Reelin' and a Rockin'. . . .

Hardly John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but we still enjoyed ourselves immensely! From left to right, Paul, Steve, Kenny, and Stokes -- The Indras.

Yesterday afternoon/evening was pretty successful for our public debut . Unfortunately, we took the stage without our promised soundcheck and were a bit rushed, but our set of six songs went over remarkably well all things considered. The audience, who ranged in age from 3 or 4 to about 65-70, was highly enthusiastic and gave us a good response. There was even some dancin' and jivin' in front of the stage by younger audience members.

Various other acts were on the bill too, all equally talented. Who would think that a bunch of people with advanced degrees, who have made a life of studying, writing, and professing would display such a surprising array of talent? Certainly not our students, many of whom, I would bet, were taken by complete surprise.

Over $300 US was raised for the McLean County Autism Society too, so it was an afternoon well spent. And the student organizers of the faculty/staff variety show were very helpful and professional in they way they ran everything. I'm eager to work with them again next year.

As an added plus, The Indras have some pretty good sounding video of the perfomance (thanks to the Grand Duchess), which we should have up on the band's MySpace page and YouTube in a day or two. So, you'll be able to experience the performance if you'd like. Ok, now let's get back to those RSM Fusiliers!

P.S.

FYI, the following tunes made up our mini set:

Some Other Guy
Honey Don't
Lucille
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
Blue Suede Shoes
Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I'm glad that it went well . . . and I hope that Irwin Amadeus' troops can hold the Sawmill from those most vile of invaders, the Stagonians.

-- Jeff

2:47 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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