Hi Rod & Paul,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodstar
I am a big fan of the dictaphone. As a lawyer by day, I dictate all my correspondence, so it is an entirely natural extension of that to dictate by night too. I have a very small digital dictaphone - not much bigger than an eraser, so it slips in the pocket between objects.
The benefit of dictating is that you can record your observations WHILE you are looking at the object, rather than looking, then turning away to write/draw. This has transformed my observing - I find that I see and note a lot more. In the days before dictating my observations, my records tended to be very vague and sloppy. Now, my description of an open cluster can run for half a page!!!
The cumbersome part is making a transcript of the observing notes. I am hoping to find some software sometime soon that can do this for me without the time and effort of manually typing.
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Well Rod, it would seem sensible to me to have the same person who is typing up your correspondence type up your observations. Or is your correspondence done "Dennis Denuto" way; as in The Castle?
As for the rest, I agree completely!
Hey Rod, how's about posting some observations then ??
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lismore Bloke
The dictaphone idea sounds great. I think lgcles uses one.
Converting what's on the dictaphone to text should be possible. This site:
http://www.softwaregeek.com/speech-t...verter/p1.html
has various conversion programs that could help. It might be a case of converting the dictaphone output to a .wav file and then converting that into text. It might be worth posting the question into the Tips, Techniques and Computers forum for some of those clever chappies to think about. Cheers, Paul. |
Yep, I do use a dictaphone of a similar sort to Rod's by the sound of it. I had a small cassette recorder until last year that served me well for 13 years but I basically wore it out in the end. If anyone comes up with a method to convert my MP3 mumblings to crisp text that is cheap, simple and can be made to work by a computer simpleton like me, let me know!
Paul there are several benefits to making notes. Obviously you will have a lasting record that can be useful for all sorts of purposes down the track.
Just as importantly, if you have a "system" of describing things and you do make notes, then it forces you to pause and look for detail. While you are making notes, it stops the glance and move on style observing and makes you observe critically and carefully. You
will see more detail in things if you force yourself to look for it -- promise. You will also, because of the extra time at the ep, start noticing other things in the field (like other galaxies) that you didn't know were there or aren't marked on the more simple maps that you would otherwise have missed.
Sketching has the same effect as note taking but heightened. Its only drawback is that it takes quite a while and you need a light-source to draw. You have to constantly re-dark adapt. I only really leaned to observe Jupiter properly when I took up sketching the planet. The more I sketched, the more detail I saw.
Best,
Les D