• Dictaphone: Scripts to manage audionotes produced by digital Dictaphone

  I have been using for two years now the "Digital Music Player NWZ B163F" from Sony Corp. as a dictaphone. I carry it everywhere with me, record short ideas in it which I process at the end of the week, and sometime conversations with doctors and administrative people which I want to review later.

** Descriptions of the scripts

Along the months I developped some scripts in Perl to help me process those audionotes: 1) =processDictaphone.pl= simply

1. creates a folder named after the current date in format 2011-12-11,
2. copy the audionotes from the dictaphone in it
3. and unmount the dictaphone 2) =readWavFiles.pl= simply
   • reads the audionotes to be processed, one at at time, pausing between each.
   • It picks the folders in reversed chronological order (the most recent first),
   • and the files inside each folder in chronological order (in the order they were recorded).
   • After playing, the audionotes is moved to another folder, replicating the folder structure (i.e. the dated batch folders) of the original folder.
   • The keys are:
     • Ret to play again
     • C-c to stop the playing
     • C-d to archive the

** Wishlist

Those scripts do the job (and a great one for me), but I do hope to improve them. Some ideas follow:

TODO REPROGRAM the scripts from Perl to Python MAYB DOCUMENT how to start =processDictaphone.pl= automatically when a dictaphone is connected. :MAYB: :LOGBOOK:

• State "MAYB" from "TODO" [2016-11-09 Wed 20:18]
• State "TODO" from "" [2016-11-09 Wed 20:18] :END: Make =processDictaphone.pl= automatically launch when the dictaphone is inserted in the USB port.

*** MAYB Improve the graphical and keyboard interface of =readWavFiles.pl=: :MAYB: :LOGBOOK:

• State "MAYB" from "TODO" [2016-11-09 Wed 20:18]
• State "TODO" from "" [2016-11-09 Wed 20:18] :END:

I am almost sure I am not using the right way to read the keyword in Perl. Nevertheless they should be "Control" keys, so that to reduce the risks that bad things happen when one types in the script's shell inside of one's favorite editor.

*** TODO ADD command to =readWavFiles.pl= to copy the audio file to another folder than the default :LOGBOOK:

• State "TODO" from "" [2016-11-09 Wed 20:19] :END: for long audionotes to process later or to archive in a particular repository

*** TODO ADD command to =readWavFiles.pl= to move back (infinitely?),

• A kind of UNDO button, moving back the files from the destination folder to the source folder.

MAYB CLEAN UP the choice of the source file when no parameter is given TODO ADD to =readWavFiles.pl= the sound of victory

• Include in =readWavFiles.pl= the sound of victory when all audionotes have been processed: currently it is just the last audionotes processed, which is read automatically, and can be archived by error. It would be nicer to have it separate.

*** MAYB INTEGRATE the script in ELISP to add to the todo item generated a link to the correponding audio file Maybe with org-capture, so that one action entered in text in org-mode can be linked to the audio-note which generated it.

** Participation to the project and Licence.

I am not so proud of the source that I would ask you to cite me if you use it, but I will be happy if you let me know.

I am planning to work more on those scripts, but cannot promise to maintain them.

I would be more than happy if anyone takes those scripts and reprogam them in another language.

** Acknowledgements

Kudos to David Allen who mentionned digital recording devices in his book "Get Things Done": this pushed me to try using a dictaphone, which helped me a lot to get organized and a quiet mind. I was always short of memory but now I have external memory!