We just learned that one of our nieces has scoliosis and is going to have surgery next week — a 10 hour procedure. Pretty daunting stuff and she’s just 14.
So we’re putting together a care package for her, to help make the time go by easier in the hospital (a five day stay) and during her convalescence at home (another 4 – 6 weeks). We’re putting some useful stuff like a journal pad, some fun pens, and lots of fun warm socks (hospitals are COLD). But we — or the kids — decided to read some books for her. (She’s not a big reader herself, or we would just send along some books.)
So through the magic of Audacity, I rigged up an ersatz recording studio in the kitchen, using the iMac and an outboard microphone as a recorder. Audacity seems to have some issues on older Mac hardware (ie, G3s) but it keeps backups of your project as you go. That was a good thing as the application would crash on exit and the working project would be missing files. The .bak file would be fine, though.
After a few iterations, I ended moving to my G4 iBook and finishing the project on my FreeBSD machine: it was there that I learned the project files are XML and easily editable. The problem I was having was that the project file’s references to the component data files would break when the project file name and date file directory name didn’t match. Easily fixed, once I looked at the project file.
So from there to an mp3 and onto a CD. Sounds a lot like some unrehearsed readings of books, staged in a kitchen.