[pct-l] Journal by digital voice recorder

[dude at fastmail.ca (dude)]

steve - thanks so much for this info.  I have been contemplating using 
a digital voice recorder for my next long hike, so this is great stuff.

One thing that I thought the voice recorder would help with is 
documenting photos.  I always seem to come back from the trip and sit 
there and look at several of my photos and say "hmmm.  now was this X 
lake or Y lake?"  did the recorder help with that at all?

also, let me know if you end up using the voice to text software, as 
thats' what I'd like to try so that my write-ups can just be alot of 
cutting and pasting :-).

thanks,
dude



> On my recent JMT hike I used a digital voice recorder to keep my
> journal. This turned out to be a very light weight and handy way to do
> it. Here are some summary specs:
> 
> - MyVoice digital voice recorder (and mp3 player) made by
> www.decktron.com, model DMR-1318MP
> 
> - 39x108x17 mm, 2.2 oz (w/one AAA battery--some online sources
> indicate that it uses 2 AAA batteries, but that isn't true)
> 
> - records onto built-in flash memory or onto MMC card; 1100 min
> recording time w/built-in memory, max of 400 messages. I used just the
> internal memory since my hike was relatively short (16 days). I did
> start to get concerned that I'd bump into the 400 msg limit, but by
> summarizing every couple of hours, I reduced the number of messages I
> was recording by quite a bit and never hit the limit. Messages are
> automatically time/date stamped.
> 
> - battery life is supposedly 5 hours, but I got somewhat less than
> that; one battery lasted me about 8-9 days. Playing mp3 stuff reduces
> batter life very quickly and I didn't use that feature. A lithium
> battery would, of course, last longer.
> 
> - over 16 days I recorded about 230 messages, most about 30 seconds
> long, but quite a few were very short--just a few seconds.
> 
> - USB port and supplied software allows upload to PC where you can
> play msgs back, or (presumably) run them through voice-to-text
> translation software. If you decide to do the latter, use the
> higher-quality recording (SP vs. LP) because (I understand) the
> voice-to-text software requires that to do a decent translation.
> 
> It is so small and light (less than a candy bar) that I could carry it
> in my shorts pocket and not be annoyed by it. That made it easy to
> whip out and record something whenever I felt like it. I was thus
> freed from having to try to remember everything until I could write it
> down and the journal stayed current. When I met people that I wanted
> to correspond with, I just had them speak their email address into the
> recorder--no fumbling with paper/pen or anything.
> 
> It took a little getting used to, but after a day or so I was
> recording everything I thought of. The one disadvantage is that it is
> harder to record an "essay" with it than with pen/paper because you
> can't (easily) look back at what you've recorded and then continue
> on--each recording is a separate message. At first I thought I might
> be self-conscious about talking in front of others, but when I wanted
> privacy I just hung back on the trail a little, or wandered off a
> short distance. At night I could just pull the quilt over my head and
> that muffled the sound.
> 
> The trick to doing compact audio recordings is to think of what you
> want to say, then say it. Don't stand there saying "Uh....gee.....I
> guess I don't really know what I want to say....maybe something will
> come to me in a minute". That's why most of my messages were 30 secs
> or less--you can say a lot in 30 seconds if you know what you're
> wanting to say.
> 
> If you choose to get a voice recorder, be sure it has a "hold"
> function--this prevents it from accidentally turning on. Before I
> started using that, it started speaking to me at random times which
> was startling, then became annoying. The hold button fixed that.
> 
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