A slightly eccentric physicist's EDC
A slightly eccentric physicist's EDC
- An all-black LAMY Safari fountain pen filled with a mix of water, Platinum carbon black, and inkjet printer ink.
- A blank sheet of A4, folded in half three times.
- My passport.
- A fully loaded Secrid card carrier.
- A really nice rock. It has been in my pocket for a year. Don't think about it.
- A dumb watch. (Casio W-59. Very small, light as a feather. Green LED-backlight LCD display. 50 metre water resist. Tough, within reason. Effectively infinite battery life.)
- A beta of the PinePhone Pro, equipped with dreemurrs archlinux.
- A USB drive containing all of my computers' boot partitions and Archiso.
Where's the rock? I want to see it.
The exact appearance of the really nice rock is a secret.
(sorry.)
I only see a pen and part of a spiral notebook.
That's a stock image. Better than I could have taken, and the pen is identical.
Why this specific formula for the fountain ink? Beautiful pen, by the way.
What do you use to manage the ISOs? Or did I misunderstand #7?
There is one ISO and three boot partitions.
First of all, I formatted the USB drive with one vfat partition. Then I copied the contents of the ISO over. That and some prodding in grub.conf is enough to get the ISO working, and there is a whole lot of extra space in the vfat partition.
The entire contents of all of my computers' hard drives is encrypted, but that leaves the boot partition. So I moved the boot partitions onto the vfat partition, each in a separate folder labelled by the host. Then, I added entries to grub.conf for each host. The USB drive boots and a boot menu appears with all of the ISO's entries, plus a list of hosts. I choose the right host, then boot.
(I need the USB drive mounted before I can update the kernel or the microcode.)
O wow! This is totally not what I imagined. I imagined something like Ventoy. You literally made portable your boot partitions which without, the device is unbootable. Since it's on a portable USB, you can essentially brick any device as easily as pulling the drive and cutting power. That's ingenious!
Wait, so you need the USB in order to boot your PC? If you lose the USB, or it dies, you can no longer boot?
I've heard good things about the LAMY. Do you find it's as practical for daily use as say a ballpoint?
You kinda have to be an enthusiast to make a fountain pen an edc. They require more work, are more prone to damage and has the potential to spill all that lovely ink all over your nice clothes. I just keep mine at my desk. They're a pleasure to write with given a quality make.
FWIW, I've never had a leak with a modern FP.
This, Lamy Vista FP at my desk, Zebra ballpoint in my bag.
Same practicality but it requires more care. If you want a daily use beater, go for Pentel energels or Sharpie S-Gels for some smooth writing and deep colors.
I don't use a Lamy (I use a Kaweco) but I can say that fountain pens are pretty nice if you like liquid and smooth writing. It's not good on other materials other than paper like hard materials but for doing math and writing it's a breeze.
More practical, even, at least in my experience.
Ballpoints always jam on me, requiring about a kilonewton of force and about five minutes of blank scribbling to get it going again. Then, often, they leave big blotches of their sticky ink on the page when turning a corner.
The Safari does jam on occasion, but usually, a single well-placed drop of water is enough to get it going again. That depends on the ink you use though. If you use water and inkjet printer ink, it never jams, though it is a little bloody. 30 water : 1 platinum carbon black makes a lovely grey, but it jams so bad that I need to add a bit of inkjet printer ink to keep it running. Yeah, you're definitely not supposed to water down that ink so much lol.
Okay, can you show us a writing sample? And what kind of ratio do you use when making that ink-mix?
30 water : 1 platinum carbon black : 5 yellow : 5 magenta is the mix for octarine.
But seriously, 30 water : 1 platinum carbon black : 10 printer ink is a good starting point for mixing. That is about how sensitive the mix is to each type of ink. Pure printer ink won't ruin the pen, but it bleeds like a motherfucker. If you don't care about the next five pieces of paper, though, you can do some pretty cool stuff with it.
you know it wasn't till I enrolled in a physics degree that I met another human using a fountain pen. My first year prof.
Why are we so fucking weird? It's obviously superior not having to exert normal force on the page to write (fuck you ball points) but why isn't that more widespread.
because we have to fill or change cartridges, buy or make ink, clean the nibs, carry our pens carefully… too much effort just to write
ballpoints are efficient, sturdy and effortless. There are situations when we have to write/mark quickly while standing or outside under the weather
it's not a question of "superiority" but practicality. when i'm writing or drawing on my desk i use a fountain pen. outside i carry a small zebra ballpoint
you have to do that to ballpoints to. Unless you use them disposably which there are disposable fountain pens too if you are a paper plates sort of person.
Felt tips share most of the advantages of ballpoints and fountain pens so are a defensible choice. They tend to work upside down too which fountain pens and ballpoints don't. Although pencils, soapstone, or pressurised paint markers are better in those applications generally.
You carry all this shit on rounds? I carry a pen.
Why would a physicist go on rounds?
Because I'm a moron and misread this. Hahah
To square things up.
That pen isn't inked, you can see right through the ink window
Yeah, I know. Like I told the other guy, it's a stock image. An image of the real pen wouldn't add anything except ink in the window, and I can't take a better picture than whoever did the stock image. The ink in the window looks entirely unremarkable.
...
/me looks at ink in the window for five minutes with a bright light backlighting the window.
...
Yeah, the ink in there is entirely unremarkable. It's just grey air bubbles and black water. IDK, you want a picture of the ink window anyway?
Computer scientist here. I also write with a fountain pen.
Me too, is this a thing?
Maybe, maybe not. Of the people I work with, only a handful even have a notebook. One other uses a Kaweco Sport FP. So for my sample, it's a mixed bag.
Nice, I've got the OG PinePhone. It had some circuit board issues, but I loved helping at the ground floor. Is the PPPro good enough to daily drive yet?
I also keep a USB, but with my Keepass database so that it's an offline carry. I keep 2 copies additional to that, 1 in my fire safe, and 1 in my mothers fire safe.
I've used the same Lamy Vista, the clear acrylic version of this pen so you can see the ink color, for maybe 18 years. Absolute workhorse.
OHHHH, I want that pen. I noticed it the week after I got my Safari, and was like, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Especially with the converter with the red twist cap, it looks awesome.
@etuomaala For the record, if you posted multiple images, they're not visible to me on Mastodon. When I've done the opposite, posting to Lemmy with a Mastodon account, multiple photos aren't visible to the lemmy users either.
Oh, neat, Mastodon! I didn't know for sure whether this was reaching Mastodon. I only posted the one image. I didn't know I could post multiple images. Now, I know not to try, for compatibility reasons.
Nice! I am using the same pen!