pens

I’ve been trying out the 0.5mm version of the Pilot G2 recently, and it just about converted me from my Uni-ball habit. However, I got into another habit years ago of clipping a pen into the neck of my T-shirt so I always have one at the ready. With the Uni-balls, the clip on their caps is attached near the very top, leaving little above the neckline of the shirt. With the G2s, the clip is a comparatively long ways from the top, particularly with the clicker unclicked; this tends to poke into my neck a bit. Yet this is a quibble, really. The 0.5 writes well, and I like the ink once it has dried. My experience has been that it behooves me to wait just a moment before turning the page and to not drag my hand too much while writing.

Mike Rohde experimented with several different pens for writing in his Moleskine, including the popular PilotG2, and settled on a Niji Stylist 100.

Me, I dig the G2, but the Uni-ball has been my “default” pen for years now.

So what’s the big whoop-dee-doo about the HPDA?

First of all, what is it? Here’s Merlin Mann’s original post: Introducing the Hipster PDA. For more details, including lots of permutations, there’s the wiki.43folders.com Hipster PDA entry. A couple of favorites, the Guest Check PDA and the Zipster. The Hipster Mini — using business cards instead of index cards — also deserves a mention.

The PDA acronym has been expanded in various ways, the most popular being the obvious “Personal Digital Assistant,” but its original meaning was actually “Parietal Disgorgement Aid.”

Merlin’s progeny has hit the big time lately, with articles in Wired and the Washington Post. Pretty spiffy for the lowly binder clip and index card. :)

A favorite quote: “The number of gadgets folks lug around is creeping ever upward, but do you really need to carry $1,000 worth of equipment to have coffee with friends and be able to write down what albums you should check out?” Sounds like a moment of Zen Pockets to me. Speaking of pockets, the HPDA fits perfectly in the back pockets of my cycling jersey and works well while I’m out hiking, too.

Anyhow, what’s the big deal? HPDA fans around the web (check out Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us for lots and lots) are not uniform in their reasons for using it, but they seem to share a desire for simplicity in something that should be simple — recording and recovering information in a super-portable manner. Dropping it on the ground might at worst scuff or bend a card. Replacing a lost or filled HPDA is pretty easy. Oh, and the lack of batteries is pretty damn cool.

For once, an Internet meme is useful in real life. Fancy that.

Novel-writing means a lot of ink on a lot of paper, and I’ve gone through a lot of each over the years. For pens, I’ve settled on a black Sanford Uni-Ball Vision Micro. Makes a good line, dries relatively quickly, and feels good in the hand. I’m less fussy with the paper, except that it should be ruled, narrowly, and most likely in a spiral notebook, or occasionally on legal pads.