Editing The Pen Addict 492/transcript (section)

== Lamy Zivo Pen Review ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like this is the perfect pen to, you know, like everyone knows what those Lamy displays look like. I mean, this is just going to look good in those displays. They design towards the display.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it will look even better at $10. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And then it'll look even better when they do purple and blue and yellow and line all them up there for all the Lamy boutiques. And someone comes in and just passing is like, well, I don't want to spend $30 on a fountain pen, but $10 on a ballpoint? Give me two.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And there's some updates for fountain pen companion, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Urban is gone off the deep end here. So the fountain pen companion.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Even more than already.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I love Urban. Urban is like, he is on it. So he's been, he's been messaging me in the background as he's been going through this process. But what he's done is actually link reviews on each ink product page, which like sounds like a simple task. But right now there's 7,500 inks cataloged on fountain pen companion. And he already has 20% of that number with at least one review of the ink from, you know, somewhere, you know, like my blog or Kelly's blog, Mountain of Ink or, you know, Fountain Pen Pharmacist. There's a ton of just ink only review blogs. And those, those reviews are getting pulled in on the individual ink product pages. And it's just kind of blowing my mind that he's able to like attach this type of content into this database to kind of help people figure things out. Right. Like it's, it's a really cool way to help people figure out because fountain pen companion isn't just like your tool to track your database and your inks and your pens. It's, you know, it's part discovery tool too. So you get to see like, Hey, a bunch of people are using this ink. I wonder if I would like it. And then you can look at the fountain pen companion page and see how many people use it. But now you can see quickly, like is, can I learn more about this ink from, from someone else who has tested it out and written about it. And then there's even a space now for like users to submit their own reviews, right? Like if you write something, you can submit it in there and Urban will add it to the page. And I just think it's just really, really cool. It's like, I have got to get better in using fountain pen companion. I haven't made that full commitment despite trying like a million times saying, I need to do this. I need to do this. So I don't know. Maybe if you could commit one pen a day, right? Just put one pen a day in there with whatever inks in there and do it five minutes. Knock it out. End of the year, I have a bunch of pens and inks listed. I think it's great. Urban's doing a fantastic job and he was pretty excited about this. He was, he sent me a lot of messages about this and I love seeing that type of passion for these, these projects.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Gotta tip my hat to the amount of manual work he does. It's, it's enormous.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Like it's no joke. Yep. So big shout out fountain pen companion. Great job, Urban. Thanks for sharing this with me and, and let me know about it so I can share it with everyone else who, who either uses fountain pen companion and haven't noticed yet, or who might consider just going over there and poking around and checking out what it is. It's really great. Really great resource. All right.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, so that was some new products, some new news. I actually have more of that, Myke, if you will allow me. Yes, please. Especially this first one, which I think you also have, because I think we subscribed. Yep, I got it. And resubscribe to Field Notes at the same time, so we both have the Ignition Edition. So what I would like to do is open this envelope while we're sitting here talking, because I haven't yet. Because I've seen it online, right? And I've seen all the, you know, watched the video and read all the specs and understand what's in here. So let me get all the unboxing materials out of here.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is an interesting edition, I think.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's an interesting one, for sure. I have lots to say, as shocker to no one. Brad likes to talk about stationery. One thing, which we have not spoken about, I don't believe, is the price increase, right? So Field Notes has a price increase for volumes and for, excuse me, volumes. We're talking about Blackwing volumes later. For the Field Notes subscription, it's gone up. And the individual three-packs price has gone up. It's like just, you know, one of those things. We talked, we had a big rash of price increases earlier this year in the pen world. And like, these are the things that happen. Field Notes, to their credit, has tried to like, continue to include things in your subscription bundle. Like, this time we got book darts in there, in the, um...

'''Myke Hurley:''' In a pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' In the, yeah, in a yellow pen. And a calendar. Which is a great pen, the calendar. So, yeah, they've tried to do little tweaks, little upgrades to make it good bang for your buck. And I still think it's like completely fairly priced. Like, I have no issue with that. So, on to the edition, Ignition. Feels like I've seen this before, Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I mean, kind of, but not really. Not really. It is an adaptation and a forward move of a previous thing that they did.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was going to go with new and better. So, yes, I'm not really like, you know, crushing them for that. But it is new and improved resolution edition. Which is what, two years ago, three years ago, something like that. Which I absolutely did not like the idea behind the resolution edition. Because they kind of had the quantities backwards. Right? Resolution edition was two books of checklists and then like one book of calendar. This, Ignition, is actually two 26-week date books. If you do the math, Myke, I'm not a math major. But if 26 plus 26 equals 52 and that's how many weeks are in a year, it almost makes sense. Right? It's kind of on purpose. So, yeah, I think that's super smart. So, like your pack of Ignition gives you a year's worth of the date books. Which are small. And, like, I think the layout's good. Like, I had no, like the resolution, I like the layout. They've actually improved the layout. It's generally the same as the resolution edition. But it's a little bit more efficient in the space usage.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I like the fact that they give you, hey, it's the end of the year. We're going to give you something for the entirety of next year if you're so into that thing. And we'll give you a singular book for just random notes checklist. You know, it's got their, like, the circles, the half circles, like the fill in your circle checklist for tasks. So, yeah, like, totally fine with it. Like, it seems like a good addition. I love the colors. I mean, you know that I'm going to love the aesthetic of this gray, white, and black with the really bright yellow.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's very construction-y.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I mean, it's super field notes-y. It's super Brad. Like, this is my look. I'm not going to use them. Like, I'm just going to be straight up. Like, I will probably give these packs away, which is fine. It doesn't mean I don't think they're, like, really good and useful. They did a much better job with this release than the resolution. And maybe they needed the resolution to happen to get us to this point to where they actually thought about how people use things. In a little bit of a different way from the resolution edition to have that kind of, like, efficiency and, like, product respect that this one offers. Like, it all adds up in what they did. And I think they look cool on top of it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I think that this is a... I would be... I would be very surprised if a version of this does not remain a permanent product available. Yeah. I mean, the reason for that is because they've not dated it. I know what that means.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right, right, right. But this is a way better stock item. Yes. I think. I'm trying to think. I'm business thinking out loud. I was like, should they just default it to a two-pack? I don't know.