It's Easter Weekend in the Grand Duchy. . .

"You mean a clue to the new direction?" Extra points if you recognize which 1964 film that line comes from.

Well, things have ground to a standstill the last few weeks here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen what with a conference out of town two weeks ago, foot surgery for the Grand Duchess last Friday, her envisioned six-week recovery on the chaise in the library, plus the usual end-of-semester song and dance.

There is also the matter of several academic projects with colleagues that have recently fallen into my lap. Should've thought a bit more about those before jumping into the deep end of the pool with all the other kids. What was I thinking? No rest for the wicked as the saying goes.

But, it's sunny outside this weekend, I plan to begin leaf and stick clean-up with an inaugural mow for the 2023 mowing season to suck up smaller debris, and we have a nice dinner to look forward to for Easter Sunday, prepared (purchased) by yours truly at the supermarket yesterday (Friday) evening.

We've also got some eggs to dye later today. And of course, the Easter Bunny -- one Ernst P. Haase. Have you met? -- may drop by late tonight after everyone is in bed asleep, with baskets full of goodies.

Otherwise, painting plans for the 135-140 or so soldiers, outlined in late December or January right here, continue just as soon as I can return to the painting table. But after that, it's back to a large unit of infantry, I think. And we can thank/blame David of the wonderfully long running Not by Appointment blog for providing the inspiration, indeed urgency behind the envisioned unit.

Yes, it's another regiment of the Reichsarmee, which wears pretty typical Prussian-style uniforms with red facings and turnbacks. This time, the Kreisinfanterieregiment Pfalz-Zweibrücken. A pretty poor body of troops by all accounts (E Class morale). But the flags!

This particular unit has long been on my radar screen for years and added to the (planned) painting list. So, while I will stay the course and forge ahead with the existing plans for 2023 (independent companies of generic jaegers, frei-corps, croats, and etc), this particular infantry regiment will be next in the queue. Probably not before Fall 2023, or possibly December and into 2024. Then, it will be time to get back to the cavalry for a bit (Ha, ha!) I think, since there is more than enough of it in the drawer of lead to my immediate left.

But in the meantime, The Grand Duchess awaits and yard work outdoors beckons. Ladies and gentlemen, to the rakes and lawn & leaf bags!

-- 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

Simon said…

A Hard Days Night

2:23 PM

David Morfitt said…

You sound very busy indeed! But I will enjoy seeing those flags with your troops later in the year/beginning of the next perhaps. And there are yet more attractive Reichsarmee flags still to come... :-)

Hope all goes well; good luck!

All the best,

David.

7:53 PM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! And we have a winner. A very funny scene, although the sequence with Ringo and the unnamed boy walking through the park talking about life and people is priceless.

Kind Regards,

Stokes

7:39 AM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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