The organizers of our wonderful new “Today’s Catholic Woman” channel here at Catholic Exchange have graciously invited me to share with you my enthusiasm for technology through this “Geek Gal” column.
Over the next few months, I hope to help you discover new products, tips and tricks for helping you “Serve God with Wisdom, Strength and Love” as is our mission here at Today’s Catholic Woman. Friends and family who know me well can vouch for the fact that I’m a geek at heart, so I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to help you learn more about one of my favorite hobbies. I’m also firmly convinced that there are wonderful products on the market today that can help each of us live life more fully, and ultimately more faithfully as well.
Lest you think that I have some formal training in technology that qualifies me to write this column or explains my affinity for geeky stuff, let me set you straight. I’m an “every woman” who’s learned most of what I know about this topic from “Dummies” books. I simply have an insatiable curiosity about things and desire to live my life more productively and with an eye towards sharing my faith with others.
I started down the path to geekdom in the autumn of 1999 when I answered a plea for volunteers from the principal of my children’s Catholic elementary school. Little did I know when I consented to become the school’s volunteer webmaster that I was opening up a door to a new vocation in my life. In reality, I was wholly unqualified for the role - I could whip up a greeting card, word process a document, and send an email (but not one with an attachment - that befuddled me at the time!)
That first encounter with the web thrilled me beyond measure and led to the founding of my own website, CatholicMom.com, which has prospered beyond my wildest imagination in its nine years of existence. CatholicMom.com taught me that the Internet is a wonderful way to nurture and cultivate our faith lives, build community and continually enlighten ourselves as women.
Here at Geek Gal, I’m excited to share with you some of my favorite technology applications and to learn about yours as well. I hope that this will be a place for sharing questions, learning about the latest software and websites, and reviewing tech products that can help you in serving God, your family and yourself as a woman.
From iPods to digital photography, from Facebook to Twitter, we’ll take a look at the tips and trends that are out there in today’s marketplace. But more importantly, I hope to help unlock some of the mysteries that keep many women from fully taking advantage of some of these advances. Face it girls, some of us tend to be a little intimidated by technology - how many of you have digital cameras that still hold the photos you took because you don’t know how to download them or what to do with them once you have? I hope to talk about some of my favorite tools from a “laymom’s” perspective - in plain terms that will be easy to understand and implement.
To get us off to a great start, I’d like to ask for your input on what you’d like to see and learn about in this column space. Feel free to pose your questions and ideas for things we should explore together. I’ll confess up front that I’m far from an expert in many areas of technology, but I’m not afraid of learning a thing or two in the process and sharing them with you.
I hope to make our journey into today’s technology fun, easy and fulfilling. I hope that you will join me in seeing these tools and applications as ways to become closer to our God and to the people around you. I hope you, too, become a “Geek Gal” - or at least brave enough to venture into the world of high tech - and that this will become a forum for sharing our favorite new discoveries with one another. In the meantime, please post your topic suggestions and questions here or email me any time at lisa@catholicmom.com with your ideas.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:55 am
How grateful I am for this new channel. Finally, there are articles/essays that speak to Catholic women who wish to remain steeped in their faith. So many times I have picked up magazines with very interesting,appealing articles but they were sandwiched between ads for artificial birth control and stories of extramarital affairs or inappropriate relationships. While I am formed in the faith enough (hopefully) to filter the bad and retain the good those aren’t the sort of magazines I want my daughter to have access to.
Thank you for creating a forum where this information is available without secular overtones.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Rebecca,
Welcome and thank you for your words of encouragment and support for all we are trying to accomplish here at TCW!
January 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Rebecca,
I am thrilled to be a part of the channel and would love your input on what types of things you, as a reader, would like to see featured here. Chime in with your thoughts and ideas for topics you’d like to see us cover. And THANK YOU for taking the time to comment!! Lisa
January 8th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I have to second what Rebecca said. I’m so glad to have found a site dedicated to Catholic women.
One of the topics I’d like to see discussed is interfaith marriage (Christian-Catholic in particular), and the challenges they face, how others have overcome them, raising kids, etc.
I live in the South, in a state where less than 5% of the population is Catholic, so I want to see more articles about staying strong in the faith, and being a “beacon of light” if you will, when you find yourself in a place where you are a “minority”.
Those are the ideas I have so far! Thanks for the opportunity to share them.
January 8th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Kayra, welcome! What a wonderful topic you’ve brought up - I’m sure we will add those to our “must discuss” lists! I lived for a while in Nashville, so I know what you are describing and my husband converted to Catholicism after 17 years of marriage. So I would love to join you in talking about those topics. Thanks for chiming in!
Lisa
January 9th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I really need help in figuring out the best way to backup or keep pictures on my computer. Of course we have tons of pics, most of which we want to keep and not print out.
Help!!
Maria
January 9th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Thanks Maria for writing - coincidentally, this is one of my upcoming topics, so be watching out for it! Lisa p.s Feel free to share topic ideas any time!
January 9th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Dear Lisa,
I have a suggestion for a TCW post. Simply put, the electronic age, though with many benefits, has assisted in the easy accumulation of too much ‘stuff’ to be managed. I want to live simply and responsibly as a Catholic woman in all areas, including in the area of recorded memories. How can one deal with all those home videos and digital pictures that are so ‘easy’ to take? My questions are both of a ‘organizing’ and ‘techie’ nature, but all in an effort to be moderate in all things.
We got our first video camcorder before the birth of our first child almost 25 years ago, and have used two successive formats since then throughout the childhoods of all our brood. We’re a bad example in having grabbed whatever cassette we could find with space on it, rather than using one cassette at a time until it was used up before starting another (what a concept!) We now have videos in three formats – VHS, Super-8, and mini-dv. I am ready to consolidate to a watchable amount (yes! edit and give up some of those tv shows that got recorded over baby’s first steps, etc.). I know I could pay to have everything transferred as is to DVD, but that would cost a lot, and I also want to be able to generously edit so that the amount I keep is ‘reasonable’.
In the camera world, we have mountains of photos and negatives, some in albums and some loose, from the 35mm camera days. We switched to digital in 2005. Without the expense of printing to trigger control over the number of pictures to be taken, we now have digital pictures all over the computers, and some on media cards and jump drives, along with those I’ve gotten printed. Help! I am in need of a systematic, objective method to use on a go-forward basis, as well as for deciding what to keep, and how best to preserve, from the pre-digital days.
My questions include:
1) Do you have advice that can help in deciding how much video footage and pictures to keep? How might one measure a ‘reasonable’ amount in a concrete Catholic assessment of moderation? Has someone written a simple book that addresses these areas of accumulation?
2) Can you suggest computer video editing software that is
1) affordable
2) easy to use
3) might not require a new high end capacity computer (details about computer memory/exterior hard drive/disc requirements?)
3) Is there value in saving 35mm negatives (color, quality, way to store, etc), should they be scanned and discarded, or is there a cut-off point on shelf-life and thus just discard?
4) Can you suggest software for a systematic way to organize digital pictures – again – affordable, easy-to-use, associated hardware needs?
Thank you for using your gifts!
God bless
January 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Wow! Thanks so much for taking the time to write with such thought provoking topic ideas - I love them and will most definitely use them as fodder for several upcoming columns. I am going to be breaking down topics into manageable pieces, so be on the lookout for several columns related to the ideas you’ve raised. I’m especially intrigued by your comments on moderation and will be delighted to learn more about this concept as it relates to our “tech stuff” and to have a discussion with you and our readers online on that important point.