I shot a bunch of video last weekend while camping out with the Mister and family in Wisconsin. Since my fancy Mac + editing software (also entire Microsoft editing suite) went back to my former employers, I consulted Wired Journalists to see where to acquire the basics online.
Audacity it is for audio. Looks pretty standard so far. Good plug-ins to convert files to mp3’s. OpenOffice for writing and (finally!) building databases. Love that it’s the MySql peoples behind it all.
There’s no excuse now. All this software was free and easily downloaded. Armed with an Excel substitute and a way to play with sound, I feel more powerful already.
Categories: Building · Learning
Tagged: skills, toolbox
Dear Steve Lopez,
Been thinking about you lately, having devoured The Soloist last weekend while holed up in a cabin by a Wisconsin lake with my Mister and family. And I do mean devoured, Mr. Lopez. That book didn’t stand a chance the minute I opened the cover; it was d-u-n by the time I went to bed that same night.
Then this popped up today, thanks to a woman on my school’s alumni listserv.
“Like a lot of my colleagues, I’ve wondered if I should finally give it up, or might be forced to. But most of us dread the idea for the same reasons we’ve always had: We love what we do, we believe in the cause, and we realize that on the open market we’re not as employable as, say, a laid-off IndyMac janitor.
The joy of my job is that I honestly don’t know what I might do from one day to the next, but I can always figure it will be pretty interesting.”
See, I’ve been reading your columns since I could read the Inquirer on my parents’ kitchen table in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. And when I figured out at age 26 that reporter was the thing for me, I couldn’t have been more excited. But my reporter job just went away and I’m trying to figure out how to get back in the saddle without begging my way onto another sinking ship whose captain has hidden a gold plated liferaft under his mahogany desk.
Morale is low. I know how important our jobs are in chronicling our neighbors and changing cities, in calling out the powerful when they act up, in safeguarding against systems that become too big for their own good. I’m just trying to figure out how to feed my family while trying to rejoin your Forces of Good.
Keep at it, LAUREN FITZPATRICK
Categories: Employing · Looking in
Tagged: newspapers
