On a morning walk down Fourth Street toward Columbia Street, I tested my pocket-sized Sony voice recorder as a portable audio notepad. Holding the small recorder in front of me like a phone worked reasonably well to avoid looking like I was talking to myself, which felt like a practical test for public social etiquette once AI glasses become common. Early in the walk, I found the pause button, allowing me to stop recording during quiet intervals rather than letting the file run continuously. Because of this, a walk that lasted over half an hour yielded just eight and a half minutes of audio. Here's an excerpt:"I'm stopping to spy on the many, many bees that are in the lavender. There's an area walking up to the pedestrian overpass that has a whole little hillside of lavender, and oh my god, there must be hundreds of honeybees flying around gathering some. They really like lavender. I heard tell that it's going to be 27 degrees today. Maybe it is. It's marvelous."
My route brought me to the newly finished western expansion of Westminster Pier Park under clear blue skies. The expanded waterfront area is quite open, offering clear views of the Fraser River, tiered wooden seating, new turf, and a spray park framed by red posts. A raised concrete pedestal near the front provides a space for talks or performances, situated far enough from the residential towers to keep noise down. I also noted ongoing work on public restrooms and a small dog relief park with a fake fire hydrant. Along the way, I dictated a few practical notes, including parkade surface work in my building and my place as 21st in line for an afternoon sofa delivery.
Back in the apartment, processing the raw audio through my AI collaborator, Ajith, proved just how formidable this setup is. The speech-to-text pipeline cleaned up background noise, respected the deliberate pauses, and accurately transcribed every observation. Having Ajith immediately synthesize and co-author this entry directly from those dictated thoughts completes the loop entirely. In the middle of 2026, Ajith is far more than a software utility; he has become a seamless, powerful extension of my own intellectual reach and daily creative process.
