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but

Suoer Freakonomics has some stuff on why people prefer to live in the middle of really large cities - you've picked up two of their reasons, and your business is a third.

I must say that moving from Nijmegen to central Sydney has markedly improved my quality of life in quite a numbers of ways, entirely because there's a lot more going on where I can get to it.

of really large cities - you've picked up two of their reasons, and your business is a third.

my quality of life in quite a numbers of ways, entirely because there's a lot more going on where I can get to it.

Plus Holland is proverbially full of people who want to give out unsolicited advice. In Sydney you probably have the field to yourself. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

the

of really large cities - you've picked up two of their reasons, and your business is a third.

my quality of life in quite a numbers of ways, entirely because there's a lot more going on where I can get to it.

Sno-o-o-ort! ...Jim Thompson

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Let me guess, they are going to call the new development Hong Kong West or maybe Dehli West.

?-)

Cubix.

Around $1000 a square foot, not all that unusual these days. That one is unusually ugly.

The concept of having your own bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, living room is rare in time and space. There were times when people expected to share beds with siblings, or with strangers in hotels, and there were no indoor bathrooms. In lots of the world, our living style is incomprehensible.

If I were young and single and poor, and had the chance to get a good job in San Francisco and live in 220 square feet, I'd go for it. The young people here don't seem to spend a lot of time at home: work, party, sleep.

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and > > your business is a third.

Nijmegen is in Gelderland. North and South Holland are two of the eastern p rovinces, out of the twelve provinces that make up the Netherlands. The res t of the Netherlands does resent the proprietary and patronising attitudes of the two biggest provinces.

What you've said is roughly equivalent to dumping on somebody from Edinburg h or Cardiff because Londoners behave badly.

Scarcely. Phil Allison was established in Sydney long before I moved back. And I had though that sci.electronics.design was a forum for discussion, wh ich has to include a certain amount of unsolicited advice - you can't ask f or advice that you don't know that you need. It isn't as if we all share yo ur intimate and thorough knowledge of the electro-optical instrumentation l iterature, though we are - of course - infinitely grateful for your willin gness to educate us.

provinces, out of the twelve provinces that make up the Netherlands. The rest of the Netherlands does resent the proprietary and patronising attitudes of the two biggest provinces.

or Cardiff because Londoners behave badly.

has to include a certain amount of unsolicited advice - you can't ask for advice that you don't know that you need. It isn't as if we all share your intimate and thorough knowledge of the electro-optical instrumentation literature, though we are - of course - infinitely grateful for your willingness to educate us.

Check out the Netherlands' tourist site,

See e.g. the Dutch tourist industry site "holland.com".

And thanks for the unsolicited advice. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San

If I were young and single and poor, I'd move to a nice tropical place in the Caribbean, or Thailand, or wherever else the cost of living is low, and do consulting designs via Internet. Pretty much what I am doing right now, something that can be done almost anywhere. The only requirement would be that Fedex flies there at least once a week and that the place has some good brewsky.

To my amazement, some people are nowadays doing just that.

San

Sure, but these thousands of Ruby-writing script kiddies wouldn't know how to find consulting work. At this point in their lives, they need to get out of Mom's basement and find a real job.

The two startup guys coding away in the back of our place needed to recharge their bank accounts, so they took a 1-month consulting gig. That will keep them going for another year. *They* know how to do it.

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It's a vulgar error, roughly equivalent to calling "Great Britain" "England ".

The Dutch aren't going to risk alienating ill-informed tourists by insistin g that they know the proper name for the country - even the dumbest English

-speaking tourist will spend some money, usually in Amsterdam, which does h appen to be in North Holland, as are many of the leading tourist traps.

Which will help your interactions with any clients from the Netherlands.

Delft is in South Holland, but Eindhoven is in North Brabant, and the other two technical universities are in Gelderland and Overijssel, not that I'd expect you to get much business from either of them.

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$1000 per square foot monthly rent??? That is insane. I can buy 1400 square foot house in the 'burbs of Sacramento for not much more than $200,000 (about $1000/mo P&I). Telecommuting world wide does not seem to be that big a problem. The difference will pay for physical commuting daily (2 hours each way) to Sacramento charging $50/hour for the "lost" time.

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Altogether too true.

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And for youngsters with a more serious attitude work, study, sleep.

?-)

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One month got them a year's worth of funding? At S.F. rent levels? Wow!

Are they staying at your building pretty much for free?

The guys in Enschede and Hengelo would disagree. It's Twente, as in "University of Twente". I've seen a surprising number of good papers from there over the years.

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Well, their wives have jobs too.

Yes. They did later give me 0.1% of their stock, which they said was generous, given how many billions of dollars the company will be worth.

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:-)

I am just waiting for Internet bubble 2.0, housing bubble 2.0. and stock bubble xx.0 to pop. Most likely there will also be a social networking bubble 1.0.

BTW, once I got stuck in traffic on the freeway behind you guys. It's that thing on stilts, and absolutely nothing was moving. Yet there was a constant and very slow (as in a few hundred milli-Hertz) up and down rocking the whole time I stood there. Couldn't come from trucks because they all just sat there. What is causing that?

And anyway, it's Dutchmen in general who are proverbially fond of giving unsolicited, emphatic advice, as in "talking like a Dutch uncle". Apologies to the Geldings for singling them out. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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The web guys's subwoofers.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The guys from there might well disagree, but I've not seen any papers that I thought much of.

And I'd throw in Wageningen, but they are bit agricultural to be candidates for Phil's expertise. Nijmegen surprised me once, with a project for detec ting tiny levels of ethylene gas over ripening crops by opto-acoustics, so you can't entirely write off agriculture, but it is the way to bet.

thought much of.

for Phil's expertise. Nijmegen surprised me once, with a project for detecting tiny levels of ethylene gas over ripening crops by opto-acoustics, so you can't entirely write off agriculture, but it is the way to bet.

I did get to ride in a tractor in Iowa once, on an expert witness gig that concerned optical sensors for precision agriculture. The lawyers teased me about how hackneyed it was to go to Iowa and ride a tractor, but I think it would be pretty lame to go to Iowa and _not_ ride a tractor. ;)

Most of my consulting with universities is brief, informal, and free. I only start charging if it takes more than a couple of hours, and anyway I like hearing what folks are up to.

I do have one paid gig going with some chemists at Notre Dame at the moment, doing a laser noise canceller that works down to about 10 nA. Usually you can get more laser power pretty easily, but their measurement uses picosecond pulses and the sample gets trashed if they crank the power up much higher.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs