My brain in blog form.
Posted in Random Reflections
I’ve enjoyed these past two weeks of looking back at 2022 and looking forward to 2023. I’ll likely keep this same set of posts for future years, although perhaps not in the same order.
Like with yesterday’s Goodreads reading challenge post, I haven’t ever dedicated a post to my blog stats. So today, I’m fixing that oversight.
Posted in Book Blogger
While I’ve meant to, I’ve never actually written a post about my Goodreads Reading Challenge activity. I’ve actively taken part in the challenge every year since 2018. Generally, I’ve been conservative with my goal. In 2022, I went fairly easy on myself, setting a goal of only 36 books.
Since I haven’t looked back at my reading in previous years — on my blog, at least — I want to provide a brief overview of the previous years’ challenges, too. After all, while I know many of my readers are here for the fountain pen posts, 32% of my blog content is related to books.
If you’re interested in what I thought of the books I read, you can take a look at my book review posts, or my Reviewed list on Goodreads. I don’t always review the books I read, and, even for those I do, they aren’t guaranteed to make it on here.
Posted in Fountain Pens
Another year, another overview of my collection. I really enjoyed the Google Data Studio approach I used last year, so I went with that again this year. There are four pages again, and, while I’ve embedded the report below, there’s a good chance it will be easier for you to view it directly in Data Studio.
Posted in Miscellaneous Information
First off, thank you to everyone who responded to my survey. I’ve closed down the form, and I want to share the results. If you can’t see the charts below (depending on what device you’re on right now, it may be too small to read) you can view it on Google Data Studio. If you don’t want to view the charts, there’s a basic table further down in this post.
The votes surprised me. I didn’t think you’d be interested in brand “grudges,” and I thought pen porn would rate higher. I’ll have to do this again next time I’m running short on ideas.
Posted in Fountain Pens
Another year, another overview of my collection. Last year, I used Adobe Illustrator and created vector images for each table — accuracy was a pain in the butt. This time, I went with Google Data Studio. I don’t have as many shape and display options as I do with Illustrator, but I can more easily separate and display data this way. I have so much fun playing with data that I went a little overboard with this, so you can click through the four pages at the bottom of the frame. Or, if it’s easier for you, you can view directly in Data Studio.
Posted in Fountain Pens
Three and a quarter years ago, I wrote about inventories as part of my fountain pen series. Bac then, I was using Google Sheets to keep track of my pen and ink collections. Of course, at the time, I only had 50 total pen records.
As my collection grew, I found that I needed something with more features than Google Sheets. After some searching, I found Airtable. It’s basically a WYSIWYG database. You can customize your databases quite a bit, if you’d like, or you can work with very basic features. You can use most of the features with a free account, but there are additional features and reporting abilities available with a paid account.
Posted in Fountain Pens
The other day, I was going through my inks, and I couldn’t help but wonder what inks I use most. So, me being me, I dug into my data, and pulled out my 10 most-used inks. To figure out which they were, I looked for which inks have been used in my last four notebooks (since I started tracking inks). Only 6 inks were used in all 4 notebooks. The remaining 4 were inks that I used for both regular rotation in 3 notebooks and had in always inked pens.
Honestly, I was rather surprised by the results, as these aren’t my favorite inks. At least, not the inks I think of when asked about favorites. Maybe I’ll cover those in another post.
Note: This list is in alphabetical order. I scanned my personal ink swabs from my ink notebook. I’ve done my best to make the inks look true-to-life, but I can’t account for everyone’s screen settings, only mine.
Posted in Fountain Pens
I’m a data hoarder. I keep track of my pen collection in an extensive AirTable database, full of delicious data. For fun, I put together this infographic of my collection from the day I bought my first pen through May 1, 2021. It’s interesting seeing the trends. To view larger, click on any section of the image.
