Editing The Pen Addict 458/transcript (section)

== New Quotex Product ==


'''Myke:''' It's a good gift pen.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. For someone. Exactly. And then the same... And kind of in the same boat, but it's also for kind of a, you know, experienced writer pen. The very last thing before you get down to a few more specials is the Pelican Moonstone, which was this year's special edition, or this past year's special edition M205, which is a great sparkly gray. So, awesome stuff this week. Big, big list. So, scroll through there. Check them out. And check out all these awesome deals from our awesome sponsor at Pen Chalet.

'''Myke:''' All right. Yeah. So, go to penchalet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password penaddict to get a code for 10% on anything at Pen Chalet and also to see these special offers. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

'''Brad:''' All right. So, I see your list in here, and I want you to talk about it because I actually have a very specific question I want to ask you, but I want you to discuss what we have here first.

'''Myke:''' So, there is one new item that has been in my rotation this week especially, which is a new product from Quotex brand called the Subtle Notebook, which, giving the inside track to penaddict listeners, my understanding is that our shipment has passed customs. So, I hope that we'll be able to have this on sale within the next week or so. Cool. Awesome. So, this is a notebook which is heavily inspired by the theme system. It's constructed the same way, but it is just a dot grid notebook. Page numbers, corner perforations, and a blue cover with a different logo design on the front. So, I've been using this notebook quite a bit over the last week, kind of just like forcing myself to take more pen and paper notes than I would normally, because I just want to make sure that I'm getting the real use out of the book, and I really, really like it. So, I'm very happy with it. It's a lovely little notebook, and I'm excited to put it out there. Obviously, this goes in conjunction with my theme system. I am fast approaching finishing my first theme system of the new version. So, I'm nearly there. So, this one, I've been rocking it since December. So, it takes me... I've actually... Oh, I've only got like two days left, actually, looking at it now. And then I've got to swap over to a new one. Because I journal only on work days. So, it's like five days a week, not seven. So, it's always taken me about four to five months to finish a journal, if I do every day.

'''Myke:''' So, you know, like I'm kind of in the place now where you have been for a while, I think. But at a certain point now, I'm just... I'm making the things that I want to exist in the world, and then I'm using them. Right. And I'm applying that thinking now to some other things. So, I already know the next product that I want to make in this environment. But all I have right now is some sketches that I've made. But I will show you those at some point, Brad. But, yeah, I know what I want to make next. So, yeah, I've been very happy with those. Obviously, I'm still using the panel book. I have the panel book right in front of me right now. It's when I'm taking my notes for the podcast on. That's what I always do. I've been also carrying around some pens from... Because I'm at the studio today. I've been coming back to the studio a bit now. So, I'm carrying some pens backwards and forwards every day in my Notco wax canvas Sinclair case.

'''Myke:''' Very nice. And the pens that I've been carrying are the Spoke Axle Titanium, the Sailor 1911 Tangerine King of Pen, and the Sailor Pro Gear Sparkling Royal Purple, which I got from Pensaci. Yeah, classics. So, they're the pens I've been carrying around every day. So, this is like a nice mixture of colors. I have... I don't remember exactly which now, but I have one of the Sailor Ink Studio inks, the really light blue one in the Spoke Axle. I have Fire on Fire in the Tangerine, and I have one of those Suite Life inks, the purple one. I think it's Birthday Cake. Oh, yeah. In the Royal Purple Pro Gear.

'''Brad:''' Those are really good inks. We've talked about them when they came out, the Monteverdi Suite Life series. Yeah. Shockingly underrated.

'''Myke:''' I love them. Every color is fantastic.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Yeah. Like, people who get them really, really enjoy them, and they don't get, like, the super hype because they're, like, really inexpensive. They're, like, $8 for... It's so worth it. ...30 or 50 milliliters. Man, they're such a good ink.

'''Myke:''' $8 mil for $10.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Penchalet.com. They have them all there. Yep. It's, yeah. Great choices in those ink colors. Very fun. Very good quality. So you kind of led into what my question was going to be. It's about how the subtle notebook, and it's going to work in your workflow because the theme system's locked in. Yeah. The pano book is locked in. Yeah. Like, they have jobs, right? You have a task, and this is what you're going to do. And, you know, the theme system and pano book both have those jobs. So do you think the subtle notebook will end up having a job, or do you think it's going to be, like, the catch-all? Like you were saying, you were taking more notes and things with it. What is... I'm talking about not for other people's use. I'm talking about your specific use case.

'''Myke:''' So I can... I mean, I can open it and tell you what I've been putting in it. So I obviously did a bunch of ink testing.

'''Myke:''' I did... We do some of our member specials, right? So we do, like, the Cortex upgrade one. I was taking all of my notes for that for the game that we were playing. And then also I was... You know, me and Steven have a meeting every Monday where we talk about company stuff. And on Mondays, I always think about these things, and then I just open an Apple note and start typing them in. It's like, well, really, I could just write them down. I actually prefer to write them down. So I've started doing that too. So, you know, really, it's like having a notebook just around more and just grabbing it to take notes in more purposefully rather than putting them in a digital form. Like stuff that basically, like, that Monday note, I just delete it afterwards. So that kind of feels like the perfect thing for a pen and paper notebook for me. I've just gotten into a habit. Right.

'''Brad:''' That was kind of my follow-up is like, would you ever... Were you ever one of the people who would take notes with like Apple Pencil, iPad and GoodNotes? Is that what that app's called? GoodNotes, I think.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I mean, yeah, I have done that. I kind of fell off that train anyway. Because really with me with the Apple Pencil, I use it for annotating documents a lot.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Right. It's something that I do.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I've never wanted to write with it like other than like a few words.

'''Myke:''' I mean, I would write something if it then needed to be stored. Like for example, talking about like making product sketches. Well, I do those digitally. I do those in Craft is the app that I'm using right now. But Craft uses the Apple Pencil, pencil kit thing that Apple's made. So it's like the best version of it. Because like for me, I want the process of drawing it out because it makes the most sense for me that way. But I then want to be able to make sure it's kept. And searchable and all that kind of stuff. So I'll always do that kind of stuff digitally.

'''Brad:''' Okay, cool. See, I find this stuff interesting because like we don't, we never sit together and work, right? And you know, like we know each other like extremely well. But like I always love like the little nitty gritty like work related stuff. And I like talking about that stuff. And I like talking about the stuff that we use today. Like I had, you know, I like catching up on this. I don't want to do this every week, right? But we do it, you know, once a month, once every two months. We kind of talk about just like some specific things. But I did have a little bit of a motive to bring up this topic today because I've been asked, I don't know how many times over the years, but the general question is, how do you use all the stuff that you have? I mean, the short version is-

'''Myke:''' People keep asking me this about keyboards.

'''Brad:''' Yeah.

'''Myke:''' What do you do? Every couple of days I get this question. What do you do with these keyboards? And my answer is, I use them. Yeah. It's the same. Right. Like I think pen addicts understand it. Right? Yeah. Like all I really need is one pen. Right. Right. That's all I actually need. But what I do is I have lots of them and I use them all by rotating through them. And it's the same thing for me with the keyboards. Like- Right. I mean, one, just because of my weird life right now, I actually have use for four keyboards in my life because I have four desks that I use like split between home and my studio. It's kind of ridiculous. So really I'm pleased I have so many keyboards because I'm actually able to put a lot of them to use. But I still rotate between them depending on what it is that I want to use, what experience I want on that day, what aesthetics I want on that day. It's the same. Like the pen and keyboard stuff, it's very similar in that.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So I've actually tasked myself, I have like a placeholder note in Ulysses to write an article basically how I use it. Not like, not the overarching, okay, how do you use all that stuff? But specifically, like Brad, how do you use the things that you use? Like what are they used for? Do, like I was saying about your notebooks, do pens have jobs? Do notebooks have jobs? And things like that. And I can't wrap my head around actually typing this article. Like I could have written this several times over all the years for all the times I've been asking it. But now I've actually, you know, put it in my little file to say, hey, maybe work on this idea. And I, it's a lot easier to talk about because I feel on the podcast because I feel time restricted, right? But with writing, it could be like endless on how I use things because like I said, I like to get into that minutia. That's why I have like maybe some highly specific random questions for you, like in how you're using things. So I'm trying to talk these things out in podcast form. And the short version is, okay, today and in the last two weeks, if I'm writing it down, these are the kind of things that I've used and they've matriculated to the top and they all have reasons for being there. But the next two weeks could be completely different. So how do you explain that? And then going into these things. So it's a fun challenge for me to think about because this should be one of the most simplest, simpler things that I could ever write. But it's actually the way I think about things. And I think if people have listened to this podcast long enough, understand a little bit about how obsessive I am about some of this stuff, that it's actually a really big challenge to do a simple post like that for me. Yeah. So anyway, that was my little diversion. is this first couple of segments is helping me figure out how I'm going to write an article for later. And I still don't know, but I'm gaining on it. All right. So that's all the stuff we're using. I wanted to follow up quickly with the Mormon croquis notebook. Since I talked about it so much, I got an email after the podcast that they really enjoyed it. They enjoyed it. Gave me a bunch of information about what we discussed. Like one of the items we discussed was accessibility of this Glyphi model, right? That they have, that's more standard bound journal style, but contains like the heavier sketch type paper that it's only available in Europe and Japan. They're working, the U.S. distributor, I'm just speaking from the U.S. market, the U.S. distributor is working on getting some of those into the marketplace over here as we speak. So they followed up on that. They also followed up in that they would like to make kind of like what I would think would be my dream type of croquis notebook is either just like the 96 page stitch bound A5 cream or like the Midori, like tape bound style notebook, you know, just a more traditional, what we would think of as a journal or diary or notebook format.

'''Brad:''' And with traditional rulings, mind, dot grid, graph, right? Like if you're going to do that style, blank is fine. Like it's a good choice, but that one needs to have more, right? If you're going to say, hey, this is a great writing paper as well, you got to do lined, right? And then maybe dot grid or something like that or graph, you know, those types of things.

'''Myke:''' So did you say they are or they want to work on this?