Goverment House, Melbourne is only open to the Public one day a year. The line to enter last year was too long but this year we managed to visit.

The interior is quite splendid, as you can see here. The Governor was walking the grounds as well.

I took some other shots of a similarly old building — Stonington Mansion — in Melbourne about 18 months ago, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

The open second floor here really reminded me of when I toured Stonington Mansion a while back. As it happens, some of the items in Stonington Mansion were on loan from Government House, including a one-off Italian leather couch. I forgot to look for any of these items today, though.

Taken shortly after our arrival in Venice. We’d arrived on the train and made our way to the apartment rental agent in order to pick up our keys, but he wasn’t open yet!

Since the streets were mostly empty, Justine waited around while I took a few photos in the early morning sun. Justine is only just out of shot (in fact, she’s in the original uncropped shot) while I took this shot from a bridge.

The man in frame apparently stared Justine down as he walked past. Dirty old Italian geezer!

The somewhat useless curves of Webb Bridge, Melbourne.

To get this angle, I stuck my arm through one of the many gaps in the bridge. I leaned out as far as I possibly could, and snapped a couple of shots in the vain attempt to get a good angle.

Ironically, this was the first shot I took. Sky’s a little boring and the right-hand side a bit too prominent, but I do like the angle and curves of the bridge quite a bit.

While Justine isn’t one for ferris wheels, she was brave enough to join me and ride the Riesenrad, a 100+ year-old example in the heart of Vienna.

Each gondola had a lot of movement and I enjoyed trying to rock ours, much to Justine’s dissatisfaction.

The hood of a vintage Ford at a bridal exhibition. Docklands, Melbourne.

Our photowalk yesterday started outside Telstra Dome (or Colonial Stadium, if you prefer); we happened across a bridal exhibition which didn’t interest any of us, but the interesting cars on display did.

As well as this car, there were stretch Cadillacs, fire engines and stretch Hummers, just to name a few. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a hood ornament such as this — and on a Ford to boot.

The picturesque Schloß Schönbrunn in Vienna.

At this point in our trip, I was beginning to make good use of foreground objects to hide people. There are still some people visible in this shot, but I think the low angle coupled with the flowers — and then the out-of-focus flowers — really works well.

The colours — the reds and purples of the flowers, and the blue of the sky — contrast well with the yellow of the building. I think it might be a little overprocessed and the conversion from Adobe RGB to sRGB made it look a little sick (i.e. green) which I possibly overcompensated by using Lightroom’s “tint” feature, as well as the sky changing colour a bit much. Very annoying and I still haven’t got the process down pat.

As we walked through Schloß Schönbrunn towards the exit, there was a small chapel within the building. Inside the chapel was a man playing an acoustic guitar, with classical music. We stepped inside for a moment to listen to the man play; without amplification, the music filled the entire room. Most certainly a magical moment.

With the recent demise of our long-lived Pioneer learning remote, I sought out a new all-in-one remote which would also control our Foxtel — something of which the older Pioneer remote was not capable.

After some searching, I found the Sony RM-VL600 remote which is considered a great buy for the price.  With the remote unavailable in Australia, and the price of Sony remotes here exorbitant (a two-generation old remote here costs around ten times the cost of the same unit in the US) I sought out the remote on eBay.

I snapped up the unit for what I consider a good price — around $35 landed — especially considering they’re about $70 on eBay in Australia.  Earlier, I’d also ordered a replacement for the Pioneer remote, which cost quite a lot more than both previously mentioned prices; still, I need it to perform some functions on the A/V receiver.

The Sony remote arrived first — and so it should, the delivery expectation was 5-7 working days; the Pioneer remote was 3-6 weeks — and as soon as I got it home I started tinkering.

Our TV, A/V receiver and DVD player had pre-programmed codes, and it was a cinch to learn our Foxtel and Xbox remotes.  Another great feature is the volume “punch-through”, which means that no matter which component you have selected, the A/V receiver always receives the volume up/down commands.  Very nice.

The next step was to setup some macros, since the unit has room for up to 16 commands on one button (certain buttons only).  I hunted the web for “discrete codes” for all of our equipment.  Discrete codes are often used in home theatres as they can send “power on” of “power off” commands, rather than “toggle between power on and power off”.  Sending a “power on” command to an already-on device simply leaves the device on.

It needs a little more tweaking, but I now have a button for “TV”, which turns on the TV, A/V receiver, sets both to the right inputs and then sets the remote to control Foxtel.  I have one which also does the same for our Xbox so we can watch downloaded content.  A third button is an “all off” which turns all our equipment off, regardless of it’s on/off status.

I could have purchased one of the Logitech Harmony remotes, but I don’t really like the “clicky” buttons, the requirement of a charger over regular batteries, having to use a website just to change the configuration and the screen is — to me — gimmicky.  Plus the cheapest unit is more than five times the cost of the one we bought.

It’s great to have just one remote again!