Editing The Pen Addict 111/transcript (section)

== Field Notes ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' I do know what you are into, though. And that's this next thing. I can't wait. The Cole DDC Field Notes Special Edition. Oh, yeah. All right. So what do you guys think about this? What do you think about this, Josh?

'''Josh Ginter:''' You know what? I'm jealous that it's not. It doesn't.

'''Josh Ginter:''' That's what I'm. They look awesome. They're like, they are as Americanized as they get. It's like field notes. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And let me say, let me preface this. Josh is Canadian. Oh, yeah. I play. Yeah. And Mr. Hurley is British. And I'm, of course, the American is outnumbered. And I'm sending links about these American USA, USA field notes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But everybody, you know, everyone knows that I'm such a big fan of America.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And field notes are worldwide.

'''Josh Ginter:''' Yeah. I agree. You know what? You guys are, you're lucky to have that. And that's, that, that, that field notes, coal headwear thing that is just gorgeous. And it, it, it epitomizes everything that, that, that field notes brand seems to stand for that Americanized thing. That, that's awesome. I really like that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I think you're right about that. And I've always enjoyed the, they always seem to sneak in some type of red, white, and blue addition somewhere along the lines. Like they've done the Levi's in the past. And they actually did one, some British, a British company. I'm blanking on now. I wasn't prepared for that. But they did like a really dark blue cover with right, white, and red lettering. And just these, the red, white, and blue colors on these notebooks just always look the best to me. And this one came out really well with the, with the stripes on the front. I thought it looked, it looked super. And what they, they printed 5,000 of them. They're still available. We'll have the link in the show notes. I ordered some. And I know a bunch of the field nuts did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But yeah, they look great. And I can't wait to get them in.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Neither can I. I found a way to get them. Yes. I have, I had three packs coming. Oh my God. I just love them. I think they look so amazing. They do. And I couldn't, couldn't help myself.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So they really, they really, really look good. When I saw them, I was, I, I, they, they teased them like a couple of months ago. I don't know, Draplin or something on Instagram or whatever. I knew they were working on it. And then just all of a sudden, here you go. Here's the link. And I'm glad someone tweeted to me so I could get my order in. So that was good. But they're still available. So no worries there. All right. I think it's time to get to Josh, Myke. So we got one more sponsor we want to take care of.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. I think that's a good idea. So I want to thank a returning sponsor again this week. That's the fine people over at Huckberry. Huckberry is an online shop and journal that unersed the coolest emerging brands and stories for guys. Huckberry features a variety of unique products like the world's first portable beer keg, knives made from 150 million year old dinosaur bones. Dinosaur bones, Brad.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And so much more. Men's Journal named Huckberry one of their favorite online shopping sites. And they've also had positive press in both Outside Magazine and Complex Magazine. Huckberry makes it easy to find exactly what you're looking for by dividing their products into shops like Made in the USA, General Store Essentials, Everyday Carry Essentials, Grooming Essentials, and so much more. These shops are continuously refreshed with new products all the time. So even if you've shopped at Huckberry before, chances are they've probably added more stuff since you've been gone. In their everyday carry essentials store, they have extremely durable pens and all-weather notebooks, so you can always keep them writing come rain or shine. Each of Huckberry's products have a distinctive look to them, combining adventure and style into a collection of high-quality apparel and gear. Many of their products also have free shipping options available. So take a minute to explore Huckberry's brand-new site over at Huckberry.com. And once you sign up for an account, so go over to Huckberry.com, sign up for an account, and you'll see a credits page on your account page. You want to enter the code PENADDICT, and it's going to give you $5 in store credit to spend at Huckberry.com, which is an incredible deal. So go sign up for an account, click the credits button in your account page, enter PENADDICT, and it's going to get you $5 to spend at Huckberry.com. Thank you so much to Huckberry for their support of the PENADDICT and 5x5.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So here's a pro tip, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Pro tip.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Pro tip. You don't have to have a new account to get the $5 credit. If you have an existing account, go to the credits page, type in PENADDICT, boom, $5 credit. I just did it.

'''Josh Ginter:''' That's a super pro tip, and you've just got yourself $5. Congratulations! You get $5.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, anybody even – yes, that's very right, Brad. Thank you for pointing that out. I say to sign up for a new account if you've never been there before. If you have, just go there, enter it, you'll get it too. Josh, even you'll get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely. I've got to try it out. You should. Huckberry is great. My favorite part about Huckberry is the featured items, which those are the short-run items that they offer special discounts on, and they run through about, I don't know, five or six of those a week, and then they refresh them and then bring in a whole new batch of items. So I'm checking in at least once a week to see what all the cool stuff that they have brought in, and it's always really good stuff. So definitely appreciate Huckberry sponsoring the podcast, and I'm a huge fan, obviously. And, yeah, y'all check them out. One more thing, Josh, before we get to you. You've been waiting so patiently.

'''Josh Ginter:''' Oh, all good. I'm enjoying just listening to this live. This is fantastic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You're the only other person that gets the live version of the podcast.

'''Nifty:''' Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I have our pin blog of the week, and that is Notebook Stories, notebookstories.com. I love these guys. I love this. Yeah. Yeah, Nifty has done this, and that's the name that she writes under, has written this blog for about as long as I can remember, pretty close to as long as I've written The Pin Addict, and, you know, we have exchanged emails over the years, and she always does a great job, and she really follows the notebook market, like, super close. I learn a lot from reading everything on her blog. And the other thing that she does, Myke, she runs, if you ever see the carnival of pen, pencil, and paper on some of our blog friends' blog, she's the one that put that together the very first time. So she's the organizer behind that. So she's definitely very important to the pen bloggers out there. She does a wonderful job at Notebook Stories, and I implore all of you to check that site out. It's excellent.

'''Josh Ginter:''' She does that Notebook Addict of the Week, correct? Yes. I love those things. They're just like, they bring out such traditional-looking notebooks. They're awesome.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, and it makes you feel good about not having so much stuff in your closet compared to something. Exactly. Exactly. Some of those are really ridiculous, and I'm not one to talk. I mean, mine would look just horrible, too. I mean, just stacks and stacks of notebooks and paper everywhere. But, yeah, I think every Friday she does that, the Notebook Addict of the Week, and that's one of my favorite posts for sure. It's very cool. All right, Mr. Ginter, from the newsprint. So before I get too far, everyone can go to thenewsprint.co, and all of our links to our show notes are at 5by5.tv slash penaddict slash 111, and you can get all the links to this episode. But, Josh, tell us a little bit about the newsprint just from the aspect of why it exists. I mean, what made you say, hey, I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to start writing about most of it, following your blog and reading back through the archives. Most of it was about technology and things like that. That seems to kind of how it gets started. So give us the background on the newsprint and what you're doing there.

'''Josh Ginter:''' I started off, I think I started in the middle of December of last year here, 2013, and I wrote about a lot of that tech stuff, Apple specifically. I really like those iOS apps. And, you know, at the same time, I graduated recently with a history degree. So I'm really – I get into the politics and the economics and the business of things, and I just thought I needed to kind of separate them all from like one to – I didn't want to have all of these major contexts being talked about in one blog. Nobody likes to read all of that in one spot, right? So I split it up, and I thought the newsprint would be kind of a cool way of talking about tech stuff, and it began that way, I guess. That's where it started.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so at some point during your writing, you had this kind of transition. It was like very digital type of articles. And then you started to sneak in a couple little things. You know, I think that I put a note in the show notes, like one of the first analog type posts you did was a post called, Why I'm Giving Up on Digital Notes. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And then you started down this path where all this analog stuff started creeping into your digitally focused blog. So tell me about how that happened.

'''Josh Ginter:''' You know, I was thinking about this exactly on the drive home from work today. And I think the reason for the switch, there are 1,001 awesome note-taking apps on the App Store for an iPhone. And I'm just – I'm as much an addict of those things as I am with paper these days. And I probably tried 10 to 15 different note-taking apps. And every time I tried a new app, of course, all of my notes end up in about 15 different spots on my phone. And I could never find what I needed when. So I just thought – like I looked at it and I figured what's the most basic stationary form of note-taking I can do so I don't have to do all these transition things all the time. And I thought like pen and paper. So I started doing a pile of research and trying to find what the best pen and paper was to take on the go and to write. And, you know, I stumbled upon the Pen Addict website there for the first time in November to December, January, somewhere in there. I stumbled upon the well-appointed desk. And the immense amount of information, boy, it just kind of sparked something. So I thought I would talk about the fact that I'm giving up on digital notes and that I – and I haven't gone back. You know what? I don't take any notes on my phone anymore. I write everything down. And if I don't have a pen and paper handy, I throw it into my phone and then I put it into my written book later on. And I just – it seems to work great and it fits me a lot better than the old way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Josh, let me ask you because you said that you were struggling with a bunch of different apps and having your notes in different apps. But what do you do when you come to the end of a notebook?

'''Nifty:''' I guess I index them basically and I just continue on to the next one. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, do you ever go back to find your previous notes?

'''Nifty:''' Oh, that way. You know what?

'''Josh Ginter:''' Occasionally I've gone back. I had to come up with a project at work where I was writing out a whole process of creating something. And I ended up having to carry that along. And I'll tell you, that's probably the biggest downfall of analog note-taking, having to carry along three or four different books at once. But at the very least, like I could find it and I could find it quickly because I had indexed things properly and ahead of time. And, you know, better than having to find a note that was in a deleted app and you know what I mean? So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Have you written about your indexing at all? Because that's really interesting.

'''Josh Ginter:''' Wrote a little bit about it. I think I called it like a hybrid journal idea. I think I'd like to sit down and kind of talk about it or write about it again just because it's evolved so much in the last three or four months. But it's growing and it seems to work. I like the way I'm able to keep track of things going forward. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So is this a handwritten index?