15,000+ Visits to the Grand Duchy of Stollen!!!

The Grand Duchy of Stollen has been visited slightly over 15,000 times since the start of this blog in August 2006. Flags are flying from bridges, government buildings, and the palace in Krankenstadt this morning. And the Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus, dressed in the fanciest version of his lobster costume, complete with TWO left-handed claws, will speak before an assembly of his ministers later today.

Besides the expected self-congratulations, it is widely believed that the Grand Duke will comment on the continued build-up of Zichenauer forces along the Zwischen river that separates largely Protestant Stollen from its arch-enemy the predominantly Catholic Electorate of Zichenau. Unusually, it is thought that a winter campaign might possibly be waged against Zichenau. Keep reading Die Krankenstadt Tageblat for further developments.

Katrina-Bettina von Heffelfinger

Comments

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

My congratulations sir, I am happy to report that I have contributed a (small) portion to the number.. :o))

7:47 AM

Stagonian Jeff said…

Congratulations, Stokes.

Of course it is due not only to your writing and photography, but also to the lovely figures the Grand Duchess has provided for you . . . so do something nice for her today.

-- Jeff

3:24 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thanks Jeff!

You are so right. I certainly will.

Best Regards,

Stokes

4:21 PM

old-tidders said…

Congratulations from the Kingdom of Wittenberg

-- Allan

7:39 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! Have a good weekend.

Best Regards,

Stokes

2:27 PM

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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