All Quiet on the Midwestern Front. . .

Happy Easter from the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

Just a quick note to say hello to everyone who routinely visits and/or follows the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog. No, I have not fallen from the edge of the earth or anything given the weeks of relative inactivity here. Just a lot going on at the moment.

Over on the painting desk, the Minden hussars wait patiently while a couple of hobby-related projects have taken precedence since our return from Mexico a month ago. Can't really say anymore about this right now, but keep your eyes and ears open for further developments in the months to come.

What else? Well, factor in a new film course that I've been developing with a colleague, the end of the spring semester, plus the usual family things, and it's been rather busier than I would like these last several weeks. Sadly, as I discovered at 20 when I went to work full-time, managing the dairy department in a large supermarket -- Just try to picture a very thin, long-haired Stokes doing that! -- there aren't enough hours in the day to do absolutely everything.

Fortunately, there is still a bit of time now and again for music, and thanks to the understanding and support of the fair Grand Duchess, my amateur rock and roll band, The Indras, continues to practice once a week and play out two-four times a month for pretty decent money these days. A related activity that has taken up some time the last few weeks has been the design of our new website, by yours truly, along with getting it online and fine-tuning everything. Just click on our name above to be transported, via the magic of the internet, to the website in question, which explains everything in greater detail. I'm the guy in the black turtleneck and glasses on the left, playing a vintage 1963 Hofner bass!

A special thank-you to my followers, who now number 99! I know from my statistics page that there are quite a few more of you who drop by every few days, so a tip of the hat to you as well. It seems that I have written something like 835 entries here since starting the Grand Duch of Stollen blog in mid-August 2006. Hard to believe there is that much to say about things like family life, skiing, bicycling, travel, music, teaching, table manners, and, oh yes, wargaming. Anyway, here's to at least a few hundred more posts before the ol' fingers drop off.

Finally, please do continue to check in here during the coming weeks. I'm teaching a May Term film course, but things should calm down and return to normal before long, which means a little more time for soldier painting, wargaming, and nattering on about it here. Stay tuned. Have a good day everyone, and Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate!

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

tradgardmastare said…

And a Happy Easter to you and your household from all at the Duchy of Tradgardland.
Alan

12:51 PM

Fitz-Badger said…

By coincidence I used a similar title for my latest post at the Soweiter League, as I've also been busy with "real life" and had little to report in the gaming world.
Hopefully we can both find a little more time for painting and gaming and such in the coming months!

10:30 PM

Mosstrooper said…

May I take this oppertunity to nominate you for 'The Stylish Bloggers Award'

10:38 AM

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