iPhone Pocket Sketches Notebook

iPhone Pocket Sketches Notebook

Picture the group of tech-savvy folk at the café, enjoying their cappuccino and witty repartee when suddenly a light bulb goes off. Ah-ha, a great new idea for an iPhone app! But how to capture the moment and develop it just that little further whilst it’s still fresh in the head and surrounded by inspirational people all eager to assist? Well thanks to Pocket Sketches, the new iPhone sketchbooks are at the ready - a small notebook with a real life size iPhone screen template printed on the page so you can draw and layout exactly how your app will display on an iPhone screen.

Light card cover with 16 pages stapled in.

The paper is printed with faint gridlines, with iPhone template superimposed on one side.

At 89 x 141mm overall size, the notebook is a little smaller than A6.

Well, I don’t actually have an iPhone, and I’m not a tech designer guy, so I just used it as a normal sort of notebook. It worked OK.

Inside front cover. A place to put your contact details so if lost the nice person can return it to you...or at least know whose app idea they are stealing.

Inside rear cover – just look at how much money my app is going to make for me!

The notebook isn’t particularly robust or durable, but then I imagine it is not intended to have a long life. It’s to replace serviettes, hamburger bags, used envelopes and all those other bits of scrap paper that get pressed into service when inspiration suddenly strikes. I haven't really had any expereince with highly specialised notebooks before so this was a novel experience for me, and it seems a really good idea for those in the mobile app industry.

To be honest I’m a little surprised the folk at Pocket Sketches sent me some samples, but for me the notebook was such a specialised and unusual concept that I was happy to accept and put a mini review on the blog. Being tech savvy folk they even included a little sheet suggesting keywords and links to put in the review to help their search engine results ranking.

Keun Young Notebook Review

Keun Young Notebook Review

As if PAS (Pencil Acquisition Syndrome) wasn’t enough, I think I also have NID (Notebook Inferiority Disorder). You see, whilst I want to write profound important stuff in fancy journals, they intimidate me. My drivel isn’t worthy of a magnificent Moleskine, a resplendent Rhodia or a classic Clairefontaine. Something simpler and workman like…a Field Notes or Rite In The Rain, that’s more my line. I feel a little more comfortable writing shopping lists, reminders and other such mundane stuff in those sort of utilitarian notebooks. But even so, they are still somewhat superior products and NID is always there…on the fringes…waiting.

Ages ago Kent from PenciLog was reading my, and other reviews of Field Notes and he recalled the simple common Korean notebooks used in yesteryear, that are now rather unfashionable but still reasonably commonly available, and he decided to send me a couple.

I will keep this review pretty brief because these are basic no nonsense simple notebooks.

The brand Kent sent me was Keun Young.

The notebook is the perfect size for me because it fits easily into my pants pockets. At 124mm (5 in.) x 84mm (3 ¼ in.) it is just that fraction smaller than the many pocket notebooks that I always find just a little too big. Maybe I have small pockets? I don’t know.

There are 26 un-numbered pages. Top right of each outer corner is day-month-year (I think).

The notebook can be opened and laid-flat. The pages are stitched together, but then glued to the cardboard cover. The stitches do not go through the cover so this means the back page has a small thin strip glued down its centre so it doesn’t open quite right. But that’s a minor point. Only the back page is affected – all the other pages open properly.

The pages are lined. The paper is “normal” as far as a philistine like me can tell. It works fine with pencil, coloured pencil and ballpoint. Heavy use of a highlighter will bleed through, as will marker pens. I imagine FP ink would too.

Personally the cover design looks basic, old fashioned, economy-grade and "Asian" to my western eyes, but then western eyes are not the target market.

This notebook has lived in my pockets for a little under 6 months, so you know how much I actually write in it. The cover has taken some abrasion damage, and has some dog-ears, but it has stood up remarkably well. The pages are still solidly attached to the cover and the notebook looks like it could survive another 6 months of life in the pocket.

It's far to say I had rather low expectations of this notebook, expecting it to fall apart, tear, etc but I have ended up being impressed. In Korea it sells for about 300 Won (27 cents US) i.e. next to nothing. It is a sturdy and durable notebook, and a good size for your pocket. If they got a cover design more appealing to my eyes, offered unlined and (my personal choice) graph squared options then as far as I'm concerned they would be onto a real winner .

Here’s another one. Exactly the same, only different colour scheme and different brand name on the back. So, I guess one printing works – many brands.

From The Desk 1

I am a fan of the On The Desk, At Any Time blog by Kossy in Japan. Taking some inspiration from his blog, I am going to have some occassional brief postings on things “from the desk” (mine or yours).  It might be an item I am actually using, or something I want to post about but don't feel inspired to do a full post or review on, or..? Though many of the postings will not be about mechanical pencils, I hope that overall it will enhance rather than dilute this blog.
To kick off then, something from Kossy himself, a desk notepad that he sent me quite a long time ago. I sort of felt it was too good to use, but now I am going to start.

Presentation box and notepad. Cherry blossom I suppose?

Being Japanese the notepad cover opens “back to front”, i.e. left to right. The red cover is very thick cardboard with a very heavy 9mm (3/8th in.) thick baseboard. The pad is A6 size and comes with a small round wooden pencil. The back cover of the pad slides into a cover on the baseboard and is thus replaceable.

There is no branding discernable to my eyes, but I imagine this marking on the cover means something?

Not much else to say. As for the quality of the paper, etc well Kossy doesn’t speak much English but (with the help of Google translate?) he included this note, “I bought it a old shop. The shop is very famous in Japan. Because always the Royal Family of Japan chose it.” In a country like Japan, I figure that's a pretty solid endorsement and worth more than any comment I might make.

Thanks Kossy.

The Vespiary Notebook

My notebook benefactor in Canada has been at it again. This time a little notebook from The Vespiary. Well, there’s a new word for me for a start. Basically vespiary is to wasps, what apiary is to bees. The Vespiary is a book restoration and bindery, the home business of a lady out there in Montana. Montana – memories of reading and watching westerns, the Badlands…where exactly is (are?) the Badlands? It seems a hard place to pin down. The Vespiary has also taught me another word – upcycling.
The Vespiaries products are all handmade. My notebook is a small hardcover notebook, 140mm tall x 95mm wide x 14mm thick. It oozes sturdiness. The pages are plain unlined white paper. I’m no expert on paper, but this paper feels a little thicker, and has a rougher surface finish than standard copier type papers. More sketch paper than writing or copy paper. I would suspect the paper might have some bleed through issues with fountain pen ink, but that’s outside my line of interest!

The notebook is covered in an upcycled map, and at the time it seemed like a good idea to practice my map sketching skills and work out just where in the world my notebook cover was. Look hard for the little penciled rectangles to lead you to the next map.
The quality of the materials and workmanship seems very high. Certainly the standard of finishing is as good as what I see on expensive notebooks in retail shops. Being hardcover it’s not really suitable as a pocket notebook for me, but I have been using it as a desk notebook and like it very much.

Field Notes Notebook Review

Field Notes Notebook Review

For a very long time now I have thought it would be a good idea to carry a pocket notebook. Whenever I don’t have one, I seem to have something worthwhile jotting down, but when I do try carrying one, I suddenly have nothing to write in it. So coupled with the fact that I’ve never really found the right sized pocket notebook this means, I don’t normally have a notebook in my pocket. Recently my friend at Pencil Talk took pity on me down under and sent me four different notebooks. I immediately wanted to put Rite In The Rain to the test, and did so. Don’t worry this blog isn’t going to morph into a notebook review blog, but something about Field Notes made me decide to give the pocket notebook thing another try.

Firstly, at 5½ x 3½ inches (139 x 89mm, Note 1) Field Notes is little bigger than my ideal pocket notebook. It does actually fit in all my pockets, but often only just, and I like to feel that the notebook is right the way down and secure inside my pocket. I’ve got a 4 ½ x 3 notebook which is the ideal dimension in that respect. The 48 pages in Field Notes are graph lined on a reasonable weight paper, with a heavier weight cover. Three staples hold the pages and cover together. I was interested to see how this notebook would hold together over an extended period of time, as I suspected the cover and stapling not might stand up so well in the long term.

The inside front cover has spaces for your name, dates, etc and tick-boxes to indicate a ‘handsome reward’ (or not) for returning a lost notebook.

The inside back cover has lots of information about the materials and processes used in printing the notebook, and an excellent list of ‘Practical Applications’ for the use of the notebook. These little things really give this notebook a little something extra, a little personality if you like.
Field Notes first got shoved into my pocket on 18 July, and I decided to always take it with me when I left the house. Monday to Friday it generally lived in the front pocket of my (office) trousers, whilst on the weekend it was often in the back pocket of my jeans. I also always carried a pencil with which to write in the notebook - a small stubby remnant of a Staedtler Mars Stenofix 101, protected by a Faber-Castell Grip eraser tip. I quickly learned that sharpening a short point rather than a long point was necessary to stop the pencil lead being broken by repeated sittings-upon, despite the protection of the eraser tip.It soon became clear that a whole week of office wear and tear on the notebook was only equal to couple of hours of weekend wear and tear. Being in the back pocket of my jeans and getting sat on and scrunched around was a lot harder than life in a cushy office environment. After spending time in a rear pocket, Field Notes does become, ahhh…anatomically contoured? About 6 weeks later at the end of August my Field Notes was about half full. All sorts of genuine field notes from my part-time employment as a birdlife field observer, random rubbish and notes, plus some good stuff too. For example towards the start of the trial period our monthly household electricity bill arrived and I had a conniption over the 250% increase, so I started recording our meter reading everyday and making notes about consumption. The lady of the house was not generally pleased with this campaign of electricity consumption analysis.

Seeing I live in a country where agriculture is still the backbone of the economy, and Field Notes claims to be inspired by “agricultural memo books”, I thought I should put in a few notes about farming down this way.
The national farm animal populations, compared to humans.Sheep ratio for the biggest sheep farmers. Hmmm, mighty dodgy claim, but as you can see with a ratio at about 10 to 1, we can claim to lead the world sheep statistics.

Over the 6 weeks of use, Field Notes stood up pretty well. A bit battered and bent, but nothing major. My worries about the strength of the cover and the staples appear basically unfounded. After about 4 weeks a small split appeared in the cover above the centre staple, but it didn’t get too much worse. I didn’t start to worry about the cover detaching from the pages. So, overall I’m pleased with my little trial at carrying a notebook, maybe I’ll even continue to do so.
Of all the things I wrote in Field Notes, the most satisfying, were two little numbers. 39 and 10, in the correct order. Note: Long time readers of this blog may have noted that I have used US customary units (i.e. inches) as the primary measurements in this posting. Since Field Notes is proudly ‘Made In The USA’ it seemed appropriate.

Hmmm, according to Wikipedia, the USA, along with Myanmar(Burma) and Liberia, is one of only three countries to not have officially adopted the metric system. I was only a little fellow, but I do remember the fun times in the 70’s when us Kiwis converted to metric. Changing every roadside speed and distance sign in the country – now that was the time to own shares in a sign-making company! Maybe for the international market Field Notes could put a metric ruler down one cover edge to compliment the inches ruler on the inside back cover.

Rite In The Rain

I found a parcel in my letterbox the other day. I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but Stephen from Pencil Talk sent me some Musgrave, FSC Canada and Papermate Canadiana Naturals wooden pencils. I haven’t seen any of these before so it was good to get them. However, the main contents of the parcel were four notebooks. A small black ‘Moleskine’, a brown ‘Field Notes’, an orange ‘Rhodia’ Bloc No 08 and a ‘Rite in The Rain’ No 393 All-Weather Spiral. Fantastic stuff. I’ve seen Moleskines locally for astronomical mind-boggling prices, but the others I have only seen on the net and I don’t think they are imported down here. As indicated by my blog sidebar link to Black Cover I am interested in notebooks.

I like that the Field Notes notebook has tick-boxes to indicate a ‘handsome reward’ (or not) for returning a lost notebook. More than that though, the inside back cover has very detailed product specifications, and an excellent list of ‘Practical Applications’ for the use of the notebook.
I do a fair bit of note taking out in the field for my bird studies, but it’s generally in fine weather. Telescopes and binoculars don’t work that well in the rain for the sort of work that I do, so I don’t really have too much trouble with wet notebooks. However, the Rite In The Rain is a most intriguing product and I couldn’t resist giving it a proper try-out. One of our recent former Prime Ministers described our country as “irreducibly pluvial”. The dictionary tells me he meant it rains an awful lot, so I only had to wait a few days for the weather report to include “frequent showers, some thundery and very heavy”. So it was on with my best raincoat, storm-pocket filled with a Rite In The Rain notebook, and three test pencils – Staedtler Mars Lumograph HB and 2B, and a BIC #2 mechanical pencil. I wanted to try different lead grades as well as ceramic and polymer leads. Taking inspiration from ‘Field Notes’, I decided on a route that would allow me achieve nine of their Practical Applications.

Right, lets not beat about the bush, the Rite In The Rain is fantastic. It works. Period. Full stop. Woodcase and mechanical pencil leads both wrote as if the paper was dry. In a particularly heavy thunder shower I rubbed my hand all over the page so it was totally wet, and made sure I wrote through an unbroken film of running water. To all intents and purposes I was writing underwater, but it was basically just like writing on dry paper.

Sorry about the state of handwrting, but I've got a good reason - driving rain, freezing wind, hands shaking, notebook balanced on my knee, etc, etc, etc.

Here’s a quick 2-minute sketch of the golf course where I stopped. Note the absence of golfers at 8.30am on a weekend morning. It was driving rain on the tee rather than driving off from the tee.
What I did notice though is that the paper did absorb water in from its edges. This became a bit of a concern with the spiral binding. All those square holes for the wire spiral make a lot of edges and I became concerned about the pages becoming soggy, weak and tearing out. I think I would personally look to use a stapled notebook rather than spiral bound because of this. Also the wet pages did tend to stick together a little. Still all this is minor stuff in the big picture. Pencil is normally pretty useless on wet or damp paper, but not on Rite In The Rain paper. I suspect erasability is a little reduced on dry paper, and out in the rain the difference between HB and 2B lead grades seemed reduced.

Back home, I wasn’t sure how to dry out the wet notebook. I was a little surprised there was nothing printed about this in the notebook. I decide to blot off the excess moisture with a towel, and then put the notebook in the linen cupboard to air. The paper dried out reasonably unaffected although there is a little wrinkling. I checked the Rite In The Rain website but couldn’t find any drying instructions either, but one of the “User Stories” was an acquaintance of mine! The guy thrown overboard with his notebook on the way to Guam.

Just for the record, my walk achieved the following Practical Applications:
03-Inspired Ramblings
05-Shoddy Sketches
06-Half-Ass Calculations
12-Small Ideas/Notions
17-Escape Routes
23-Phone Numbers
24-Treasure Maps
26-Topographic Studies
28-Scrapbook Fodder

So, get yourself out in the rain.