Christmas Coffee Blend. . .

Not one of ours, but we observed both cats lounging for quite some time yesterday evening beneath the larger of our two Christmas trees. They seem to be very interested in the the aroma of the tree and in the spectacle of the white lights and glass ornaments. Thus far, no attempts to make off with anything or climb up the tree.

Enjoying an early morning mug of Starbuck's (I know, I know) dark Christmas blend at the moment. following a haircut for the Young Master and myself later this morning, I've got final grades to tally and enter for the semester just ended. With any luck, that will be finished by supper, and then there are some gifts to wrap this evening.

The situation at the close of Move One. That's General von Tschatschke heading to the local tavern for a refresher.

In the meantime, you can observe the situation after Move One in the Raid on Fickmuhlen currently being fought between Greg Horne and yours truly. We are using Greg's collection of vintage Spencer Smiths and playing via email although Greg is sending me short digital video updates as well. The game is a variation of Sawmill Village with both forces attempting to take and hold the village. My troops are in the foreground with General von Tschatschke himself attempting to get a table at the local tavern The Elector's Arms from where he can direct the battle while imbibing some of the local ale. Shades of Inspector Morse you know.

-- Stokes

Comments

Conrad Kinch said…

Watch that Horne. He's a wily opponent.

10:20 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Ross MacFarlane has agreed to take the reins of the Alzheimer force, placing Greg solely in the umpire's seat. Should be an interesting ride. I do hope Mrs. Kinch has recovered from the attack if M-Isis last week.

Best Regards,

Stokes

2:31 PM

Anonymous said…

A the pleasure of the snug. The good General should watch out the ale and food don't get the better of him.

3:10 PM

Unknown said…

I look forward to the story unfolding. Great to see simple unfussy terrain (your Blog Stokes has inspired me to have the same approach)and also the old Airfix pub...haven't seen one of those for years!
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Best regards,
Simon

2:10 AM

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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