Merry Christmas from The Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

A vintage feline-themed Christmas card that tickled my heart when I came across it two weeks or so ago.

Well, just over three hours left of Christmas Day. We had a delightful one with gifts (some new soldiers too), far too much food, treats, a dusting of new snow outside, telephone conversations with distant family members, and a long walk for the three of us around the neighborhood mid-afternoon.

The Young Master has been tucked in for the evening, the Grand Duchess is having a few minutes to herself, and I have brought my second mug of after dinner coffee down here to Zum Stollenkeller for a break before we reconvene in the living room a little later. There, The Grand Duchess and I will listen once again to this year's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from the chapel at King's College Cambridge.

Before the day slips away, allow me to wish you a Merry Christmas! Wherever in the world you are, I hope you have enjoyed a day of calm, good company, and a light mood. Remember, the season lasts longer than one day. Let's say no to the cycle of hyper sales driven retail whatever and its after Christmas and New Year's sales. Instead, let's hang on to that spirit of good will just a little while longer. Surely, there can be no harm in that?

-- Stokes

Comments

Rob Young said…

It was an excellent Xmas for us too; to you, Merry Boxing Day.

3:00 AM

marinergrim said…

Hope you had a great day

3:58 AM

Anonymous said…

Merry Christmas to you Stokes and Family. I'd love to see that "Dusting" of light Snow...here in Sydney- Australia -out in the West some 60km from Sydney it will be 35Deg C to-day followed by a predicted 41Deg C tomorrow....yes, Snow and Cold Days sounds very appealing as I sit here in my Air-Conditioned Study typing away- hoping to get out into my Workshop for some modelling when things cool down a little. Cheers. KEV.

8:15 PM

Millsy said…

A Jolly Christmas to you too sir and all the best to you and the family for 2019.

4:15 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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