Stollen's Irwin Amadeus II Makes Second Diplomatic Faux Pas

News Release:

Krankenstadt Palace -- Krankenstadt, The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Today, Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus II made another in a growing line of diplomatic blunders that place The Grand Duchy of Stollen in a precarious position among the other marginal and erroneous states around mid-eighteenth century Europe. In an exchange with a new acquaintance, regarding the recruitment and training of soldiers in the Bishopric of Uber Gruntshuffen, Irwin-Amadeus mistakenly attributed the relationship between the Duchy of Alzheim and Australia to the former and New Zealand. An egregious error if ever there were one.

The magnitude of our Grand Duke’s gaff is exacerbated by the fact that he and The Grand Duchess Sonja have a very close friend who hails from Australia! One could almost observe Irwin-Amadeus shriveling up as he apologized and took leave of the conversation.

How does our Grand Duke’s most recent poor conduct affect Stollen’s standing in the eyes of its immediate neighbors? Only time will tell. But, in view of the rumblings of war in the region, the recruitment of extra forces by neighboring countries, and various fevered diplomatic exchanges between the governments of those same territories, the picture for Stollen does not look good. Perhaps the handlers of Irwin-Amadeus II should mind their ruler more closely when he is loose in public. In any case, stay abreast of continuing developments right here with the Krankenstadt Tageblat.

-- Katrina-Bettina von Heffelfinger

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

Search This Blog