vault_overseer
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Posts posted by vault_overseer
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No France or Italy as countries of residence. I want to be able to understand people around me.
As of residency in UK, it's not a problem for a US citizen - just have to leave every 6 months(our friends just spend weekends in spain of france). the biggest issue is taxes, but I'm still looking into that.
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Because we don't want him to grow up in USA:)
Why?
It's hard and expensive to find a decent school and even then, no one seems to be interested in developing creativity and independent thinking in children. We also really don't like American television and the practice of creating environments that encourage segregation amongst cultures.
Those seem like pretty general blanket condemnations for a very large country. Other than the American television bit, I doubt you will really find the answer to your problems in the UK.
I do know that the schools are different. I know that from people who went to schools both there and here, as well as from few teachers I've met, who had gone to teach in England.
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Because we don't want him to grow up in USA:)
Why?
It's hard and expensive to find a decent school and even then, no one seems to be interested in developing creativity and independent thinking in children. We also really don't like American television and the practice of creating environments that encourage segregation amongst cultures.
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A few points from a veteran Londoner, born-and-bred.
Edinburgh: Beautiful, fab architecture, lots of culture, great pubs. It's also the most expensive city in the UK next to London to live in and the weather is something else. Awful.
Ireland: The economy is FUBAR. England is in the doldrums but nowhere near as bad. Avoid it for now.
England: London, forget it. Very expensive, it's like New York in the early 80's - a place for the rich and the poor and tough for folks in the middle. You're an IT type, want a nice community, want to live in Europe, right?
You need, like the person who said that he knew Americans living in Reading, to consider the Thames corridor that follows the M4 motorway west out of London. It's where most of our high-tech industry is located, you are on top of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and the West Country, are near some good regional airports / sea ports for your trips to France, Spain and Italy and it's not hideously expensive with good schools. You can still easily get to London if you want to see the sights. Furthermore, the lush green England you might have in your mind's eye, with pubs and people playing cricket does actually exist out that way.
This website is a pretty good starter for ten, check out how far your dollar might go. Alternatively, if you know any folks in the military ask them what life's like here or expat Americans, there are lots of US airbases in the UK (I'm sure there must be an online community you can visit).
Cheers
MC
Thanks for suggestions. So what's your view on Brighton, as Moose suggested?
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London is expensive but in terms of economic opportunity it is the only place you should seriously consider. Other places are perfectly viable but London is the bread winner hands down, not to mention contacts.
It's not a good place for a family though. London is the sort of place an undergraduate goes to sacrifice 10-15 years of their life in the meat grinder whilst they're young and able to.
Genuinely nice places in the UK would be Brighton, Oxfordshire (if you don't like living near people) and the west country (which also had the lowest paying jobs in the country).
I know an American that went to live in Reading with his wife and two kids and they seem happy enough.
Someone might mention Manchester. I lived there for a couple of years, it's nothing special in my opinion.
Reading up on Brighton, seems like a great suggestion. Thank you.
Why?Because we don't want him to grow up in USA:)
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Hey, I'd like to say.. we have good food in England. The Scots, Welsh, and Irish aren't too bad for grub either. Its the joys of culture, what's good to one group is completely upchuckable to another....
Well, the Labour government had been screwing things over for the past decade so there's still the recovery from that.. there's the dangers of how much the EU is infringing to deal with as well...
Also, local prices can shift a lot depending on whether your North or South. There's also a bit of a stereotypical cultural divide there as well.. traditionally the North was a lot of the heavy industry and the South was more commercial.
Much as we enjoy poking fun at our own weather, it tends to be highly variable.. as the saying goes, "other countries have a climate, where the UK has weather."
Steer clear of London, it's hellaciously expensive.
The rest of it.. well, there are pros and cons in lots of ways. Are you wanting to be heavily in the urban environment, or on the outskirts of a city? Or slide a bit more into the "country environment" that's spread around?
Well, currently I live in a very community based neighborhood and I love it, so I'd prefer to stick to something similar - still a city, but homey and close knit enough to know your neighbors. Again, from what I understand, things are a lot closer to each other there.
So what area would be relatively inexpensive to live in, have good schools(is that even an issue in UK) and have IT jobs?
Also, my wife, her sister and our kid's godmother all had a huge complain about living in UK - lack of mixer type taps in the kitchen/bathrooms. Is it really hard to find a place with one?
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I forgot to mention that the people are ugly too.
Oh, and I think you can drive from Ireland to Paris in a day.
Pick a Scandinavian country, instead. Everyone there speaks English, people are prettier, the quality of life is above and beyond what you can find in the UK, and the weather really isn't any worse.
Speaking as a Swede; Not everyone here speaks English, some people are pretty, just as everywhere else, we have a 30% taxrate and 25% extra on everything we buy. Oh, and the politicians are idiots.
On the "plus" side of things, people here seems to want us to become more American by the day!
OH yeah, forgot about ugly people...And Ireland is fine too, I guess.
I don't know how working in a Scandinavian countries as a US citizen would work out, would I need a visa or a work permit? anyone?
Don't have a clue about permits or visas I'm afraid. Yet, atleast.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have some huge unemployment issues amongst youths here. Atleast, so say the politicians.
What about schools?
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I forgot to mention that the people are ugly too.
Oh, and I think you can drive from Ireland to Paris in a day.
Pick a Scandinavian country, instead. Everyone there speaks English, people are prettier, the quality of life is above and beyond what you can find in the UK, and the weather really isn't any worse.
OH yeah, forgot about ugly people...
And Ireland is fine too, I guess.
I don't know how working in a Scandinavian countries as a US citizen would work out, would I need a visa or a work permit? anyone?
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I'm not a Brit, but still I'm going to chime in and point out a couple of things: the food is bloody awful, life there is fairly expensive, and finally the weather is awful. With all that being said, within the UK I'd recommend Scotland to live in.
Oh, and why not move to Ireland, instead?
I don't mind Pies, Chicago isn't exactly cheap either and the weather.... yes, that does bother me. However, I like the fact that I can drive to Paris in a day(I hate flying)
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Im not a Brit but wouldnt your choice of cities be influenced by what you are doing for employment? Gotta live close-ish to work, right?
Oh yeah great point. I'm a system/network admin(but also code sometimes), my wife is an accountant.
P.S. Good morning, Chicago:)
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Sorry, I have to leave this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iKjkPgVQcE
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Me and my wife have been entertaining the idea of moving to UK for few years, so our kid could grow up in Europe. Why UK? Well, we already speak the language(albeit poorly, but still...) and we love the culture. TV(kid's favorite cartoon is Kipper), music, humor, food(at least some of it), EPL(that one is just me, actually), etc.
With us being US citizens, the whole ordeal would be somewhat simple - we can come and work as we please, we'd just need to leave the country every 6 months - sort of a forced vacation. However, due to the fact that we'd have to pay double taxes(US and UK), we'd want to go somewhere relatively inexpensive, but with decent opportunities. So far, Edinburgh seems to be one of the best choices, but frankly, i'm not too keen on living in water for most of the year.
So tell me, Brits, what is the best place under the sun in the land of Her Majesty? Any tips/ideas/wtf are you thinking moments? Keep in mind, we're still in "what if" mode, so we're just looking for information, good or bad.
Thank you all in advance.
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Camera men inadvertently got us our first glimpse of what I guess was a fire gecko, so he (she?)'s better than the interviewer.
I must be blind. Fire Gecko? Where?
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I"m really not sure who's worse, interviewer or the camera man.
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Ethan from lost has been revealed as on of the voice actors
http://williammapother.blogspot.com/2010/0...-new-vegas.html
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You mean when they talk about Bio games, or in general?You know, if Alpha Protocol can be ripped for graphics when it looked better than DA:O, this better be completely slaughtered for looking worse than DA:O.It is made by Bioware. Even if those screens were final, DA2 reviews would be praising the graphics.
If there's one thing most reviewers get right, no matter how biased they may be, it's the graphics.
In general.
It is kind of hard to straight out lie about that since you have screenshots right next to the review and there's really no subjectivity about that.
Are those the same reviewers that called F3's graphics beautiful?
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new new s##t
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I've never really understood the appeal of wandering aimlessly around a gameworld after the primary narrative arc has concluded.
Do your wandering as part of and in response to the primary narrative arc, which is, after all, the reason for the entire game.
I can only assume its part of the LARP culture. Or something.
It really only works for games like F3, where there's a lot of tiny hidden stuff all over
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Still, it was a pretty bland presentation. I don't think it reached the target audience in the optimal way. Should have shown more combat - melee vats moves, companion wheel, new weapons, provoking fights with smart ass dialog. You know, the "cool" ****
IIRC there was a melee weapon in the inventory of the second part of the demo, so if the previewer was willing to try melee vats moves he/she could.
They showed the companion wheel in various videos, same with some new weapons, including the super anticipated anti-materiel rifle and its 'knocking you back' animation.
It could have been better true, but I don't think it was that bad.
No, not that bad, but still, I don't think that showing casino games was that necessary
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I don't mind the casino games being minigames, I think that'll fit in pretty good. But I found it sorta lame that they showed it off in the E3 presentation, because really... Roulette, Blackjack, Slots. Yeah, we know about these things... Why show them off?
Well for me it was more like 'we're showing The Strip.. you see? different from Fallout 3, right?', so it was just a natural consequences that they'd show the casino minigames.
Don't forget that they showed things like the casino bouncer taking weapons, the use of sneak to.. well.. sneak a couple of weapons in the casino, the fact that you can 'break' them etc..
Still, it was a pretty bland presentation. I don't think it reached the target audience in the optimal way. Should have shown more combat - melee vats moves, companion wheel, new weapons, provoking fights with smart ass dialog. You know, the "cool" ****
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Interesting, but it's still much better than what I thought when I first heard about it.
The technology has potential.
I don't think so - it's missing scalability. They still have to run each game session on a dedicated CPU and GPU(imagine the power budget for a 100k machine server farm with high performance GPUs), which still need to be upgraded regularly. And on top of that, noone has seen him cope with ridiculous bandwidth demands that mass adoption would bring.
I'm very very skeptical. It's a good idea and they got some tech done. But visualization is not there yet.
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Kotick's crazy ramblings brought to you by Activision inc.Not unless they can get the lag from OnLive below 200ms.
Actually, speaking of OnLive, they have a limited beta thing going and I've heard from a few people that it is actually playable without any more noticeable lag than normal online gaming. The bigger problem is really the fact that you actually have to buy all the games ala Steam before you can play them via OnLive in addition to a subscription fee.
Not that it's coming to Australia anytime soon, but looks like the thing actually works.
Digital Foundry ran teir tests and established that on 25mbps FiOs connection, you can expect anywhere between 150 to 216 ms lag.
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In expectation of tomorrow: GO TEAM USA!!!!
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Aaaaand she's back
Question to Brits
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
My son's godmother, who's one of my sources of anecdotal evidence to British school superiority, was a teacher in NJ, before going to work in England. She really hated it there and often described environment as jail-like.