A cohesive manuscript is coming together. . .

I've actually managed to make some final corrections to the latest article/chapter in the last couple of days. In addition, I began assembling a bunch of disparate sections into a cohesive manuscript for the developing book on wargaming this afternoon. Hurrah!!! It would appear that I haven't been as much of a slug the last few weeks as I was beginning to suspect! ;-) So, barring any unforeseen surprises, the book will consist of twelve sections, an endpiece, an appendix, and a select bibliography. . . plus at least a few illustrations in the form of photographs. Now, I'm not quite ready to bug publishers just yet. There is still a short way to go until the basic manuscript is completed. I have several sections to finish and tune up, plus a few more to actually start, but there is at least some light at the end of the tunnel. Suffice to say, that it was a blast to assemble everything, and take in how much I've managed to finish up to this point. It's a good feeling.

Comments

Martin said…

Way to Stokes! I'll be looking forward to when it hits the shelves! With all the gaming "Classic Work Reprints" available, Battlegames, and Brig. Grant's new stuff rolling off the line, is this a great time to be a wargamer or what?!

Yours,

Martin

9:10 PM

Bluebear Jeff said…

Stokes,

So now you have yet another "child" to look forward to.

I hope that all continues to progress well.

-- Jeff

9:18 PM

Fitz-Badger said…

Was it a dark and stormy night?
lol
I hope it gets published! I will definitely be looking for it (and buying it!).

10:00 PM

old-tidders said…

That book should be worth waiting for !

-- Allan

6:42 AM

CWT said…

Very impressive to hear you've produced an actual book! Good luck on the finishing-off work!

12:45 AM

A J said…

As one author to another, I know full well the whole process you're going through! WTG on the project. I look forward to buying the end result.

11:19 AM

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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