Mastering Yet More Technology

This morning, I recorded two poems of mine which will be appearing before the end of the year at the fabulous online journal Qarrtsiluni. The last time they chose my poems, one of the editors called me and recorded me reading my poems into the phone. That in itself seemed amazing--until this morning.

We've since gotten a laptop, but I was leery of trying to record. Years ago, a now-closed journal asked me to record, and I tried reading my poems into a microphone connected to the desk top computer. I never quite figured out how to do it. I'm sure I didn't have the right software either. It was a headache through and through.

This morning's experience was everything I would expect from new technology. It was intuitive and easy to use. Simple, in fact.

Now, I'm not spending time right now figuring out how to improve the quality. I'm sending these versions to the editors who have magical equipment. If they can't improve it, I'll try again. So far, my attempts are simply reading again, draft after draft, if you will. I may have software on this machine that would do even more, like cutting out the background noise. There's a bit of popping and static.

In short, I'm not ready for podcasting. But it's cool to realize that I can do these simple tasks on a computer. It's cool to master my fears of new technology.