I’m a dictaphone fan. Even better than the kind shown in the article are the ones with sliding switches. I have an Olympus model.
Mine has both internal memory and SD card capability. And similar to what the author aspires to, I record bits and bobs throughout the day and then use the SD card to transfer them to my Mac. From there, they automatically get added to a MacWhisper watch folder and then automatically transcribed to plain text with the Parakeet v3 model.
I use regex to put each sentence on its own line and then I dump the file’s contents into my ongoing mindmap, where I sort everything out. (From there, ideas make their way to other files/apps: outlines, OmniFocus/TaskPaper, calendar, email, etc.) The text file then gets archived and is easily searchable later (nvALT/Obsidian, ripgrep, etc.). It’s a great system — primarily because it reduces distractions; it keeps me away from the screen and off the phone; it’s ergonomic; and it affords background/subconscious processing time and power. The mind releases ideas out of order, and the system lets me capture them easily and anywhere, and then sort, edit, combine, and act on them later.
My only complaint is that Parakeet doesn’t respect punctuation commands. I can work around that with regex / find-and-replace, but it’s a bit janky.
I’d love having a smaller dictaphone device that would fit on a keychain without any loss in functionality, and perhaps with improvements in recording quality and battery life. Wireless transfer would be nice too.
treetalker•27m ago
Mine has both internal memory and SD card capability. And similar to what the author aspires to, I record bits and bobs throughout the day and then use the SD card to transfer them to my Mac. From there, they automatically get added to a MacWhisper watch folder and then automatically transcribed to plain text with the Parakeet v3 model.
I use regex to put each sentence on its own line and then I dump the file’s contents into my ongoing mindmap, where I sort everything out. (From there, ideas make their way to other files/apps: outlines, OmniFocus/TaskPaper, calendar, email, etc.) The text file then gets archived and is easily searchable later (nvALT/Obsidian, ripgrep, etc.). It’s a great system — primarily because it reduces distractions; it keeps me away from the screen and off the phone; it’s ergonomic; and it affords background/subconscious processing time and power. The mind releases ideas out of order, and the system lets me capture them easily and anywhere, and then sort, edit, combine, and act on them later.
My only complaint is that Parakeet doesn’t respect punctuation commands. I can work around that with regex / find-and-replace, but it’s a bit janky.
I’d love having a smaller dictaphone device that would fit on a keychain without any loss in functionality, and perhaps with improvements in recording quality and battery life. Wireless transfer would be nice too.