this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Everyday Carry. What essentials do you carry on a daily basis?
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What do you carry on a daily basis?
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you know it wasn't till I enrolled in a physics degree that I met another human using a fountain pen. My first year prof.
Why are we so fucking weird? It's obviously superior not having to exert normal force on the page to write (fuck you ball points) but why isn't that more widespread.
because we have to fill or change cartridges, buy or make ink, clean the nibs, carry our pens carefully… too much effort just to write
ballpoints are efficient, sturdy and effortless. There are situations when we have to write/mark quickly while standing or outside under the weather
it's not a question of "superiority" but practicality. when i'm writing or drawing on my desk i use a fountain pen. outside i carry a small zebra ballpoint
you have to do that to ballpoints to. Unless you use them disposably which there are disposable fountain pens too if you are a paper plates sort of person.
Felt tips share most of the advantages of ballpoints and fountain pens so are a defensible choice. They tend to work upside down too which fountain pens and ballpoints don't. Although pencils, soapstone, or pressurised paint markers are better in those applications generally.
Ah yeah the felt is actually my preference for writing, because they never jam . . . (unless you leave the lid off like an idiot lol). But they're not refillable and the tips aren't replaceable. Usually. I have seen refillable felt tip markers. It's definitely something I would be willing to try.
Yeah I had one ages back but you did need to replace the wicking material and tip periodically, filling also involved slowly infusing with a syringe and drawing needle.
In the end it was about as much hassle as a solid fountain pen and I couldn't use archivists ink so I went back.
Interesting story, @[email protected] . Why do you use archivists' ink?
If I write something down it's usually because I want to remember. Sucks to lose notes/journals/data to sunbeams, coffee spills, rain, leaks, or time.
Well, I can comment on water damage. My printer ink is totally immune, and so is the Platinum carbon black. I don't trust the black in felt tips, but the printer ink would be fine. Probably. My printer ink has a curious property of being perfectly water soluble until absorbed by certain materials including paper and fabric, after which it becomes pretty darned permanent.
UV damage, well, if my ink dyes are the same as in the UV faded inkjet printouts I see taped to the windows of abandoned storefronts, then that will be a problem if I decided to put the pages of my notebook on display in direct sunlight. I've never done that or have been compelled to do it, but never say never, I guess.
That's a good question, though. Have you lost data to sunbeams before, or is this more of a hypothetical?
Yeah I'm in Australia and I left my lab notebook by a window over a holiday break. It was probably getting over 50 C daily and the ink all faded. I don't think it was UV, as multiple pages were damaged, I think the ink wasn't hugely temperature stable.
It wasn't like magically gone, but faded enough that my chicken scratch was hard to read. Between that and water damage at various points I figured I'd just switch before something got fucked up beyond salvaging. Besides, you never know what'll be interesting to future generations. Whether it's a grandkid paging through something to get a sense of who you were or some researcher going through archives. Archivists ink is non acidic, so it doesn't destroy paper over time. Idk whether printer ink is.
Wow, that's awesome! I mean yeah I'm sorry to hear your ink faded in the heat, but at least some good came out of it: that's a whole new mode of failure I didn't know about. Hey, maybe I'll try putting a test page in the oven's warming drawer or something.
space pen works upside down and it's a ballpoint
it's also a space pen which is designed to work in an environment with no upside down so it would obviously have to.