[pct-l] Journal by digital voice recorder

[steve_peterson at sbcglobal.net (Steve Peterson)]

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.