The Sydney Royal Easter Show is one of Australia's largest annual events, with up to one million people passing through its gates every year. If you're planning to attend the event with a litter of rug rats in tow, here are some tips I learned during my own Show adventure. With a little luck, they should help you to get through the day without boring the kids or going broke.

I wish I left my computer on when I was on holiday. But when I came back from a week-long, cross-country trip to Lifehacker HQ late on a Saturday night, I made a fatal error. When I got home, I unpacked my bags, brushed my teeth, and fed my cat. I didn't think to flip on my desktop PC and let it chug through a sea of updates overnight, which would have saved me a ton of time.

Booking a holiday stay with friends can get pretty stressful, and pretty expensive if you're the one putting down the deposit. With Airbnb's Split Payments service, however, you can you split the bill with your fellow travellers. Instead of footing the entire bill on your own and waiting for your buddies to send you their share, now you can take care of it all in one place.

As Hotels.com's regional director for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, Katherine Cole knows a thing or two about the hotel industry. Travelling on a fortnightly basis to all corners of the globe, she's stayed at hundreds of hotels and has learned a few tricks along the way. We asked Cole to share her top hotel hacks with Lifehacker readers, from the best time to book your hotel to the hidden costs you need to watch out for.

When you think of Valentine's Day you probably think of flowers, chocolates, and notes sealed with a kiss - not whipping women with dead animals or martyrdom. But it turns out this sweet and loving commercial holiday has its roots in pagan rituals and good old-fashioned Christian rebranding. Oh, and selling you cards.

It is, ironically, difficult to have a pleasant date night on Valentine's Day, when every "nice" restaurant replaces their normal menu with a mandatory and expensive prix fixe. Some couples actually like those dinners, and have a fun pre-packaged date night. Other couples like to cook at home, or to ignore the holiday altogether. But if you want to have a typical "date night" out on February 14, your options will feel limited. Here's how to navigate that strait.

When was the last time you had a really good holiday? If you're currently scratching your head, take note: With a little strategic planning, it's possible to score five luxurious vacations totalling more than eight weeks off work without resorting to unpaid leave. Here's how to pull it off.

Picture the scene: you've organised a week off work for some much-needed R&R. On the first day of your holiday, you're struck down with the flu. Instead of sunning it up on the beach, you spend the entire week coughing up phlegm in bed.

If you'd been at work, you definitely would have called in sick on these days - so why should annual leave be any different? Let's take a look at the legalities.

There are three ways to have a good birthday.

You've got problems, I've got advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated -- in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

About ten years ago, I went to a New Year's Day brunch party. Frankly, I hadn't really wanted to go. That particular time in my life was a low point; I'd just gone through a breakup and was feeling unusually forlorn, and I wanted to wallow at home. But the hostess was a good friend and she had invited other interesting, cool people to a good restaurant... so I dragged my feeble, mildly hungover self downtown.

Everyone made fun of the performative pep talk from that Ticketmaster bro who thinks working the holidays turns you into Usain Bolt, but he got one thing right: Most people, even if they're back in the office, aren't working hard between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Every year without fail I end up running tech support for an assortment of friends and family when I travel back home for the holidays. This year I've already tackled such hard-hitting questions as "Where did my Bitmoji keyboard go?" "Why are people tapping their phone on registers?" and "Why is my computer doing this thing?"

The nice thing about getting together with family for the holidays is catching up with loved ones you haven't seen since last year. It's lovely to hear about your sister's new job, watch the kids play with their cousins, and grit your teeth through your racist relatives' awful comments. OK, wait -- that's actually not very fun. In fact, it can be rather distressing and depressing.

Choosing between real and artificial Christmas trees largely comes down to personal preference: do you want that cosy pine smell and hellacious clean-up, or built-in lights with no personal touch but nary a needle on the floor? Personal preference aside, though, there's someone else who probably cares: Mother Earth.

Hey, it's peak airport season! The time of year when you spend a lot of time in lines waiting to be barked at by airport security, and waiting to take off your shoes, and then ... sometimes waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more. This is not exactly ideal when you don't have children, but for those of us with toddlers and little kids, it's a special stretch of total hell. So the prepared parent plans enough activities to keep little Corian and Toto engaged -- and most importantly not whining or screaming -- for up to, oh, 11 hours.

Holidays are a time of high stress. Despite the delight of not having to work for several days or even weeks, holidays come with pressures. These can include catching up with family, giving gifts, consuming to keep the economy buoyant, and having enough fun to see us through to the next holiday.

Here are ten tips for enjoying things that little bit more without all the stress and after-effects.

Cranberries are quite pretty but, unless you pickle them, they aren't the tastiest garnish. Rather than let them skate by on looks alone, I make them pull their weight by performing double duty as a beverage chiller.

Snappy, treat-studded chocolate bark is a holiday treat that is always met with much enthusiasm. (Williams Sonoma is able to charge $42 for 454g of their peppermint iteration, making it more expensive than organic rib eye.) There is, however, no reason to spend a bunch on bark, as it can be made in your kitchen with very little effort.