Happy Christmas Sunday!

A pair of Norwegian Fjord Horses in the snow. I'm not necessarily pining or the fjords myself this morning, but some snow for Nordic/Cross-Country skiing would be nice.

Another blissfully quiet morning here today although things are beginning to heat up in the Raid on Fickmuhlen play-by-email game between General MacDuff (Ross MacFarlane) and General von Tschatschke (yours truly), hosted by Greg Horne. Watch this space for a photograph or two later today.

-- Stokes

The latest Kodak Moment in The Raid on Fickmuhlen. General MacDuff's infantry have occupied the village ahead of General von Tschatschke's cavalry. Drat! Meanwhile von Tschatschke's guns at the far left have fired on MacDuff's cavalry, inflicting only minimal casualties for their trouble. It seems von Tschatschke's troops are having difficulty establishing a line. And what of the good von Tschatschke himself? After one ale too many, he looks woozy and wobbly in the saddle. Time for two aspirin and a lie-down.

Comments

CelticCurmudgeon said…

My Dear Heinz-Ulrich, Greetings!

It is so very nice to see that you are able to enjoy the holidays by participating in a game with friends.
All the very best for a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Years!!

With kindest regards,

Gerardus Magnus
Archbishop Emeritus

3:23 PM

Der Alte Fritz said…

In the battle pix, it would be helpful to identify the relative positions of the two sides. Which side of the table is Side A and which is Side B, etc.?

Jim

3:57 PM

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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