It's Almost Christmas in The Grand Duchy. . .

A suitably snowy vista across part of the capital city Krankenstadt of the Grand Duchy of Stollen, a place which bares a striking resemblance to Riga, Latvia.

Things are busier than I would like here in the Grand Duchy at the moment, further early brushwork on the first 16 Eureka Saxon cavalry has been put on a back burner, and a slight cold for a few days threw a wrench into the works. Grrrr.

But I am on the mend now and steaming full ahead with the few last minute details and errands out ahead of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and our December 27th departure for a week of cross-country skiing in Canada through the new year. In the meantime, it seems like a nice idea to share a few of our favorite traditional carols here in the Grand Duchy of Stollen.

Given the many traditional carols out there, this has been a tough call to make since there are some truly beuatiful pieces, but his long-suffering manservant Hives and I have managed to narrow the list to Grand Duke Irwin-Amadeus' Top 10. No doubt, you will recognize many. Now, we are not certain, but witnesses tell us that these particular carols, and one more modern jazzy piece, always bring a tear to Grand Duke's eye through the beauty of their melodies, lyrics, and quiet sentiment. Here they are in no particular order:

Stille Nacht (Silent Night)

Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen

Es Wird Schon Glei Dumpa

O Tannenbaum

Ding-Dong Merrily on High

The Holly and the Ivy

Once in David's Royal City

In the Bleak Midwinter

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Here We Come a Wassailing

Christmastime Is Here (Honorable Mention)

In the meantime, there will be one more post here before Christmas Day. If you have a few spare moments, please be sure to drop by for a figurative cup of seasonal cheer.

-- Stokes

Comments

Andy McMaster said…

Frohe Weihnachten und Schöne Feiertage!

3:30 PM

The Good Soldier Svjek said…

A Merry Christmas to you all , Tony

11:49 PM

tradgardmastare said…

God Jul from all in the Duchy of Tradgardland!

1:33 AM

Duke of Baylen said…

I'll look out for that next post too.
Merry Christmas
Stphen

2:29 AM

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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