external audio source -> cd

[dep]

morning, all.

i have a little project that i hope to undertake here, but i'm not at 
all certain how to proceed.

a dear friend of mine died the first of the month, and on monday there 
was a memorial luncheon in his honor. i have one of those dinky 
little olympus digital recorders and thought to record the remarks, 
which came through in better quality than i expected but not so good 
that the content would survive many generations of dubbing from 
involving magnetic media -- i'd normally dump the thing to cassette 
and call it a day.

there is a usb port on the recorder, but the gadget saves in some 
proprietary file format which is readily converted to other formats 
only through the use of a provided program which runs only on 
windows. this suggests the need to insert an analog link, from the 
headphone output on the recorder to the line input on the audio card 
in my machine.

now. beyond that i am lost because i have neither done this nor done 
anything like this, ever. i am not certain how -- or even what 
application to use -- to bring this in, save it as an easily read 
file, and burn it to a cd in music cd format, such that anyone who 
has a cd player can play it. i'm eager to get this done because it is 
currently subject to the volatile memory of the little recorder, 
which of course will go blank as soon as the batteries run out.

ideas? strategies?
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within
the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.