dowdy: I had a systems failure. Yeah, I like that. So I think I did. And you know what? To circle back all the way to the beginning, I couldn't sleep last night. I made the mistake of, you know, so I already panicked myself for doing this right for forgetting. And then I asked the Slack channel.

Brad Dowdy: And I left the channel after I asked it. But then I went back and started reading all the what everyone wanted while I was in bed. And then my brain didn't shut down for at least another hour, hour and a half because I was going through these topics in my head because I've already missed my chance to plan. And now I'm trying to catch up and then I implant all these new ideas into my head while I'm laying in bed. And that was just a huge mistake.

Myke Hurley: So yeah, just yeah, this is your wake up call. You need a system like this. Like I when I was using it before, like going full time on relay, it was like, oh, this is really useful for me. But then it got to a certain point where it was like, no, this is a must.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah. I'm about to cross that threshold.

Myke Hurley: It's getting to where things are falling through the crack. You are past the point now where your brain can contain everything that you need to remember to do. And I genuinely feel that whilst people can use pen and paper for this type of thing, I feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot by doing it. Because what if you forget your notebook like that day or whatever? Or it gets damaged. You've lost your tasks. And for me, I have a system which lives in three different places. Right. It's on my iPad, my iPhone and my Mac. I'm never going to be working without one of them. Gotcha. And it's synced to the cloud. It's always there if I need it. Like that's the system that you need if you're going to be, I think, really serious. You need something like this. You don't have to use OmniFocus. It's the one that I use and really strongly recommend. There are other things out there. I know that people love and use Todoist and I have used that. And it's a great service, but it just didn't completely fit for me. But what's good about Todoist that you might like is you can assign people tasks into Todoist.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Myke Hurley: So you could have like Jeff in there, for example, or Eva Jeff, and you could assign them tasks to do that they would complete. And when they complete them, you see them.

Brad Dowdy: Cool. Okay. I actually have digital homework instead of analog homework. Yeah, look at me. Look at what I'm saying. Yeah. What kind of show is this?

Myke Hurley: Sort your life out, Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: What kind of show is this you're running here? I know. So let's get back to the pens and paper. All right. A couple more questions. Real quick and straightforward, but really good questions. So Gorn on Twitter wants to know, Noodler's Bulletproof Permanent Inks. I've heard opinions from Do Not Use to Best Ink Ever. Are they worth the trouble?

Brad Dowdy: This is a delimited question.

Brad Dowdy: Black and white answer. Are they worth the trouble?

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to go, No. And I'm going to get a lot of dirty email for that. The thing is, if bulletproof permanence is that important to you, you should absolutely use it. If you don't need to use that, there's no reason for you to use these types of inks. So if your requirements dictate that you're writing something that has to have some type of permanence, by all means, the Noodler's Bulletproof Inks are very good. And then there's other permanent inks you should get. But if you don't, I do think there's... It's the wrong word, but I'm going to say tamer choices. And that kind of goes against the permanence and the bulletproofness. But like Pilot Black, for example, is wonderfully flowing, great writing, waterproof, cheap, and is not going to ruin your pens. You know, so that's kind of how I see this one. But if your requirement dictates that it has to be bulletproof, by all means, you should use the Noodler's Bulletproof Ink. And I really haven't heard many people having problems with the Noodler's Bulletproof Inks. So there you go. If you had to choose a permanent ink, I will tell you, and the chat room will agree with me.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe Punky will because he just unsubscribed. And Sailor Nano Black is like the best black permanent ink out there. I love that ink. But you got to stay on top of cleaning that because it will clog up your pen. All right. This is the all ink edition of Ask TPA. So Chris wants to know, can you explain why people like Hiroshizuku ink so much when very similar colors from others are way cheaper? That's an extremely valid, good quality question right there, Myke.

Myke Hurley: For me, I mean, I'll answer first because I pretty much exclusively use Hiroshizuku inks. And for me, this is going deep catalog back into the pen addict history. Mm-hmm. Um, whilst trying to find a good dry time ink because I'm left-handed, uh, with the color variants that I wanted, like a bunch of different colors, um, and the pedigree behind it, Hiroshizuku came out the winner.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. so the ink properties of a roshizuku a roshizuku if you're not people aren't familiar with it is pilot's premium fountain pen ink line so pilot has their standard fountain pen ink light ink line which for the most part um is just blue black and blue black um that's their main line inks then they have the premium line inks which is a roshizuku and they have about 30 varying colors huge range of colors they're all beautiful what i find with roshizuku ink is you never have a performance problem with the ink like if you get a new pen and you want like a baseline ink to test it with like i throw in like i either throw in pilot blue black which is one of their base inks or pilot shinkai roshizuku shinkai which is the blue black version and like just comparing those two inks the roshizuku has more depth of color it has more sheen it has more shading um so it's got a lot of you could say they're superficial properties but it's a prettier ink on the page in general than pilot's baseline inks now if you're comparing it to something like diamine which is not quite half the cost but you know maybe ten dollars or more a bottle cheaper you can probably find some things that are close but really when you start putting roshizuku inks up side by side with other ones you can tell the difference at least i can um like if you're gonna look at a hot pink and i can't think of what roshizuku's hot pink is called you can just tell how good of an ink that is and it's not oversaturated you know and it's not going to stain your pen it's not going to do damage or anything crazy like that so i the real question is is it worth the premium price that's a personal decision you can find comparable inks that are cheaper but you do i i mean i feel like this is an roshizuku infomercial but i just really love those inks across the board you know it's going to be wonderful and you know you're not going to have any problems with it and that's the uh worth the price the peace of mind um is worth the added price as well as the beauty of the ink on the page so that's my my take on roshizuku but you can find some some pretty good alternatives and we talk about those all the time all right last one dave wants to know i've been using mont blanc toffee brown but do you have any other daily use brown ink recommendations so we talked about my toffee brown purchase experiment right mike i maybe a month ago maybe two months ago it was just kind of in passing you may not even remember so i said i wanted to try some more brownings i was getting all these letters written to me that were using brown ink and it's just an ink i've overlooked and didn't think i would enjoy toffee brown seemed to be like the king of the the brown ink hill so i bought a bottle which you know maybe i should try a sample next time because i don't love it it's really good i don't hate it it's just not finding its way into my rotation and you know if i have five or ten pink ten pins inked up one of them's probably not gonna contain toffee brown so i wasn't giving up on the brown ink though and i'm gonna go find the name and guess what it's an oroshizuku and i think it's chiku ren ring um it's the horse it's horse tail um it's a darker brown it's a more chocolatey brown if you will a more coffee brown and it's really good like i find myself using that brown ink much more than the toffee brown did you say the name of it was uh i think it's chiku ren but did you say it's horse tail yeah i think it's sukushi maybe i'm looking at the wrong one i'm looking at gulay yeah all right i'm gonna find it for you and it says pilot iroshi sukushi i'm sorry it's it's yamaguri it's wild chestnut not the horse tail well all over the yeah all over the place three different inks we're talking about i know horse tail is more reddish the wild chestnut is a dark brown so yes that's the one that i am digging as far as brown ink goes but our chat room is blown up with the brown ink recommendations so i'll have to try some more one day but um you know jay her bon lee de tae that one has come up a lot when i was talking about brown inks and i have not tried that one yet but i like the darker brown and the yamaguri is working for me right now so uh montblanc toffee brown i'll probably use it um if anyone take wants to take it off my hands you know i have a pretty full bottle we could we could probably talk you know maybe work out a trade you know i could always use some more jfk blue that stuff's awesome all right mike for not planning an episode it was a pretty sweet episode if i must say i think we did a good job we did a good job good job by us indeed if you want to find our show notes

Myke Hurley: online you can go to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 165 there's 30 links today that is a lot of links you can find them all there find a bunch of stuff that we've been talking about thanks again to our sponsors this week fracture and squarespace for helping us out if you want to find us online you can find brad's work over at penaddict.com and he is at dowdyism d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m on twitter and penaddict on instagram i am at imike i-m-y-k-e on penaddict and instagram and we'll be back next time thank you so much for listening bye bye bye