Fountain Pen Rotation: What’s in Your Cup this Month?

Did you miss any of the prior month’s blog posts? Welp, here is your chance to catch up…

• Fountain Pen Rotation: What’s in Your Cup this Month? It’s a new month, so what’s in your pen cup? Time to shelve your current choice of pens in favor of new pens. Don’t let those long-forgotten and neglected pens develop a complex. Also, let’s review how the pens from last month fared? And the obligatory recap of the prior month’s posts.
• Why Film Photography; Push/Pull Unlike digital photography which is all about instant gratification, film photography offers fun options some because of the camera and some because of the film. But you really don’t know until after the film is developed. I am writing about a topic I incorporated into my first test roll and true to form I didn’t follow directions.
• Writing with CM and Italic Nibs. A month ago I wrote a post detailing oblique nibs, this month I have an italic and CM nib inked up. Let’s compare how they write based on the notes I made from Formal penmanship and other papers.
• 41% Liked Having Physical Records to Look At. Several weeks back I wrote about the commercial distribution of music – specifically the media formats and ownership. It is well know I am a big fan of owning music (records). When asked, 41% of LP buyers said they bought records to look at. My grandson this value is understated and not the rantings of an “old guy.”
• Inkwells. I suffer from the BSO (bright, shiny, object) syndrome. Recently, I discovered inkwells – really. This seems appropriate since I collect fountain pens – my wife calls me a loser for good reason. Inkwells were once as commonplace as mobile phones, but do they have a place in contemporary society?
• #ThrowbackThursday. After three years of posts, the desire to share the older stuff becomes more relevant. I used to lose sleep wondering why a fountain pen nib is called a NIB?
• Book Genre LitRPG? I read many book review blogs, most based on topics of interest. A couple months back I stumbled upon a blog discussing novels that included Role-Play Game mechanics. WHAT? I played D&D in the early 80s, I was into a fantasy book series staring Cormac MacArt, a Gael who joins a band of Danish Vikings during the reign of King Arthur (by Robert Howard author of Conan the Barbarian and father of the swords and sorcery genre). I was very intrigued and confused as to how this was going to happen. Yes, I went looking for my 20-sided dice.
• Welcome to “Explore” For all my complaints a couple months back about Flickr, welp they surprised me with an honor.

Pens in the News

Banned Books List 2025. “In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America found more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles, with about 45% of the bans occurring in Florida and 36% in Iowa.

How much can a pencil sharpener mean to its owner? “ICHEON, Gyeonggi Province — How much can a pencil sharpener mean to its owner? During an interview with The Korea Herald on Jan. 14, he shared a binder overflowing with letters, each highlighted in yellow to emphasize the parts that he thought were especially touching.

Analog Adventures

• Ozzy Osbourne Shares Heartbreaking Message to Fans: I Want to ‘Say a Proper Goodbye’— reunites with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward on July 5, 2025, is working with Paramount+ to launch a new documentary, titled “No Escape From Now,” to chronicle his battle with Parkinson’s disease—among other health issues—and his last show.
• 49 years on, the Canon AE-1 is still a gateway drug to film cameras. When it launched in 1976, the Canon AE-1 took the photography world by storm. Here was a camera that made advanced features affordable to the mass market, and the camera sold like crazy to those who had always wanted to try film photography.
• I love retro cameras, but if there’s one thing I hate about the vintage design, it’s this. Vintage film SLRs from the 1980s and earlier, like the Canon AE-1 and the Pentax K1000 don’t really have much of a grip.
• Seeing red? Harman releases new Harman Red 125 film based on Phoenix emulsion. This unique film enables photographers to explore creative possibilities by shooting through the back of the color film, exposing the red-sensitive layer first.

Blogging Updates

Last month I asked for help naming a new content stream for the blog. I opted for “Off on a Tangent.” Content published in this stream will vary and pertain to who knows what. My first post was published, and it generated many comments which makes me grateful. It is always a risk when publishing something new that readership will ignore it. Thank you to all who read and commented on the Book Genre LitRPG?

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