Technology What a Thing it is Two

Let me begin by telling that today is the first time I’ve walked along pretending to be on the phone, while actually talking to the built in voice recorder. I quite often compose blogs and scribbling as I wander. However it can be a pain in the arse to keep stopping to write notes, and for that matter to carry a notebook. Due to this inconvenience, often the words I conjure are lost. Being able to make these recordings is far easier. It’s why some time ago I bought a Dictaphone. However I can’t find my Dictaphone; I think it managed to get ditched in the lockup (this could be fatal for it, because I wouldn’t have removed the batteries, for everything else placed in storage I removed the batteries to save them from leak damage over time).

Today I have to eat my once words “who needs a smartphone, all I need to do is make calls ect”? That has certainly turned out to be bunkem. I take pictures with the phone, and it's great for that (it’s only 5megapixels, but for Facebook, Twitter and here it’s fine). The pictures can act as cues, and often once a thread is picked back up I can re-live a walk, and re-discover my thoughts or words (as long as I make time to actually write them down ... I am working on that particular self discipline).

It may be limited, but I always have the phone, where quite often I don’t have the camera (because I’m a dullard), and now I have the phones voice recorder as well. I may have mentioned I have voice to text software, but I’ve never had time to train it properly (maybe once we are away that will change, if the phone files are compatible ... shouldn’t be too challenging with my previous background in IT ... ahem).

So just before I started typing I listened to my new verbal notes; eventually I stopped cringing at my dulcet tones ringing in my ears like a bad Dick Van Dyke impression, roughed up with a little vintage Mike Reid (the more relaxed I am the better I sound; also: note to self, make notes don’t try to write using speech, because that just sounds like an Eastenders extra trying to big up their role). Having listened through I grabbed out the key phrases and thoughts typed some words to start a post, headed it with a paragraph about the use of the voice recorder and then got caught up with the use of technology again ... and the spiel above ensued.

Over the nineteen months of this blog I’ve tried to find shortcuts, to deal with my shortcomings in written form, notebooks and carrying them, my terrible illegible scrawl, how my written words go from ten words per line at the start of a note, to four words per two lines by line three, and how to catch those fleeting thoughts that eventually end up here. I may have cracked it, Samsung Galaxy Ace and a hands free kit ... though based on battery consumption today I may have to purchase a spare phone battery, and I think we have no option but to find a dash mounted solar charging system.

Now I shall proof read this, preview it and hope I’ve picked up on all my other written short comings when it’s published, and then write what I actually meant to write before I went off on a massive tangent.