Happy New Year from the Grand Duchy of Stollen. . .

Well, here we are. Almost two decades into the 21st century. It seems like just yesterday that everyone was filled with anxiety about Y2K during the final weeks of the 20th century, and the apparent threat of our toasters and coffee makers taking over in a Terminator-like coup during the night of December 31st, 1999-January 1st, 2000. I was living in Norway at the time, and, contrary to expectation, my trusty worldband radio, a Sony ICF2010 failed to take the opportunity to take me out while I slept. And, as I say, here we are in 2017. May your new year be filled with interesting reading about your chosen campaigns (real or imagined), the occasional game of toy soldiers, painting, collecting, and daydreaming about future tabletop exploits.

-- Stokes

Comments

Steve-the-Wargamer said…

Same to you Stokes... A worthwhile wish indeed...

9:31 AM

Steve J. said…

Happy New Year to you too Stokes.

10:33 AM

Captain Brummel said…

And a happy new year to you. (I have just figured out how to become a follower instead of just a reader).
Best
Adrian

10:49 AM

warpaintjj said…

Happy New Year to you too.
Jeremy

3:31 AM

Fitz-Badger said…

Happy New Year!
I remember those days.

12:48 PM

Maj. Guiscard said…

Happy New Year, and looking forward to all your posts

2:40 PM

Wellington Man said…

Happy New Year, Stokes. 2017 is shaping up to be a grand year for the Duchy! Best regards, WM

6:20 PM

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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