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SunnyWalker
05-16-2012, 15:47
I am picking up a new digital voice recorder tomorrow. Plan to start journaling now and then when I start cdt (June/July 2013) I'll be in real good practice. I've looked thru WB for a couple of days on the subject of journals and see that general consensus is paper. It kind of surprises me with our love affair w/tech and elec gadgets. I have used many recorders over the years. From micro cassette recorders I used when I did a short stint as a reporter, school, college etc. I use an inexpensive one (digital recorder) now to track certain things in my life. When I rode w/my son from Amarillo to Oregon coast by bicycle I used a a small cassette recorder w/the usual size cassette. There were extenuating circumstances to why I did not use a micro-cassette recorder. This tech has come so far that of course these recorders are digital. On the bike trip I did my recording in the day and also to talk to certain people. It was a great way to capture many events, memories etc. I had a laugh when we got home, my wife asked me to listen to one of her favorite entries. It's a night when I am in the bag and I talk slower n slower until you hear a long pause n then a snore. So you can capture some neat moments.
So, anyone doing this w/success? I am going to use a Sony ICDUX523. Uses 1 AAA bat. This is a long way from the cheapie recorders. Nowdays when you look at the recording time, storage capacity n then some w/SD cards, USB port, its really something. Will be either swapping out SD cards or emailing portions home. This is why I am doing this now to work the wrinkles out. Will use Dragon Naturally Speaking software for transcribing the recordings. All in all I think its a good plan. Anyone else doing this w/success?

kayak karl
05-16-2012, 16:05
i use this recorder. (http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-WS-700M-Digital-Recorder-140152/dp/B003VWU14E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337198586&sr=8-1) i just use it for kayaking and GPSing trails. works good. i keep mine in a waterproof sleeve. i swap out cards.

kayak karl
05-16-2012, 16:14
i use it WITH gps to remember landmarks, turns and water etc.

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 17:23
I have over the years used an old mini tape recorder,that I bought a long time ago,after talking to a writer in my family that recommended it to me.I had,at a Thanksgiving dinner one year,said that I had very bad penmanship,and writing skills,and suck spelling(not that any of that has improved over the years) and therefore shied away from writing,She asked why I wanted to write,to which I replied,"Cause I just might have something to say"It was a good investment,and yes, if I were to ever do a trail journal in the traditional sense,I'd get a new digital recorder,as to avoid all those little tapes.Great topic.

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 17:25
I have over the years used an old mini tape recorder,that I bought a long time ago,after talking to a writer in my family that recommended it to me.I had,at a Thanksgiving dinner one year,said that I had very bad penmanship,and writing skills,and suck spelling(not that any of that has improved over the years) and therefore shied away from writing,She asked why I wanted to write,to which I replied,"Cause I just might have something to say"It was a good investment,and yes, if I were to ever do a trail journal in the traditional sense,I'd get a new digital recorder,as to avoid all those little tapes.Great topic.Incidentally,"spell check" is my friend to which without,I would be lost!

Spokes
05-16-2012, 18:23
I like paper myself. Let's me unwind as I write while laying warm inside my sleeping bag.
I realize your use of the digital recorder is different but I found on my thru hike folks following along liked listening to audio updates. Smartphones make it easy.

Some suggestions to achieve this are:
- set up a free www.trailphone.net account and post an audio update
- get the AudioBoo app (free) and post and audio update via your twitter account
- set up a free WordPress account and use the "post by voice" feature or use AudioBoo app to link your adio Tweets to your WP blog.

Cheers!

SunnyWalker
05-16-2012, 19:23
Dear Spokes: Thankyou for all these suggestions. I will use at least two separate folders on the recorder. ONE for "public consumption" of which I will post on something like that or WB or Postholer. These comments will be just pretty factual and not a whole lot of personal info/stories. Reason being I feel I loose control of anything posted. The goal of the project is to produce something in writing 'bout the trip and experience. -The other folder will be all my notes, etc.

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 19:39
I like paper myself. Let's me unwind as I write while laying warm inside my sleeping bag.
I realize your use of the digital recorder is different but I found on my thru hike folks following along liked listening to audio updates. Smartphones make it easy.

Some suggestions to achieve this are:
- set up a free www.trailphone.net (http://www.trailphone.net) account and post an audio update
- get the AudioBoo app (free) and post and audio update via your twitter account
- set up a free WordPress account and use the "post by voice" feature or use AudioBoo app to link your adio Tweets to your WP blog.

Cheers!Thanks for the advise Spokes,And for those of you that have not seen "Spokes video journals",check em out at "Trail journals",they are awesome and took me about 4 hours to see em all,and well worth the time,very rich and just plain fun,again,nice job Spokes!:sun

kayak karl
05-16-2012, 19:41
i got DRAGON (http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/pd/productID.231526100?link_name=home_standard&utm_medium=ps&utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=Dragon&utm_term=Dragon%20Home%20Edition%20Site%20link) for my laptop. i just plug the recorder's speaker into to computers mic. and it types it up for me. if you learn the commands you can start sentences, punctuation, new line, caps and paragraphs.

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 20:50
i got DRAGON (http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/pd/productID.231526100?link_name=home_standard&utm_medium=ps&utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=Dragon&utm_term=Dragon%20Home%20Edition%20Site%20link) for my laptop. i just plug the recorder's speaker into to computers mic. and it types it up for me. if you learn the commands you can start sentences, punctuation, new line, caps and paragraphs.What a great piece of hardware/software,allowing so many that may otherwise might be excluded from typing,for what ever reason.

SunnyWalker
05-16-2012, 21:38
Yeah, that Dragon softwre is something.

Thanks Kayak Karl n Spokes n Rocketsocks for the suggesstions n fine n encouraging words. Now off to watch Spokes' videos!

JJJ
05-16-2012, 22:17
Thanks for the advise Spokes,And for those of you that have not seen "Spokes video journals",check em out at "Trail journals",they are awesome and took me about 4 hours to see em all,and well worth the time,very rich and just plain fun,again,nice job Spokes!:sun
I could not find it at http://www.trailjournals.com/journals.cfm
:(

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 22:21
I could not find it at http://www.trailjournals.com/journals.cfm
:(oh,man,Hope I did give out mis info.I thought thats where it was,let me poke around a bit,sorry.And it really is very good to view.

rocketsocks
05-16-2012, 22:25
oh,man,Hope I did give out mis info.I thought thats where it was,let me poke around a bit,sorry.And it really is very good to view.Yep jj it's there,are you sure you spelled Spokes right:-?.give it another shot...it also on you-tube.:)

LeeAllure
05-16-2012, 23:00
I'm planning on bringing my audio recorder along, mailing /swapping out the SD cards.
I suppose some people would like to hear the audio, but I'd only put them up after copious editing,
and it's a lot easier to get my audio transcribed.

leaftye
05-16-2012, 23:11
Good ideas. I've had some of the same ideas after I found that I wouldn't journal sufficiently on my hikes. Sometimes that was because my fingers were too cold at the end of the day, or I didn't want to break my pace to write down the name of the hikers I had just met, or because it was just too much writing. My thoughts only got as far as using a recorder, Dragon and trying to find a way to upload the journals to the trailphone site...and preferably have someone at home convert it with Dragon. There are other great ideas here too.

SunnyWalker
05-17-2012, 00:44
It's pretty easy to use a recorder. I salute all those who do a real journal on devices like a smartphone, Palm, Pocketmail(thing of the past?). To me to try to peck it out on one of them , well the thought of it is kind of mentally stifling. This method is not the cure-all-end-all but I think it'll wk for me. Lot more creativity, inspiration, imagination, sound, emotion can go into a record of this type. OK, I need to stop!

rocketsocks
05-17-2012, 00:49
It's pretty easy to use a recorder. I salute all those who do a real journal on devices like a smartphone, Palm, Pocketmail(thing of the past?). To me to try to peck it out on one of them , well the thought of it is kind of mentally stifling. This method is not the cure-all-end-all but I think it'll wk for me. Lot more creativity, inspiration, imagination, sound, emotion can go into a record of this type. OK, I need to stop!Ah yes,the creativity,unhindered and with continuity of thought.

kayak karl
05-17-2012, 07:44
if your a writer it will help, but for me my journaling went from a paragraph each day to "this week we walked and it rained Tuesday" :)

SunnyWalker
05-17-2012, 10:23
Ha ha, yes it can take some attention n work. Kayak, it sure is worth it though.
LLallure: what type/brand/model of device are you using? Please tell us how this has worked for you.

SunnyWalker
05-17-2012, 10:26
Don't want to change the subject here, but Kayak maybe you can PM me n tell 'bout your avatar photo (is that you?), n tell me 'bout your experiences?

leaftye
05-17-2012, 11:39
@kayak karl

I can see how a journal can get like that. I think I mentioned it earlier, but I like to note the names of everyone I meet. On the PCT in southern California, it also helps to note the quality of water sources so that I can get the water report updated for the community. On long hot difficult days, I'll easily forget those if I only stored it in my head.

BrianLe
05-17-2012, 12:21
I do like having a voice recorder --- as one of many apps on my smartphone. Great for remembering things in town that occur to me while I'm walking on trail. But I don't like using it as a journaling device.

For the CDT last year I got a new phone and sadly (don't get me started ...) ultimately had to get a new folding keyboard that would work with it. I really like having a folding wireless (blutooth) keyboard for comfortably writing up trail journals at the end of each trail day. It makes it so much easier to type up a more complete picture of the day, and do so while things are still fresh in my head.

Something that took me literally months to figure out on the CDT was, however, that the particular keyboard I got was susceptible to cold. So on colder nights it literally just wouldn't work. Finally I just started to put it into an inner pocket when I got to camp and then it would stay warm enough to type up my journal entry.

Before I figured this out I just did long voice recordings in my tent for each such day, and would then transcribe these into text (no voice-to-text software on my phone) when I had some time in trail towns.
I really hated that; it just took too much of my available in-town time. And even though it was typically not more than a week at most since the recordings were made, I had still forgotten things, things got a bit jumbled together.

I can only imagine that all of this would be that much worse if doing several months worth after the trip were over. If voice recognition software is accurate enough, maybe that would make it reasonable. Perhaps the quality of the recording device and the software setting for recording quality make a difference. It would certainly be something to test out well before starting the trip. With no experience at it, I wonder if when converting to text later that you might later regret the types of things that you didn't think to say at the time; the text format is just ... different. I.e., when I'm verbally recording something, I tend to preserve a somewhat different subset of the experience than I will be looking for when I express it as text. Logical or not, that's how it's seemed to me anyway.

I think it could also be almost overwhelmingly tempting to do too much editing and re-interpreting of the story in the transcribing process. It's well understood how really poor the human memory is for accuracy; all of our memories are to some degree a sort of telephone game retelling of the story to ourselves, and we unconsciously edit some things to be how we want to remember them rather than as they actually occurred. It must be hard to avoid this when transcribing; for my own part, I've got complete text and just resist any later edits beyond really obvious error corrections or fixing the occasional spelling error.

At any rate, for me personally a voice recording approach is a good backup but I far prefer typing up journal entries in my tent each night, just as part of the evening ritual.

LeeAllure
05-17-2012, 14:16
LLallure: what type/brand/model of device are you using? Please tell us how this has worked for you.

I'll be carrying a Samson ZoomH2. It's bigger than the Olympus others are carrying, and takes 2aa batteries, so I'm considering it a luxury item; it weighs ~8 oz. with all the gear I need to make it work on the trail, and in town. I've been using this for a couple of years for other audio recording. The quality is excellent and the battery life is decent. it also holds SD cards from 1 to 16 GB. I'll share how it works out, as I go along.

leaftye
05-17-2012, 15:06
I'll be carrying a Samson ZoomH2. It's bigger than the Olympus others are carrying, and takes 2aa batteries, so I'm considering it a luxury item; it weighs ~4 oz. I've been using this for a couple of years for other audio recording. The quality is excellent and the battery life is decent. it also holds SD cards from 1 to 16 GB. I'll share how it works out, as I go along.

I'm interested. That recorder caught my attention a long time ago. Given that it's held up to a couple years of use, do you think it stands a good chance of handling half a year on the trail? How well does it work for listening to music, particularly with shuffle (music) and a resume feature (for audiobooks)?

rocketsocks
05-17-2012, 17:18
I do like having a voice recorder --- as one of many apps on my smartphone. Great for remembering things in town that occur to me while I'm walking on trail. But I don't like using it as a journaling device.

For the CDT last year I got a new phone and sadly (don't get me started ...) ultimately had to get a new folding keyboard that would work with it. I really like having a folding wireless (blutooth) keyboard for comfortably writing up trail journals at the end of each trail day. It makes it so much easier to type up a more complete picture of the day, and do so while things are still fresh in my head.

Something that took me literally months to figure out on the CDT was, however, that the particular keyboard I got was susceptible to cold. So on colder nights it literally just wouldn't work. Finally I just started to put it into an inner pocket when I got to camp and then it would stay warm enough to type up my journal entry.

Before I figured this out I just did long voice recordings in my tent for each such day, and would then transcribe these into text (no voice-to-text software on my phone) when I had some time in trail towns.
I really hated that; it just took too much of my available in-town time. And even though it was typically not more than a week at most since the recordings were made, I had still forgotten things, things got a bit jumbled together.

I can only imagine that all of this would be that much worse if doing several months worth after the trip were over. If voice recognition software is accurate enough, maybe that would make it reasonable. Perhaps the quality of the recording device and the software setting for recording quality make a difference. It would certainly be something to test out well before starting the trip. With no experience at it, I wonder if when converting to text later that you might later regret the types of things that you didn't think to say at the time; the text format is just ... different. I.e., when I'm verbally recording something, I tend to preserve a somewhat different subset of the experience than I will be looking for when I express it as text. Logical or not, that's how it's seemed to me anyway.

I think it could also be almost overwhelmingly tempting to do too much editing and re-interpreting of the story in the transcribing process. It's well understood how really poor the human memory is for accuracy; all of our memories are to some degree a sort of telephone game retelling of the story to ourselves, and we unconsciously edit some things to be how we want to remember them rather than as they actually occurred. It must be hard to avoid this when transcribing; for my own part, I've got complete text and just resist any later edits beyond really obvious error corrections or fixing the occasional spelling error.

At any rate, for me personally a voice recording approach is a good backup but I far prefer typing up journal entries in my tent each night, just as part of the evening ritual.Good post Brian,as you've pointed out,not remembering entire events correctly is yes,a hindrance.But having Artistic license is one of things I've enjoyed.Most of my entries are a jumbled series of bullet points with intermittent run on sentences,followed by some not well thought out concepts,as is apparent here with most of my post.Although I have increased my typing skills greatly,and can now have a decent conversation typing with someone,their's more to be improved upon,and again without spell check,my word selections drop.....drastically.

chiefduffy
05-18-2012, 01:00
I have had great luck with a digital recorder, much better than writing in a journal. But I never could get Dragon to trancribe the recordings very well.

LeeAllure
05-18-2012, 07:51
I'm interested. That recorder caught my attention a long time ago. Given that it's held up to a couple years of use, do you think it stands a good chance of handling half a year on the trail? How well does it work for listening to music, particularly with shuffle (music) and a resume feature (for audiobooks)?

I have never used it to listen to anything except the immediate audio I'm working on.
It doesn't shuffle, per se, but it's easy to scroll through things I've created, or other
things I've added to the SD card. The name of the file can be seen, but is limited.

As long as I remove batteries (so that it doesn't accidentally turn on, which happened on
another trip, and resulted in some warranty replacement) I expect it will handle the trip
just fine.

SunnyWalker
05-20-2012, 00:37
To see Dragon Naturally Speaking sftwre., try Youtube. It does not wk for rvryone the same way. I dwnload the files, it brings them uo in "print" Then I edit as I watch. Really nice.

SunnyWalker
05-20-2012, 22:52
I picked up the Sony ICDUX523 digital Voice Recorder and the Dragon Naturally Speaking sftwre. The Softwre was on sale at Best Buy, $40.00 off. Such a deal. Will load the sftwre onto my Mac Tomorrow. Best Buy matched the Office Depot price of $79.99., otherwise it would have been $104 or something like that. Of course I would have just driven over to Office Depot. It's nice to deal w/BB. I'll try to give some progress reports. However, if no one is interested I won't. The recorder is smaller than I thought n again uses just one AAA batt. Wow. It's a light little thing. Easy to use n intuitive. Sure seems better than anything like that I ever owned or used. If you wish though, one can spend MUCH more on a voice recorder.

SunnyWalker
05-22-2012, 18:49
Brian, I have a folding portable keyboard for my palm pilot. That is a good idea also-portable keyboard for smartphone, palm, etc.

BrianLe
05-22-2012, 21:24
I don't suggest that my approach is right for everyone; my pack weight is increased thereby. Phone, keyboard, neoprene case for the phone, charger for the phone, spare battery for the phone, it all adds up.

But I've found it worth the weight. The mechanical act of using something close to a real keyboard seems to engage my brain at just the right pace to comfortably type out a lot of detail about the now-completed day.

chiefduffy
05-22-2012, 21:32
I'll try to give some progress reports. However, if no one is interested I won't. .

I'm interested! Especially in how well Dragon will transcribe the recordings for you.

bearcreek
05-23-2012, 10:21
I used Dragon several years ago on a project to map The Colorado Trail. It worked, but not very well. I found that if I downloaded the information while it was still fairly fresh in mind that I could get the translation to work. It is really susceptible to wind noise, water noise, or any other noise. Works ok indoors, but not so great outdoors.

I upgraded my version last year but it still didn't work very well. I may give it one more try on the CDT this summer.

SunnyWalker
08-28-2012, 23:09
I am recording lately and am trying to remember to get out in the wind outdoors. Then to bring it in and try it with the Dragon software. I'll let you know. So far the device is far advanced of anything I have used before. It kind of appears to me to be beyond the "toy" voice recorders and into the "professional recorders" although one could still spend much more on a device then I did.

scree
08-29-2012, 00:01
I used Dragon several years ago on a project to map The Colorado Trail. It worked, but not very well. I found that if I downloaded the information while it was still fairly fresh in mind that I could get the translation to work. It is really susceptible to wind noise, water noise, or any other noise. Works ok indoors, but not so great outdoors.

I upgraded my version last year but it still didn't work very well. I may give it one more try on the CDT this summer.

You can isolate speech from other sounds with audio processing programs like Audacity (free - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) if you learn how to apply the right filters or plugins. You would use this to process your audio before importing it to Dragon. Google up something like "voice isolation" and you'll find some methods for chopping out a lot, but not all, of the background noise in your speech recordings. It's a notoriously challenging problem but I would estimate it could still result in very significant gains in Dragon recognition.

etboy
08-29-2012, 01:17
Dragon Naturally Speaking?
Buyer beware. I have spent $250-$300 on these in years gone by. The results were little short of embezzlement. How it is legal to sell this snake oil is beyond my comprehension.
E.T

BrianLe
08-29-2012, 11:46
My new tablet has Google voice recognition software and my first attempt with this was surprisingly good. Then I tried a more extensive session and found too many errors. It seemed at times that multiple sentences in a row would come out right and then one would be laughably wrong.

It says that it can recognize other languages too, but I found this to be utter crap, at least in Spanish and German. But indeed, english language recognition has come quite a ways since I tried this last. It's still not "there" yet, at least not anything I've had direct experience with. (maybe if I spend some time training it --- dunno off-hand if that's even an option with my tablet, TBD).