It's Chrstmas Eve in the Grand Duchy. . .

Yet another quiet, seasonal photograph of some snow-covered valleys somewhere.

Another quiet morning here in Zum Stollenkeller -- Christmas Eve here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold -- with fresh coffee waiting to hear A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge on BBC Radio 4 in just over 10 minutes. I've listened for many, many years, first via BBC World service on the shortwaves for close to 30 years, and more recently online. It is, for me, a very pleasant and reflective way to begin the Christmas festival in earnest. To those who celebrate, Merry Christmas!/ God Jul!/ Frohe Weihnachten! To everyone, peace and goodwill. Undoubtedly, we could have done with more of it in 2015.

-- Stokes

Here's the situation at the start of Move Four. My own army is in the foreground, with Ross's in the background. Things are about to become interesting. Meanwhile, General von Tschatschke observes from horseback outside The Elector's Arms in the center of the photograph.

The Young Master enjoys the fireside before bedtime yesterday evening.

Comments

Peter Douglas said…

Merry Christmas Stokes
Enjoy the day with the Ducal family. You sound very relaxed in your new abide.
Cheers, Peter

9:36 AM

Phil said…

Compliments of the season to all in The Grand Duchy.
Phil

3:04 PM

Unknown said…

Merry Christmas.
Simon

4:53 PM

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said…

Merry Christmas to the 3 of you, may there be happy memories made to be cherished for years to come.

9:48 PM

Prince Lupus said…

Merry Christmas to all in the Duchy Of Stollen.

Many thanks for sharing a splendid game.

6:33 AM

Der Alte Fritz said…

Merry Christmas to the Duke, the Duchess, YMP and Hives.

Jim

10:49 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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