For a long time I have collected fountain pens.  Most people see that I have “nice” pens, but they don’t really understand the difference between a fountain pen and a pen that “looks expensive”.  In a nutshell, there are two things that make a fountain pen special.

1. The writing tip has to last the life of the pen, not just the ink in the pen.  When a ball point runs out of ink, you throw away the cartridge AND the writing tip and put in a new one.  With a fountain pen, the actual writing tip stays and you simply add more ink, whether via bottle or cartridge.  It stays FOREVER.  Therefore it must be of very high quality.
2. The other major difference is the feel.  A really good fountain pen should pass the “Zero Weight” test, holding the pen while applying zero pressure – only the weight of the pen itself – and drawing it across the page should produce a smooth effortless flow of ink.

It is the second reason that I am passionate about fountain pens.  Being able to lay down a smooth, bold stroke with no pressing, no effort means I can write for hours with little to no hand fatigue.  I also like the look of the line on the page, it’s very satisfying to see the pages fill up with strong bold strokes.

But that’s not really why I’m writing.  The real reason I am writing is that there appears to be a major shift in the Fountain Pen Market.

Great Pens.  Great Value.

For years good fountain pens were insanely expensive.  A “decent” pen cost over $100 and to get a great pen you were spending $300 to $400.  My Parker Duo Fold for example is an absolutely magnificent pen and cost around $450 a decade ago.  Well, when the economy tanked, people stopped buying things they didn’t need.  I believe fountain pens were already in decline by 2008, but the extra kick in the teeth didn’t help.  What that meant was that many stores stopped carrying pens and the selection of pens started to dry up.

Of course for the $500 and up crowd there was no recession so you still see some of those around – like Rolex watches.  Fine Jewelry for executives and diplomats I’m sure.  But for those of us who enjoy a great writing experience the market evaporated.  There was plastic or platinum and nothing in between.

To put it in perspective the best “low price” quality fountain pen I found was a Cross Townsend on sale for $80.

This past year however, something changed.  It might have started sooner, but in the last two months I uncovered an amazing array of fantastic quality pens that retail in the $20-$60 range.  Some of these pens write better than most of my high end pens.  And they are inexpensive enough to feel confident in carrying them around and not worrying too much about losing one.  Given that a decent roller ball at staples now costs $9, is it really that stressful to carry a $20 fountain pen?

Here is a hit list of my recent favorites that have impressed me with their writing and price point:

Lamy Safari Medium Nib:

This is just an amazingly robust pen.  You can find them on line for as little as $26, or for $35 at a stationer.  This plastic pen feels rugged and robust, and it is flawless with converter or cartridge.  One of my favorite pens I own 3 – one yellow, one clear, and one black.  They are all consistent performers.  You can leave them for a week, pick them up and they write like you’d never stopped.  They never skip, and the ink flow is even and smooth leaving a rich bold line on the page.  If you’ve never owned a fountain pen before I highly recommend this pen.  I use the Medium Nib.  I bought my pens from the stockroom in Phoenix, Arizona for around $35.

Kaweco Sport Classic Medium and Fine Nib:

I recently discovered this German manufactured pen on http://jetpens.com.  I’d never heard of Kaweco before, but after ordering one I ordered two more.  I own a medium and a fine nib pen.  They start 98% of the time and once flowing never stop.  While they are small and compact, they are absolutely a joy to write with.  The fine is not that much narrower than the medium and both of these pens retail for $22, a great bargain.  They are too short to take the long ink cartridges and converter, but there is an example of converting a Kaweco into a dropper fill pen.  If you do this I recommend getting the “ice” version so you can keep you eye on how much ink is left in the cartridge.

Aurora Style

Aurora is an Italian pen manufacturer I’d never heard of until a month ago.  I ordered two pens from them and both were two of the best most consistent writing fountain pens I’ve ever owned.  They instantly rivaled the Lamy and both look much more classy.  The Style is a bit pricey compared to the Lamy at $64, but it rivals and exceeds pens costing hundreds of dollars more.  I purchased my Aurora Style through penboutique on Amazon.com.

Retro 51 Tornado

The Retro’s were recommended to me when I bought a high end Lamy that failed.  (I had to send it back for service.  More money does not always equal a better pen).  The Retro 51 writes wet, and starts 99% of the time, but on the whole it is an amazingly consistent pen, comfortable and has a real quality feel.  Like the Aurora it is made out of resin so it doesn’t feel like plastic and the metal appointments (clip, cap ring, and base) all make this pen look like it should cost a lot more.  You can find them from $32 to $50.  It’s interesting that this pen looks very similar to my Delta which cost $100 and it writes about the same.

The Rest…

Over the holiday I purchased a number of other fountain pens, including several Platinum Preppy’s and a Sailor Clear Candy.  Platinum and Sailor are both Japanese pen manufacturers.  The Preppy’s are interesting because they cost <$4 each but they have proven to be inconsistent.  Some write great, others have ink flow trouble.  I bought them because they are super easy to convert to a dropper fill.  There is a great blog on this at (http://blog.jetpens.com).

The Sailor is a tad scratchy being a fine point, but otherwise it is a decently servicable pen.  The real disappointment were the pilots.  The first pilot pen I bought was an inexpensive F-78.  It was a joy to write with and matched my Lamy except that it was a tad light and thin for my taste.  It was an inexpensive pen that felt cheap.  So I bought a Prera.  At $56 it was a disaster.  I had to return it.  Then I got a Pilot Lucina ($67) expecting it to be closer to my F-78 but a much nicer, heavier pen.  It is much nicer looking, and more comfortable to hold.  In the end however, it also struggled with ink flow.  It looks fantastic, I just wish that it wrote as well as it looked.

Close but no cigar

Final mention goes to Noodlers.  I really like their inks and they recently produced the Ahab Fountain Pen.  This is a big fat pen with an enormous reserve.  It is designed to be user serviceable and comes with an o-ring suitable to convert the pen to dropper fill.  For $20 these are fun Celluloid pens, but they often struggle with spotty ink flow.  They’ll flood the paper then dry up suddenly, then return to gushing.  You feel like you’re writing with a small hose at times.

Many Great Options

As a result however I have never had so many great pens to write with.  And as you may have noticed all of these pens were under $100.  It seems like combination of things have made a wide range of great, low cost fountain pens available.  More than I can ever remember.  If you have never used a fountain pen before the time has never been better to try one out.

For my money the best result has to be the Kaweco’s.  For $25 or less, they are simple to put in your pocket, they always seem to work, and they are just fun to carry around.  Second place goes to the Aurora Style.  While they are a little on the pricey side they never once disappointed me.

– Scott

Some links:

http://jetpens.com

http://shopwritersblock.com

and of course Amazon.

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Okay, this is kind of gross.  But if it helps someone else it is worth sharing.  The area where we live in is absolutely saturated with LBA’s – little black ants.  We have had every kind of bug guy out, and NOTHING seems to keep these dudes at bay.  As long as they stay outside, we can live with it.  But when the weather turns cold, or sometimes when we flood the yard (we have flood irrigation), they move inside.

I’m pretty sure the ants have setup a nest inside one (or more) our walls.  But when they showed up in our closet, I felt like I needed to do something.  I have heard the Borax and sugar works in getting rid of them (poisons the queen) but in my experience it never worked.

Until, I came across a YouTube video that contained the real “trick”.  The recipe is simple but brilliant.

1. Mix 1/2 cup sugar with 1 cup warm (or hot) water.
2. Add 2 tables spoons 20 mule borax.
3. Stir until everything dissolves

Now here’s the magic part:  Soak up the syrup with cotton balls

The cotton balls really make all the difference.  The mixture will be thicker than water, and sticky.  But soaking it up with cotton balls allows you to drop the balls on an ant line.

But does it work?  Check it out:

This was one of 5 cotton balls we dropped on the ant line.  Within an hour of dropping them all 5 were swarmed with ants, but 24 hours later they were all virtually empty and the total number of visible ants had dropped to 4.  That’s right FOUR.  Total.  You could count them on one hand.

In the past what would happen is we would spray, wipe, clean, and pray.  Eventually the ants would show up somewhere else, usually within 12 hours.  But with the Sugar Borax cotton balls, the ants seem to be receding, and not coming back.

So if you’ve got little black ants, give it a try.  I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.

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Or… I dropped my iPad2.

So I wrote about how un impressed I was with my Fire, and as I turned back to my iPad – I noticed that my slick – solid – sturdy aluminum case – was dented!  And not just any dent, it was dented right where you plug in the connector.

Disappointment #1

Apparently it slipped off my arm rest in my F250 and landed just right on one of the steel posts that holds in the back seat.  Until you really look it it, it’s kind of hard to believe how tight the tolerances are on these things.  No way could I get a pair of pliers into the gap to straighten it out.

And with no access to the connector plug, there is no way to charge the darn thing.

So I made an appointment at the Genius bar and took it to the apple store.

Disappointment #2

Turns out Apple does not have an accidental damage policy for these things.  And they can’t repair it.  Say what?  That’s a 64GB 3G iPad!  What do you mean it can’t be repaired?  Not by apple anyway.

Suuuuuuck.

Fail #1

I go to Fry’s electronics and buy the smallest, skinniest pliers I can find and try to straighten the port myself.  No joy.  All I’m doing is scratching the surface and I’m afraid I’m going to break the board inside the slot.  Time to get help.

Let’s hope there’ s not a Fail #2

So I go online, find a company that says they can repair iPads.  I sign up, and take my baby to Fedex and ship it out.  God help me.

Kindle Fire to the Rescue

So that leaves me tablet-less…  or does it?  I still have my Fire!  And so I start to poke around with the skinny 7″ unit.  Without the option to use my iPad I’m forced to really assess to the Fire.  And now I have to say… if I couldn’t own an iPad I would definitely want one of these.  And if I didn’t already own an iPad, I think I would give the Fire some serious consideration.  If you don’t know what you are missing then the Fire is a very impressive little box.

Works for my books, I’ve downloaded a couple of games and they work pretty darn well.  And I can stream some old TV shows (Why isn’t Quantum Leap part of Amazon Prime?  Really?).  It’s not iTunes and the iPad but this little bugger cost $800 LESS than my beefy iPad 2.

And I now see that they’ve added email and some other useful apps.  I still find Android scattered and generally not nearly as polished as iOS and iOS apps.  But for $800 still in my pocket I think I could learn to live with it.

I’ll update when I know how my repair went.

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Or the death of a good story.

So I was talking about Coral Castle with some friends, and I remembered some stuff from T. Lobsang Rampa (thanks for the reference dad).  And then it hit me.  When I first heard about these things… there was no internet.

Funny, I wondered what the internet had to say… sigh.  Facts suck.

First Coral Castle.  If no one saw Ed Leedskalnin lift this stones, then no one owned a pretty decent camera back in the thirties to take these pictures.
Apparently the secret of the great pyramids was a block and tackle.  Or as Ed was quoted as saying, “he understood the laws of weight and leverage well”

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Yesterday, I wrote about using Filters to clean up your email.  It has made a HUGE difference in helping me maintain an empty inbox.

There is a saying that you can not be efficient with email because for every email you ship out, you get 1.2 back.  So the more you email the more you get.

However, I wonder what the statistics are on all the sneaky ways email marketers (from companies you like!) work to get around your filters.

Every day.  every single day I get email showing up that does not match my filters.  Amazon.  Ebay.  Microsoft.  All companies I use, work with, or buy from.  I have filters for all of them.  More than one in fact.  Yet they keep coming.  Right there, in my inbox.  NOT in the folders I have carefully constructed to hold their chaff.  What the heck?

The longer I keep up this battle – I’m getting a much clearer picture of how many weeds I allowed to infest my mental garden.  If you only have room to hold 7 thoughts in your working memory, how can you afford to let 700 random ideas pollute your precious working mind?

This has been a crazy battle.  I’m wondering if I’ll ever win.  At least its down to 1 or 2 stupid new things a day, but I’m wondering if I can get it to zero.

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Okay, it was about a month ago that I got back on the GTD train. I’m not exactly sure what caused it, but I think was really starting to feel overwhelmed and I had a number of personal projects that were driving me crazy. Strangely I was being pretty productive with my coding projects, but stunningly ineffective with everything else and the stress was getting to me.

Now this is probably my third trip to the GTD dance. I first learned about it 6 years ago, and I thought it was the bees knees. But the incredible attention to detail usually overwhelmed me and I’d give up. But then life would completely overwhelm me and I would come back to it. So this time, instead of being completely doe-eyed that I’d convert everything I started small.

So I started in my personal life. And I started to go through all the todo apps I’d started to collect. I realized that perhaps some software had advanced since I’d last taken a tour through the world of todo apps.

What I needed (or wanted) was something that would let me enter tasks on my Mac, then take them with me on my iPhone. If there was an iPad version that was a bonus. But the goal was to be able to quickly capture information with a full sized keyboard, access to online resources, and then be able to take those lists of tasks with me where ever I went.

I knew the one important thing about Getting Things Done, was that I needed contexts. The ability to look at my tasks from a different point of view. In fact from a very specific point of view, the environment or context by which they would be executed. Having two points of view was critical to effective GTD for me.

The other thing I really wanted was the ability to set a start date for my tasks. One of the best, but hardest to implement ideas I found in GTD was the idea of the tickler file. You stick tasks you can’t act on yet into a future folder. That way you don’t have to think about it until the task comes into a time frame when you can actually do something about it.

For example, every two weeks I have to open the flood valve in our back yard to irrigate our lawn. I want to be reminded the day before but I don’t want to see that reminder in my to-do list every day. Or perhaps there a BluRay movie I want to buy. It won’t go on sale for a few weeks, and it doesn’t really matter which day I buy it, but I don’t want it to show up on my BestBuy shopping list until I can actually buy it. I love start dates. Very few systems seem to support them.

I think it’s important to point out that a start date is not a due date. A due date is something that REALLY has to be done by a certain day. Things like this probably really belong on a calendar, but if you have to complete a task by a certain date (like turn in a homework assignment) having it in your daily tasks is better than sticking it on a calendar in the future where you may forget about it.

The key difference is that a start date constrains WHEN you can act on a task (and when it takes up precious room in your brain) and a due date constrains when a task MUST be completed. After watching an excellent video series by David Sparks of Macsparky.com, I now rarely use due dates. I employ start dates religiously to help manage my mental load of what I’m going to get done and when.

So, where to start?

To Do Apps

I’m looking for todo apps with a Mac client, and an iPhone app. A web based client is okay, as long as it’s easy to use and quick. The apps I looked at were:

Things
Toodledo
Remember The Milk
ToDo
Get It Done

Initially, I completely discounted OmniFocus as being way too complex and expensive. Ironic, as in the end that is the tool I use daily. But I’ll get to that.

What worked what didn’t

Things – I love the look of things, it’s simplicity, and the power of tagging. What absolutely kills things is the lack of syncing. While I can sync between home and work – oh yeah, another critical requirement. Their syncing between iPhone and mac is atrocious. They really need a syncing solution and they don’t appear to be working on one. Plus it’s expensive. Boo Things.

Toodledo – Was absolutely one of the best solutions I looked at. While they don’t have a desktop client, their website in general is excellent and they supported all the features I wanted. Except, their syncing with the iPhone just didn’t work. If you created a project on the web, it didn’t show up on the iPhone and changes on the iPhone didn’t sync back to the web. It was crazy. What’s more, they had SO MANY options for each task, entering tasks on the web felt clumsy. Despite Toodledo’s great features, I can’t use something if it doesn’t work and the sync killed it for me. Rats Toodledo

ToDo and GetItDone Looked promising. I didn’t like GetItDone’s $40 a year subscription fee. I’ve had OmniFocus for 5 years. At $40 a year, would be like spending $200 for an app. Heck, I don’t like paying that for Office. I’m not paying that for a task manager. ToDo looked promising but was slow.

Remember The Milk The winner for me was Remember the Milk. Bar none it had absolutely the fastest mechanism for entering tasks (capture is important) and it was simple. There was an outstanding blog post by a user who explained how he used RTM for GTD and that gave me the handle I needed to start using it. The iPhone syncing worked flawlessly and once I got the idea down I could begin using it.

Next… How I started with RTM.

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The Chandler Rangers won their first bracket game by defeating the South Ohio Midland Tomahawks 20-5 in 4 innings. Casey Legumina recorded the win pitching 3 complete innings. Quincy Westbrook came in to close it.

Next up, the Rangers face the winner of the Voodoo vs Jack Hammers Black. The last score I saw had the Voodoo winning 9-5 in the bottom of the 6th and they looked poised to score more.

Game time is 5PM Eastern Standard, and it will be played in the big Stadium. There is a chance the game will be streamed live at Http://usssalive.com. You can also check the score cast at score.com. The user key is: F5C0213527

See you at 5PM!

Go rangers!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:W Irlo Bronson Memorial Hwy,Celebration,United States

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Questions:
How do they determine the home team?
How do they decide dh vs pitcher hits?

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[this will be a live blog format. I'll just keep taking pics and entires on the end.]

12:30 it’s started. They are starting with the girls. At every level until the finals you have to hit a target – any part of it. But now they have to put it through a hole into a net and that is a lot harder

12:39 Lita hit 2 of 6. I was worried until the other girls in her age did the same. Girls are almost done.

12:46. Girls are done. Very last girl hit 6 of 6. Very impressive. She was like a machine just putting them in there. Nicely done.
7-8 boys are done. Now the 9-10s.

12:58. Ryan hit 6 out of 6! Way to go kid. The other two guys were 4/6 and 4/6.

They are now setting up for hitting.

1:15 the girls are done hitting. Best hit was about 198 on the tape. Wow that’s a long way to hit a softball. I’m a little nervous because they have to hit off a mat. That puts the ball in a weird spot.

You actually don’t want to hit a ball in the middle of the plate.

1:24 some 12 year old representing the nationals just set the 12 year old record hitting it 305 feet off the tee. Tyler – the player in front of Ryan had three real nice hits over 280 but they were a little far off the line. Ryan had one hit right on the line near? 300 it looked to me but it could have been more than 10 feet short. The record for 13/14 is 356 feet. That record is in no danger today.
Ryan was frustrated but I think he still has a chance. It’s the first competition where he hasn’t out driven everyone by 20 or more feet.

Now it’s time to run.

1:36 Boys are running now.

Ryan will be in the last group.

Ryan and Tyler tied for the fastest time with a time of 6.97. Luke trailed with 7.1

So now we wait. They don’t announce the winners until much later but I think Ryan has a shot to win it!

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Got here and got parked. $20 for parking. It’s usually $10 so I guess it’s not that bad. Waited outside for the kids. Glendale parks and rec crew are here to run the event. Nice guys.

The bus showed up a few minutes late. Then they unloaded.

I hit the shop while they marched the kids through the stadium. They are already running out of stuff! Unbelievable. But I found some neat stuff. This is really cool.

The kids are warmed up now

Now they are sitting in the dugout waiting for it to start.

I wish I’d eaten breakfast.

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