Erasable pens for editing papers
I recently discovered the Pilot Frixion pens and I like them a lot. (I am not getting any advertisement money from them I swear :-)
The pens have erasable ink, so they are great for marking your comments/edits on a paper while reading. They erase via heat. Each pen comes with a plastic nub, and if you apply friction to the page with the plastic nub at the top, and it erases the writing --mostly clean. A word of caution though, this means if you leave your writing in a hot car, you will find it erased, which you can remedy by putting it in a freezer. I am not kidding.
So, don't use it for writing you want to keep permanently, but it is great for writing comments and marking on a paper when you are reading.
I print the research paper I am reading and I do a lot of marking on paper. If I use a regular pen, I cross over some of my guesswork, nonsensical questions, or misinformed comments, and it messes up the paper. But using Frixion pens, I erase and modify my comments without creating a mess. Well, at least, less of a mess.
I am still not an online shopping junkie. Although these pens are available on Amazon, I still like to buy them from a store. I was happy to see that Walmart has the 3 colors (black, red, blue) for $5. I use the red pen for question, blue pen for important comments, and black pen for all the other comments and doodling.
The pens have erasable ink, so they are great for marking your comments/edits on a paper while reading. They erase via heat. Each pen comes with a plastic nub, and if you apply friction to the page with the plastic nub at the top, and it erases the writing --mostly clean. A word of caution though, this means if you leave your writing in a hot car, you will find it erased, which you can remedy by putting it in a freezer. I am not kidding.
So, don't use it for writing you want to keep permanently, but it is great for writing comments and marking on a paper when you are reading.
I print the research paper I am reading and I do a lot of marking on paper. If I use a regular pen, I cross over some of my guesswork, nonsensical questions, or misinformed comments, and it messes up the paper. But using Frixion pens, I erase and modify my comments without creating a mess. Well, at least, less of a mess.
I am still not an online shopping junkie. Although these pens are available on Amazon, I still like to buy them from a store. I was happy to see that Walmart has the 3 colors (black, red, blue) for $5. I use the red pen for question, blue pen for important comments, and black pen for all the other comments and doodling.
MAD questions
I once prematurely advocated going back to the fountain pen.
I still switch between the two. Mostly I live in Emacs happily. But I print and edit with erasable pens when I need to edit. And I switch to a fountain pen (a cheap Pilot Metropolitan pen combined with a refillable ink-pump --- again not advertising), when I am badly stuck and I need to think on paper, or when I want to break monotony. I sign things with that fountain pen, and the pen surprises the students even my colleagues. Fountain pens are now considered antique.
I wonder if it would be possible to combine the perfect pen on paper feel with all the ease/convenience of text wrangling in Emacs within the next 10 years. I feel that would be the ultimate productivity product for me.
No I don't think MS surface* is there yet; it is still lacking in both fronts: writing-feel and editing-convenience. I was hoping Apple with get there, but after Steve Jobs passed away, I am not counting on it anymore.
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