My "Other" Wintertime Pursuit. .

Finally managed to get out for about 90 minutes midday for the first jaunt on my old Fischer classic skis at a nearby park that has actually rolled trails for skate technique. Not quite enough snow yet for classic tracks, but that didn't stop many of us from taking a tour through the Mid-Michigan woods. Quite a few other skiers out early this afternoon.

I was a bit wobbly for about the first 10 minutes, but I soon found my balance and stride, doing pretty well for the first outing this season. Some nice glide and no wipeouts. Even managed a few tricky downhills. Yes!!!

Besides yoga and meditation with the Grand Duchess, there is nothing that makes me feel as happy and at peace as cross-country skiing. Except a ski tour with her. . . Or shiny toy soldiers, fresh coffee, and cats in no particular order. It was not so today, but plenty of couples skiing is on the way over the next few months along with the Young Master, who is a strong intermediate skier and clearly enjoys the activity regardless of whatever he might say. A contrary nature seems to be his new pastime and specialty.

For the present, however, amazing early season conditions for local skiing by myself just 10 minutes from home. Might just have to do it again tomorrow.

-- Stokes

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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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