using stellarium and books to plan ahead. I came across this wiki book en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Observing_the_Sky_from_30°S which seems promising and has a pdf download. you may have to change it to
http://www.wikibooks.org/wiki/Observ..._Sky_from_30°S since I'm on a phone.
www.skymaps.org are good planispheres for a given month, and have a list of targets for naked eye, bino and scope, and then using software and books to plan an observing session.
Stellarium is fine for certain things .. I rarely use it, instead preferring an app on the phone which isn't sky safari for when I'm next to the scope. I mainly use stellarium to set up my eye pieces so I know what to "expect" when I'm trying to locate or view an object using it's eyepiece projection filter. play around with it it's quite a good piece of kit especially for free.
matt
also being on a balcony limits your sky view so planning ahead and knowing when and what's visable is probably a handy thing .. least when the skies are clear you won't need to be in a book or on a computer you can be panning the skies with your dob and going wow, that's such and such ..
