A Christmas Carol. . .

I must admit that I am something of a big sap when it comes to Mr. Dickens' well-known story, which always gets me even though, as an adult, the story's social message is a bit heavy handed in places. Still, it's a fun story. So, a few nights ago, the Grand Duchess and I sat down to watch the 1984 production of A Christmas Carol, which stars George C. Scott, Susana York, David Warner, Edward Woodward, Roger Rees, and a host of other well-known actors.

What I enjoy most about this production is the fact that this production remains very close to the original 1843 story. Its visual lushness is also wery special. The British always do period pieces well, and this 1984 movie is no exception. I have three particularly favorite parts of the movie. One is the Christmas Eve party at Mr. Fezziwig's, where the young Scrooge was apprenticed, during the Ghost of Christmas Past sequence. The next is when the Ghost of Christmas Present (played by the Equalizer himself, Edward Woodward) strolls through 1840s London (actually Shrewsbury) on Christmas morning with Scrooge.

Finally, the end of the story, where Scrooge wakes up a changed man on Christmas morning is great. The excitement of Chrstmas Day and Scrooge's newly found lease on life is palpable and something I enjoy every year. It's contagious. And yes, before anyone asks, I did actually read the story in December 1987, and it was highly enjoyable, but I'll always have a soft spot for this movie.

Oh yes! One more thing. The Action at Pickelhaubewicz. Jonathan and I rolled the dice in our musketry duel last night. You'll recall that our grenzers and jaeger were arrayed in in close order lines at close musketry range, that is less than 6". We each had a dozen figures capable of firing at each other, so we rolled two dice each, one for eight figures and one for the remaining four.

Jonathan had the magic touch and threw a 2 and a 5 for his red-coated Irishmen, scoring a total of 7 hits on my green-coated jaeger. Unfortunately, I rolled just a 3 and a 1, scoring only four hits on Jonathan's troops! So, Colonel von Grundig's Jaeger zu Fuss inflicted four casualties and received seven casualties in return at the hands of Major von Hirschbiegel's smug Irish Grenzers, almost half their original number. Things are not looking good -- We are using the old, tried and true 50% rule, as stipulated in Charge!, so I'm afraid it won't be long before the Jaeger zu Fuss will have to be withdrawn from the the game altogether. :-(

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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