#TeamWhite: Alex Linder & Jan – Technical Problems fixed but… lost show… my mistake

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Alex Linder and I have managed to finally find the perfect solution to our communications problems. We used to do our shows on Skype, and Skype gave us so many problems. Alex’s laptop would lose connection and he’d have to reboot. I had problems, mainly because of my ADSL, but my PC is very "bloated" and very low on disk space, and I need to do a lot of archiving of stuff. That combined with my ADSL made interviews a nightmare. My connection would be slow, and it would break. Between the two of us, we had so many skype problems, that we would do a show, and it could be broken into about 6 pieces, along with the need for Alex, often, to have to reboot. And if we looked at a url link while talking, the damned Interview could also break and require a rebooting.

After my ADSL problems earlier this year, I got myself a lovely, very cheap, wireless internet which is slightly faster than my ADSL. I found in other shows I did that I had to abandon my PC and use my laptop in order to get better up time, because the bloated PC is struggling too much.

The other day, Alex and I got together to see what we could do, and with some experimentation, we quickly found an awesome way to connect, and the connection was fantastic. The sound was not as clear as Skype, but the connection was stable and never once gave us trouble.

Everything looked so great, that Alex and I did a whole show on COVID-19 in South Africa and America. I hit the record button, and off we went. We did a fabulous 1.5 hour show.

Then when we’d finished, I began looking for the recording… found none, did some digging and realised I needed to have installed something!

So, our lovely interview was gone … with no backup, etc.

I installed what I needed, ran some tests and indeed it works. But the bummer is that I had not tested before Alex and I started.

So we lost a show due to me, and me not checking properly.

However, we will be doing shows according to our availability and we’ll work some of the stuff from the lost show into other shows.

So apart from losing the Interview, the fact was that we finally have something what is solid and works perfectly. The audio is a bit more of a "tin" sound, but in terms of speed and stability it is awesome. Also, unlike Skype, I can get the recording instantly. I used to have so many problems (a) Downloading the skype interview with my slow connection (b) editing the different chunks together and stitching them together and removing the junk inbetween. I found the editing to be extremely tedious, and it wasted many hours.

So finally we have a system that is looking great, and I have a Plan B, if we ever should move to another system. But this one is awesome. It leaves Skype in the dust!