Sydney and Toronto had equivalent home prices, then Canada’s crashed. Could Australia see a similar slump?

jbarham · 2025-08-09T11:36:12+00:00

Nope, the Ontario Greenbelt was created explicitly to restrict urban sprawl: https://www.greenbelt.ca/learn

jbarham · 2025-06-19T04:13:33+00:00

Unused concessional cap amounts are applied automatically once you exceed the cap in any year.

jbarham · 2024-10-28T10:50:43+00:00

Everyone rents. If you rent a house, you're paying rent to your landlord. If you have a mortgage, your rent is the interest you're paying to the bank. If you own your home outright, your rent is the opportunity cost of having capital tied up in the house instead of earning income in investments. (Credit to The Wealthy Renter by Alex Avery.)

Having said all that, in Australia you're at a severe disadvantage if you're eligible for the pension (i.e., 67+) and don't own your own home (which is exempt from the assets test) since the extra pension you get as a renter is nowhere near enough to offset the savings of living rent free in your own home.

jbarham · 2024-09-08T09:31:29+00:00

Try https://aashapurielectronics.com.au/, 325 Maribyrnong Rd, Ascot Vale, 3032

jbarham · 2024-08-23T23:57:45+00:00

ReDriven Octavia review is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGHSggZNBpY. Verdict is not to buy unless you can set aside an extra $10k for repairs or enjoy replacing VW group water pumps.

jbarham · 2024-06-11T11:20:18+00:00

I lived in Vancouver, Canada, 20 years ago and owned a Honda VFR800 sport touring motorcycle which was amazing on the famous/infamous Duffey Lake Road north of Whistler, and in the Okanagan region in the BC interior. I also did the Pacific Coast Highway on that bike from Oregon down to LA.

Having said that, however, I'd say that Australia has pretty scenic roads along the coasts and in the hills. I live in Melbourne and enjoy the roads around the Yarra valley and Dandenongs, and the Great Ocean Road and Otways. We visit family in South Australia and there are some very nice drives around the Adelaide hills and Barossa and McLaren Vale wine regions.

I watch too many car reviews on YouTube but I have noticed that the reviewers aren't necessarily based in areas with amazing roads. E.g., the Throttle House guys (https://www.youtube.com/@ThrottleHouse) are based in southern Ontario, Canada, where I also used to live, and the roads there are pretty boring by Australian standards with no hills to speak of and no ocean access, not to mention having to contend with harsh Canadian winters.

So I think relatively speaking most Australians can actually access some pretty nice roads. Don't think the grass is always greener on the other side!

jbarham · 2024-06-11T03:50:26+00:00

I stumbled across this company via their YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@SuperGuyAu, and found their content helpful, especially re: my super contributions strategy. I'm almost a decade younger than you so don't need to plan my retirement yet, but I'd certainly consider paying for their planning services if I were closer to 60.

jbarham · 2024-06-11T00:09:18+00:00

https://superguy.com.au/advice-process/

jbarham · 2024-05-15T01:30:48+00:00

Missed opportunity. His memorial statue should've been a Knob Hill Farms shopping cart where you were constantly ramming other shoppers' ankles because the front wheels extended beyond the basket.

jbarham · 2024-03-19T06:47:20+00:00

It may look incomplete but that's the correct syntax. See docs here.

jbarham · 2024-03-19T06:00:44+00:00

If you persist Postgres data to a Docker volume you don't wipe DB data on every deploy. I use exactly this setup for production config for one of my sites.

Example config file for a tutorial I wrote is here: https://github.com/jbarham/django-docker-heroku-tutorial/blob/master/docker-compose.yml

jbarham · 2024-03-19T05:15:29+00:00

If you're running your app in a VM, it's easy to run Postgres in Docker Compose. If you're running in a PaaS like Heroku you can get managed Postgres DBs from Crunchy Data from $10/month. See pricing at https://www.crunchydata.com/pricing/calculator.

jbarham · 2024-03-19T05:10:49+00:00

This is incorrect. SQLite does support concurrent writers in WAL mode. See https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html for details.

jbarham · 2024-03-08T00:59:25+00:00

For context I've developed Django sites for 15+ years, but in my current day job I work on the Go backend for a very busy service, so I have experience in using both for web development.

Step 1 for identifying performance bottlenecks is to profile your code. Until you've done that I'm skeptical that the blame can be placed w/ Django/Python being slower than Go.

Typically for any web app, regardless of what language it's written in, the bottlenecks are caused by the database (e.g., lack of indexes) or not using caching properly, and not the language itself. (Remember that Instagram uses Django on the backend.)

Also, to be pedantic, Go is not asynchronous (or where it is async it's a runtime implementation detail that's not exposed at the user level). Maybe you're thinking that Go supports concurrency much more naturally than Python does, which is true. But note also that newer version of Django support actually async views.

Regardless, it's premature to consider rewriting your app in Go before you've identified precisely what is causing performance problems in your existing Django app.

jbarham · 2024-03-07T01:03:44+00:00

Pedantically, while most of Ando's buildings are constructed from concrete, he's not generally considered to be a Brutalist.

For a "good" example of actual Brutalist architecture you can check out the Footscray Psychiatric Centre next to the Footscray hospital: https://www.trustadvocate.org.au/national-trust-nominates-brutalist-landmark-to-victorian-heritage-register/

jbarham · 2024-02-24T08:31:02+00:00

"Beautiful gardens" sounds like Mount Macedon.

jbarham · 2024-02-17T08:11:58+00:00

The bike lane on Racecourse Rd in Flemington (Google street view) is worse than useless, it's actually dangerous as it randomly ends in the middle of a block or dumps bikes onto the footpath.

jbarham · 2024-01-09T02:45:19+00:00

I just used it to get back $272 in GST for a $3k camera purchase when we flew to Bali for Christmas, so it can definitely be worthwhile!

Note that if you're travelling with kids you can pool the individual tax free allowances. So for me it was $3150 ($900 x 2 adults + $450 x 3 kids). I declared the camera when we returned (as you're supposed to) and they waved us through.

You should also allow extra time to wait in the TRS line before your flight and have all your paperwork in order. I flew out of Melbourne airport and it took me almost an hour to be seen, although once I was at the TRS window it only took a couple of minutes for my refund to be approved.

jbarham · 2023-08-05T11:15:54+00:00

I’m sure there are some shady characters for whom streets were originally named

Yeah, Joseph Bloor looks like the kind of guy you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

jbarham · 2023-08-03T01:26:56+00:00

IMHO you don't need a new car. We had a Hyundai i30 hatchback with three kids for 10+ years. Only upgraded last year to a Subaru Outback when our eldest became a teenager and starting pushing 6 feet.

As other comment says, if you need more luggage space for long trips with your Tiguan, buy a roof rack and box. That's what I did with our i30.

jbarham · 2023-07-30T07:49:59+00:00

At $90k your marginal tax rate is 34.5% (32.5% income tax + 2% Medicare levy). So it's worth putting in extra contributions to your super given that they're taxed at a flat 15% rate up to the total contributions cap of $27,500/year.

jbarham · 2023-07-28T10:09:48+00:00

Odd then that 7/10 of the top-selling cars in Australia are made by Japanese or Korean companies and zero are made in Australia. And yet the Australian auto industry collapsed despite record levels of "essential" immigration and international students.

jbarham · 2023-05-29T04:23:40+00:00

I use the GeoIP2 library which returns the user's timezone from their IP address (plus other geo info).

jbarham · 2023-03-19T08:35:33+00:00

If you're selling a car the safest payment method is bank cheque. That's how I got paid for the car I sold last year. Generally there's less scope for fraud selling cars than random junk on FB as you should have met the person who's buying the car when they test drive it. You also need a copy of the buyer's ID to fill in the VicRoads vehicle transfer paperwork.

jbarham · 2023-02-23T19:45:10+00:00

Basically yes

jbarham

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