Preparing for the Move. . .

A seasonally appropriate and very pretty, quiet winter photograph of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset (Great Britain) [Thank you, Simon!] that I found online somewhere.

Well Sir, we are in the home stretch and move into our new house on Monday. My classes for the fall term finished yesterday, and I have spent the day here taking two carloads of clothing and various odds and ends we don't wish to repack into boxes over to the house and stowing them in bedroom and hall closets.

Since yours truly will be working with the crew of movers come Monday while the Grand Duchess and Young Master are at work and school respectively, I've also spent some time spotting where the various larger pieces of furniture will go and measuring where my wife's eventual baby grand piano will go when we get around to making that addition. Funny how several hours to oneself to get things done and think quietly without interruption eases and even cheers the spirit. A good day all the way around I think.

More of the same with Part II tomorrow, and Part III on Sunday. The movers arrive at 8:30am Monday morning to do the heavy work, and we'll spend our first night in the house that evening. The Grand Duchess and I have a date for a glass or two of wine by the working fireplace once the Young Master is in bed.

-- Stokes

T-minus Two Days and Counting (Saturday Morning Update). . .

Thank you for the good wishes, men! Yes, as soon as we can in the next few days, we will hang a very pretty (although it is fake and we reuse it each year) red berry wreath inside somewhere prominent, and a real evergreen Christmas wreath on the front door outside. Christmas trees to follow next Saturday once the ground floor (and the Young Master's bedroom) of Totleigh-in-the-Wold is in order. Ok. Enough wasting time. I've got a car full of clothing and odds and ends to deliver, unload, and stow at the house.

-- 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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