Another Quiet Pre-Christmas Greeting. . .

Squirrels are not everbody's cup of tea, especially when they find their way into the attic, but I find them fascinating to watch outdoors. Especially in the snow. A bold and very large red squirrel once stole a cookie from my brown bag lunch as I picnicked on Bascom Hill at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about 18 years ago! I wisely chose not to pursue the culprit. The family story goes that my maternal Great Grandmother "Myrtle" had a pet squirrel as a girl.

Another quiet, dark, foggy morning with a bit of rain here in Lower Michigan today. Snow would be nice, but I'm not complaining. The delivery of our new Sears Craftsman snowblower is scheduled for later this afternoon, and I finally found our Nordic/cross-country skiing boots two evenings ago, so we are probably now jinxed and destined to have a snowless winter this (El Nino) year.

In any case, I am enjoying another mug of coffee with the cats nearby following the Young Master's breakfast before I dress, order a Christmas centerpiece for my sister, and wrap a few gifts before the Grand Duchess returns home. This sticky f-key on my keyboard is driving me to distraction!

I've also recently sent my Move 2 orders to Greg Horne in Australia, who is umpiring the 'Raid On Fickmuhlen' Christmas play-by-email game between Ross MacFarlane in Nova Scotia and myself. I would, of course, share my plans for the battle here, but there may be spies everywhere, in the form of a washer woman, or a serving wench at The Elector's Arms tavern -- where the good General von Tschatschke is enjoying a second tankard of ale at the moment -- who will transmit my intentions to the other side. The walls have ears you know.

-- 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

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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