All Quiet at Totleigh-in-the-Wold. . .

Here is another seasonal photograph culled from somewhere on the web. Not especially Christmas, but I like the quietude it suggests. In a way, it reminds me of walking along the Nidar River in downtown Trondheim, Norway as snow fell during the winter of 1999-2000.

The Grand Duchess and Young Master left for work and school half an hour or so ago, and it's just yours truly with the two cats at home. It is mercifully and wonderfully quiet here at the moment since we are on the edge of open country well away from highways, apartment buildings, and our street is not a major thoroughfare in any way, shape, or form. It is delightful. As soon as I finish the current mug of coffee, I am off to the local hardware store in Williamston (purposefully avoiding the big box stores, thank you very much) to purchase some picture hanging hardware and then some Christmas wrapping paper and ribbon at the local Fresh Market outlet nearby.

As for my play-by-email game with Mr. Horne, well, I wish I could say that I rolled over his own army in a keen display of tactical aptitude on my part -- and I began the game with a distinct plan in mind -- but bad luck with the dice and poor handling of my available troops (rash and overly bold on my part) quickly led to rather significant casualties, especially among my gun crews on my right flank and cavalry. In the end, the application of Young and Lawford's 50% Rule (we used the Basic Rules from Charge!) meant that my army fled the field after five (or was it six?) turns. Fun was had on both sides, however, I think I am safe in saying, and Greg was a good wargaming host. Time permitting, we might try another such game as soon as next week, but my thinking is I need to to adjust how I do things and be a little less Marshal Ney and a bit more Lord Raglan in spirit.

Meanwhile, back in real life. . . Sometime today, I'll bite the bullet and put in a few hours on reading student papers and calculating final grades to submit online next Monday. This, of course, is what pays the bills, and I've taken several days off due to the move and related activities. Back to the salt mines! But, best of all, I pulled my copy of The Wargaming Compendium (a Christmas present from the in-laws back in 2013) from the shelf last night, something I have not done for many, many months, and read bits and pieces here and there until I drifted off to sleep. It was a very pleasant way to end an otherwise full day. Life is slowly returning to normal.

-- Stokes

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

Bluebear Jeff said…

Well, here on Vancouver Island (off the west coast of Canada) we are getting our very first snow of the season . . . mind you it is very light and probably won't last (we only have "snow on the ground" for a handful of days each year).

Still the quiet still fall of snow is great to watch . . . from inside with something warm to drink.

May you have a wonderful holiday season, sir.

-- Jeff

1:10 PM

Bloggerator said…

Thank-you Stokes, you're a gallant foe man for a vile Bordurian.

Our intelligencers report the repulsive yet oddly charismatic von T may well be leading a strong raid with a lot of cavalry and minimal infantry to discomfort brave Alzheim by seizing a village in the Border Marches.

Elector F.A.

3:29 AM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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