Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

The one that always sticks with me is (I think) from So I Married an Axe Murderer, Mike Myers' character is talking about evil, but it has to be pronounced as "ee-vill, as in the Froo-its of the Dev-ill"

 

I'm going to give bullet journalling a shot, so of course that means I have to indulge in some retail therapy. I mean... you can't expect me to start doing a new thing without getting some toys to do it with, are you mad?

Notebook



LAMY Safari fountain pen (plus spare cartridges)



Never really used a fountain pen since school, but on a whim I decided to give it a shot. If I find that I get on with it then I'll get the converter and use bottled inks instead of cartridges. A comparitively cheap pen, but if I don't get on with it then I've only spent £22!

Next one has nothing to do with journalling and everything to do with the complete failure of using an iPad instead of a laptop for university: ThinkPad T490 (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i5-8365U, 1080p)



I always used to get the X-series notebooks but the last one I had, the X280, was just too small... The screen was rather tiny and too low-res to be of any real use. I could do most tasks on my iPad... except development. I had this whole ridiculous remote web-based development environment set up and hosted in Azure, which is a really cool solution to a problem that doesn't really need to exist. I mean... it's really neat having an instance VS Code that runs in a browser and is hosted in a docker-based compute environment (where all code execution takes place), but even something as simple as installing VS Code extensions is a bit of a ballache. So... 14" 1080P ThinkPad it is.

This will also replace my tiny Optiplex 3050 desktop. I've been back & fore for a while on upgrading that to an M.2 SSD, but lately I've also become aware just how impractical it is trying to use an iPad in classes or for assignments. So, 2 birds, 1 stone and all that*...

*Please don't kill birds with stones, that's sadistic

 

Nice, the Lamy pens are pretty cool. I think I have the clear Safari tucked away in a box of bits somewhere. Lamy pens do take a particular style of nib that is a little different to other more traditional styles, but there are a few out there to choose from and pretty easy to swap over. So, you can have a little bit of a choice without needing a whole new pen each time. I think (not 100%) that there are even things like italic and stub nibs if you really want to go funky with different line widths as you write.

I have just ordered one of the new Jinhao X159 pens from China which should be interesting to have a play with. Pretty much a cartridge converted copy of the awesome (but scary priced) Mont Blanc 149. I have the Jinhao 159, but the new ones are meant to be a lot lighter and have a big size 8 nib rather than the smaller size 6 of the older model.

 

My handwriting is pretty poor, it looks like something's jumped in a pot of ink and is having spasms all over the page; suffice to say I'm not interested anything fancy like italic nibs . But I did want something that has replaceable nibs and has a cartridge converter available, and I didn't want to spend a fortune. I did see mention of Chinese fountain pens in a couple of articles I read, but I'm not quite ready for that rabbit-hole yet!

 

currently looking at bullet journaling. see if i can make some organization changes in my life

 

These couple of videos are what sent me down this garden path - the first two are ADHD-focussed, but still useful info/context (even if her earlier videos are a little... enthusiastic...). The last one is from the creator of bullet journal.







EDIT: Also, no one will ever get me to call it a "bujo" - I think I'd rather eat sick.

 

Oh yes, the world of Chinese fountain pens is a deep deep hole to go getting lost down. I have a few from Jinhao (159, x450, x750, plus another on the way), I also have a wonderful little pen from Picasso, I forget the model name/number, but it is a beautiful little thing. A lot of them use things like standard number 6 nibs so they are open to all sorts of playing. I also did some playing around with dip pen nibs and seeing if I can fit them to number 6 feeds as most of them are a very similar size and most of them also have some insane levels of flex

 

I was just sitting here thinking "Did I hear someone say that you have to have 11th gen to use dual M2".

Bugger me am I glad I took a risk on a etailer I had never heard of before and bought the 11400. I would have been really annoyed had I got the 10400 !

 

Just wait until you learn of fountain brush pens for writing Chinese/Japanese characters

 

Yup yup...

 

Need me one of those for art on birchbark bindings for bows.

 

Genuinely thank you

 

I hope you have more luck with RH than we have

We've had numerous things by them purely because they've all had to be replaced under warranty.

It may just be me though, there's the odd brand that people are fine with, love even, that always decides it doesn't like me. Like Corsair, Corsair doesn't like me.

When the last kettle finally went we turned to Bosch.

Kitchen is looking nice though mate

 

To be fair they had a very painless warranty replacement of my nvme a little while back and that is still running happily in my NUC.

For now anyway, I'll just tell it I know the Doge and maybe it'll be nice to me

 

Two days on a 1080p TV is just about all I can handle.

This is a bit of a gamble because I'm really not sure about ultrawides, and I usually prefer VA over IPS. Time will tell.

 

I absolutely hate the Ultrawide format. The one I had lasted a few weeks before going back to a standard monitor.