Get rid of the email popup. Nobody wants that. Other than that, cool!

I was reading through some of the posts when the modal takeover happened and my natural instinct to close the page kicked in. I have so little patience for modals these days.

If you want some kind of delayed call to action maybe some kind of toast at the bottom would be better. As it is today I'm primed to abandon sites that do a full screen take-over while i'm reading.

Wait, you do professional photo retouching on your iPhone?

Ditto this... as a developer in Auckland, I've got to say it's pretty sweet here. Ditched a career in investment banking in the US for the quality of life here. I only occasionally regret it.

What's the occasional that you regret? Friends/family?

Likely anytime he needs to catch a bus or a train. Or wishes to have a discussion about something other than Auckland housing prices, Rugby, or Reality TV.

I'm currently in the process of sorting out a temporary work visa in Christchurch (+1 for the quality of life comment seriously). It's definitely harder to get a work visa without a degree in your field of work (I switched to software from another field of engineering), but 5+ years of relevant experience can serve as an alternative to a degree.

Are you from Auckland, or did you move there from the US?

Could you elaborate a bit?

Perhaps I'm rubbish at it, but I felt like the AI in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was fantastic.

Yes but as I suspected it features a scripted A.I. while I was looking for a real 100% "thinking" dynamic and/or even machine-learning based A.I.

Quoting from: http://voices.yahoo.com/what-good-ai-bad-ai-7633798.html

"Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3. These two games feature the most scripted A.I. in the history of video games. And yet, I love the A.I. of both games. They're programmed to react differently to your different actions and while everything is pre-programmed and you'll learn just how scripted it is by the time you're about half-done with the game, there're so many different scripts to the A.I., that as predictable as they are, you'll en up having a lot of unique and unpredictable moments in those two games."

Compare that to "Creatures" for example.

Quoting from: http://aigamedev.com/open/highlights/top-ai-games/

"Creatures is an artificial life program where the user ‘hatches’ small furry animals and teaches them how to behave. These “Norms” can talk, feed themselves, and protect themselves against vicious creatures.

It’s the first popular application of machine learning into an interactive simulation.

Neural networks are used by the creatures to learn what to do. The game is regarded as a breakthrough in alife research, which aims to model the behavior of creatures interacting with their environment."

So I am sure that no matter at how good MGS 3 might get, given I am specifically putting attention to this aspect (and that I am not really interested in stunning graphics and such), at some point I will surely notice its scripted behaviour...

Thanks for the suggestion though, it might still be a good game to play. :)

Apparently no one knows about New Zealand.

This surprises me. I thought New Zealand was a prominent part of the world map. All maps have included much less distinctive areas.

Perhaps the paper needed to be slightly wider on the right-hand side?

That's typical, always blaming the paper. The world needs to be skinnier, dammit!

I looked at the site for some time and couldn't find an answer to my question. Does anybody know if the SMS is just for US cellphones?

It is done!

Please try to remember that this is not Reddit.

Why the US? Are you just looking for a bit of a change? If so, you should look at New Zealand!