Working From Home Tax Changes — Here’s What You Need To Know

With many Australians now working from home amid the coronavirus crisis, electricity and internet bills will likely increase. Australia’s tax system allows us to claim some of that back but it can be a bit of an arduous process. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has now announced it’s offering workers a shortcut to simplify the process.

Source: Working From Home Tax Changes — Here’s What You Need To Know

2019 and All That

As we head into 2019, I have to reflect on a strange but fun year 2018 was.

I started the Year looking after a Family member who had a number of health issues which became quite critical, but lucky they pulled though and rallied.

Crisis over, I took a short time IT Contact for 3 months with a Government Department, which has been extended to June 2019 and maybe beyond.

I started a Long term plan to lose some weight and increase my fitness which I hope will continue though 2019 and beyond.

I bought a 2018 Mac mini to replace my 2014 Mac mini and 27 inch 4K Monitor to replace my existing 24 inch Monitor.

I hope 2019 is good for me and everyone out there

Timezones and All That

I spend a lot of my spare time online watching media, talking to friends or gaming online.

When I first started watching media online, it was mostly movies or video clips. Time of day was not a factor as they were on-demand. (Which is a fancy way of saying when you have another better to do)

Once People starting Creating and broadcasting there own creations the situation gets complicated. I watch some excellent shows which are standalone, they create, edit and then broadcast.

But there is a new class of media where the show requires Audience participation like watching people playing games on Twitch (What a Nerd I am), sure you can watch the archived videos but it loses some of the fun.

Due to the way the timezones work, but of the the USA day occurs in the middle of the Australian night, so a lot of the daytime shows are missed.

Lucky some of the people play late at night after work and family time so you can catch them in the early morning before work.

Not sure how to fix that

2018 and All That

Wow, Long time between updates.

Life has been crazy the 2 year’s  in a good way.

Been busy doing everything other than updating my Blog.

Spent a lot of time lately working, studying and family stuff.

Going to try and blog one a week at least

Michael

Life Catches up with me

Haven’t blogged for a long time.

Lots of changes happened in the last 6 months or so, but not for the Internet to hear about.

I did suffer a DDOS, some French Website tried to Hack my WordPress Site and blew out my Monthly hosting Limit for 2 Months. Decided to change my Hosting to a different company, my last one was run by a friend I used to work with.

 

Moving to a Mac – Part 2

Over the last few months, I’ve been slowly moving from a Single PC doing everything to separate Devices.

Part of the Change is to keep work separate from home as we move from a 9 to 5 work day to a 24/7 work style (Hopefully not too many late nights or weekends)

I have extended this concept to a separate PC for gaming.

My Main PC is a 2014 Mac Mini with 16 GB of Ram currently running the OS X 10.11 Beta.

I moved to a mac for most of my Home life as it still seems to be the best Multimedia Creator / Consumer device out there.

I use the mac mostly for

Listening to Music, both on the mac and syncing to my iPhone or iPad

Listening to Podcasts, both on the mac and syncing to my iPhone or iPad

Watching Videos, mostly YouTube or Netflix

Importing, Cataloguing and saving Photos.

As well as the usual, reading emails, online shopping, etc.

 

I build a Mini ITX Size Desktop for Work using spare components.

It’s mostly has the Microsoft suite of application as well as some development tools

 

I purpose built a Mid Tower Desktop PC for my gaming needs including a New GTX 970

It’s running Windows 8.1 64 Bit with 16 GB of Ram.

These Devices join my iPhone 5s and an IPad Air 2 64 Gb

I also have a 2011 Mac Book Air which I use mostly for Personal Travel

Working Remotely

Over the last few weeks, I’ve needed to work remotely both from Home and on the move.

I find my iPad is the best for this as I always have it with me unlike a laptop. We currently use skype at work, so I can dial into meeting on the Train (Get’s lot’s of strange looks from the other passengers.

I can access the servers at work via VPN to my Desktop and most importantly read and reply to emails on the go.