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A passive Canadian’s portfolio

After years of procrastinating, I’ve finally got my finances in order and done my homework on investment. I thought I’d write up a bit of my strategy for anyone interested or wiser than me.

I was relatively uninvested during the Fall 2008 credit crisis, and saw an ideal opportunity to get in and make some money. It was a dangerous time to learn the ropes and I only put money in slowly, with no expectation of “timing” the market’s true low point. As a result, I made nothing off the huge March 2009 dip – but no matter.

I’ve taken a fairly conventional asset allocation strategy – I’m young, and can afford a lot of risk, so my target is to have a high amount in stocks: Continue reading “A passive Canadian’s portfolio”

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Switched to Mac

I’ve just bought a Mac Mini and retired my five-year-old desktop PC, an Athlon XP based system running the Ubuntu Linux distribution. With steady upgrades (especially a 2GB RAM boost), it was still quite usable, but the CPU was showing its age and the graphics were miserable. I’d tried fitting a new AGP card in, but the system rebooted randomly and I’m just not patient enough to suss out the source of the difficulty any more.

Most of my computer science friends made the leap to Mac four or five years ago, while I stuck it out with Linux for quite some time.

I ultimately made the jump for three main reasons:

  • Unix without the hassle of Linux. The terminal and macports/fink give me the full power of the Unix command line and most of the Linux toolset–but I get a polished GUI on top. To be fair, Ubuntu Linux had a pretty clean, simple GUI on top… but I really got sick of things breaking from release to release, and spending hours trying to figure out what was wrong. (Examples: PulseAudio in the 8.1/9.0 releases, Amarok2 in the 9.0 release, nVidia drivers in 8.1, etc., etc.) To be fair, Mac has its share of problems too–it looks like a lot of software has broken with the Snow Leopard release, especially in the macports/fink world. But the basics will almost always work, I think.
  • Low power consumption and quiet. I’m really impressed by Apple’s commitment here: 15W / 30W power consumption on the Mac Mini (idle / active), versus 64W / 100W for a typical minitower PC. I did a bit of research on this, and PCs have certainly improved over the last 5 years—the new Energy Star-rated “80 plus” power supplies are certainly decent. But the killer these days appears to be graphics: a dedicated PCI graphics card really sucks juice, while the Mac Mini uses a graphics chip optimized for notebook systems. The Mac Mini’s chip isn’t the hottest on the market, but is still capable of playing many current graphics-hungry games like Quake 4. And because the chip is designed for notebooks, it’s very power efficient.
  • Futureproof…? I’d like to be able to continue using this system for at least five years. This is always a challenging game to play—parts come and go, new operating system versions come out, new media are invented. That said, USB and Firewire allow a lot of the customization to happen outside the box now, and the main things that are inflexible are processor, RAM, graphics and software. I’m most concerned about the software—I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple orphans the Mac Mini down the road, given the hands-off treatment of the first Mac Mini model. That said, as long as I can load Linux on it once Apple drops support, it’ll continue to be useable. We’ll see what happens.

At first blush, it looked like the Mac Mini was within $100-$200 in price of a comparable spec PC. I spent a while trying to ensure that I was making an objective decision without being seduced by Apple’s slick, glossy emotional appeal. In the end, the PC makers dropped prices dramatically for the back-to-school season, and there was no price contest; I paid a full $250 more for the Mac Mini with slightly poorer specs. I’ve justified this to myself on the basis of wanting a truly good operating system, and getting a truly energy-efficient computer.

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Hillside 2009

The Hillside music festival appears to have a very low profile in the blogosphere… curious, because it’s one of the best I’ve attended. I suspect it’s just a way of keeping a good festival for the locals, and fending off the Toronto hordes. A very low-key festival, a great lineup and a nice location on an island in Guelph Lake. The only trick is getting tickets – they sell out of weekend passes in a matter of hours, and tickets sell out in under a week. And that’s in April, two months before they’ve even announced the lineup.

Anyways, my highlights from the festival this year:

  • woodhands. Great electro, playing to a thrilled and bouncing crowd. Watching the geeks crowdsurf was well worth the time
  • patrick watson. An intriguingly loose and brave rock crew, fresh from a Polaris prize win. Very interesting sound, and great percussion.
  • the clues. This Montreal group played a super-tight, slick rock/pop set, but were clearly off-kilter from the weather. A massive thunderclap/lightning strike forced the stage crew to power everything down minutes before their set, and the reboot clearly harmed the band’s polished sound setup and cut a deep hole in their playlist. Too bad – they were excellent.
  • great lakes swimmers. I’ve heard the buzz, but never seen these introverted folkies. Nice, sweet, and a little reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens.
  • the tallboys. You won’t find a disc in the name of these jazz profs and studio musicians, but they played a great set.
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Mix 2008.12

My musical listening time has diminished dramatically in the last year, since I finished my graduate degree and moved to full-time work in the transportation field. Unlike my past jobs, my work does not involve extended periods of concentration at a computer with the headphones on, and I don’t take in nearly as much music.

The main musical event of 2008 was a trip to Guelph Lake for the Hillside festival, with a great lineup—Broken Social Scene, Harry Manx and many many more over the course of a full weekend.

At any rate, I did put together a quick mix of some recent favourites for myself and anyone who’d care to hear it. Drop me a line to hear the mix.

  1. amon tobin. people like frank. jazzy drum & bass, from permutations, 1998.
  2. xploding plastix. more powah to yah. jazzy drum & bass, from amateur girlfriends go proskirt agents, 2001.
  3. v.l.a.d. transcom_t.v. techno, from D, 2002.
  4. mouse on mars. untitled states of. ambient / experimental, from agit itter it it, 2001.
  5. ml. sidedish. experimental, from everyone looks like somebody else, 2002.
  6. elliott smith. independence day. pop, from xo, 1998.
  7. harry manx. only then will your house be blessed. blues / world, from wise and otherwise, 2002.
  8. sufjan stevens. romulus. folk, from greetings from michigan! the great lakes state, 2003.
  9. yppah. again with the subtitles. downtempo, from ninja tune: you don’t know, 2008.
  10. radiohead. reckoner. rock / experimental, from in rainbows, 2007.
  11. kevin drew. fcked up kid. rock, from spirit if…, 2007.
  12. feist. past in present. pop, from the reminder, 2007.
  13. hot chip. playboy. soul / electro, from future sounds of jazz 10, 2005.
  14. caribou. melody day. experimental / rock, from andorra, 2007.
  15. milky globe. ode [scsi 9 moscow mix]. ambient, from susumu yokota: lo compilation, 2006.
  16. justice. newjack. electro, from t, 2007.
  17. gary davis. the professor’s here. disco, from four tet: dj kicks, 2006 (original release 1982).
  18. the herbaliser. gadget funk. funk, from ninja tune: you don’t know, 2008.