Der Stollen ist da! / We've got Stollen!

Here's the finished product with a fresh pot of coffee all ready to go.

The Grand Duchess, despite a small cold, whipped up a stollen for us late this afternoon, and the Young Master helped her for the first time. So, I think this year's stollen will taste extra specially good this year.

Longtime visitors to the Grand Duchy of Stollen blog might recall that the name for this ongoing project came to me in mid-December 2005 one afternoon in our old apartment a few blocks away from the current Stollen Central. The semester was over, final grades had been submitted, and there was finally time for daydreaming and note-making for a then as yet unamed fictitious mid-18th century campaign in the tradition of The War Game and Charge!

I mulled over everything at my desk as the Grand Duchess baked our very first stollen right across the hall in the kitchen, wondering what I might call the project. Suddenly, it hit me. The Grand Duchy of Stollen. . . Yes, that's it! And here we are. Eight years and close to 1000 25-30mm painted figures later. Christmas can come along now. We've got stollen in the kitchen, and I feel ready for anything.

A few minutes before, the Young Master and Grand Duchess applied melted butter before dusting heavily with Vanilla Sugar.

And finally, the Young Master and Grand Duchess applied the heavy dusting of the Vanilla Sugar.

Comments

marinergrim said…

A very warm and Merry Christmas to you sir. My wife makes fruit loaf and walnut bread just before the big day. It's never Christmas until then.

8:33 AM

Fitz-Badger said…

Always sounds yummy.

7:04 PM

Mad Padre said…

Mmmm, stollen. Madame Padre and I cheated and purchased a stollen from a Euro deli store here in town. I'm sure the Duchess' will be much finer.
A very happy Christmas to all in the Duchy from Canada.
Michael

11:17 AM

And We're Off!!!

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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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