A Quick Post Today. . .

The Grand Duchess and I are talking between Berlin and Bloomington via Skype in just a few minutes, so a quick post is in order. The Garrison Prussian artillery crew samples arrived in the mail earlier this afternoon, and they are wonderful. Their size falls between the Revell plastics and the RSM95s the make up most of the Grand Duchy of Stollen collection, and I will send a full order and payment information to Rob Young at Garrison later today or tomorrow. I'm also treating myself to a regiment of Holger Eriksson cavalry, mentioned a few posts back, and will send the order to Peter Johnstone at Spencer Smith Miniatures later this weekend as well.

Whew! Just finished mowing the grass in the front and back, which, since we have had no rain in the last several days, was a hot, dusty job. But it's all done for another week. Finally, in amongst all of the other "real life" stuff currently vying for time, my band The Indras has landed several paying gigs over the next several months. Find out more by visiting our MySpace page at: www.myspace.com/presentingtheindras.

Comments

Bluebear Jeff said…

I hope that you and the Grand Duchess have a good chat.

I sent you my orders for our Charge game last Sunday night . . . did you get them? Any idea when you'll have time to translate them to the table?

-- Jeff

2:45 PM

John Clements said…

I'm very pleased you like the Garrison figures as they have always been favourites of mine and I used them for most of my active gaming in previous years. I sold mine a while back so look forward to seeing yours when painted up.

3:12 PM

Anonymous said…

Stokes,
If you need rain for your grass, I can package some up and send it over from the UK. We've had more than enough of the stuff.

Steve.

3:25 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 ...

The 18th century? What's the Fascination?

Hessian musketeers by All the King's Men Toy Soldiers of Snellville, Georgia, U.S.A. Just a quick post post today, but I thought the above question might be interesting food for thought. Obviously, there is an array of possible periods, theaters, and conflicts that might catch our eyes. But what is it about the era 1700-1799 -- either real, or imagined? Is it the commanders and politics? The fairly straightforward tactics? The myriad of uniforms and flags? The variety and scope of the conflicts? The patchwork of various and sundry petty states, (at least in Central Europe)? I'm very interested to learn your thoughts. Don't be a lurker! Please leave a comment -- or even two or three. Have a nice day everyone!

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...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

Search This Blog