From Bunny Slippers to Business Plans
I don’t replace my keyboards because they’ve stopped working. I relpace them because they’re so disgustingly filthy they’re beyond all hope.
I have a bad habit of snacking at my desk, working through lunch with a sandwich at my side, spilling coffee droplets, cookie crumbs, etc. Once, when I was still working in an office, I even spilled an entire mug full of tea with honey onto my keyboard. All of the keys got stuck.
I’ll admit it.
I only wanted my husband to get his laptop fixed so that I would never have to leave the cozy safety of my bed ever again.
I loved propping up several pillows behind my back, setting up the small breakfast-in-bed tray, and writing, tweeting, and surfing Etsy to my heart’s content. It was relaxing, and appealed to my inherent laziness.
So it drove me crazy that he was taking his sweet old time replacing his laptop’s defunct power cable.
Then he presented me with an early birthday gift, and suddenly the possibility afforded by mobility seemed limitless!
[RCA Rp5022 64 Mb Voice Recorder With Usb, $19.98, Amazon]
[Olympus TP-7 Telephone Recording Device, $17.71, Amazon]
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews lately and, to get the job done, I’ve been using the items above.
My voice recorder (new versions are available) has a ton of storage place, allows me to place markers within my sound files, and includes a USB port for uploading to my computer. My telephone recording device also works like a charm, one end plugging into my recorder, the other going into my ear, allowing me to record all of my telephone interviews. Both of them being quite cheap, I’d recommend them to any writer on a budget.
But once the interviews are done, the worst part still remains: transcribing.
After the jump, a few resources for those who wish transcribing could be easier, or for those who’d like to outsource it altogether!
The Flip Mino – An Intro from Steph Auteri on Vimeo.
Hey there guys. A couple months ago, I was reading about the Flip Mino, and how it was the new It tool for journalists everywhere. Why? You could use it both to take interviews and photograph subjects, and its slim, sleek design made it ideal for on-the-go reportage.
Did this mean my audio recorder and fancy schmancy DSLR were obsolete? God forbid, people. God forbid.
Anyway. The people behind the Flip Mino ($179.99) were kind enough to send along one of their products, for review puposes. For the sake of comparison, RCA also sent me their Small Wonder. The nitty-gritty, after the jump:
At the moment, the items I have that plug in with USB cable are my scanner, my digital camera, my webcam, my iPod and, of course, my flash drive. As I have a mere two USB ports on my computer, located on the back of it, swapping these items in and out can be a royal pain in the ass.
Eight years ago, I bought my first SLR (single-lens reflex camera). It was a Canon Rebel, the same camera my editor at the Pennington Post had, and owning it made it nearly impossible for me to take bad photos. That $500 — paid back to my parents in installments — was worth every penny.
Now I have the Nikon D40X, a gift from my family, and it’s been proving indispensable to my work since the moment I received it.
