Happy Thanksgiving from the Quiet Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Not a very model soliderly photograph at all, and, sadly, not our dinner table this year either since most of our finer things remain in storage. But maybe by Christmas?

Deathly quiet in recent months here at The Grand Duchy of Stollen without much to report. We are still alive though. The planned solider painting just has not happened due to extremely limited desk space, much of which has been covered with student papers and related course notes since classes began back on September 2nd. Still, we have much else to be thankful for including the sale of our old house in Illinois, which closed yesterday and now belongs to someone else. . . or rather their bank for the next 30 years.

Here in Michigan, we are waiting for our lender to issue a closing date for our own Totleigh-in-the-Wold, but that has been delayed by the long Thanksgiving Weekend. We had hoped to hear on that early this week. Sigh. All desired repairs have, however, been carried out and given the A-OK by our house inspector, all paperwork from us has been submitted with all it the i's dotted and the t's crossed saying we the purchasers approve of said repairs. With any luck at all, we can close shortly, move in just before Christmas, and get the first floor of the house squared away before Christmas Eve. Cross your fingers and toes. The Grand Duchess and I have had it with this blasted apartment into which the three of us have been crammed since the summer.

In the meantime, allow me to wish those of you who celebrate to have a happy and reflective Thanksgiving wherever you might find yourself today. It ain't all just about the food and the NFL games. While I may fret, grumble, and grouse about this and that, we indeed have much to be thankful for. Goodness knows that there are plenty of people around the world in much more dire straights and in want of common necessities that I and many others take for granted from our relatively safe vantage point here in the United States. When I stop and remember that, suddenly my own frustrations seem very small in comparison.

-- Stokes

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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