Like most technology, DVDs rarely do anything other than drop in price. I just found The Late Show — Best Bits: Champagne Edition for $19.95 in Dymocks. According to the ABC Shop Online and that wondrous assistant to DVD shopping, DVD Plaza’s Pricecrawler, it’s widely available at that price. 6 hours of 90s-era hilarity for $20? Woo hoo!
Checked the other day how much of my home loan I’ve paid off. It’s currently sitting at 8.13% gone, up from 6.59% this time last year, and it’s only shifting at about 0.11% per month (unless I choose to pay extra). Slow going. So much for my NY resolution in 2006 of trying to pay off 20% by the end of that year.
Some will say that buying a house doesn’t make economic sense; that renting is overall a better option. When I see the home loan statements, with the humongous amount of interest being charged, I can see that point of view.
But my sister pointed out the other day that it’s pointless looking at it like that. Money lost in interest is just part of the cost of having the house. I guess you could compare it to rent — in those terms, my loan payments are about double what I was paying in rent.
Wait a sec. If you took into account the full proposition, all the money going in, going out, and the how the property value is appreciating, how does it all add up?
So I did a few quick calculations. Thanks to the booming house prices in my area, I’m actually making a huge profit every month. In fact the expenses of loan payments and interest are outweighed 3:1 by the current (estimated) monthly appreciation on the house. Even if prices were rising half as fast, I’d still be ahead.
It’s worth noting that one of the criteria the Buyers Advocate used was that the house would be a good investment — along with all the other factors such as location and affordability and something I liked.
So while it’s money I’ll never see (I’m determined to avoid ever moving house again, cockroaches or no cockroaches), it’s certainly all piling up. That’s cheered me up no end.
My old mate Brian once described his car as being an air-conditioner on wheels.
Which got me thinking. When I go for a drive on my own, the engine in my car is moving me (75 Kg) and the car itself (1356 Kg). Therefore 94% of the energy involved is spent moving the car. It’s only marginally better if I have passengers.
An SUV such as a Ford Territory weighs about 50% more, so 96% of the energy is moving the car.
Of course, there’s a lot more to fuel efficiency than weight. A 3-car train weighs about 120 tonnes (so even if it’s full of people, the weight barely changes), but it’s still more efficient (in terms of both energy and emissions) than a similar number of cars. Ditto for trams:
The Combino light rail vehicle is about the same energy efficiency as a Porsche Carrera GT; the Porsche seats 2, the Combino seats 67 and can carry 180. The efficiency advantage is huge, though the Porsche obviously accelerates better and has a higher top speed!
– James Strickland
So there you go. Just close your eyes the next time you’re on the tram and pretend you’re in a Porsche instead.
… Well, if that’s your thing and you actually think sports cars are cool.
I was back at work today. The city seemed a bit quiet today (Degraves St/Centreway excepted), and with many blokes shunning their ties, obviously things are still a bit in holiday mode.
This morning I found the biggest damn spider I’ve seen this year in ages sitting on the wall above the front door. I know spiders probably help keep the cockroach (etc) population down, but I just couldn’t face one that size being in the house. It took several hits with a broom to kill it, and I swept it out into the garden.
It’s not just that I watched Return of the King with the kids a few days ago (remember Shelob?) — I’ve never been that keen on big spiders wandering around. Turns out Peter Jackson based his adaption of Shelob on funnel-web spiders, though my visitor was probably a Huntsman.
Then just as I was about to leave the house I found a huge cockroach on my bedroom window sill.
I really don’t want to have an entire ecosystem inside my home. I think it might be time to get the house sprayed again.
Oh thank goodness — they didn’t use that horrible old picture in the print edition of the Herald Sun article today. Though perhaps the one they did use (which from memory was taken in late-2006 in Swanston Street) wasn’t much better.
There was a bit of a typo in the article that appeared during production though. The bit that says:
“Most importantly, it [VicRoads] doesn’t hold back from lobbying the Government for much-needed road projects.”
should have actually said:
“Most importantly, it doesn’t hold back from lobbying the Government for big road projects on the basis of what it regards as the needs of the Victorian public.”
Changes the meaning a bit. But no matter, that was only a tiny bit of the article.
Unfortunately some of the comments on the HS web page appear to have missed the point. It’s not really about the bicycle ban, or crowded trains. It’s about the root causes: why PT management and planning — and thus services — are such a splintered, chaotic mess, and what can be done to fix them.