February Skiing "Up North". . .

Bad Dad and The Young Master on Day #2.

The Grand Duchess gives us a slight smile as she glides by on Day#1.

Don't look now, it's The Young Master leading the way.

The Young Master demonstrates Step One of the Dead Bug method for getting up after a fall.

No, not toy soldiers, painting, or wargaming, but healthy, bracing winter fun outdoors at Forbush Corner Nordic Center outside of Frederic, Michigan. Our second visit this winter.

15 miles on cross-country skis over two days with some pretty challenging hills on certain intermediate and difficult runs. Very cold temperatures, blowing snow, windchills below 0 Fahrenheit, and near whiteouts at times on Day #1 completed the picture. It was almost our own Heroes of Telemark moment. . . without the heavy water plant guarded by German soldiers above a forbidding gorge.

Day #2 was warmer, sunny, and just as delightful. The Young Master kept a running tally of falls. Paul - 1, Mom - 1, Bad Dad - 3. But I plead a sticky left ski on a frightening run called The Roller Coaster. However, I did manage to make it down all but two of the hills on that particular trail, including the final one at the end, a screamer called The Corkscrew. Don't ask how I managed it. When you navigate a hill successfully, it is over before you know it.

As an added bonus, the Nordic center where we were hosted two races for area skiers on both days! We were not part of that, but it was really interesting and fun to observe the proceedings and hear the cowbells before we skied along our way. Amazing how fast some of those amateurs (some well into their 70s by the look of it) are on skate skis. Needless to say, they were all finished, packing up, and gone by about 11:30am both days.

We returned home late Sunday afternoon tired and a bit sore, but relaxed and loose. That evening, after showers for everyone, fresh pajamas, and dinner plus a little bedtime reading with The Young Master (still working our way through Harry Potter Book #5), the Grand Duchess and I polished off our leftover half-bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, that we brought home with us before the hearth.

A fitting end to 2.5 days "Up north" as they say here in Lower Michigan (aka "The Mitten"). We now return you to our normal programming. . . Painting toy soldiers, rule writing, and tabletop wargaming

-- 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

tradgardmastare said…

Sounds great family time, glad you all enjoyed it.

1:17 AM

David Morfitt said…

Yes, that does sound like a very enjoyable break for you and your family. We all need times like that (not necessarily skiing, of course! ;-)).

Look forward to seeing what you get stuck into on the toy soldier front next... :-)

All the best,

David.

11:33 PM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Search This Blog