Has it been three years already?

Today is the Young Master's third birthday! Bells are chiming in the capital city Krankenstadt this morning, and the Grand Duke Irwin Amadeus II (with the help of his trusty valet Hives) has declared a national holiday throughout the Grand Duchy of Stollen, which will be marked by a large parade of troops through the downtown area mid-afternoon and an opulent costume ball at The Residenz this evening.

Here in our little neck of the woods though, where in the heck has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday -- and at the same time like it has been forty years -- that the Grand Duchess was wheeled away into the delivery room for preparation at an extremely early hour, and I was handed some scrubs to don before following to hold her hand throughout the procedure that brought us young Paul. How funny and strange the passage of time is, and nothing makes one realize that like having a child and watching him or her grow up.

We are off to an area zoo today since our weather is bright, sunny, and cool. A wonderful autumn day! Lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant will follow since the Young Master loves hummus and pita bread. After the return home and a couple of hours of the usual "quiet time" in his room with a few books in bed, we'll enjoy some pizza (another Paul favorite) with chocolate cake for dessert, and the opening of several gifts to Paul from us and his grandparents. An hour or two of play will follow before pajama, toothbrush, and story time. A full day indeed, but a much needed respite from the frustrations of Monday through Friday life.

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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