Contradictions

Woeful dreams of nothingness,
Stuck in a state of cloudless skies, car-less streets and treeless forests,
I'm standing in a grass-less field, trying to fly a kite in a windless sky,
Oh when will I ever stop sailing this ship of fools in a waterless ocean?
Its meaningless.

The moon shines in a night-less sky,
While I walk on by in a people-less city,
I pull my coat tighter on a cold-less sunny day,
All around me are cars gridlocked in traffic, on a road-less junction,
Is it now the right time to cry?

The Sun now rises in the west,
The oceans have no ebb and tide,
And somewhere, somewhere out there,
The long cruel night begins to fade....


(Originally written in long hand, on Conquerer paper, Pelikan Brilliant Brown ink and with a Pilot 78G F)




This work by Paul David Krishnan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at phaseignition.blogspot.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting the author at phaseignition.blogspot.com.

Pilot 78G

Hur hur...had to start off blogging again with a pen review didn't I :P.

I've been hearing a lot about the Pilot 78G from the FPN forums and how great they were and all that. I had previously seen a few in my secret pen lair (stationery shop, shall remain unnamed :P ) But was put off by the fact that the only nib size they had was a BB (double Broad). After an extensive review reading session, I decided to get myself one. Meanwhile, someone was offering a 1959 Sheaffer Snorkel trade in the FPN forums for a BB 78G. So, I roll up to the shop and I get myself a Black BB (to trade with) and amazingly found a maroon F nibbed 78G which I promptly grabbed. They look like this by the way:

So, pens in hand, I got home and looked the pen over. Unposted (without the cap on) it measured about 12.5cm, Posted (the cap on the end of the barrel - do this carefully, some pens won't take too kindly to this kind of treatment. Cracks in the cap lip are common specially when you cram the cap on the barrell) the pen measures about 15cm. The cap is a screw on type, the pen itself is made of plastic. Rather light weight but not as light as the China made copies of the Parker 51 (Hero and Youth pens).

This review by the way, focuses on the Maroon F nibbed pen as I want to keep the BB for trading purposes (either for the Snorkel or for a bottle of Noodlers or something) As far as decorations are concerned, the clip is squarish,metallic and gold in color. Not sure what its made from tho. The word "Pilot" is imprinted on the clip. The pen itself is colored uniform maroon without any marbling (unlike my Sheaffer No-Nonsense Vintage) and 2 gold bands are imprinted on the cap itself with the word "Japan" breaking one band.

Ok, the nib itself is gold with the words "Pilot. Super Quality. Japan. printed on it. A closer look with a jewellers loupe, revealed perfectly aligned tines (that the point of the nib) and a feed section that was dead center to the nib. Interestingly tho, the feed (that black section beneath the nib) had vertical instead of horizontal slits that I'm more used to. Moving on the inking system, this Pilot sports an aerometric style converter (them squeeze type fillers that you would find in older pens - lazy to go find a pic :P) I am told however, that this pen can take International cartridges.

Filled it up with Pelikan's Brilliant Brown (my new bottle of ink as voted by the good people of Plurk) and grabbed my usual generic notepaper to start scribbling some lines. A very fine line developed on the paper and this is the place to explain an important distinction in nib sizes as far as Western and Japanese are concerned. Both Japanese and Western have the same designations for nibs. They run from BB (double broad) stubs to XF (extra fine). Japanese nibs however are actually a size smaller from what is advertised. So a B (broad) will write like a M (medium), M like a F and so on. So my F 78G writes like a XF.

I was very disappointed that instead of evenly colored lines, the 78G started to write rather erratically. The ink looked like it was being spread very thinly. I attribute this to one of 2 reasons:

1. Paper was crap. Most paper these days are not made for FP use.
2. The Ink. Pelikan Inks are known to be 'dry'

So, I tried writing with other type of papers but I got the same results. In the office this morning, I unscrewed the barrel and noticed that the filler was not very snug with the main section. Pushed it in, grabbed another notepad (yes I have many notepads) and presto! It wrote like a dream! The pad was made of heavier paper (think somewhere in the region of 80gm). I've yet to try this on my 100gm paper journal but for now, I totally love this pen! For RM18, its not too bad actually.

Writing Sample (no apologies for penmanship):


Image seems to be blurry cos, scanner was crap. (Click on the image for a clearer pic.)

First Line: Pilot 78G, Pelikan Brilliant Brown (F)
Second Line: Youth 303, Parker Quink Solv-x Vintage Blue Black(F)
Third line: Rotring Core Coridium, Pelikan Violet (M)

Side Note: Pilot also has another division called Namiki (named after Ryosuke Namiki - Pilot's founder) that makes gorgeous pens sold at very high prices. They specialize in the maki-e type lacquering that goes on their pens. Drool at this:

PS: This entire blog post was written in long hand with the subject of this review, the Pilot 78G :)

Reboot started ..accessing...0xFFFF0

Again? Yeah, why not? Its been a tough one year (Ok, maybe more than a year) since I blogged. Work, travel, dealing with Dad's death has taken a very heavy toll on me. For a while, I was experimenting with a tumblelog. That's a little bit on hold at the moment now that my digital camera is busted. A flat bed scanner might help to serve the same purpose as the camera did but, urm..it feels totally different. Obviously I'll use the scanner once in a while to upload entries into the tumblog from my personal journal but..lets just say that I've been putting down a lot of really personal stuff that I don't feel like sharing right about now. You can go see that blog here: http://phaseinked.tumblr.com/

So, another new beginning? (seems to be a lot of those in this blog) What on earth do I blog about now? I've done the 'rojak'(mixed, anything goes) style of blogging, tried my hand at technology blogging. Interesting pause for thought here. I could go back to the rojak thing and the technology thing. I could blog about shaving or fountain pens..(Paul is currently facing a mid-life crisis. Unable to afford Ferraris, sports cars and other expensive pursuits, he's turned to DE shaving and collecting fountain pens - Paul's Doppleganger).

Here's my proposal tho, I'll post whatever I feel like posting. Could be a rant, an ink review, a tech piece or even a shaving soap review. Hey, I might even break my rule of not talking about politics. (hazardous to my life but a man's gotta do what he has to do y'see?) So sit back, enjoy (if you can) and lets celebrate life as it is eh?

(Clicky to make it big).

Pos Malaysia, Free money and a lot of hot air

If you think this is gonna be a rant, you're right. Partially. Last weekend wifey, baby and me went off to the Jalan Besar Seri Kembangan Post Office to see if we could collect out RM625 (about USD191) that the Government was giving out as a rebate to deal with the rise of fuel prices. We've been hearing a lot of stories of how to actually get the RM625. Turns out, it was pretty painless. You go in and ask for a form to claim the rebate, which turns out to be a money-order ish kinda form with spaces for your name, MyKad number (Identification Card) and your vehicle number rubber stamped on it. Fill that out, take a number, wait till yer turn and hand that over to the person behind the counter. He/she will then take your thumb print (huh? yeah, we still do thumb prints here) put that on the form, hand you a scrap of tissue paper to clean yer thumb and hand you the money. Since dad's car is under my name, I ended up with RM1250. Dad refused to take it when I gave it to him so its mine. Wah..thats what in Malay we call 'Durian Runtuh' (windfall). Until I got into my car and switched on the air conditioning.

Hot air. Tweaked every imaginable setting and all I got was hot air. Called up some buddies to find out why and I got a variety of answers. The figures I was getting in terms of replacing cooling coils and compressors were really frightening. At last, the ever reliable Mr Kee sent me an sms with the contact details of a very reliable Air Con guy:

HENG WA AIR-COND SERVICE CENTRE
3003, Jalan Tun Razak,
50400 KL
Tel : 019 2136170 / 03 26980254

Turns out, the problem was a busted cooling coil and damaged compressor.Oh, the Air con relay was bust too. Pics below. The damage? RM645! So much for the extra cash. Well at least he finished the car in one day. I pity the Mercedes Benz Elegance owner that had his car over there. To change one damaged cooling coil, the entire dash got removed. Back seat littered with the steering wheel, buttons and all kinds of stuff. Sucks to be you dood. :P

Oh yeah, sucky Camera phone pics warning.

The dead Coil



Compressor from Hell. Replacement was a second hand one. New would have cost upwards RM1K. yikes!

Zipidee doo dah

Ever been in a situation where you've got a zip file and you can't open it cos the idiot admin didn't grant you access to install anything on the lousy outdated machine you're using in the office? Or maybe its a situation where you got a rar or a tar file and have no blinking idea what to do with it. Also, zip files have them nasty viruses in them so you're afraid of opening them at the first place. Well, the fretting is over. Wobzip hath arrived!



I found this while going through some del.icio.us links and was wondering why someone had not thought about this idea earlier.(Maybe there are others but I haven't looked) So on to brass tacks. Simply put, wobzip asks for an upload of any zip, tar, rar file ( up to 15 formats supported: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZHCHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS), un-zips (tars, rars etc) and displays the content for you to download:



1. Is where you upload files from yer hard disk.
2. Is what you press after you choose the zip file..duh

Results look like whats in the box. Be reminded that the limit for files that you upload is 100MB. There is also the option to download what you unzipped back as a zip and an option to delete what you just unzipped. Ok so far? Good. It gets better. Because not only can you password protect your files but you also have the option to input a download link into wobzip and wobzip will unzip it for you. Boom! Here's how it looks like (kinda):



Now, the obvious benefit of using something like this is that its cross platform, there's no need to install anything, no need for registrations and its safe. How do you ask its safe? Well, there's the fact that every file uploaded gets scanned for viruses. The technology powering the anti virus comes from Bitdefender. Speaking of what powers wobzip, the Uncompression Software is made possible by p7zip.

However its not all that complete actually. wobzip is in testing and development and only uncompression is available. The site lists a couple of known bugs:

1. Uploader may cause corrupted files.
2. There are reports that .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 file extension do not work

So yer mileage may vary. Got a better solution or have an opinion about this? Leave me a comment and I'll be more than happy to discuss (or Disqus) it with you.