[AT] OT -- Fort Knox & gold

[Larry D Goss]

LOL!  I just so happen to have purchased a digital voice recorder last week, 
Steve.  I got it for "genealogical purposes" to help in transcribing 100 
volumes of journals and daily diaries that I inherited from three 
generations of women in my family.  It's the expensive Sony ($150) that is 
compatible with Dragon Dictate's Naturally Speaking.  I bought the latest 
version of that software also so I can feed directly from the voice recorder 
and go from audio to word processor text.  I have worked with earlier 
versions of Dragon Dictate and like the way it operates.  The latest version 
can faithfully capture speech from any digital source without a bunch of 
training.  When I get the whole system set up, I'll be able to go from oral 
history to searchable PDF files "without human intervention."   We all know 
that there will have to be some editing to cull out the glitches and for 
formatting purposes, but this should be a real time saver.  The complete 
thread of hardware and software includes a Sony ICD-SX46 (that's already 
been superseded by a later model), Naturally Speaking 9, Microsoft Office 
2007, and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.  The Sony recorder gives a necessary 
portability for working with the bound diaries (Did you ever try to type 
while holding a book open with both hands?) and the PDF format for the files 
solves some security issues (maintaining file integrity) while making the 
resulting material available to family members, libraries, and museums 
regardless of their computer platform and operating system.

FWIW, all the versions of Adobe Acrobat since version 4 have had the 
capability of making any text file infinitely searchable.  Version 8 is the 
first one to do it more or less automatically.  All the free versions of 
Adobe Reader have the ability to search for text strings in files if they 
have been set up for page capture or character recognition by running them 
through the full version of Adobe Acrobat.

Larry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve W." <falcon at telenet.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] OT -- Fort Knox & gold


> Larry,
>  You just need to take a digital recorder with you and ask his
> permission to record some of this info before it is lost to the world.
> I do that a lot at reunions and other gatherings of "older" people.
>
> Larry D Goss wrote:
>> And to think that I got all that information for the price of a cup of
>> senior coffee at McDonalds.  I wish I could convince Rolla to write his
>> memoirs while he is still able.  He turns 85 this year.  He was employed 
>> at
>> the gold repository when he was around 18 years old, but by that time he 
>> was
>> a seasoned jeweler and watchmaker.  When his father died, he was 
>> apprenticed
>> at age 10 to a jeweler in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
>>
>> Larry
>
>
> -- 
> Steve W.
> Near Cooperstown, New York
>
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