Collin Donnell

I had one of those nights last night where I woke up at 5 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep for a long time. I eventually woke up way later than I have been and didn’t get out of the house at a very reasonable time. Bummer.

I love the Pilot Vanishing Point. Depending on which day you asked, I’d more often than not say it’s my favorite pen[1]. It’s a (relatively) affordable fountain pen with an incredibly smooth 18k gold nib, and a novel retraction mechanism — an unusual feature in fountain pens. In a slightly uncharacteristic move for me, when I saw the 2019 Limited Edition, I ordered it immediately.

The finish is called “Tropical Turquoise.” I like turquoise and thought the blue with black swirl finish looked good in photos. In person, however, it’s much nicer. The finish sparkles in a way that didn’t come across in the pictures. Pilot has made 2019 of these pens, of which mine is #949. And while it’s not technically an anniversary edition[2], this year marks Pilot’s one-hundredth anniversary, which made it feel a little more special.

The only nib size available with this edition is medium, which can be a bit of a mixed bag depending on which paper you use it with. On high-quality paper like Rhodia or Midori, it’s excellent, and I appreciate the smoothness of the broader nib. On Leuchtturm, it’s acceptable, but your lines will come across a bit thick, and on something like a Baron Fig, it tends to bleed a bit depending on the ink. Since I keep a fine nib in my other Vanishing Point, this was preferable for me, but it’s something to keep in mind. I really wish Pilot made a Medium/Fine nib because the jump is so significant between the two sizes.

If the medium is too thick for you, however, a great feature of the Vanishing Point is that Pilot makes extra nib units available at reasonable prices. And once you have multiple, they can be swapped in around four seconds. Effectively, it lets you own a variety of gold nib pens in different sizes at a discounted price.

I tested using the included cartridge of turquoise ink, and the writing experience was (expectedly) very smooth. If you’ve used steel nib pens and are looking for your first gold nib pen, one of the regular Vanishing Points is hard to beat on value.

Overall, I’m entirely happy with my purchase. It’s just what I expected, was not outrageously priced for a limited edition, and looks even better in person. If you’re on the fence and can find one available, go for it.

I moved all of my old blog content from Wordpress to Micro.blog, and can recommend it as a host if you want something simple. Migration was a one button import that grabbed images, set up redirects, etc.

The booting sounds of that Mac SE actually appeared on a recording I did as a sort of backing track a long time ago (which I still think sounded pretty cool) and traveled with me to shows for a while. Will be a fun endeavor to restore it to its full system 6 glory.

Ordered an improbably long T15 screwdriver (aka a “Mac cracker”) with the intention of replacing the capacitors and installing an CF card reader in the Mac SE I bought for $4 at a thrift store about 14 years ago.

I finished applying for a new apartment this morning in Campbell, so hopefully, that goes through quickly. Cupertino has been a fine place to live, but I’ll be happy to save a little money and have good coffee, bookstores, etc. be a bit more walkable.

The extra wide lens on the iPhone 11 is fantastic. I didn’t realize how much I’d use it, but I have been constantly.

Wasn’t sure if I had work today or not… but the full parking lot when I arrived sort of gave away that I did.

Decided the classic mouse ears are really the only way to go at Disneyland.

Me Feige, I don’t feel so good. I don’t want to go… to Sony.

Air conditioning is out in my office again. I think we have that kind where it only works when it’s below 80º outside?

Weight continues to trend in the right direction and the changes I’ve been making are still feeling maintainable. So that’s cool.

I recorded myself playing ukulele and singing a Mountain Goats song on my bed into GarageBand, and I’m kind of blown away that it sounds as good as it does. soundcloud.com/fisherman…

To quote the poet Fred Durst: it’s just one of those days.

Felt warm in my office yesterday, so I decided to bring in a thermometer to see what was up. It’s currently 82º in here. Ugh.

I don’t know what the consensus is on Automattic acquiring Tumblr, but my take is if you like Tumblr, you should be really happy. Verizon was going to continue ruining it until it died and now it’s owned by people who care about and understand exactly this sort of thing.

I’ve been playing music with a friend from work, and kind of annoyed that there’s already a band called “The Apples in Stereo” because that would have been the perfect name for our thing 😂

My new policy is to default notifications to off for anything that isn’t an actual person trying to get ahold of me (Messages, Slack, etc). It’s working out pretty well so far.

I only just recently found out “git checkout -” will take you back to the previous branch you were on. That’s pretty useful!

Would anyone be interested in starting an online book club with me? Converse over iMessage or email and then group FaceTime every couple weeks or so to discuss what we read? Could be fun?

I’d like to start integrating some of the ideas from the Slow Media Manifesto into the way I consume media. Consuming media and social networks aren’t bad, but they have to be used mindfully. en.slow-media.net/manifesto

Did you know you can do find/find and replace in Xcode using regular expressions? Most developer people probably know this, but the few who don’t should have their minds blown. I use this all the time.

Getting localization right in your app is a surprisingly tricky thing when you take into account RTL languages and regions using that use different number characters. Definitely the worst skill for me to have gotten a lot better at recently.

I am having a very Reginald Barclay kind of day.

I wouldn’t have minded it being a little bit smaller, but this is pretty handsome for a $100 watch.