Review: Black N Red Day Per Page Diary (2012)

One of the habits I've tried to sustain this year is writing *something* about my day, each day.  A diary (as in a proper diary sometimes called a daily planner, with printed dates on each page) makes this a bit easier for me - an unprinted book would doubtless lead me into the most terrible backsliding.

So far, I've used Moleskine Daily Planners (2009, 2010, pocket size - they've been surprisingly ok, given how poor the paper is in their notebooks, but are expensive) and a Ciak Daily Planner (2011).  The Ciak was a bit disappointing, with thin paper that had a lot of show & bleedthrough through for some inks.

For 2012, I bought a Black N Red Day to Page diary in the A5 size.  UK readers with decent stationery cupboards will be familiar with Black N Red, who make a series of spiral bound and casebound notebooks that are generally well regarded.  The diaries use a 90gsm "Optik" paper, and come in a range of sizes up to A4 (which seems to me to be massive - even I would struggle to fill an A4 page with my pointless wibbling each day).

The front cover - I think the "Oxford" logo is new, I can't remember seeing it on Black N Red products before.

The rear cover is rather busier, with product information, barcode, and so on.

The diary is casebound, with stitched signatures, and the cover is a nicely textured cloth over board.  The contrasting spine appears taped, although it isn't. A red woven ribbon is glued into the binding for use as a place marker.  All of the pages (save the end papers) have perforated corners, which you can remove to allow quick location of the current day (assuming you remove the corners after each day, of course).

A Sample Page

The diary begins with a page for contact details, followed by a two page year planner for 2012.  After the planner, it's straight into the daily pages, an example of which is above. Note that Black N Red don't put Saturday and Sunday on one page, which some daily planners do to save space. At the end of the diary (the last dated page is 3rd January 2013) is another two page year planner (for 2013), a page of country information, a page of weights and measures and mileages, a page of international telephone codes and time zones and then 6 pages for notes.  It's fairly restrained in this respect, (no tube map, for example) and I quite like that, having never really appreciated the pages and pages of junk I never use that crops up at the beginning and end of some dairies.

The main diary pages have three months of calendar on the top left hand side, showing the previous month, current month and coming month.  The main part of the page has appointment times from 07:00 to 20:00, split into half hours.  Below this are "Quick Note" spaces.  (I should say that I don't use these planning features, I just write on the pages, so can't really comment on how useful it is).  Lines are dark ruled, at a fairly narrow 5mm spacing - the paper is a bright white that ink shows up very nicely on. 

The amount of writing space is slightly larger than my medium Ciak planner (much larger if one writes beyond the lines and into the notes spaces on the Black N Red pages), despite the Black N Red being a larger book.  This is because of the rather busier page layout in the Black N Red diary - I don't think it's fair to criticise that, because the product is, I think, intended to be a planner rather than a journal or personal diary.

I bought my diary from Ryman, for £9.99, although they're fairly widely available, and the price doesn't seem to vary much between stockists.

Note that I've done my ink tests on the "Notes" pages at the back of the diary - I'm assuming the paper quality is consistent throughout.

INK TESTS

Showthrough (how visible your writing is with a blank page over it).

On showthrough, I think the diary is slightly less impressive than this scan shows - not terrible, but there is some ghosting through the facing page.

Bleedthrough (how much of the writing is visible on the reverse of the written page).

It's a similar story on bleedthrough, although the scan gives a fairer (possibly *slightly* unfair) picture here.  There's a small amount of ghosting, with the beginnings of bleedthrough at a couple of points from Amazing Amethyst and Pousserie De Lune ink.

The written page.

Close ups - the lower set of inks.

And the top set.

I think the ink tests tell the best story of this paper though - compare inks like Amazing Amethyst, Pousserie De Lune and Havana Brown with their performance in previous reviews, and the superiority of Black N Red's paper is evident.  I can't make out any feathering, even from problem inks in close ups, and for that, I'll put up with the small amount of ghosting on facing and reverse pages.

IN SUMMARY

For the page count, and the cost, I think the Black N Red diary is a great buy - the paper is better than any day per page diary I've used, and it costs less than a lot of premium daily planners/diaries.  If you can live with the slightly utilitarian styling (these books always remind me of being at work, but that could just be an association I have), busy page layout, and lack of premium notebook fripperies (soft cover, rounded corners, elastic closure &c) you'll not regret getting one.

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Notebook Review - Staples Eco Notebook, A5

The Staples "Eco Easy" notebook is a spiral bound notebook, with 160 ruled pages (80 sheets), and board covers. Its pages are Bagasse paper, made from 80% recycled sugar cane processing waste, hence the "Eco" title. I bought mine in their Manchester store, for the rrp of £2.49. The cover you see in the picture above is a brown paper foldover cover, that can be removed to reveal a plainer board cover.

For those of you worried about the variability of the paper in these (mentioned in some other reviews) the product code on this notebook is #37537-EU

The front of the book, with a Moleskine pocket notebook on it for scale.

Inside the front cover is a "pocket page" formed from a heavier brown paper page, folded back on itself with a third or so of the lower portion folded up to make a crude pocket. It's not something I'd use, personally, but I rarely use the pockets in other notebooks, so may not be the best judge of the utility of this feature!

The sheets are perforated, and double punched to allow them to be removed and stored in ring binders.

The binding, again with a Moleskine pocket notebook for scale.

The spiral binding is done with what seems to me to be a pretty big coil - my personal feeling is that this makes the book a bit of a pain to carry around, although the pages do turn easily compared to books with more compact spirals (Pukka Pads, for example). The spiral doesn't seem to interfere with writing on the page, so long as you write to the long side of the perforation and margin; you may find it more problematic if you like to use the entire page. The beefiness of the coil does give me some confidence that it wouldn't be damaged by relatively rough treatment - you could throw this pad in the bottom of a bag, and be reasonably confident you could still turn the pages after the rest of your posessions had tried to squash the spiral!

The paper is an orangey sort of cream colour to my eye, and the ruling is a complimentary orangey brown, spaced at 8mm. A margin is ruled on the left of the page, at 14.5 mm from the perforation, and 29mm from the bound side's edge of the page. My feeling is that paper has more "tooth" (the "scratchy" feeling as a nib moves over the page) than the paper in my Rhodia bloc pads, but not to an unpleasant degree.

INK TESTS:

The paper handles most inks pretty well - there's some feathering from Waterman's Havana Brown, and Diamine Amazing Amethyst, which I'd expect, after tests of these inks on other papers. I detect a small amount of feathering from Quink Black, but only if I look at closeups.

I think the only inks with "unzoomed" noticeable feathering are Diamine Dark Brown, and J. Herbin's Pousserie de Lune - even that doesn't seem too bad compared to their behaviour on the Moleskine & Ryman books I tested previously.

Some closeups;

and the top set;

Note that the lowest green ink is "Diamine Emerald", not "Emerale". That's what you get for writing ink test pages too late in the day, I guess.

The paper feels pretty thin, and that's borne out by the showthrough scan above (how visible the ink is when covered by a single sheet of blank paper).

The reverse of the pages show up the thin paper too, with the inks clearly legible from the reverse side of the page. This is a more controlled, less blotchy reverse page than I saw on either the Ryman or Moleskine though, and I think overall, that's better.

IN SUMMARY

If you like spiral bound pads, this is a good bet at a relatively cheap price, if you can live with a somewhat over engineered coil in the binding, and the relatively thin paper. Do bear in mind that the paper in these pads has been known to vary in quality - the usual advice is to check the product code, and country of origin, and buy pads from the same batch, if you like your sample!

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IRD Cafam Cantilevers

Latest addition to the LHT is these IRD "Cafam" cantilevers.

I'm hoping for more power than the CR720 brakes, with less grabbiness than the Tektro Oryx. (It's surprisingly hard to find a cantilever that will play nicely with STi road levers).  One happy coincidence of the geometry of these brakes is more room at the fork crown (the CR720 need the straddle to be down on the mudguard) - hopefully that'll be where my dynamo light goes once my dynohub wheel is built.

First indications are pretty positive - I've run the brakes for a week now, although I've not done a wet ride with them, which is probably the real test they need.

Huge thanks to James at Fine-ADC for getting me these - they're surprisingly hard to lay hands on locally, so I was glad I was able to buy direct from Fine.

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Red Harvest

First published in 1929, "Red Harvest" is my favourite Dashiell Hammett novel.  Cleverer people than I talk about it, and its influence in its wikipedia page.

I remember this cover as slightly more striking than it is here (and it's not a patch on the beautiful Knopf first edition) but I like its simplicity.

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Colour Comparison - Diamine Teal vs Diamine Blue Black

It's hard to see the green in the Teal colour when it's not set against another ink - here's a close up;

Paper is Bloc Rhodia (from a No.11 pad), pens are both Schneider Base.

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Ryman Softcover Notebook (Pocket) vs Pocket Moleskine

Ryman are a UK stationers, with both High Street stores, and an internet shopping presence. The notebook featured here is also available in an A5 size, which costs £5.99 (and is included in the current 2 for 1 offer, making the A5 book effectively £3).

Ryman's pocket notebook (as tested here) currently costs £4.99 (although with their buy one get one free they are effectively £2.50 each). A pocket Moleskine costs between £6 (Amazon) and £10.

Both pocket and A5 books come in Purple, Red, Brown and Black covers, each having 192 sheets of cream paper.

Side by side - hopefully you can see that the Ryman notebook (right) is just slightly larger. The Moleskine here is a hardcover, although comparison with my softcover Moleskine planners suggest that the Ryman cover is somewhat stiffer.

Both books have 192 pages (96 sheets). As you can see, the Ryman book is slightly thicker, indicating a heavier weight of paper. This is borne out by the feel of the pages - the pages in the Ryman are smoother, and do seem thicker. The ruling is darker than in the Moleskine, and spaced at 6mm.

The rear is stamped with Ryman's logotype. Neither this, nor the smooth cover look quite as nice as the Moleskine logotype & cover. The Ryman book has an elastic closure, a woven ribbon as a placemarker, and a pocket at the rear cover, just like any notebook of this type. (The brown is actually darker than it appears here).

Ink Tests

In all images, the top page is from the Ryman book, the lower from the Moleskine.

Bleed through test - the reverse of the pages after being written on.

Show through test - how visible the writing is when underneath a blank page.

The Ryman beats the Mole on showthrough (can you see writing through the facing page) and is slightly better (I think) on bleedthrough (can you see what you've written when you look at the back of the written page) although neither is great in that respect.

The Ryman loses on feathering for some inks (Waterman Havana Brown, Diamine Amazing Amethyst, and J. Herbin's Pousserie De Lune), although the Mole feathers more consistently (weird, tendril like growths from the letters, as though the ink is following the paper fibres). The Moleskine is definitely better at handling J. Herbin's Pousserie de Lune than the Ryman book.

Some closeups - Ink in the Ryman;

And the same inks in the Moleskine;

The top set from the Ryman;

and the Moleskine;

Neither book is a patch on Ciak, Rhodia or Quo Vadis products, which have far better paper - and to be fair, neither Ryman nor Moleskine position themselves as "fountain pen friendly" notebooks. However, the Ryman notebook, despite being cheaper, performs better than the pocket Moleskine for all but a couple of the inks I tested. The Moleskine is worse for show and bleedthrough than the Ryman product.

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A Carradice Bodge

The seat tube angle on the LHT is fairly slack, and I've never really liked the way the Carradice hung from the bag loops on my saddle because of it.  Last week, I finally got around to doing something about it.

I cut a short length of pvc pipe, wide enough to feed the seatpost strap through.

Then, I cut a longer piece from a 26 x 2.00 innertube - this went through the pipe, with the ends folded back over the outside, and taped down with electrical tape.  The tube should, I hope, stop the pipe abrading the bag.

The whole lot goes over the seatpost strap, and stands the bag a little way away from the post.

With something reasonably firm packed against the seatpost end of the bag (a book, for example), the bag now hangs at a far better angle. As a bonus, I finally feel like a proper Carradice owner, having used a few pennies worth of leftover DIY stuff to fettle the bag.

 

 

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