In this episode Brad and Myke discuss all of the hot topics of the week including a possible new pen case design, the closing of Staples stores and a new podcast that aims to be our evil twin. We also discuss Brad's review of the JAWNS notebook and talk about the creation of his Edison Menlo.
Links and Show Notes
In this episode Brad and Myke discuss all of the hot topics of the week including a possible new pen case design, the closing of Staples stores and a new podcast that aims to be our evil twin. We also discuss Brad's review of the JAWNS notebook and talk about the creation of his Edison Menlo.
Links for this episode:
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Hello and welcome to episode 97 of the Panatic podcast on five by five. The Panatic is a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper and the analog tools that we love ever so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by a man whose wife once misunderstood a holiday of a lifetime because he was talking about zebras and safaris, Mr Brad daddy. It's a little stretch right there but oh yeah. Oh no they're getting like the you know when I say it's like bottom of the barrel time like I've really you know we are we are so there it's you know you've hit it you've hit the bottom but hey that's that's pretty good you know like on you know episode 30 or so that would that would have brought the house down. It's a good point actually. But that's cool. I peaked too soon. I know I know I know but still well done sir. So how are all things pen and paper and analogie this week? So um sad because I haven't received my knock cases. Man, man. So have you tracked them? That's probably a fruitless endeavor for you to even bother with. But how many tracks going out of the US? Yeah so yeah that's right so yeah I think pretty much it's weird I've been following some of the tracking and whether it's going to Canada or going over to Europe seems like it goes through Miami. So our our pen cases as one of my Canadian friends has said our pen cases get nice and tan before before hitting the rest of the world. Oh they only left Miami on the 8th. Oh no one I haven't got them yet. Yeah wow that took a long time to get to Miami. I think they show up there then they they hang out there for a while and and work on their tans. So yeah I think that's the theory. It left Macon on the 4th. Whoa the electric ship information received in the 2nd. Left Macon on the 4th got to Miami on the 7th. Left Miami on the 8th. Hmm interesting. On the wait. No it didn't it left on the 9th so no one there I haven't got it yet. Yeah so maybe by next week. Maybe by next week I hope so. But some good news and I'm not going to spoil this this will also be a point for next week too. I made a purchase. Is that that's all we're getting? So are you getting? Or maybe maybe to give a hint. I won an item. Really? Interesting. Interesting so yeah I don't I don't know anything about this. So uh I guess we'll uh we'll we'll wait till next week to figure that out. So well cool well last last week um we had our friend Andy Welfully from Woodclench to on to talk about pencils and I don't know what your inbox or Twitter feed look like but we got so much positive feedback off of that episode. Um that it was really cool to see that you know we did something a little bit different for the podcast and Andy was uh was such a pro. He did a good job. Great guest. Excellent. Excellent guest. Yeah he wanted to make sure I got one correction out there though and because I did get a few specific emails pertaining to um a misspeak that he had when we were talking about um the lead grade the lead hardness and the and the lead grades and how the uh the actual lead in the pencil is manufactured. He said that the graphite was mixed with wax and I got a couple of emails going oh what is he talking about? It's not mixed with wax. How dare he? Yeah it's mixed with clay and that guys he was a good guest but he's never coming back on the show again. No and you have been struck. So he got uh as I get stuck all the time with uh you know my old uh pilot 51 that I used to keep getting reamed over that I could never get out of my head. Andy got mixed up in that he wanted to say that the the graphite is actually mixed with clay and when the clay content in the and the graphite makes the lead and the clay content is higher it gives a waxier feel. So that's uh Andy. Andy certainly certainly knows that so stand down uh pitchfork and torch bearing internetters. Well personally Brad the lead that I have in the pencils here that I have is mixed with wax and it gives a clay like feel. So you know and I wonder what people think of that. Yeah and you know what people really like those yikes pencils that you and him were talking about and I've still never heard of those things but um I think they may have just been UK based like yeah but uh people that really struck a chord with people too. Yeah but if you if you were a child of like the 90s um these things mean mean something to you if you're if you're UK based yeah they had like a massive like you know loads and loads of different styles really cool. Yeah so I think Andy uh thought the podcast went so well last week he uh he put his big boy pants on and uh he's gonna launch a podcast of his own to rip it off Brad huh he's ripping us off. I know I know we're gonna have to throw down it's gonna be like anchor man you know we're gonna break out the uh we're gonna break killed somebody with a tri-end. Well you know if it comes to fighting with stationary we're gonna definitely win because pens are you know the mightier than pencils you know. Yeah there's no doubt but they have between Andy and um Johnny from the pencil revolution and Tim from uh what was formerly um the daily carrier and is now the riding arsenal which we'll talk about that later too um they are the three of them are joining together and making the erasable podcast which is a great name and they're gonna make a podcast about pencils so I'm excited to see what those guys come up with because they're all um really smart and knowledgeable and have combined for years and years and years of experience. Oh I'm already actually genuinely excited about this. I am too. I am too so we'll throw all our support behind them and um I think they let the cat out of the bag a little bit early and um because they don't have anything live yet and um they have super cool podcast artwork. Yeah it is it looks great. Like I don't know if you did that. I want to know who did that so if one of you guys can tell me who did that I want to know because I don't know if it's I don't know if it's the same guy that did Andy's uh Andy did that that pencil uh vector set I forget the name of it we'll have to link I don't know if we linked it but previously a couple weeks ago or not but we'll link it. There's a guy that Andy um worked with to create this pencil pencil vector set that you see on their Twitter page. Oh I guess it's those isn't it? Yeah so I wonder if it's the same guy put together the icon um or the the show artwork because it's spectacular um they did a really good job. So hopefully their show is as good as their artwork and I'm I'm sure it will be and we throw our full support behind these guys at the erasable podcast. So go follow them on Twitter we'll have the link in the show notes but they're at erasable podcast on Twitter um they don't have a show live yet but um but now that the cat's really out of the bag the pressure's on guys so yeah you better deliver. They have a website which is erasable.us or erasable.us which is again quite funny. Mm hmm. It is very good. Good domain. Good artwork. It's basically 95% of the podcast done. I know. I know. Now just uh now just deliver. Make it make it listenable. I think that there should be a like a rivalry. Mm hmm. You know. Okay. Between the pen show and the pencil show. Okay. I think you know we'll see how that goes. I mean in the episode 100. But you know guys you can feel free to try and uh show us what's what I guess. That's right. That's right. It's gonna be like uh do you ever see that movie bring it on? The cheerleading movie. Yeah. Double check in there. We're talking about the same movie. No I haven't I haven't seen a cheerleading movie and do not for a second try to to blame this on your children. No I know. This was out before I had kids. I love that movie. At least the first one. It was all downhill after the first one. So you've seen more than one of one cheerleading cheerleading. How can well no well there was bringing on to then like all these other shootoffs. I never saw any of the other ones. You can't really go wrong with Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Deeskew. Don't try and make it about the latest now buddy. All right. I want to you. I understand that you love cheerleading movies. Brad cheerleading. Daddy. Yeah. There's a new podcast. The cheerleading movie. Fast. Hey do you see what um do you see what the office vlog geek did to me yesterday? I don't think so. No. Click on that link in the show notes. You haven't seen this really? No. All right. Hit it. Okay. Sloating. Is that not the most awesome thing ever? Yes. So in the show notes you will go find this link because it's too long for us to uh for you to um for us to say it on the on the air. But needless to say when you get to this point the podcast goes straight to the show notes at five by five dot tv slash panatic slash 97 and hit this link and you are in for quite a treat. Um basically I won't give it all the way away but um Brian has made a modification to one of our um our knock co-high tower pin and notebook case and um it's pretty impressive. I hope this comes to standard or like at least an option in further in further knock cases. I'm pretty sure that it would not take a lot to convince Jeffrey to make that happen. Oh my god no. Yeah. I'm surprised. This looks like something that Jeff would come up with on his own. There's no doubt. Yeah and now yeah Jeffrey I would very much uh I would very much pay extra um to have to have this built in and I really I don't want to spoil it. You have to kind of go and see it. Yeah. Yeah. You can't really talk about it. It's it's not too much to talk about. It's more of a it's more of a visual. Yep. So um I was stumbling through as I do um Twisbee's Facebook page because I'm pretty sure they just troll us. It's like it's just a big troll page with all their new stuff that they put on but they had a pretty funny post I ran across last night um it's about a pin case and all that all it says it's it says do you like this type of pin case and it's basically a small skinny leather pouch with just a zipper top. So there's it's just a pouch and it's really about maybe two or three pins tall. It's a very skinny long skinny pouch. It says do you like this type of pin case? I have to can put four pins into it. I found it very easy for me to use. I'm thinking to make Twisbee case like this like or no like. So I don't know how many comments were on this thing but the prevailing thought when talking about fountain pens since Twisbee's a fountain pen brand and this case is three out of four people said sure the case looks fine but I don't want my pins to touch. For a lot of reasons and I mean it's just like just everything everything down not if the pins would be touching. Yes the pins will touch um I don't mind pins that touch and it's just on and on and finally what made me put this in there about halfway down he goes okay I see a lot of no likes and then about 30 more comments later um Twisbee goes okay thanks you all got the idea it was just on and on and on and just incessantly I we don't want our pins to touch and um that just brought me back to when we were designing knock and I think that's probably the first thing that I told Jeff right is we're making these cases and none of the pins can touch. Why? Why Brad? So I just don't want mine to knock together no pen intended. Yeah well that's what they that's what they will do. I mean in any open style pouch case yeah so I mean that's what they're talking about you know everyone looks like you want with fountain pens it seems to matter more uh it does matter more um because you've most people have paid more for that pen and they want to keep it you know a little bit nicer and not get all scratched up and dinged up that's why like we sell a little zip pouch case but that's really made for you know like your high tech sees or your sharpies or your secure pig or microns you know you just put a bunch in there and those pens I don't care about touching right you know the disposable replaceable type of pens you know uniball sono de-exes all of those type of things but my fountain pens I want some separation and segregation in them you know I don't want them to touch and you know that's just from a scratching perspective you know a lot of these fountain pens have um very high attention attention to details on you know things like the clip and you know different chrome bits and you just don't want these things getting scratched up so when people are buying more expensive pens um which fountain pens fall into that category people just don't want to carry them around and then open case where they're just banging around on each other all day so the more I read the comments on that post the more I just started laughing because this is the like the exact thought process I had when we were Jeff and I sat down for the very first time there was a it was a pretty short list of things that we had to have and then that couldn't happen and you know one of the things that couldn't happen was all right these pens can't touch so that's why there's you know dedicated pockets and you know some cases have flaps so when you fold the pen case over on top of each other the clips aren't hitting and things like that so it was uh it was really funny to see that um on twist piece page and just the the reaction was so strong that it actually made him say okay I've got it y'all can stop now we're not gonna do it it's like the twist be page the twist be Facebook page continues to be a source of intrigue for me because it's like now it's written like probably sometimes but i'm noticing like it's been written in the first person like twist be is this one guy or girl yeah i i think it actually is still i don't i don't know the the lineage of the twist be Facebook page but there is one guy who's kind of the face of the public facing to his be if you will his name is speedy speedy and yeah speed like the son of the the founder and then like the he's like the he's based in the u.s he's kind of like the u.s distribution point and so i think he does all the marketing and stuff too so it's kind of like it's coming from him but it's like he's saying like he's gonna make it right and you know what he might i mean seriously that's that's kind of the way they roll i mean it's a very family based organization from what i gather and different things i've read i've read so good luck you know they've got a what's that said i switched feedy good luck yeah no he's awesome he's the one that keeps pushing these teas pictures on here like did we even talk about this wood one a couple weeks ago when we're i don't think that one was up on the on the page when we were talking about it a couple weeks ago when we're talking about the aluminum piston filler 580 and things like that and they're working on a way to make the twizbee classic post and things so anyway it's they should just call it the twizbee prototype page because that's pretty much what it is yeah i'm wrong with that but that is what it is it is what it is so that was pretty funny um in sadder pin news which eh it's it's more kind of a meh than sad but um and i didn't catch this till someone uh sent me the link a couple weeks ago or week and a half ago that uh staples is about to close 225 us stores and you know reading the article it's not really a surprise that this is this consolidation is happening in this office supply store space you know they're all feeling the wrath of amazon pretty much online and staples wanting to focus more online and this doesn't really relate to pins because it it's just you know pins doesn't drive any business to those stores and you know they're not made to you know i'm sure they're getting you know more killed on the the the pc business you know falling off a cliff and things like that and they're trying to move more to just online shopping but i thought it was interesting just because you know that's kind of the gateway drug though for you know the pin pencil paper office supply junkies right but you know before we had this internet that we all love so much you know this is some of the places we would go you know staples office max office depot all those places to just kind of find some new pins and find something different and better and that's certainly where i found some of my you know first pins that i really enjoyed the most and you know i'm sad for any business to to be hurting and have to close stores but you see it in places like Best Buy 2 where they just have these massive square footage stores that they just don't need you know they can't fill the stores up anymore because the products aren't selling and they can get those things you know people people are shopping online more now and i think that's what staples are moving to so i mean it kind of stinks that you know people won't have these options but i don't know i guess you can kind of see the writing on the wall for a long time as far as these big big box retailers go yep same with all of them yeah yeah do do staples office max or office depot have any uk presence we have staples but not in big numbers they're like huge outlet stores and we don't have many of them gotcha we have a a high street stationer have a carpool one called ryman one called wh smith but ryman is just office supplies and that seems to be doing relatively well okay interesting so yeah i mean oh this reminded me i'm interviewing this up last week in the mall which is attached to where i work so i work in the new financial district in london and there's multiple skyscrapers but there's a mall underneath all the skyscrapers there's that building a moleskin shop really like a dedicated moleskin shops moleskin branded it's just moleskin products interesting i mean over the since of the in the time that i've done the blog um so i guess starting in about 2007 i have moleskin has really morphed from a notebook company for the most part to a lifestyle accessories brand where they're just branching out into so many different categories um you know along with notebooks they want to you know they're made you know um carrying cases and just other things lots of other business related items you know to where you could stock your whole desk with you know moleskin items um it it's i think they had some changeover and someone our listeners will know better than i do um just going off of memory i think they had some like hierarchy changeover back in the past several years some new leadership at the top and they've really just kind of pushed this whole lifestyle thing and it's almost like they've gotten away from their core a little bit so it'll be interesting to see how you know what's what i was carried in that shop i bet it's pretty cool they always have moleskin one of the thing i've always been impressed with if if nothing else is their design aesthetic i think they they do a good job designing products um they just tend to be overpriced and not as high quality as other things you can get um but they've got that brand name they're pushing right so they they can sell a lot on name alone so i guess that's why we're seeing something like that so i'll be anxious to see um when it opens it will be um a good place to get pen refills hopefully that's one of the best products they make well like the rap like because it's the stores being like you know it's being getting ready to be opened and they have like a wrap around the the windows you know and um it's got notebooks and stuff but it's also got like bags and stuff on it but like outlines just like silhouettes of them you know so uh that kind of gives it i think an idea is the type of thing that they're looking to create yeah and you know it'll be cool because maybe they'll have like all the special editions and in one place you know like how they do the star wars and the hobbit and yeah and all those different little Lego ones that'll be cool so maybe they'll have some neat things like that that they'll carry that you'll be able to see and i never use this product but that's one of the most interesting products they've made in the past several years is the Evernote notebook and that integration how they've tried to push that a little bit um i don't know that that's doing well for them or i don't i don't know what it is or isn't but um it it was cool to see them do something like that so hopefully there's going to be more of that uh to come with more skin i don't follow them too closely and as a brand honestly um just because i don't use hardly any more skin products except some of their pens so i think um where i work it's it's perfect oh totally it's like yeah it's it's perfect they've they have picked the exact place oh i imagine they will they will do pretty well yeah just for that location and for you know it's become pretty much a household name obviously not as not as ingrained into people's life but it's getting there people understand you know if they don't know anything about paper they probably at least know what a moleskin looks like yeah you know they'll say any little black notebook oh is that a is that a moleskin oh i've heard of that you know they've kind of they've kind of getting getting to that point of recognition so i think like it's got that sort of Kleenex nature to it you know where they people call books that have those sort of faux leather hardbound you know look to them oh they're moleskins yep it's definitely crossed over into a generic catch-all term yep yep well cool i got a few other things i want to talk about um and like a little game i want to play with you real quick so um why don't you talk about our good friends at Squarespace play a game yeah i didn't know we were playing a game i know it's a game show good i look game shows so let's take a quick moment to thank square spaces as Brad mentioned they are the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own website for a free trial and ten percent off go to squarespace.com and use the offer code tallyho3. Squarespace are making sure that they always do amazing work to make sure that their platform is up to date this means that they're always implementing new features they're always revising and adding new designs and they're making sure that their support is strengthened and even greater all the time when talking about their designs and their templates they have absolutely fantastic ones that you can get started with they also have tons of style options that you can adjust so you can really tweak and create and craft and create and craft or create after so i was going to go get everything your own space on the internet everything is drag and drop on Squarespace's platform so it's super easy to add content from your desktop and you can easily rearrange elements of content within the page or with drag and drop and you can see exactly how this is going to look before publishing it live you basically you create your web page in your web page it's kind of cool Squarespace makes sure that your site looks fantastic on any device because they all feature their every template every Squarespace website features its own unique mobile design you can easily connect all of your favorite web and social services so you can push content in and pull content out of them and just play them to your world out there you know if you want to tweet a link to every post that you put on your blog very very easy to do that built in Squarespace also has their e-commerce platform Squarespace Commerce so you can set up and shop and sell things in just minutes and that is how we've spoken before how Brad is going to be setting up his shop and his store for knock as well as having their website there they will be using Squarespace for that it's super easy to use Squarespace as a whole but if you need any help they have over 70 dedicated employees that are on their customer care team based in New York City they're available for live chat during the week and have super fast email support throughout the day and night now guys and girls this is your last chance if you would love to get a job over at Squarespace well you can do that they're looking to hire over 30 engineers and designers by March 15th so you really didn't have long now so if you want to be in for a chance to go for a job at Squarespace you can go to be a part of it.squarespace.com you'll find out more and if you are considered for an interview if you fill out an application for them if you put them on your short list of somewhere you want to work they'll take you out to New York for the weekend and they'll pay for everything they'll put you up in a lovely accommodation and they'll let you explore the sites so you should definitely go and do that if you're interested in joining the fantastic Squarespace team if I was a designer or a developer then I would have rushed at it already. As I said earlier you can try out Squarespace for free no credit card required to do this and if you decide to purchase it starts to just $8 a month then includes a domain name for free if you sign up for a year make sure that you get 10% off and support this show by using the offer code tallyho3 as T-A-L-L-Y-H-O in the number three so thank you so much to Squarespace for their support to 5x5 and the pan addict. One quick word on their support that it's never failed to be exceptional they always they're always quick to respond quick to look at errors and any issues that you have or even just general basic general questions but if I run into something like more on the that's more of a bug related issue as opposed to just a general question they are quick to escalate which I really appreciate you know you get that first level support that they go in and look at the problems and they're like oh yeah I see what you're talking about looks like an issue you know what I'm gonna go ahead and escalate this to the next group that needs to look at this and they're going to get back in touch with you they're going to dig into it a little more so I always appreciate knowing that that escalation is going on and they let you know that as opposed to just letting you know your your support ticket float out there never never land until someone decides to touch it and get working on it so I always appreciate that about them and that's been consistent since day one their supporters is always excellent. Good. Now our pin blog of the week is actually a Squarespace blog for a change I don't know the way we have even done one yet not that it matters but it was interesting because our blog of the week is called the writing arsenal and if no one has ever heard of that blog it's kind of like last week's pin blog of the week the pessimistic pedant is a newly renamed rebranded blog well the writing arsenal is a newly renamed reblended blog I don't know if this is a trick just to get uh this is the pin blog of the week on the pinatic podcast but um this was um this was the previously mentioned uh Tim Tim wasm I believe it's how you say his last name I'm not sure taking a shot at that but it was called the daily carry now a lot of you are probably familiar with that and have read it before so he's rebranded and he's getting ready to join the uh the erasable podcast but um Tim does it's a newer blog and right from the jump I could tell that he was going to do an awesome job and he really has um he's in depth reviews great photography great product selection um he he loves him some pencils too so he's gonna be perfect for the erasable but he's gotten into uh you know lots of pens lots of fountain pens really just kind of all over um the topic and does a super super good job um at reviewing and has a great blog to read and I enjoyed very much so y'all go check out Tim's blog if you previously followed the daily carry it is now the writing arsenal and he's got a whole blog post explaining why switch the name and URL and all that fun stuff so you might need to update your uh your feed readers to the to the latest and greatest but um thanks for being awesome Tim and keep up the good work all right you want to play a game real quick goals so I've held this email a couple couple weeks just because I thought it was it was pretty neat um and it's real it relates to a lot of things we talk about all the time but this is uh this is a guy going going on a trip so let's uh talk about this this is an email from grom he says I'm about to journey on a world trip one that will cost less than fifty dollars a day so you can imagine that I'll have very minimal luggage since I'm a pen nerd I want to bring everything with me but of course that'll be a stupid idea so here's my question if you decided to travel the world what would you carry with you to satisfy the pen addiction this goes for pens as well as a sort of stationary he says for me it's my Midori travelers journal and fist full of banded apple notebooks as well as a space pen um it's my collection of fountain pens but that would be silly to bring with me especially when they have a habit of habit of popping on planes plus carrying nice pens will just tempt fate and I'll either lose or break them on day one cheers so you're going around the world let's say you're going for six months Mike all right and this is a this is a one backpack trip and you know you're going you're going you know just kind of more bouncing you know maybe couch surfing you know hostile to hostile or you know just jumping on the train and finding that next destination but you know you have to carry some pen and paper with you right because that's just what you do on these kind of trips you know you're logging you know you're spending some time journaling um you need something to write with um you know maybe you're sketching you know some of the fancy places that you're visiting or you know you're you're taking down some some phone numbers or some um email addresses for those you know Swedish girls you met in Ibiza you know so sure what yes I do so yeah as you do as one does um so what are you bringing that fits into this mold here well the obvious things are a handful of field notes notebooks for me I think for sure especially in a trip like that um I would definitely take a fisher space pen because I say you should have something pocketable and something that can be used in all occasions and in all scenarios you want to have something like that and then I wouldn't take any fountain pens um I feel like fountain pens would be a bad idea um because you'd also need ink to fill them you kind of want to carry ink around so I mean you know so I can have my the good time feel with pens that I enjoy uh I would probably would take a retro 51 right because I feel like that's gonna last me some time and refill in there you know for when I want to do some some long writing if I want to do any or some like writing for fun as opposed to writing for like utility or whatever then that's probably what I would take so stack full of field notes a retro 51 and a fisher space pen I think that's a good mix for me yeah I I've been hesitant to like do the pocketable thing like field notes but I think that would be useful um because you know if you're out and about um you know sightseeing during the day you don't want to carry around the larger items you know like I think a rodeo webby you know something with a more hardbound um style with a harder back to you know where you can write on your knees or you know have a little bit of structure writing but it's still not overly big that would kind of be the the thing that I would lean to but I could see the the portability aspect um is not so great for just like the during the day stuff so maybe a field notes will be good for that so maybe I'd carry both of those actually um which wouldn't be overly big but maybe pushing it a little bit with the larger notebook but I think I just want something more durable with a harder bound cover and I'm actually I'll probably take uh I'll probably take a few secure secure pigment microns um it's not the most necessary the most durable pin in the world I'd take maybe two or three of them and I don't know that's just a good all-around pin for me um I see the I mean the space space pins kind of a no-brainer um but just kind of give you that good combination of good quality pin with something I also enjoy writing with so I don't know if that that would be what I would take and um you know I wouldn't be you know worried about losing those pins definitely wouldn't take a fountain pen for an extended you know six-month backpacking type trip so um let us know what you what you would take you know if you could take you know one notebook or or maybe one or two notebooks and you know a single pen or a one or two pens you know nothing you know kind of limit yourself to what you can fit in a backpack easily and um what what makes the cut if you're uh if you're going on a jaunt for a few months and um I don't know I thought it was an interesting question we've covered we've talked about this type of thing up before but you know never in in this in this exact um this exact question but uh I thought it was a neat question plus maybe I'm just jealous you know I want to I want to get on a get on a plane in a train with a backpack and backpack in a journal and uh live that life um is is always a cool a cool dream that a lot of us have so uh thanks for the question grum I definitely appreciate it so maybe one of the maybe one of the notebooks that would make the cut Mike is one I reviewed yesterday on the blog I don't know if you've seen I don't know if you've read my blog Mike sorry what is your blog yeah it's called pen addict it's at picking fun at it the pen addict dot com I thought it was pen addict uh they're reading it wrong this pen addict dot com uh where I review moleskiness um I remember you talking about this book yeah so I stumbled across that uh the jauns j-a-w-n-s brand notebook on instagram and I thought it was cool reached out to one of the guys that makes them his name's Daniel and said hey this is a pretty neat product and he said yeah I'll send you one once we start production and uh for you to check out so he did um and this is a really neat this is a really neat notebook and I think it's actually perfect for travel so that's why I wanted to play that little little game because I don't know that this notebook is necessarily like it's not even like a field notes competitor type notebook I don't think it's really even in the same category because I see this notebook basically what it is it's uh think of it around a standard field note size it's not those exact dimensions but it's a little bit different it's like three by six by five so it's a little shorter in the length um but around the same width and it's got an extra durable cover it's got the upo paper um 80 pound cover which the upo is the kind of like the uh the plastic type paper um and it's just on the cover of the johns so that makes it tear proof makes it waterproof so this is a very durable cover that can take a beating and what johns is done with the cover is they've put in on the front inside cover there's two card slots on the back inside the back cover there's a full length pocket um for larger papers and inside the back cover like in between like the inner and outer binding of the cover is a wallet slot so this could be this is a great travel book or like I said like an urban warrior almost like you Mike where you know if you're riding the train a lot where you don't have to necessarily you know take your wallet every day or you know someone that's making a day trip or or traveling they can put a few of their most important items you know like uh identification and you know insurance or whatever notification cards they need in here they can put some bills in the back um slot and have you know 40 pages of paper to write their notes on it's kind of an all-in-one wallet slash notebook but it's really it's well made the footprint of it if you will is really small which I like even with you know a couple of cards and some bills in there now I will say it is designed for the US um dimension US dollar bill dimensions it doesn't have like the depth necessary to carry some of the foreign denominations um outside of maybe the inside back pocket but I like what they've done here with the Johns I like the attention and detail that they've put in it um I mentioned in the review that it's not a cheap notebook it's $12 for a single notebook but it's something that kind of fits a specific need for specific individuals you know it's not going to be my everyday daily back pocket journal like a field notes or a don't paper book would be but it's going to be a very useful product for when I need something this specific if that makes sense so I like I like what they've done here this is their first first crack at it their first product there's going to be more to come you know I'd like to see some with darker covers and I think those are going to be coming down the line as opposed to the all-white and pretty much everything is going to be made they're made in st. Louis, Missouri and everything is going to be made in kind of small batches so like this white one is going to have a 250 unit run and that's it and they're just going to keep making more so they'll have different ones to come out so take a look and see if this is a fit for you I thought it was an interesting enough product to um to kind of give its own standalone review for you know as opposed to a standard memo book so it's pretty cool do you think you would use something like this Mike do you see a a fit ever for this um I don't I can it looks nice I don't think it's for me yeah there's something just about like the pockets and like the castles and stuff I don't think I'd use them and I kind of I'm not a massive fan of the way that that paper's printed oh the triangle grid yeah yeah see I like that but I'm I've always been into the weird and interesting grid patterns it's funny you know once I started writing on it um I don't even notice things like that I just I I like the subtle backgrounds like that but I can see and you know I don't know if in the future they'll have um you know the the triangle grids kind of their thing um but I don't know if they'll have other options down the line um I didn't ask specifically about that but um yeah I could see where some people wouldn't like that for sure for sure but um it's it's pretty cool and I like it and you know like I said I'm not going to use this every day but uh the more I played around with it and you know tried different things with it the more I really liked it and can see the utility of it so it was very cool so thank you Daniel and John's for uh for sending this out to me this neat little notebook do you know the where the name comes from yeah it is the oh I'm gonna mess it up if I don't look at it it's the journal of all things written needed and sketched so it should be so it's an acronym joe wild yeah jafar the little wings ones uh yeah journal for all things written needed and sketched johns jafar the one that's yeah okay speaking of jeff wand and the nest the uh the the rotor fodden tashin we can let her people reached out to me this week on my email was pretty funny they're like hey we heard you we heard you reviewed our product or something but I can't find it on your blog i was like oh yeah because we talked about it on the podcast the link yeah so they said so I said yeah here's the link and they reply back it's like okay cool i'll go listen to it i like how how you put that on them that they were like super excited hey you hey hey you did yeah they did that's how they wrote it but um you know lots of exclamation points and an interesting um interesting um formatting they're gonna think that you're me i know i know that's uh yeah that's a bad thing i don't want that to happen no hello rota fodden people use it every day yeah um one more quick thing and then we'll call it a show but i mentioned last week that i got a new pin and when we did our wish list items for 2014 back in january you know i had two pins top that list that i really wanted to get this year one was a nakaya of some type you know i don't know the specific model um and that's still at the top of the list and the second item on my list was a edison minlow which uh brian grey and edison came out with a pin last year with a pump filling system similar to like your vacuum addict mike where it's got um you know the screw off they call it the blind cap on the end of the pin and that you screw that off and it reveals like a pump system right to fill your pin you dip the nib in the ink and you you pump it several times and it sucks and comes into the uh into the pin i thought there's this is a great design no one really makes things like that anymore um so brian kind of engineered his own solution to that and made a pin line at edison called the minlow and i was like i got to get one of these um one because i think just the general the design of the pin in general is a really good looking good looking pin and i've become a huge fan of edison obviously over these past years um so i talked to brian really probably early in january probably not too long after that episode so hey i said hey i'm thinking about a minlow and the min the minlow is pretty much all custom made by brian there's not a production line like the bowmont like you can't just go to anderson pins and pick up a minlow necessarily um it's a custom made pin so you work with brian directly you tell him kind of what you're looking for in materials and look and design of the pin so i want to just do something you know kind of different and um i was asking him about a few different specs and said hey can we do this for a minlow so i sent him that email with what i was doing he came back he's like yeah we can we can totally do that no problem at all you know um let me know when you're ready to discuss it further you know i'll work up a price invoice for you and we'll we'll get it going so i was like cool so now i kind of got an idea like the idea in my head i can i can get what i want and you know i already know the price generally and so i just left it there and you know knowing that later this year i'm going to come around to it and order that pin so a week ago or about a week and a half ago i'm up in atlanta working with jeff and he hands me an envelope with a piece of paper well you know a sealed envelope obviously with a letter in it and then the outside of it says don't open this until i tell you to i'm like hmm okay so he gave you it yes no so you gave me this letter yeah and on on the outside of the letter it says don't open this until i tell you to yeah i love this guy yeah so i said actually i asked him i said so what do we so do we have like a safe word i'm waiting for like the same so what is our safe word onions so i'm just waiting for you to say onions and i can open this and he so i just took it home with me and you know i'm i'm true to my word i just put it in my backpack and forgot about it so like two days later or the next day i'm going out and i get my mailbox is stuffed full of products i've been on a run recently with all kinds of stuff i've been buying stuff i'm testing out so i had like three packages in the in the mailbox that day and one of them is from edison pen company and it's definitely a pen i mean it's the square box there's no doubt that there's a pen inside this box i'm like i didn't order anything from edison um you know so maybe brian wants me to maybe he's sending me something to test out i don't know maybe brian has a question for me wants me to you know see if i'll like this i don't know whatever i'm running through all these things i'm like but i'm pretty sure i did not order a pen from edison so i go in open the box and in the paperwork that comes with the box like the first sheet up there's like three or four sheets of paper you know with the packing list and just the notes on it the first sheet that you open up it says open the letter i'm like oh damn he didn't so this is so this is but i think before i even open the pen i go get the letter open it up and jeff has wrote and written me this you know i i'll keep that between me and jeff but he's wrote me a great letter about you know working together and starting this company and you know you know being able to you know really bring our dreams you know to life and you know appreciating my support and all this just is really great letter that i opened the box and it's the minlow design that i've asked brian about back a couple months ago so jeff had worked up this idea to get me a minlow reached out to brian brian says hey you know i got this email from brad a few months ago and then they collaborated or as i as i told them um individually that they co-conspired to make this pen for me and send it to me and that's the story of how i got my Edison minlow and it's a really special pen special story from a special guy so thank you jeff and thank you brian for being complicit in this endeavor because y'all are some sneaky bastages um but it was really special and there's no doubt that this is far and away my favorite pen that i may ever own because it has more meaning to it than just a pen that's so nice i wanted to tell that story so um aside you know there's aside from this i hate the pen no i was to say there's nothing i can review about this pen that's gonna top what the pen actually means to me you know on a personal level and i think that's really what it's all about and you know it doesn't hurt that the pen is flat out amazingly awesome and there will be a full review forthcoming and it can you want one of these i mean yeah obviously i'd love it a jeffy special but we don't all get those but yeah i i i i i'm looking at it and i i mean i'd love the designs of the Addison stuff you know like i love all the swirly acrylic and all that you know yeah so but on my design i was asking brian i was like hey you know i like the demonstrator you know the clear acrylic type pen so i said you know i want something with like a maybe a red cap and you know a blue barrel and you know a clear section or something like that just something you know i like the red white and blue like you know like i like the twizby rock i just like how those look those those it's something appeals to me so this is a pen that it's totally me right i mean some people will probably look at this pen and think it's just ugly a sin and i think it's the most beautiful pen i've ever seen because it encompasses me you know it's the colors that i wanted the design that i wanted and it's mine i mean it was made for me i'm the only one that's going to have it um and it's just really special and it's it's an amazing pen just on its own i mean it's going to be a favorite regardless of of all the additional meaning behind it but i actually call it the the minlow 3d by the way it looks with the red and blue it looks like the old 3d glasses so it's pretty cool you know you just made my like decision in getting one of these even more difficult because now i need to think what's the mic what's the mic version of this yep yeah so yeah you'll get lost for hours going through um the edison um like materials archive like all the materials you can pick out where is that there's stuff um he has a link to a smug mug gallery if you go to like the minlow product page you can click on a gallery but you can really get any material in any pen that he's ever done and i mean he's got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of materials of pens that he's made and you can pick and choose you get it made for yourself so i feel like i need an Obi-Wan Kenobi to help me in this um hmm Obi-Wan pen nobi yep that's what i need there you go that would have been a better title than the earlier one i knew you're going to say that and i hate you all right well that's a wrap sir i know what kind of thing i want now what i want like that sort of you know that like style that he does that like acrylic it's like all the waves i want but i want it to like lava yeah you know like black and orange red yep like he's done something similar i'll have to see if i can find you the links yeah i'll find something close cool that's why i like the look of because i found one that's kind of similar but it's white gotcha so if you find that please send it to me you got it and uh yeah you're gonna spend hours looking through that stuff because i know i will i have done that on more than one occasion okay well okay well i'm interested to see your uh your actual review of it as well giant yeah for as much as is possible just review the pen oh totally yeah no it's there's no doubt because he uh he actually got me a um he had brian grind down a nib for me too that's a steel nib and it's with a point five millimeter stub nib so that's on there so it's great it's it's so far the the early returns are if this was the only fountain pen i had i would be happy wow so that says a lot about yeah i really how this pen fits and feels and writes and is functional so yeah yeah i think i want one i think i want one i've been thinking as well like i i want to get another pen and i want it to be a one point five just to try that but i'll probably just wait and get a twist being like a new twist be or whatever and get get one of five whenever that will be okay so if you want to catch up with us online there's a few ways you can do that you can get us on twitter i am at i'm like i am yk e and brad is at dowddsm d-o-w-d-y-s-m brad also writes over at pen addict dot com pen addict depending on you know the way that you you come across it um if you want to catch up with the show notes for today's episode go to five by five dot tv slash pen addict slash 97 nearly at the special episode 100 which is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day it's pretty crazy yeah it's getting pretty insane uh what we're going to do all this stuff um so yeah look out for that in a couple of weeks time episode 100 very very excited i don't want to thank you all for listening to this week's episode of the pen addict as always and thank you brad for being here until next time say goodbye bradley goodbye bradley
