Pretend you're in jail.

So today I'm trying a piece of advice I once heard: If you're working on something that's going to take a long time, and you have the urge to try to rush, pretend you're in jail.

If you're in jail, you have all the time in the world. You have no reason to hurry, no reason to cut corners or to try to do too many things at once. You can slow down, concentrate. You can take the time to get every single detail right.

I've been telling myself this today, because I've been trying to figure out how to get everything set up so I can do podcasts of my blog. One of my resolutions is "learn to do something new," and mastering the arcana of podcasting seems like a good challenge.

I took my time. I read a few sets of instructions from different sources to get a sense of what to do. I printed out the guidelines that seemed simplest to follow.

I got most of the way through, then hit a wall. I got Audacity to load, but for some reason, when I try to copy LAME, it looks like it has copied successfully, but then I can't find it again to tell where Audacity where it's located.

What's the problem? It's so frustrating not to be able to figure it out, because I know it's not hard, but because I don't have a good sense of what the terms mean, even the easiest instructions are a challenge.

This is what is stumping me:

Download the the archive file from the site above, and open it in a utility like winzip, 7-zip, or some versions of Windows Explorer Take the lameenc.dll file and extract (uncompress) it to a directory on you hard drive. The directory where you installed Audacity would be a good idea. This is probably C:\Program Files\Audacity or similar if you used the installer

Now, am I "saving" when I should be "opening"? am I supposed to "unzip" something (other sets of directions seem to say so)? and I've never extracted (uncompressed) before. Aaargh.

But hey, I'm in jail. There are a million websites offering advice and instruction, and I have time to read as many as I need to. I'm just going to stay patient...and also try to think of a friend who might know how to do this! It's one of Life's True Rules: Ask for help.

Comments

[Andy]

Hi Gretchen,

Try opening your Audacity folder and then dragging and dropping the lameenc.dll file right into that folder from WinZip.

If it still doesn't work there try putting it in c:\windows\system32 - it should definitely find it there.

--Andy

[gr8face]

Here's a lens all about it if you still need info--

http://www.squidoo.com/freudenpoden/

[Thijs]

Since you never extracted something, I'll start from the very beginning :)

1) download winzip: http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm
when you get the download dialog (http://www.mail-print.com/file-download-dialog.jpg) choose run, and install winzip.

2)download the lame encoder:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~raa110/audacity/lame.html
and at the download dialog choose run again.

3)now winzip will load and display all the files in the lame file. Click on the file named lameenc.dll and then on the "extract" button.

4)in the next screen (http://www.loughborough.ac.uk/computing/desktop/backup/images/winzip-extract.jpg)browse to the location where audacity is installed (probably C:\Program Files\Audacity) and click on extract.

This should do the job! good luck on your prison day and looking forward to your podcasting adventures :)

greetings,

Thijs
http://www.partners-inc.nl

[Gretchen Rubin]

Oh my gosh, thanks so much. This is just what I need. I'm going to try again tonight.

[Liz]

This is a great tip for writing. I find that when I feel panicked about time, I become paralyzed at the key board. I'm going to try the jail technique right now.

Also helpful about this: In jail, I probably couldn't procrastinate by checking emails and surfing the web.