FPN user Brian Anderson has made the most amazing pen case from a printer’s chest he picked up at an antique shop. The chest of drawers was in pretty poor shape when he started, so it must have taken a lot of work to get it to the state it’s in now. The before and after pics are fantastic.

Well, kind of – it’s Sanrio’s headquarters – an office block with a Hello Kitty on the side.

Found another interesting blog via The Happiness Project – How To Live. Here, the author offers a recipe for happiness, from Roy Baumeister’s Meanings of Life:

• form and maintain positive social relationships
• satisfy your basic need for meaning
• maintain goals and aspirations that are achievable
• do reasonably well in objective terms
• cultivate self-flattering, optimistic illusions

Another one to add to my blogroll. Thanks, Gretchen!

• How To Live

While on a much-needed clutter-clearing mission of part of my wing over here at GuitarPr0n towers, I found something that I thought I’d thrown away months ago, a booklet that came free with Total Guitar magazine last year, and contained some fine quality Guitar Pr0nography.

“Cor! He’s looking well!” – Me, February 2005.

The Jack Daniels has been ditched in favour of Guinness. Good choice.

The article talks about how to replicate the sound of various guitar heroes, and says about Slash…

Let’s face it: this is a fair old stash for someone who claims he’s not that interested in gear – and a bloody expensive mountain to climb if you’re dedicated to replicating Slash’s tone with total accuracy. And that’s before you even consider all the Marlboros, Jack Daniels and hair extensions…

To read the rest of it, visit our good, good friends at All Things Considered… Slash! – Thanks WOTW… here’s a picture just for you to say thanks…

The Jimmy. Le Sex. The Wizard. Yes, he is rather, isn’t he?

This fabulous booklet also contains pics of Brian May, Kirk Hammett and Jimi Hendrix. More pix to follow soon.

Advice from Total Guitar on how to sound like Slash when your budget is, er… duff. (sorry)

You’re not going to like this very much, we’re afraid. A Les Paul Standard will sting you for a good £2,200, while a couple of Alnico II Pro humbuckers will cost about £90 apiece. Admittedly, Slash did have a signature model created for him – but only 5- were ever made, of which Slash had two (one of which was nicked) and another recently went for $7000 at auction. Stop daydreaming, pal – it ain’t gonna happen.

Equally hard to find is Slash’s signature Marshall. Only 3000 were produced, and these days you’ve more chance of finding Richey Edwards. Fortunately, Slash’s trademark pedals are somewhat cheaper and easier to pin down. A Boss DD-6 Delay pedal will hit your wallet for £129, while a Boss GE-7 Equalizer is yours for about £65. Throw in a Dunlop Crybaby pedal for £110 and you’ve got all the effects bases covered (assuming you’re happy to settle for just the one wah pedal).

But what about the guitar and amp? Even if you’re on a tight budget, all is not necessarily lost. There are hundreds of Les Paul copies out there, which theoretically should get you near the Slashter’s tone – but such is the wildly varying quality that we recommend playing it safe and shelling out £599 for an Epiphone LP Standard. You’ll find cheaper copies than that, of course, but if you’re after a pro Slash tone, then you can’t afford to go much lower. For a cheap amp that deals well with G N’ R riffing, meanwhile, we’d advise stumping up £344 for the Marshall AVT50. Finally, Slash prefers Ernie Ball KPS 11s and Jim Dunlop Tortex 1.14mm picks.

(content originally appeared in Total Guitar and was found on Rik’s Velvet Revolver Site

HOW TO SOLO…THE SLASH WAY

RULE 1 Be spontaneous: “I don’t write solos like Judas Priest or some of those other two-guitar bands where they’d write the whole solo and harmonize it. For me solos are usually very spontaneous and I usually end up keeping the original idea that came to mind the first time.”

RULE 2 Don’t worry about making mistakes: “When I’m writing a solo I’m wary of going back. I’d rather play it again then listen to it, in case I get too analytical. If it gets me during the performance then I know it’s okay. The thing is it needs to have a great flow. So sometimes if you’re rolling and there’s a mistake, just leave it. In the studio you can go back and fix it.”

RULE 3 Invest in a good, big hat. Wear it.

RULE 4 Stand out from the rest of the band: If you’re ever fortunate enough to make a music video, choose a sparse location in which to play your guitar solo. A desert, cliff top or the middle of the ocean (see about) are all ideal places to throw some classic rock shapes – completely isolated from your bandmates.

Latest Update: Added a photo of it next to a couple of other pens for size comparison.

Since I was so impressed with the pencil version of the Birdie, Simon at Cult Pens sent us the fountain pen version to review – in both medium and fine points. The pencil version is made useful by its small size, but made likeable by the solidity and simplicity. Would the same appeal still work in a fountain pen?

What Is It?

A very small fountain pen. The Birdie fountain pen is thicker than the pencil and ballpoint versions – 8mm diameter instead of 5mm – but is still very small for a fountain pen. The size is just about right for fitting in the pen loop in a Filofax, but probably not the very tiny ones some notebooks come with.

• Stainless Steel Casing.
• Simple, effective pocket clip.
• Fine or Medium nibs available. In the UK, the fine nib isn’t normally available, but Cult Pens have some.
• Steel Nib.
• Supplied with Converter to use bottled ink.
• RRP £9.95, £7.95 at Cult Pens.

Looks

Like the pencil, the looks are probably best described as ‘simple’. It’s just a brushed steel tube. The fountain pen version narrows in a step towards the top of the barrel, and there’s a black plastic ring where the cap pushes on. The stepped-down narrowing of the barrel makes it look a little like a Parker 25 in miniature.

The clip is just a shaped piece of steel, with a cut out section.

Removing the cap shows the grip section, in black plastic, with vertical grooves, and the plain steel nib. The nib is in the ‘folded’ style that Lamy are known best for, though I believe it was originally a MontBlanc style. There is no plating or patterning to the nib, just “PILOT” and a letter for the nib width – M or F – unless that’s how you tell what sex your Birdie is.

Feel

Like the pencil, the feel is very solid. The brushed steel is nice and ‘grippy’, and everything about the Birdie feels well put together. Whilst the cap doesn’t actually click into place, it feels nice and definite, and the clip feels good and tough.

In Use

There is good news and bad news here. It’s mostly good, but a few compromises have to be accepted in a pen this small – and there are a couple of things that could have been done better.

Filling the Birdie is easy. It can take Pilot cartridges, if you prefer the easy option, or if you prefer the fun of bottled ink, it is supplied with a squeezable sac converter – similar to an old Parker Aerometric filler. Unfortunately, this is the first thing that could have been better – the sac is black, so you can’t tell how much ink is in there. This is perfectly common, but always seems a shame to me. Fifty years ago, Parker managed to make fillers with clear sacs, and made them so well that many are still around, still working, and still clear. You have to open the barrel to check the ink level in these, but at least you can. With a black sac, you’re left to guess.

As I said, this is a problem in plenty of other pens, and it just means you either take the risk of running out of ink, carry a cartridge just in case, or refill more often to make sure you don’t run out. It’s also a problem with the converter, really, not the pen itself, and not all manufacturers include a converter at all with their cheaper models – Pilot certainly deserve credit for including one with a pen costing less than £10.

Once filled, both pens wrote well, immediately. The fine nib, oddly, wrote a much darker, and not much thinner line than the medium. This probably won’t be the case with all of these pens, but does suggest that the nibs will vary somewhat. Having discussed this with Simon, we think the writing of the medium nib is probably more average – smooth and reliable, and fairly dry. A relatively dry line means less chance of smearing ink, because the line will dry quicker, but less saturated colour (or less solid black).

Personally, I like a fairly wet line, because I like my Noodler’s ink laid down nice and black, so I’m glad the fine is a bit unusually wet, but if you have similar tastes, you may find the Birdie a bit too dry for you.

I use all other fountain pens unposted – I hold the cap in my hand, or put it down somewhere, rather than putting it on the other end of the pen. Even my preference for short pens wasn’t enough for the Birdie unposted, though. The cap fits neatly over the narrowed section, and leaves the posted pen feeling like a single tube again.

With the cap posted on the barrel like this, the balance is good, and the pen is long enough to be comfortable in use.

The black plastic grip is the other thing that I think Pilot could have done better with. I think the vertical-only grooves are there to help the cap slide on and off, but they don’t do much to help you hold the pen. I haven’t found slipping to be much of a problem with it yet, but if you sometimes do have trouble with slippery pens, the Birdie may not be ideal.

Despite these little niggles, all things considered, this is a very good little pen. Bearing in mind how small it is, and the price, I’m very impressed that Pilot have managed to put together a fountain pen that isn’t just good for its size – it’s just good. It’s not the pen I’d reach for if I had a lot of writing to do, but it’s more than good enough for a carry-everywhere pen.

Here’s the Birdie sitting on top of my Filofax – that’s a Pocket Filofax, not the standard size.

It fits very neatly into the pen loop, which most other pens are far too big for.

I then noticed that I could put the fountain pen in the loop, clip the mechanical pencil Birdie to the outside of the loop, and the Filofax still zipped up neatly. Taking it a step further, I clipped the other fountain pen to the outside of the loop too, and it still zipped up neatly, with two fountain pens and a pencil all fitted to the pen loop.

I’m not sure it that says more about how small Pilot can make these things, or about how much space Filofax waste inside their organisers

For a bit more comparison, here is the Birdie next to a couple of other pens – the Pelikan Go! and the Sheaffer Saratoga Snorkel.

The Pelikan (top) is a reasonably chunky pen. The Saratoga is probably a fairly average thickness compared to most modern pens, but a little longer than most.

The Birdie is not the best pen you can buy, but it just might be the best you can buy for under £10 – and you won’t have to leave it behind for lack of pocket space.

And if drawing is more your thing than writing, this one gives quite decent line variation (for a modern pen, anyway), and turning the nib upside down gives thinner lines than a 0.25mm Rotring Isograph.

To finish, I tested the old saying, and it turned out not to be true. The Birdie in the hand is not worth two in the bush.

Conclusion

This isn’t the best pen I’ve ever used, but it’s amazingly close, considering the size and price. It compares well with budget models from Parker and Lamy, and if you have reason to want something small, I think it’s a real bargain.

If you don’t actually need something small, there’s less reason to go for the Birdie, but it’s still worth considering – it writes well, seems very solid and reliable, and it’s a bit different too.

Related

• Birdies at Cult Pens: Fountain Pen, Mechanical Pencil and Ballpoint.
• Birdie Mechanical Pencil: Reviewed here at PigPog.

• Suw puts the Chocolate in Chocolate and Vodka.

Lots of information and history on chocolate – interesting stuff, and real dark chocolate is surprisingly good for you. Hmm. Time for a bit of a health kick – where did we put those chocolate bars we bought yestereay?

It is the sad anniversary of the death of the great John Henry Bonham. Sometimes you never really accept the death of a person, and John is one of those people. I speak of him in the present, because present he is, in all his larger than life glory, everyday in my life. His presence is huge on all the Zeppelin tracks, and you can’t help but be amazed every time you hear hear him or watch a DVD, no matter how many times you have heard the songs. He is truly awesome – definitely the best drummer rock n roll has ever produced.

The time of his death was a real shock to all Led Zep fans. I remember hearing it on the news and thinking, hoping, that they must be wrong. I called my friend and when she picked up the phone to say hello, it was obvious she was crying. And then I just cried too, and we both cried on the phone not saying anything other than, “Oh no…”

One thing that really annoyed me was the media portrayal of John in the aftermath of his passing. It always seemed to focus on the negative. His bad temper, his groupie antics, tearing up hotels, but John was so much more than those moments. By all accounts of people who knew him, he was a wonderful fun man with a heart of gold who loved his family, his cars, motorcycles and boats, and his farm. He doled out bear hugs, and big smiles, lots of laughs, and of course, the best drumming ever. As the years pass it seems that more and more people are catching on to just how awesome his talent was, and he has been given the credit he deserves. Richly deserved credit, for his drumming is the blueprint for much that has followed in the rock music world. Mr Bonham is simply the gold standard in his craft.

I like to imagine him hauling his drum kit up to the Pearly Gates and getting the party started! Listen carefully to the next thunderstorm…that just has to be Bonzo, playing away for all the heavenly host!

In an interview, Robert Plant said that he had written this song “Trouble Your Money” because he missed his dear friend John. And we do too. We love you Bonzo.

I had a dream last night – didn’t come as a surprise
When I woke up wet with the moon in my eyes
Just the same old dream – like the one before
But this time I thought you were there for sure
Hot-blooded, red-handed by me
I don’t know what I’m gonna do

So when I wake up – every night it’s the same
I could swear now I do as I fumble in the dark
For the line or the light from the tear in my heart
It’s here again – hot-blooded, heavy-headed – looking for you
And here it comes again –

Now I will carry the torch – I will come with the flame
For the friend that I meet in my sleep with no name
Had a dream last night – didn’t come as a surprise
When I woke up wet with the moon in my eyes
Here I am, here I am again, looking for you
And here it comes again –
Every night it’s the same –