A Saturday Visit to the Tailor. . .

It's 10:30 Saturday morning, and I am still waking up with the first mug of coffee, and the two cats milling around here in my office at home. A dark, wet, and dreary day outside, but I've got much activity planned since the Grand Duchess and Young Master have decided to visit Chicago for the day and left very early this morning.

First off, and following a hot shower, a visit to my tailor to take in a new three-piece suit from J. Press for the usual minor alterations. It arrived yesterday, and was/is a gift to myself for some good news professionally speaking earlier this fall. And since three-piece suits are generally pretty hard to find in 2023, I leapt at the opportunity after spotting this particular number on the J. Press website two weeks back. A charcoal Donegal weave, very soft to the touch, and perfect for the cooler months, which here in Mid-Michigan are, conveniently, October through April, and sometimes well into May. So this one should get a lot of wear.

Then, it's off to run a few Christmas gift errands. Most of my shopping for the season long ago -- and well before Covid with its initial lock-downs -- migrated online. Nevertheless, there are a couple of things I have spotted that the Grand Duchess will enjoy on Christmas Morning and beyond. Once that errand is done, a few things at the supermarket, and then home again to enjoy the rest of the afternoon preparing the next batch of figures for painting, this time those 28mm Eureka Saxon cuirassiers I've nattered on about in previous posts.

Initially, I had planned to spend the day working through final student assignments, their course capstone projects, but that can wait until Monday and Tuesday next week. Time instead to play hooky and take a couple of days for myself. Sunday, I will record, process, mix, master, and post another episode of my podcast, an activity that, while time consuming, is actually a lot of fun, so not something I mind doing. But that is putting the cart before the horse.

Back to Saturday activities!

This evening, I plan to enjoy some coffee and possibly a dram or two of single malt by the fireside in the library with some Christmas music playing softly in the background. And who knows? I might actually crack open an actual work of fiction that has nothing at all to do with work pursuits. It used to happen now and then. Once upon a time, I was a great reader of fiction, and that habit, I think, ought to be resurrected as we approach the Christmas break with its related festivities and downtime.

-- 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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