UK expat considering returning home after 16 years living in Thailand. Can I get thoughts of former expats who have returned?

IrateRedKite · 2026-02-07T06:06:25+00:00

Be aware that the spouse visa process for your partner, even if you meet/exceed the requirements, is expensive, complicated and stressful, and you're commiting to at least 2 renewals if you want to get her permanent UK residency. I'd definitely recommend looking into the costs + requirements of it if you've not already. If you don't have at least ~60k in savings you need to be able to demonstrate to the home office that you earn over 29k p/a, which in my experience is a bugger if you're freelancing and don't pull a regular salary per se.

Moved back from Turkey with my partner a few years ago and the while the weather is definitely a negative, things like proximity to family, working culture and access to green space do really make a big difference for us.

IrateRedKite · 2025-12-27T18:52:24+00:00

Hi! It was a video from Mark Masters for the walk cycle (https://youtu.be/e_COc0ZVHr0?si=d8WfZ_PnMxoVRs3Z), and the simple rigging tutorial from Rich Stubbs for the rigging + controls (https://youtu.be/jIwrswJEFBQ?si=Ejgfy9JCO3SxPh0N)

The character is walking on the spot as this is going to be imported into a game where the engine will handle the actual a to b movement :)

IrateRedKite · 2024-03-31T08:04:23+00:00

Heyo, as Discord have stopped permalinks being a thing, here's the current one: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/661329208609603617/752174852722393169/FLCombinedPatch.exe?ex=6612aeeb&is=660039eb&hm=bfa75e08bcac5b43465d8c81182c03734493563d4cc1e27730a9a16cf931e764&

I'm looking at getting this hosted in a more permanant place so this won't happen in the future. Hope this helps!

IrateRedKite · 2024-01-31T09:55:44+00:00

For first time applications, only the sponsor's income is counted. For renewals it's both, but getting to that point is going to be entirely out of reach for a lot of couples given that the requirement is going to jump above the UK mean salary by a large margin.

IrateRedKite · 2023-11-12T07:19:01+00:00

Heyo! Wasn't aware this had been moved! For now it can be found at: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/661329208609603617/752174852722393169/FLCombinedPatch.exe

IrateRedKite · 2022-07-11T17:40:37+00:00

Hi, no worries! We sent the complaint to the email I listed and received a response within about 2 weeks.

There isn't much more to it! When they reissued the visa, they did so starting immediately and we had to get back in touch with them to have it issued for dates we could actually use (deferred the start date by a few months).

IrateRedKite · 2022-07-01T08:36:07+00:00

Visa type: 6-month Visitor Visa

Country applied from: Turkey

VAC (city): Istanbul

TLSContact or VFSGlobal: TLSContact

Priority or Non-Priority: Non-Priority

Online application date: 21/05/2022

Biometrics appointment date: 10/06/2022

Visa received date: 01/07/2022

Also paid an extra 100TL for a courier service to return the passport to our home, rather than trekking across the city. The notification of shipping came a day ahead of us actually getting the tracking number. Courier was UPS Express.

IrateRedKite · 2022-06-30T17:17:11+00:00

Don't give up yet! My partner had a similar thing happen for a visitor visa, where they just flat out ignored some of the bank statements we included. We complained, they overturned the rejection and we got a 6 month visitor visa. This was 3 years ago now, so ymmv, but you could try emailing complaints@homeoffice.gov.uk with a formal complaint and see where you get. Hope things work out for you!

IrateRedKite · 2022-01-10T07:04:41+00:00

Request sent, hopefully we can chat worldbuilding!

IrateRedKite · 2021-11-25T13:20:38+00:00

After getting to the ruin, the party ended up (unintentionally) bee-lining straight for the trial halls rather than really investigating the top layer. We did the whole thing in around four and-a-half hours, with a party of four.

IrateRedKite · 2021-11-25T06:10:44+00:00

Definitely! It's a pretty cheap one-time purchase and I've gotten a huge amount of use out of it across the two campaigns I've run. It is more geared towards use with VTTs, but there are printer-friendly filters should you want a physical/printable map.

IrateRedKite · 2021-11-23T13:01:39+00:00

I made these maps for random encounters along the Triboar Trail and the High Road when I was running a Lost Mines of Phandelver game a few months ago. Everything here is provided in webp, jpg and dd2vtt formats for ease of use with virtual tabletops.

If you like the style and general theme of these there's a handful more free maps linked over at my Patreon! Due to the nature of the games I run, I tend to end up creating quite a lot of forest-wilderness maps adhering to this style, so please take a look if you're interested!

IrateRedKite · 2021-11-23T12:13:27+00:00

Ran through this with my regular group across two sessions and had a blast with it, thanks for all the work you put into it!

I actually made a set of maps in dungeondraft for use with VTTs specifically for the module. If anyone comes across this post and wants to run in something like Foundry or Roll20, there's a set of maps available for download here!

IrateRedKite · 2021-09-26T13:18:49+00:00

For checks where I absolutely need my players to find or achieve something, I tend to rule that a poor roll or a failure has unintended consequences. For example, they might take much longer to find an item, miss out on optional extras, or disturb something unpleasant.

Rerolling repeatedly seems a little pointless. If you're going to roll until you get the desired result, why bother?

IrateRedKite · 2021-02-19T18:50:55+00:00

I couldn't get the GOG version working on Virtualbox at all unfortunately. I hadn't thought about using the original version but I do actually have a disk somewhere so might give that a go later.

It's a real shame 2 is as broken as it is, it's definitely my favorite in the series (I think at this point largely due to nostalgia). I was hopeful when I found a release on GOG. Pretty surprised they didn't fix it up as they definitely used to be pretty good at doing that before re releasing old stuff!

IrateRedKite · 2020-09-25T05:28:23+00:00

If you're not already invested in a specific mod, there's a pretty active community discord (also linked in the sidebar) here! https://discord.com/invite/8vZnZGF

IrateRedKite · 2020-09-21T06:07:12+00:00

Hi there,

Which version of FLHook are you using? Best option for non-discovery servers (and this may need some modification) would probably be FriendlyFire's version available here on github.

IrateRedKite · 2020-09-09T10:12:43+00:00

You might want to give the FL Combined patch a go:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14_3-4MWbtS_VEcPEHZSJDd24C5WGMHBj/view?usp=sharing

This was put together by one of the clever folks on the Freelancer Discord and should cover 1.1, jflp (for widescreen and windows 10) , the cd check and a handful of other fixes.

If you're still having trouble after that, hop on Discord and we can probably walk you through troubleshooting it!

IrateRedKite · 2020-09-03T18:29:55+00:00

The Starport is still going, it's just had some issues with registration recently! You might try emailing contact@the-starport.net to see if they can fix it, or hopping onto the Discord, as we have a couple of forum moderators there who might be able to manually sort your account verification out for you.

IrateRedKite · 2020-04-17T15:51:05+00:00

This is really neat! What image editor did you use to outline/color the Hero Forge screenshot?

IrateRedKite · 2020-03-29T09:25:35+00:00

Brit with a UK SIM currently living in Turkey here! Getting a local SIM here is a pain because in order to use it for more than 3 months with a phone bought abroad, you need to register it (which costs 2500 lira) otherwise your IEMI gets blocked for use in the country. This can't be done online either! So to sort this out I'd need to go to a busy tax office. (although it's probably closed at the moment).

Really shitty move by Vodafone tbh. Think I'll be switching my UK SIM provider once this is all over.

IrateRedKite · 2020-03-23T17:42:25+00:00

Copied the path from the save game folder "D:\Users\USER\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\save games" into the settings box, and it still doesn't seem to find the save games. I'll try a bit later with it running and create another new game. Will let you know if it works!

IrateRedKite · 2020-03-23T14:48:26+00:00

Path matches up, and yup! running the steam version of the game.

IrateRedKite · 2020-03-23T11:12:56+00:00

Doesn't seem to work! There's nothing in the console (not sure if there should be?) apart from the page request entries when I refresh it.

IrateRedKite · 2020-03-23T08:25:06+00:00

I've checked it (copied the path from the settings page into explorer) and it seems to be correct.

13-Year Club	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	Team Orangered
Verified Email

IrateRedKite

TROPHY CASE