We could use a little snow in the Grand Duchy of Stollen!

Today's seasonal photograph is of the Flensburger Weihnachtsmarkt (Flensburg Christmas Market) in the small German city of Flensburg near the Danish border.

A dark, damp, gloomy December morning here at Stollen Central. We sure could use some of the snow they have had in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Upper Michigan, which would brighten things up nicely. The Nordic Skiing place that the Grand Duchess and I like, ABR Trails just outside Ironwood, Michigan, reports 4"-6" on the ground and some grooming of trails. What a shame it's about eight hours north of us by car! And Young Master Paul is still a wee bit on the young side for that sort of outting. Sigh.

On the soldierly front, I completed one batch of four RSM Prussian musketeers early yesterday evening and began another batch of five, which will bring us to 16 musketeers in a day or two when those are finished. A photo or two when these are done. Then it will be time to tackle a couple of officers, a drummer, and a standard bearer plus the mounted colonel, all of which should provided a nice change of pace before plowing ahead with another four musketeers.

Finally, today's photograph of a German Christmas market comes from Flensburg, a small, sleepy place very close to Denmark but on the German side of the border. The region is interesting because it's one of those places which has, or had until the fairly recent past, a sizable Danish-speaking minority. However, when I spent several days in the city in the spring of 1990, I only ever encountered German speakers. Maybe I just wasn't listening closely enough? But I digress. What a shame one can't earn billions for the simple act of digression. I'd be filthy rich by now.

Anyway, for those of you who are intrigued by the idea of these German Christmas markets, something that many other countries have taken up in recent years, here is a link to Wikipedia, which explains a bit about the origins of this delightful pre-Christmas tradion that typically takes place during the Advent period or Adventzeit. Just click on this link: Weihnactsmarkt.

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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