Happy Monday Everybody!

I simply can’t believe how rewarding the wargaming hobby is. This is what I always read in Military Modelling and Miniature Wargames (when I could find them) as a long-haired, teen-aged Stokes, but I didn’t really think it was possible.

Fast forward 25 or more years. The Grand Duchy of Stollen project is right about 2 ½ years old now. The related blog is slightly less (dating from August 2006, I think), but sometime in the night, we rounded the 30,000 visits mark. And it’s indescribably cool to be part of the worldwide network of friends and acquaintances that has developed thanks to this blog and others. Who would have thought this back in 1982 or ‘83? Certainly not me.

So, before going any further, I must give credit where credit is due and place the blame with Greg Horne in Australia for his article on blogging in one of the first issues of Battlegames. It was this piece and Greg’s Duchy of Alzheim blog that started me down the road all of us are traveling together. “Eccentric” is the term the Grand Duchess once used to describe me, but I suspect that I am in good company among you Stollen regulars!

Next, are a few photos of my buildings above especially for Charles Grant, who was interested to know if there were ruins inside my model structures. Some of you will recognize these photos from before, but what the heck. So, Charles, here you are. Enjoy!

Finally, the Olympic “Grassy Meadow” latex is dry today, so I can start the river sections on those four extra squares, which means I should probably cut out some 5” wide templates – that’s the length of my bridge span (the middle section). And those 21 RSM French aren’t looking quite as sloppy as I thought Saturday night. In fact, with the work I did yesterday (lots of slow, painstaking black lining), they look pretty good if I do say so myself, but somewhere along the way, I missed the speed painting boat I'm afraid. I’ll try to wrap them up this evening and take a few photos to post here.

In the meantime, I’ve got some real life stuff to take care of today (phone calls and writing), so the solders will have to wait until after dinner this evening. And there’s this little 30-mile bike ride I want to take if the rain holds off. . .

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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