Begging Your Indulgence. . .

The yearly Christmas Market in Luebeck, Germany, adjacent to the Marienkirche and the old Rathaus. While I've never been to the city in December, I've spent lots of time goofing off in this very square during visits in 1986, 1990, and 2009.

Today is the first of December and time again for various and sundry seasonal images that catch my eye. While I promise there will be more photos of my own soldiers-in-progress and tabletop battles in the coming days and weeks as the academic calendar for the year mercifully winds down, I nevertheless wanted to kick off the Advent and Christmas season with a few photographs of the annual Luebecker Weinachtsmarkt . . . The Christmas Market as it exists in Luebeck, Germany. I've never been fortunate enough to spend Christmas in this delightfully sleepy old capital of the Hanseatic League, but I hope to one day. Keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime. . .

Another part of the Christmas market in the old part of the city center, this time along An der Obertrave. The Grand Duchess and I purchased some delicious marzipan in one of the shops here during our June 2009 visit to Luebeck.

Another Christmas market in another part of the old town, this time in front of the old Hospital of the Holy Ghost along Der Grosse Burgstrasse.

Here's a shot of the main Christmas Market near the Marienkirche. Doesn't it look pretty? The German word gemuetlichkeit comes readily to mind when I look at scenes like this.

Here's a dark, snowy street scene during one recent December in Luebeck. It looked just like this the first time I visited in Febrary 1986. Snow and coalsmoke everywhere. I even saw a tall blond guy with a mustache dressed in old-fashioned black chimney sweep clothes, complete with tophat and large wire brush attached to a long, coiled cable over his shoulder.

And finally, an advertisement for one recent Christmas Market in the city. Why is it that we always want to be somewhere else where we are not?

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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