Finally got voice and pictures organised with the UK… I can finally talk to the oldies and see pictures at the same time. We’ve been trying to use MS-Messenger… (Windows Live version) for a while but we just couldn’t get both voice and picture working. However my father and I have both installed Skype which has really done the trick!
No idea why Messenger didn’t work… but since Skype does… why worry?
One of the things I liked was that we can get ‘full screen video’ which is really nice even though it’s a bit pixellated with the transfer rates we get between the two countries. No idea what the old mans upload rate is, but mine is limited to 367 kb/s which isn’t enough for the sort of decent quality we *could* get if upload rates weren’t throttled the way they are. Still… why complain? We are effectively getting free communication with voice and picture from one side of the world to the other!
I still recall how hard it was for my Aunt to call the UK when she migrated to New Zealand! They had to book calls months in advance and had to pay a pound a minute for the privilege…. *and* you were often limited to five minute calls! Ok this was a half century ago… but, to me at least, this new technology is still amazing value!!
Anyway… back to the point of the post.
During the conversation the old man spotted the dog and whistled to him. The dogs ears lifted and he started trying to locate the source of the sound. He looked at me and clearly knew I wasn’t doing it. Then the old man started calling him and the dog got *really* confused. Eventually however, he worked out roughly what was going on. The sound was coming from near the computer, so since he couldn’t see anyone there… so they must be behind the computer. Behind the computer was a wall… so the sound must have been coming from behind the wall.
Watching him work all this out was a strange experience… it just shows how clever dogs, especially Labradors, can be.
The proof he had worked all this out was his behaviour. He ran to and from the windows trying to look round to see if he could see the old man… which he obviously couldn’t, and when, a couple of minutes after the call, we let him out… he shot around to the back of the house running up and down the sniffing the air clearly trying to find where he was hiding!! Bearing in mind he’s not see the old man since last April and the sound was coming from computer speakers I think this was quite remarkable!
Maybe we ought to change the dogs name back from Stupid to Snoopy… he’s obviously a lot cleverer than he’s been getting credit for!?!? 😀
The Eclectic Interweb 