Stopping social drinking was tougher than stopping binge drinking for me. What helped was deciding to go 100% cold turkey for a year. It forced me to learn how to socialise sober. Before that it was too easy to opt out of sobriety "just for this occasion".
It’s been a while since I looked at IPCC report. Is the worst case still apocalyptically bad? We’re nearing 1.5 degrees above average and the results are bad enough already. (Not looking forward to another summer of fires like Australia had a couple of years ago.)
Your four emotional needs ring true to me. I’ve also spent a good chunk of time playing video games. Can I suggest trying out mountain biking as an alternative source of adrenaline? IME it’s possible to balance the risk if you stay conscious of what you are doing and confident enough to skip a challenging feature when you’re not feeling it.
> the people buying houses in the outer-inner-suburbs that would still be vastly outside their price range without massive help from both sets of parents; these buyers are unfailingly couples.
I suspect there is a big difference between the long term wealth implications of buying a house vs buying an apartment. There are never going to be more houses in outer-inner-suburbs. There is going to be a constant supply of new apartments as we move towards higher density living.
People who have wealthy parents are in the best position to make better housing investments.
There are sooooo many VST plugins out there. If you don't see the value in the cost of Omnisphere don't buy it. Look for other options. It's an extremely competitive market.
Ableton Live Suite has a tremendous amount of tools out of the box and contains everything you need to make music with. Look for second hand copies on forums. You'll likely be able to pick a copy up for $400 or so. You could buy that and never buy any software again.
> And instead of paying upfront, synths / effects can make money by taking a cut of your revenue
Hahahaha, have you asked how much the average electronic music producer makes vs the average software dev? ;)
> It's a shame because Perth and even Melbourne used to have a relatively low cost-of-living and high quality-of-life. I honestly don't know how anyone does it now.
The experience of living in Melbourne in 2000 as someone not on the property ladder is very different to now.
In 2000 it was possible to be on the poverty line and still live within an easy bike ride of the CBD. Now everyone I know lives increasingly on the fringes of the city.
This change is not unique to Melbourne but I can't help feel something is lost when you go to a house party and the only people you meet are ones who can afford property.
I'm increasingly assuming anyone who buys in Melbourne is doing so with the assistance of multi-generation wealth.
> I'm always kind of surprised by people who move to Australia. It's a country that has had an active policy of censorship on entertainment for a very long time - books, video games, movies. The fact that the populace is okay with such a policy would make me reconsider moving there.
On my list of things to be concerned about as an Australian, censorship of media is pretty low down. It's not something we run up against in day to day life.
What's the story for building VST plugins? How much c++ glue code do you need to write?
The amount of effort required to build a VST plugin is very off-putting. IMHO it's hard to justify doing unless it's a commercial project. I think we would see more idiosyncratic and creative plugins if building one took weeks instead of years.
6 solid hours of coding solo is pushing my daily limits. I can do more but productivity goes down. Day in day out pair coding sounds for 6 hours sounds more intense again.