For Justine’s birthday, we rented a small self-contained villa a few kilometres outside of Hepburn Springs. Even though her birthday had been a few weeks earlier, this was the first weekend since then we’d been able to get away.

Getting there was easy, even without a GPS (is it like we’re in the dark ages?) though we did drive past the driveway to the property as it was hard to spot. A quick U turn and we were sorted. After quickly investigating the place — quite nice; a canopy bed, spa bath, sauna, large shower and small kitchen — we headed back through Hepburn Springs and into Daylesford to buy some dinner to prepare later and returned.

The view from our villa was — for over 270 degrees — totally unspoiled with nothing in front of us but bushland. To the right was another villa but since it was difficult to see, it wasn’t a big deal.

After a great night of relaxing and burning myself trying to cook marshmallows in the open fire with a small pair of tongs, we headed out and about. We first checked out a big antique/collectibles place which had a lot of stuff but nothing which really took our fancy. We then made our way to visit a honey stall (where an asian couple were buying over $350 worth of honey!) and to a chocolate “mill” where Justine had a wonderful time ogling the chocolates.

We headed further into Castlemaine which was a ghost town compared to Daylesford, so turned immediately around and headed back. We stopped in at a second-hand bookstore which had so many books it was hard to know where to start. After a bit of looking Justine bought a couple of books she enjoyed as a kid and I bought first editions of “The Amtrak Wars” (paperback, from the 80s) and “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (hardback, from 1935). Neither are in great condition or worth much, but it’s nice to have them anyway.

Dinner consisted of a wood-fired Calabrese pizza (me) and Spaghetti Puttanesca (Justine) and wasn’t too bad. We then retreated to the villa where I gave the sauna a whirl; we chucked a few potatoes wrapped in foil into the fire. And promptly forgot about them… until one exploded.

Next morning we checked out the local Daylesford market; not much worth checking but we did find a print of San Parco place in Venice, which the stallholder was selling for only five dollars. The frame is a little dirty but the picture itself is in good condition. We are interested in reframing it anyway, but the frame is probably worth more than the canvas print.

Justine wanted to take the steam train from Daylesford to Maldon but as we arrived at the station realised we had the information wrong — there’s one from Daylesford to somewhere, and Castlemaine to Maldon. Instead, we drove directly to Maldon where a food and wine festival was running for the day. I had a nice yabby bisque and Justine a vegetable pie — which was vegetables and pastry, nothing else — as well as buying some harissa paste which I’ve been wanting to try for a while.

Tired, we headed home and arrived at a reasonable hour before retiring for the night.

RTS (Real Time Strategy) games were once one of my most favoured genres. I’ve never been close to the top tier of players, and was often quite handily beaten in most LAN events. I still enjoyed the games, but I think more for the city-building and was the sort of player that “turtles” (builds large defensive structures rather than being on the offensive).

I was quite excited to hear that Starcraft 2 is in development and due out later this year, but I can’t help but think I won’t really enjoy it. The last few RTS games I’ve played have been almost exactly the same as the others, with minor changes cosmetic such as character units and setting. The missions are usually quite similar and generic, and the whole thing gets pretty old, pretty fast.

Supreme Commander was the last such game I installed, and although I haven’t played it a great deal, I just can’t find myself getting excited by what seems to be a “been there, done that” experience. The whole strategy in these sorts of games seems to lie in finding the fastest way to crank out as many units as possible. There doesn’t ever seem to be a huge amount of tactics involved.

Sure, you can make two or three groups of units and send them off in different directions to pincer the enemy in multiple fronts, but once the units are together the AI is not particularly intelligent and micromanaging each unit seems more a chore than interesting part of the game.

One game I did play and enjoy a while back is Company of Heroes (I haven’t gotten into the second yet, but plan to) as even though it’s an RTS it was focused on missions with smaller units and less on churning out as many units in as short a time as possible. This is, I think, the direction that the games need to take (even though it is a well-done rehash of the Commandos games).

Starcraft 2, on the other hand, will be a massive, micromanaging clickfest. And it will sell millions. Mostly because I’m not the intended target audience (one, I’m not Korean and two I’m obviously not a hardcore RTS gamer). I’d really like to see more RTS games with no or limited bases with a focus on different style of gaming. What? I’m not sure, anything I could think of has probably been thought up before and already failed. I just think the current style of game needs to evolve. Shooters have; RPGs have. Why not RTS?

Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge), one of the two covered bridges in Luzern, Switzerland. Behind is the large Wasserturm (Water Tower).

This is a ten-image stitch. I must have taken dozens of photos of this bridge and a similar (but older one, which is “behind” you from where this was taken) bridge but you can hardly blame me when it’s such a picturesque view. In fact, it’s supposely the most photographed monument in the country, which is hard to believe given some of the other things around Luzern, let alone Switzerland.

What I like about this bridge is that even though the style old the style of construction (see the concrete pillars) is new. This is because of a fire which destroyed quite a bit of the bridge. All the builders cared about was making it feel like the old bridge; they don’t care if it’s exactly the same — it’s the feel that’s important.

Luzern has such a nice feel about it too; it feels like the air is clean (the water most certainly is), the place feels small even though it’s large enough to be considered a city and there is a definite country feel about the place even though it’s definitely quite urban.

And that doesn’t even take into consideration the huge lake and massive mountains surrounding the place.

As we drove to Warrnambool on the first day of our Adelaide Road Trip, I spotted a quaint bridge right beside the building in this shot.

I pulled over the car at the first available opportunity and we took a short stroll back to the area I’d seen from the road. As we were walking toward the bridge I set down my camera and tripod, and snapped a few various shots.

As I did so, I noticed the boat house — at least that’s what I think it is — and started framing rural-style shots around it instead. Closer shots of the bridge and building weren’t to be, however, as the rain started falling incredibly heavily just moments after this. We ran back to the car, with me hiding the camera under my jumper but with a somewhat humourous tripod bouncing along from under my jumper.

After a moment’s rest we pulled back onto the road and the rain stopped. Typical.

I tried a few different angles and focus points for this one.  There are none that I’d call “perfect” because I wasn’t able to get closer.  But I do like this one with the reeds in the foreground; I think it makes the scene feel more “rural”.

Watching a plane fly overheard while standing on a bridge over the river Aar, Bern.

This is one of those shots that you think “got it!” just as you press the shutter. While we were crossing a bridge over the Aar river, I heard the plane, looked up and managed to compose exactly the shot I wanted with just enough time for the plane to be pretty much where I wanted it. It’s great when a plan comes together.

I didn’t think I’d process this shot in this way, but I really like the effect. The lamp has an old style to it, and the bricks are a bit crusty; the colouring I think works nicely too. The plane could be (but isn’t) a DC-8 or plane from a similar time.

Yet another building I’m unable to locate or identify. It’s in Bern, somewhere.

Whenever I am unable to identify a building, I can usually look at the photos just before and after to jog my memory into telling where and when I took the shot.

With this shot, there was a long period of time where we were walking down a hill, to where we were almost back at our hotel. It might have been when we had a rest on a bus which went to a far off destination and back again, but I can’t even find where that was.

Quite frustrating really — and I wonder why I only took one shot, and why I took so few before or after.