I recently finished the fantastic book by Erik Larson entitled The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. This book is a non-fiction work centered around Sir Winston Churchill during the early days of World War 2. One of the things that I was struck by as I listened to the audiobook, was how much information the author was able to glean from diaries and personal correspondence. Whether it was from the diary of Churchill’s personal aide, which gave all manner of insights into how Sir Winston acted and treated others to Mary Churchill’s diary entries telling of how the 18-year-old daughter spent her evenings dancing at clubs and spending time chasing airmen from the Royal Air Force, these diaries helped to paint a much more full picture of the life and times of Churchill.

Other examples of how diaries and letters help to tell the story of history, are the bestselling biographies, John Adams, by David McCullough and Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. My mom and dad have listened to both of these recently and over and over again, they tell me about these wonderful nuggets of history that show up in these books directly from the archived letters and diaries of various historical figures. One such example is the friendship and rivalry of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. John Adams wrote extensively about how their friendship fell apart over politics and then much later in life, they were able to reconcile with one another. On a side note, these two great founding fathers died on the same day, within hours of one another, fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Not related to my point about diaries, but still a really great nugget of information.

In reflecting on all this, I couldn’t help but think about how we as Americans and perhaps even as humans, seem to have forgotten how to journal in diaries. Be it because of our fixation with technology and entertainment or our inability to be bored or whatever it is, we just do not do much of it anymore. I can’t help but think that historians will have so much digital information to dig through, tons and tons of official documentation about this time we are living in, but so little of it will be personal thoughts on day to day life.

Are we better off without the diary? Are our lives improved by not taking the time each day to write down what happened and how we feel about it? Have we forgotten how to journal in the last 75 years since Churchill’s time? Is this what regular blogging is for our time? I honestly don’t know but I do like the romantic idea of becoming a much more prolific diarist. I do know that when I take the time to journal daily, that my mind is more at ease and my thoughts less jumbled. Besides, journaling regularly will give me a great use for all these fantastic notebooks and writing instruments that I love so dearly. What a concept! If it was important to our second President and so many others, maybe it does have value after all.

There are two types of people in the world. People who love to read and those that I believe must have a large, gaping hole in their souls. Bold statement I know but I make it from a place of love. I love to read and books have played, at least in some part, a role in many of my memories. 

As a child, I was that weird kid that always had a paperback with him. I would take a small stack with me on vacation and read the entire drive while my brother and sister slept. I would read late into the night if the book was particularly compelling (which most were) and would go to school groggy the next day. I would even sneak books to church and my friend Todd and I would read instead of listening to the sermon. 

Now, as a father of four, I am striving to raise lovers of reading, although to varying degrees of success. My oldest has gone through phases where she has read a lot, but not so much now as a 16 year-old. My 13 year-old is not a fan of the physical act of reading but loves audiobooks and audio dramas in podcast form. That brings us to my younger two, 9 and 7, who both are showing signs of loving to read, especially the youngest. She always has stacks of books on her floor and loves to read out loud or to herself. 

In thinking about the kids and what might be a good book to recommend to them from the library, I tried to remember some of my favorites from my pre-teen years. This was the period of time that I really took charge of my book and genre selection. I remember spending hours at the library or at the Waldenbooks or B. Dalton Books in the local mall. I would peruse the book covers, looking for something to grab my attention, and then read the summaries on the backs to help me make my selections. I even got book catalogs delivered by mail so I could keep up with what was coming out soon in my genres of choice, science fiction and fantasy. Yes, I was that kid. 

Here is a short list of series and books that I loved from that period of time, and these have certainly continued to influence my reading to this day. 

• Xanth series by Piers Anthony – Some of my first fantasy that I just couldn’t get enough of. Weird but wonderful.
• Elfquest series by Wendy and Richard Pini) – Sparked a love of comics that has lasted to this day.
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien – A lifelong love and I definitely read the Fellowship of the Ring during church.
• Knight Rider and the A-Team – Books based on the shows, not top tier literature but who doesn’t love KITT and Mr. T?
• Mack Bolan/The Executioner series by Don Pendleton – Shoot-em-up pulp stories that I devoured from used bookstores.
• The Epic of Flight by Time-Life Books – These were a large series of coffee table-sized hardbacks that chronicled the history of aviation. I would check them out from the library, one at a time, and read them cover to cover. I loved them so much that I bought them a few years ago and have them on my bookshelf. 
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury – The first time I read these, I read my dad’s copies that we still had at that time. Classic science fiction which was so ahead of their time.

So many good books there plus so many others. Now I do just about all of my reading in audiobook format since my eyes don’t allow me to read without some serious magnification. But I still love it, maybe even more than I did when I was 12. Maybe.

But, there is still room for more and to that end, I present the Sketchnote Ideabook. This is a product that is currently on Kickstarter with about three weeks to go in its funding campaign. The product was developed by noted sketchnote expert and author Mike Rohde, in collaboration with Airship Notebooks. Sketchnoting is a style of note-taking that utilizes a more creative method of taking notes in order to improve information retention and to make the process more fun and interesting.

These notebooks are lovely to look at and feature heavy, high-quality paper which should be suitable for just about any pen or pencil. The project fully funded within just a few hours, We ordered a six-pack of the books to share with my art-loving daughter and fellow stationery addict father. We are all looking forward to getting them once they ship sometime in October and I will follow up with a review. I recommend you take advantage of the Kickstarter while the prices are still well below the future expected retail price of $25.

MSNBC recently did a video segment about Field Notes and how they keep the secrets from being spoiled. It offers a fun inside look at the company and its iconic notebooks.

Baron Fig recently released a limited edition notebook in partnership with CodeAcademy called Computerworld. It was meant to be a celebration of technology and the way that analog and digital tools can come together to create amazing things. After seeing them, I had a feeling that they would be right up my alley given how much of my life is spent using both types of tools. I was fortunate enough to pick up a box of three notebooks before the edition sold out and I am very pleased with my purchase.

Let’s get the specs out of the way first. These 72-page notebooks are in the Vanguard line and are Flagship-sized. In plain English, this means they are soft cover notebooks and are 5.4 inches by 7.7 inches in size. The ruling found inside are one of the unique features of Computerworld. They feature what Baron Fig calls Code Ruling which has numbered rules and bullets for indents. This could be useful for those who write out their code first but also works for making lists and general note taking.

The notebooks shipped in a sturdy, brightly colored box featuring the fun Computerworld illustration and logo design that you will also find on the notebooks themselves. Inside are three notebooks, each with different art detailing how computer hardware, software and data are like living things. They each also have unique bright colors for the back and inner covers, coming in pink, yellow and blue. Along with unique colors, each notebook features a poem inspired by the three destinations, “Software Skies,” “Hardware Fields” and “Data Valley.” These poems are found inside the back cover and they tie into the art design for each book. This type of attention to detail is typical for Baron Fig and really shows how they are attempting to present a cohesive vision with this product.

As we move to the inside, we find the standard high-quality Baron Fig paper. It takes pencil and fountain pen ink equally well, being toothy enough for pencil yet smooth enough for ink. It even took my daughter’s brush pens well that she uses for art. The only thing that bled through were her alcohol and watercolor markers which is to be expected. She simply put a sheet of sketch paper behind it while coloring in her doodle and that kept the bleed from reaching the next page. Also in the box was a sheet of fun stickers in the same style as all the rest of the set.

Overall, my thoughts on these Computerworld edition notebooks are similar to how I felt about the Baron Fig Composition notebooks. Great paper and fun details combined with a high level of quality make for an excellent notebook. Especially considering that I only paid $15 for the box of 3. I just wish I would have bought more before they sold out.

I first heard about this book while listening to Covered, an author interview podcast by the great Harry C. Marks. In this interview, David Sax, the author of The Revenge of Analog, really struck me as someone who knew his stuff and was passionate about telling others about it. To this point, Mr. Sax is a journalist and author who has written for the New York Times, GQ and many other publications. I read, or rather listened to it, over a period of about 10 days and spoiler alert, I really enjoyed it. I tried to listen to just a chapter or two at a time, to allow me to take it in without rushing through it.

In thinking about this book and how I wanted to review it, I thought it would be useful to share some of the things that I wrote down while listening to the author read the audiobook version. These are the things that stood out to me enough that I wanted to remember them by writing them down. I will focus on the chapters that really spoke to me rather than covering the entirety of the book. The book is called The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter, but could also be titled The Comeback of Analog. It really does detail how a wide variety of analog businesses and interests have bounced back in what he calls a post-digital world.

Introduction and Chapter 1 – The Revenge of Vinyl

• In this new age of Amazon and other online retailers of goods, we are paralyzed by too much choice, too many options.
• There is no room for serendipity, to discover new things completely outside of what we normally choose because the algorithms keep pushing more things ‘like’ what you just bought.
• With these sites, you no longer wander the aisles of a store, allowing your eyes to be struck by a great book cover or unusual looking product.
• Vinyl albums never truly went away, despite newer technologies putting a huge dent in the industry. He talked about a company that presses albums and all that process, super interesting stuff.
• Details how the annual Record Store Day came about and how that has played a huge role in revitalizing the community around vinyl records. This particularly hit home for me since a good friend of ours named Beth took my 13 year old daughter to one of our local record stores (Ralph’s Records) and she had a blast.
• I learned that the grooves and bumps in the vinyl are a physical translation of the music and the more complex the music, the harder it is to translate to analog.
• I grew up listening to vinyl, cassette tapes and even 8 tracks, as that was all we had so this chapter was a fun trip down memory lane. I remember buying the 45 RPM singles and loving the B-sides as much or more than the featured track on the A-side. The first ever piece of music that I bought with my own money was People are People by Depeche Mode, on vinyl.
• One of the reasons vinyl has come back so well is because listening to it is such a tactile experience, it engages nearly all of your senses. You look at the album cover and sleeve, you pull out the record and blow off the dust before putting it on the player. You hear the needle as it first touches the spinning album. This makes for a sensory experience, rather than just hearing a song.

Chapter 2 – The Revenge of Paper

• All about paper notebooks and the rise of Moleskine.
• Writing things down is a better memory tool than typing it due to how it engages more of your brain in the process.

Chapter 4 – The Revenge of Board Games

• Board gaming struggled during the early 2000s as most games were copycats of others or were just reissues with pop culture branding. Think Star Wars Monopoly and Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit.
• There is a huge renaissance in board gaming. Board game shops featuring game nights, knowledgeable staff and community focused events have helped tremendously.
• Games like Ticket to Ride (our family favorite) and Settlers of Catan have led the way.
• Board games on Kickstarter have been very successful

Chapter 6 – The Revenge of Retail

• Customers are realizing that shopping in a store for certain items is a better overall experience. The ability to interact with expert staff leads to better choices being made. This is largely why my wife refuses to shop online for groceries and other household items. She enjoys the personal interactions with both store employees and other shoppers and she truly values the tactile experience of seeing, touching and sometimes even smelling the things she is buying.
• We are not paralyzed by infinite choices as we have what is in front of us to choose from. More likely to buy something on a whim and possibly discover your new favorite thing.
• Online retailers still losing money, despite all the innovation and supposedly low overhead.
• The Internet will never have a ‘nice’ location.

Chapter 8 – The Revenge of School

• Digital technologies in the classroom were supposed to improve education but it has not.
• Adding iPads and laptops has actually introduced more distractions, hurting children’s ability to process and retain knowledge.
• Taking notes by keyboard is far less effective for retention than handwritten notes.
• Schools are now circling back to more tactile, analog tools for educating like Legos and hand-on learning experiences.

Chapter 9 – The Revenge of Analog in Digital

• Adobe, the software giant behind Photoshop, offers mediatation time for employees
• Facebook now has an internal Analog Research Division, creating print materials, posters, etc.
• Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, requires meeting attendees to read the material being covered silently before discussion begins. No PowerPoint presentations allowed either.

There was much, much more in the book than what I have detailed here, but these were my thoughts while reading. I encourage you to check it out for yourself. I think it will give you a better appreciation of the analog things around you and the businesses behind them.

This story has been around for awhile but I love it as it relates to two things that I love: baseball and beautiful penmanship. Long time baseball coach Don Wakamatsu, now with my favorite team, the Texas Rangers, is renowned for his fantastic calligraphy. When he does the lineup cards before each game, the cards are truly works of art. Linked below are a couple of articles written about him and his passion for calligraphy. Enjoy!

Baseball Coach Brings His Beautiful Calligraphy to the Baseball Dugout

The Write Way: KC’s Coach’s Lineup Cards are Artful

Another Major League coach, Jerry Narron, also does his lineup cards in calligraphy for his team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Fox Sports did a video about him and his process and that video is below.

I had heard a lot of praise about Baron Fig and their “tools for thinkers” over the last few years, but had not taken the plunge on purchasing any of their products. I had heard about their excellent paper and their well designed stationery items and was always just on the verge of buying. So, when a coupon to save $10 off an order of $20 or more was posted to the Erasable Podcast Facebook group, I thought now is as good a time as any to get a few things and see what all the fuss is about. One product in particular caught my eye and that was the Vanguard Composition Notebook.

As a child of the greatest decade ever, the 1980s, I was well familiar with composition books. In my time, they typically had black marbled covers and had stitched binding. They were softcovers yet were sturdy enough to last despite being chucked around and used hard. The paper was never that great but in the age of Bic ballpoints and pencils, they were good enough. I’ve even continued using them to this day, mostly to capture notes from audio podcasts and books that I am listening to. But, as an adult, I have often wished that these were just better. Better quality, maybe even just a bit more grown-up.

That’s where the motivation to purchase the Baron Fig Composition Notebook came from. And in many ways, it delivers on being better. Now, is it truly a “composition book?” No, not really and that’s okay too. The first thing I noticed was how much smaller it is than it’s larger inspiration. It is A5-ish in size, coming in at 5.4 inches by 7.7 inches. It also contains just 72 pages, whereas most composition books are 100 pages. Essentially these notebooks are not meant to be a replacement for the classic, but perhaps an evolution of it.

After using them for several days, I can say with certainty that the hype is well-deserved. The paper is lovely to use. It is toothy enough to be great for pencils and yet takes fountain pens and rollerballs with ease. There is slight shadow on the opposite side when using wetter nibs but not enough to cause me any pause. This excellent paper is stitch bound and the binding feels very tight and secure. The books come in a pack of 3, and have composition book style covers in black, green and yellow. They also feature a “This book belongs to” inside the front cover and a chart of “Useful Information” inside the back. The useful information includes a handy conversion chart and some English helps such as a parts of speech and punctuation guide. These are neat additions that show Baron Fig’s attention to detail.

I do wish that the ruling was slightly darker so as to be more visible. I realize that most eyes can see them just fine, but not mine. I also was saddened that you can no longer get the Archer pencils with the books as part of the School Set that Baron Fig used to offer. Alas, the Archers are no longer in stock and there is no indication that they will return.

My final verdict is that I am pleased with these notebooks. Their design, paper quality and size make them a great addition to my collection.

I purchased these for $12 for a pack of 3 and I even got free shipping due to my order exceeding $25! If you’d like to take advantage of the same $10 off offer that I did, just click here!

The opinions included are mine and mine alone.

I thought I would share a short video from a new series, Samll Thing Big Idea, by TED. This series  takes a look at small things that have had big impacts on the world we live in. This particular episode is interesting to me as it looks at the humble but wonderful pencil. The narrator for this episode is none other that Caroline Weaver, the owner and proprietor of CW Pencil in New York City. CW Pencil is a store completely dedicated to pencils, especially wooden ones. She takes us through a short history of the pencil and how it