Voice Recognition for Log?

[Dockhead]

Is anyone using any kind of voice recognition app for doing the narrative part of the log?


I hate writing stuff out by hand, and some time ago starting using the OpenCPN log application to get down basic voyage data (and it's great!), and started typing out the narrative part.



Big improvement, but would be just that much better if I could dictate it.



As the years go by, I feel it increasingly difficult to make myself keep a proper log, and that is not good

[Paul L]

I'm not comfortable with an electronic log, let alone one created by Alexa. To me a paper book log is a longterm legal document and a short term backup when all electronics fail, aka lightning. The point to start my DR from.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Paul L

I'm not comfortable with an electronic log, let alone one created by Alexa. To me a paper book log is a longterm legal document and a short term backup when all electronics fail, aka lightning. The point to start my DR from.

Speaking as a lawyer -- you may be surprised to learn that most legal documents these days never see paper, and get signed digitally That's why all the paper mills in Finland are going out of business or switching over to making paperboard for Amazon boxes


So you can relax about that aspect of it -- do proper regular backups in the cloud and you will be fine, from the "long term legal document" point of view.


As to short term backup when all the electronics fail -- here you're right, and paper is better, but I'm, personally, not willing to go through the agony of all that writing by hand, just to guard against that once in a lifetime occurrence. OpenCPN logs my position, speed, all instrument data, weather, everything! Every 10 minutes. That's the way to do it, to my taste! YMMV!




But anyway -- that's not what this thread it about. I didn't ask "should I"? I asked HOW?

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Speaking as a lawyer -- you may be surprised to learn that most legal documents these days never see paper, and get signed digitally That's why all the paper mills in Finland are going out of business or switching over to making paperboard for Amazon boxes


So you can relax about that aspect of it -- do proper regular backups in the cloud and you will be fine, from the "long term legal document" point of view.


As to short term backup when all the electronics fail -- here you're right, and paper is better, but I'm, personally, not willing to go through the agony of all that writing by hand, just to guard against that once in a lifetime occurrence. OpenCPN logs my position, speed, all instrument data, weather, everything! Every 10 minutes. That's the way to do it, to my taste! YMMV!




But anyway -- that's not what this thread it about. I didn't ask "should I"? I asked HOW?

The only place I've had to use logs as a legal document was with stateside tax authorities. Copies from a handwritten log worked well. I doubt a computer generated one would have worked as well. You can't back up to the cloud when you are off remote cruising.

Don't believe you sail in the tropics where lightning strikes are a fact of life, not some rare once in a lifetime thing. Liferafts are once in a lifetime.

What's the purpose of your log?

No need to lecture on what the thread is about. Its just friendly discussion in a pub.

[Stu Jackson]

Sounds like a good idea.


I just Googled vr software


The Best Voice Recognition Software Reviews of 2019

The best voice recognition software gives you the ability to streamline your workflow. In our increasingly busy world, this is a major reason it is gaining in popularity.
https://www.business.com/categories/...tion-software/


Lots of hits.

[toddster8]

I can just imagine what a hash Siri would make of log entries. She has the vocabulary of a thirteen year old girl. I prefer to type, anyway. The only time I really use voice notes is when both hands are busy, then I usually transcribe them myself later. Well... actually I'm talking about lab notebooks, but same thing.

Come to think of it, IIRC, Robin Lee Graham famously used a cassette recorder for log keeping. I suppose you could pack quite a lot of hours of audio into a modern iThing.

[Macblaze]

Captain's Log. Star Date 2642. We just dropped anchor in the Antares sector...

Lol.

I tired writing a short story using Siri. It was cool but the editing took as much time as typing it would have, And when you are spouting things off the cuff often you will have a hard time remember what it was Siri was SUPPOSED to type out

Its not there yet IMHO but I wouldn't be surprised if we are only a year or two away.

[Stu Jackson]

Wait!!!


I forgot!!!


With YOUR accent?!?

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

So you can relax about that aspect of it -- do proper regular backups in the cloud and you will be fine, from the "long term legal document" point of view.

Having backups in the cloud sort of defeats the purpose of strategic disasters.

https://www.americanarchivist.org/do...81301629107368

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Paul L

No need to lecture on what the thread is about. Its just friendly discussion in a pub.

No lecture intended

Originally Posted by Paul L

The only place I've had to use logs as a legal document was with stateside tax authorities. Copies from a handwritten log worked well. I doubt a computer generated one would have worked as well. You can't back up to the cloud when you are off remote cruising.

Don't believe you sail in the tropics where lightning strikes are a fact of life, not some rare once in a lifetime thing. Liferafts are once in a lifetime.

What's the purpose of your log?

A log IS a legal document -- you are certainly right about that. It is a proof of what happened on board, who was on board, where the vessel was, how the vessel was being run, how long a vessel has been in whose waters, etc.. It can be demanded by the authorities for different purposes, and could save you in case there is an accident or you get accused of something.


But in this day and age electronic records are accepted everywhere and by all authorities I know about. The gold standard practice would be to digitally sign them and upload them to an authentication archive (like this one Electronic Record Authenticity), but even ordinary electronic documents saved and archived have evidentiary value. Much better than just saving and archiving, is simply emailing your daily log entries to yourself -- that is what I do. The email goes to my company's server and leaves an auditable trail, so already better proof than any paper document. The use of emails as evidence is a well established practice by now.


E-mailing the log to yourself works great even in remote places if you have some means to send them. I did email every day last summer in the Arctic via Iridium Go.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Singularity

Having backups in the cloud sort of defeats the purpose of strategic disasters.

https://www.americanarchivist.org/do...81301629107368

Ha, ha! Indeed!


We actually invented a form of cloud computing in the IT department of my company in the mid '90s specifically for the purpose of ultra robust archiving of legal documents. Documents were broken up into encrypted packets and were distributed with massive redundancy across a WAN made up of geographically distributed computers. The encryption key for each document also contained a catalogue of the packets so that documents could be reassembled by "calling" the packets home over the WAN.


We developed it for our own use and only retired it when conventional cloud computing became available in the 2000's. It's a shame we didn't patent it and commercialize it -- we never thought of that. It was my idea.

[stevead]

If you are using OpenCPN, why not ask for a feature request to add voice recognition support to annotate the Logbook plugin.

From a developer point of view, at least using Windows and .Net (using the System.Speech.Recognition namespace), it ain't rocket surgery to create an application with voice recognition support.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by stevead

If you are using OpenCPN, why not ask for a feature request to add voice recognition support to annotate the Logbook plugin.

From a developer point of view, at least using Windows and .Net (using the System.Speech.Recognition namespace), it ain't rocket surgery to create an application with voice recognition support.

That's a great suggestion; thanks.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by toddster8

I can just imagine what a hash Siri would make of log entries. She has the vocabulary of a thirteen year old girl. I prefer to type, anyway. The only time I really use voice notes is when both hands are busy, then I usually transcribe them myself later. Well... actually I'm talking about lab notebooks, but same thing.

Come to think of it, IIRC, Robin Lee Graham famously used a cassette recorder for log keeping. I suppose you could pack quite a lot of hours of audio into a modern iThing.

Siri is awful, and I bet there has been great progress with voice recognition since then.


I type well, but I just get tired of it.


For years I used to write letters and memos by dictating them -- it's a skill which takes some time to develop, but tremendously effective once you learn to work that way. I even had a secretary who took stenography -- dating myself here


That's kind of what I'm dreaming about, but the voice recognition would need to be vastly better than Siri, to be worthwhile. Like someone said -- if editing the text takes as much time as it would have taken to simply type it in the first place, it's useless.

[mrm]

I think the FreeNet Project took over from where you left


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet


Back to the topic, voice recognition is a computation-intensive task and is usually done on the server (cloud) side. Don't know if it would be running with any quality on low end hardware.

Originally Posted by Dockhead

We actually invented a form of cloud computing in the IT department of my company in the mid '90s specifically for the purpose of ultra robust archiving of legal documents. Documents were broken up into encrypted packets and were distributed with massive redundancy across a WAN made up of geographically distributed computers. The encryption key for each document also contained a catalogue of the packets so that documents could be reassembled by "calling" the packets home over the WAN. [...]