Travelling Again and Passing the Time Playing Around With AI

This time travel is to the ever vibrant Sydney. The Domestic Controller (DC) wanted to see Opera Australia's production of Westside Story, so we have hopped across the ditch for a long weekend. This is a special outdoor production on a stage the canter-levers out over Sydney Harbour. This is annual event, featuring a different show each year. We had planned to do it in 2020, but that annoying virus got in the way. The venue offers some stunning night views of the city behind the stage.

The relative monotony of the three hour flight was broken by some reading - I did start watching a really awful fantasy film called Napoleon, but couldn’t stomach it beyond the first fifteen minutes. I knew it was going to be bad and wasn't disappointed, but the really sad thing about this film is that there will be a significant number of people that will actually believe that the storyline is true.

The flight was uneventful and as usual the DC had organised the whole trip and booked a hotel near the venue - well I say near but it is still a two kilometre walk from the hotel but it is in Circular Quay, within easy distance of the train and restaurants. The deluxe room she booked turned out to be a suite...far too big for the two of us for two nights...in fact at around 1,000 square feet it us pretty close to half the size of our house, but I have to admit it is nice bit of luxury.

Visiting Sydney always provides an excuse to visit old haunts - like the fabulous The Malaya restaurant that we discovered on our last visit in October last year. I mourn the loss of Napoleon's Military Bookshop and the Tin Soldier shop in York Street (both of which have been gone for many years now, but I still miss them), because now instead of fossicking around their dusty shelves while the DC is off doing her thing I have to wait in those shops that women frequent and sit in that little area with old armchairs set aside for husbands who sit there in a state of embarrassment scrolling through news services on their phones and desperately trying not to make eye contact with each other. 

The show was superb and although the few spots of rain after the interval had everyone scrambling to put their put their rain ponchos on, immediately giving most of the audience the appearance of a bunch of CSI specialists, thankfully the rain failed to eventuate and the show was a success.

By the time we had walked back to the hotel we had been awake for around 20 hours and simply collapsed into bed.

The rain we missed on Friday night caught up with us on Saturday. It didn't stop us getting out and about though. We picked up a few bits and pieces around town...in truth most of the same big name stores exist in Auckland and prices are comparable, but the range in Sydney is better. Lunch in Chinatown and dinner at Darling Harbour were the dining options for the day. It was another long day and we slept well.

Now we are sitting in the airport lounge waiting for our flight to be called. By 6:00 PM NZ time we should be on home soil and walking in the door some 30 minutes later.

But while I am in the lounge with a good internet connection I had a but of fun with an AI app called Perplexity.ai that Jonathan introduced me to on his blog a few weeks ago (link).

I played around at first asking it to create some fictional biographies for characters that might be in a game and it did a brilliant job.  Then I took a different approach and asked it to:

Write me a scenario for a napoleonic wargame set in 1813 between a French infantry division and an Austrian infantry division

Here is what it returned (unedited) in just over one second...

Napoleonic Wargame Scenario: 1813 French vs Austrian Infantry

The Situation

The year is 1813, and the Napoleonic Wars are raging across Europe. In the aftermath of Napoleon's disastrous campaign in Russia the previous year, the French Empire finds itself facing a growing coalition of enemies, including the Austrian Empire.

In a remote region of central Europe, a French infantry division under the command of Marshal Auguste de Marmont is tasked with securing a vital crossroads town against an advancing Austrian force. The Austrians, led by General Archduke Karl, have dispatched one of their veteran infantry divisions to capture the town and disrupt the French supply lines.

The stage is set for a clash between these two formidable opponents, with the outcome hanging in the balance.

The Battlefield

The town of Schöngrabern sits at the intersection of several key roads, making it a strategically important location. The terrain surrounding the town is a mix of gently rolling hills, scattered woodlands, and open farmland, providing both opportunities and challenges for the opposing armies.

To the north of the town, a series of low ridges offer excellent defensive positions for the French, while to the south, the Austrians can utilize the cover of the wooded areas to maneuver their forces. The town itself is a maze of narrow streets and sturdy stone buildings, which could prove to be a formidable obstacle for either side.

The Forces

French Infantry Division

• Commander: Marshal Auguste de Marmont
• Composition:
• 3 Veteran Line Infantry Regiments
• 1 Elite Grenadier Regiment
• 1 Light Infantry Regiment
• 1 Artillery Battery
• 1 Cavalry Regiment

Austrian Infantry Division

• Commander: Archduke Karl
• Composition:
• 4 Veteran Line Infantry Regiments
• 1 Jäger (Rifle) Regiment
• 1 Artillery Battery
• 1 Cavalry Regiment

The Objective

The French must hold the town of Schöngrabern at all costs, denying the Austrians a vital crossroads and maintaining their supply lines. The Austrians, on the other hand, must capture the town and secure the roads, cutting off the French and potentially opening the way for a larger offensive.

Both sides will need to carefully maneuver their forces, utilize the terrain to their advantage, and employ a mix of infantry, artillery, and cavalry to achieve their objectives. The battle promises to be a hard-fought and decisive engagement that could have far-reaching consequences for the ongoing Napoleonic conflict.

Clearly the more information that goes into the description the better. I can see many hours being dedicated to developing this for future games.

More Trees

Continuing my work as a miniature arbourist I have made a bunch of conifer trees. This post is a sort of a tutorial of how I made them. I take pains to point out that this is not my concept, the YouTube tutorial I based my process on can be found here - I  have just added some twists of my own.

But first to honour a promise I made to Stew, here is a quick tutorial of how I make my deciduous tree armatures. Now there are plenty of YouTube tutorials about how to make superbly detailed and delicate armatures, but this is my way of making my armatures that are robust and will stand up to the rigours of the gaming table.

For this exercise I have used some 18 gauge (1.25mm diameter) tie wire, although 20 gauge wire is preferred - I just didn't have any to hand. I cut four pieces of wire between 200mm (8") 300mm (12") long and folded them in half.

Then holding the bent end of the wire in a pair of pliers about 12mm (half an inch) in from the end, I loosely twisted the two strands of wire together, leaving the open end in a fork of about 12mm.

Next I took one of the long pieces and one of the shorter pieces and holding both ends again about 12mm from the bottom and twisted the shorter piece around the larger one, leaving about 40mm (one and a half inches) bend out at an angle from the 'trunk'.

I continued to twist the other pieces around the trunk again leaving about 40mm bend out at an angle from the trunk. As these pieces are twisted together the trunk thicken and distorts the shape into gnarly trunk. I bent and twisted the branches as required.

I bent out the bottom pieces out at angles to the trunk to create the roots. At this point some lower branches were added by twisting shorter pieces of wire through the trunk. With a lighter gauge wire it is possible to add quite a few more branches if needed and I would normally put three of four more on than I have here, but it since this to a tutorial piece I will leave it at one extra.

The next step is to create the trunk over the wire. For this I use toilet paper and PVA glue. I coated the wire with PVA and begin wrapping the toilet paper around the wire. I kept wrapping the paper around, applying water thinned PVA as I went. As the paper built up and the trunk took shape.

I kept working up the tree and around the branches. Before the paper and PVA dries it is possible to etch some lines to give the appearance of bark, but I haven't done that here because I am happy enough with the wrinkled appearance. The paper and glue were left to dry.

Once dry the armature was then fixed to a base and the wire roots were covered with more toilet paper papier mâché.

Then the armature was painted. I start with a burn sienna, then drybrushed two or three lighter tones over top. With a little bit of ground texture around the base it's job done. Certainly this is not a quick process and it would be quicker to user a commercial product (although if you are reasonably organised, working just a couple of hours a night will see a pretty good number of armatures completed over a week), but making it yourself is hugely satisfying. 

Now onto the conifers.

The Materials List

• Bamboo Skewers
• Coconut fibre hanging basket liner
• MDF bases
• Can of black spray paint
• A small amount of Sculpey
• Woodlands Scenic course turf, conifer, flock
• PVA glue
• Model paints - a couple of brown tones
• Ground covering
• 6mm x 3mm rare earth magnets 

The first thing I did was use the Sculpey to make the stumps into which the trees would plug. I thought about making a master and then a push mould, but it was only 20 pieces and it's not like I have any figures to paint. It only took a a few hours over a couple of nights.

Each stump was then drilled and a piece of skewer glued in place. The skewers were cut to three different lengths for variety. The whole piece was ten fixed to a MDF base.

The coconut matting, which comes as a disc, was cut into four quarters. The quarters were then cut into three 'slices'.

The slices are then cut into a number of irregular discs of various sizes and the discs are split in two, or three if the matting is as thick as the piece I am using here.

The discs are then skewered through with the widest discs on the bottom and the narrowest on the top, although sizing is not too important at this point as they can be trimmed later. The idea is to create an irregular shape and the purpose of the coconut matting is really just creating the bulk and basic shape. Each layer of discs is held in place on the skewer with a drop of PVA.

I also made some smaller trees in pairs. These will sit between the larger trees and provide some density to  the pine forests.

The whole tree is then sprayed black - you could use dark green, but in my view black is better - and left to dry...well away from the house otherwise there are many complaints of "...oh that smelly stuff again...."  This step is important for two reasons: first, the dark colour conceals the brown of the coconut fibre, providing depth, and second, the paint helps to bond the coconut fibres together. When it is dry the trees can be given a bit of a haircut to get rid off the odd stray strand.

 

Now to the messy part as each tree has PVA applied. The glue is another important component in making these trees wargamer-proof, binding the coconut matting even more. I prefer to apply it by brush, but I suppose it could be dipped or spray adhesive could be used, although I have had variable results with the spray. Then sprinkle the flock over the glue and leave it overnight to dry. 

The final step is to paint the trunks and texture the bases. And there we have it, 26 conifer tree stands.

Here they are fitted into the woods bases.

And the cost? Total materials cost was $32.42 which gave a unit price of $1.30 (US0.78 or £0.62). There maybe cheaper sources from China, but they aren't wargamer-proof and besides I like making stuff.

Working in the Woods Again

Many years ago, twenty years to be precise, I put on a game that was a refight of the Battle of Pea Ridge or Elkhorn Tavern at one of our annual wargames weekends away - I'm not sure if I can call it an annual event anymore since COVID and the illness of our host have prevented us holding an event for the last three years. Because the original battle was fought in winter and the trees were deciduous I needed trees without foliage. I started with the woodlands scenics armatures, but they were quite expensive and I needed a LOT of trees - anyone who has studied the battle knows that field was heavily wooded. 

So I made most of these trees by making armatures from 18 gauge wire, coating the armature with a maché of toilet paper and PVA and then painting them. I made quite a few of these...actually I made a lot of them...probably as many as 100. Those who played in that game remember them well because as they manoeuvred their figures through the woods and were not careful the got stabbed by the ends of the wire armatures with loud shrieks that called my parentage into question more than once.

Three of the original tree armatures with those evil sharp ends.

Sadly a number of these trees were lost or damaged over the years (a number of them were flattened beyond recovery when a box fell in the garage as I was reversing out - thankfully the car was not damaged by the falling timber) - while some have been repurposed. Twenty of them had foliage added to them and formed part of my woods project three and a half years ago.  My recent dabbling with trees has got me keen to return to that project and I have made another seven deciduous trees.

This gives me around 30 deciduous trees and that should be enough for now. Next are a batch of conifer trees.

The End of the Road Trip

Day nine of the Grand Tour, saw us depart Devonport, heading west towards Birnie. On the western outskirts of the latter we turned south and drove to a beautiful spot called Fern Glade, a place recommended for spotting platypus. We spent about 45 minutes there, but spotted none, although the telltale signs of bubbles rising from the still waters indicated that they were about, just unwilling to show themselves.

Heading southwest from there we were making for Macquarie Harbour, about half way down the west coast of the island. We drove off into picturesque rolling countryside, but were soon into mountainous terrain with the Meredith range on our right and Cradle Mountain on the left. It was a magnificent drive through towering forests of gum, Tasmanian Myrtle and Ironwood.

Finally we arrived at the seaside town of Strahan (pronounced Strawn - which irked me since my own name of Strachan is often mispronounced as Strawn by the English tongue instead of the Scottish pronunciation Stra-kan). A work colleague had been in this place a few years back when he sailed around Tasmania and was trapped in Macquarie Harbour for a week when strong westerly winds prevented them from sailing out of the very narrow and treacherous harbour mouth. He said it was a stunning spot and he was not exaggerating. We arrived there with the temperature showing 30 degrees C, clear skies and a brilliant blue sea.

Our hotel was an eclectic mix of a modern structure on the bluff above the bay and the converted worker's cottages on the shore. Our room was the latter and a nice little place it was too, even if the wifi wouldn't connect.

The cottages - each one was a room

Our room was in Federation House, on the right of the lower floor.

Dinner was at a very nice place overlooking the bay...pork belly for me, beautifully cooked and presented.

Next day, day ten, we took a local tourist train along the coast. This used to be the track that ran up to the copper mining area up the King River. The line was closed in 1963 but brought to back to life as a tourist attraction in the 1990s. It was a nice leisurely trip through the rainforest along the river bank.

By the time we made it back to the station the weather had turned from a lovely sunny day with calm seas to grey skies and choppy seas. As we headed out of town making for the Central Plateau. Our trusty SatNav lead us on four hour drive, back-tracking around the northern side Cradle Mountain. The weather was worsening, with heavy squalls and lowering cloud, slowing us a little. Then for the next 60 kilometres on a winding road with no opportunity to overtake we got stuck behind a tedious driver who insisted on breaking on EVERY corner, whenever they met ANY oncoming traffic, then in completely RANDOM spots, and regularly drifting across the centre line. Finally we got past them, having lost the better part of half an hour of time. We had just begun to make up the time when we encountered low cloud that cut visibility down to 20 metres in places. Finally at around 5:30 we made it to our destination.

When the Australian Antarctic expedition looked for the location to set up a training centre, they settled on a position in the Tasmanian Central Plateau on the edge of Lake Augusta at an altitude of 3800 feet, at 42 degrees south on land owned by the Tasmanian hydro company. Mid-winter temperatures here could be sub-zero. They established Bernacchi Lodge on site in 1981, but in 1999 the training facility was moved and the building fell into disrepair. In 2015 an expression of interest was issued for its demolition, but a developer put forward a proposal to redevelop it as a wilderness retreat and it opened as such in 2016 as the Thousand Lakes Lodge, our destination.

The location is remote and ruggedly beautiful, laced with lakes that are linked to the hydro system. We came to the lodge to walk some of the trails and generally relax after ten days on the go. For those familiar with the geography of the North Island, NZ, the terrain around the lodge is very similar to the Rangipo Desert on the volcanic plateau. The refurbished lodge has eight rooms (although on the night of our arrival we were the only guests - more arrived the next day) and two big common rooms, one of which overlooks a lawn where native animals graze. 

We settled in quickly and a home cooked dinner was served at 6:30 - very generous dinners too as evidenced by my lamb shank and vegetables...

After dinner we sat in the observation lounge where we saw a few Bennett's Wallabies grazing as the sun was setting. 

Then out of the distance came one, then two, then three Spotted Tail Quolls, little stoat-like animals that scuttle around at a rapid rate looking for bugs and worms.

Then to the left a devil arrived...

He chased the quolls around for a few minutes then wandered off into the darkness.  The quolls fossicked around for a while then disappeared. But shortly after another quoll turned up - a different one, an Eastern Quoll, with a darker fur an a bushy tail.

By 9:00 the effect of our long drive had taken its toll and we turned in for the night.

Just before dawn on day eleven we were awakened by strong wind and the sound of heavy rain. When we raised the blind we saw that the wind had indeed strengthened and swung around to the southwest, but rather than rain we were being lashed by snow! It was just cold enough for the snow to settle briefly and the sleet kept coming in waves. We did go out for a walk about 9:30, but the wind chill made it decidedly unpleasant. Even the wallaby in the shot below couldn't understand what these stupid humans would want to leave the warmth of the lodge...

From the top of the dam I could just make out the lake where whisps of low cloud looked like steam rising from the water.

...and the sleet kept coming...

Obviously things were not going to clear up in a hurry so we dug out the books and settled down in front of the fire. While occasionally watching a mob of wallabies and a family of Tasmanian hens graze on the lawn I read nine chapters of T. Harry Williams' "Lincoln and his Generals" and managed to fit in some lunch. It was fascinating just watching the weather blow through and the way the colours of the landscape changed with the varying light.

As the afternoon passed the sleet began to ease, but the wind was still viciously cold. We watched an increasing number of wallabies gather on the lawn. After dinner we watched for wildlife again and observed more quolls and two devils. It was great to see them in the wild.  We retired to our room to read some more before sleep. We had no regrets for our day of leisure.

Thursday dawned still, clear and bearably cold. I walked a short distance from the lodge to take in some of the barren beauty of this area, but breakfast and our departure were calling.

As we drove away from the lodge we paused in a few spots to take in more of the dramatic landscape.

We couldn't linger too long though as the road to Hobart lay ahead of us. Just after 12:30 we arrived in the city, dropped off the bags and parked the car before lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. 

Day thirteen, Thursday, saw us drive south of Hobart to the Hastings Caves. The road took us through the picturesque Huon Valley and the settlements of Huonville, Waterloo, Dover and Hastings. The caves were set back in the forest some 500 metres from the road's end and were impressive with the public access area running back maybe a kilometre and then down perhaps 50-70 metres - and 500 stairs they reckoned. I have been in a number of cave systems in locations around the globe, but some of the formations seen here were the finest I have seen. 

After a quiet return trip we left the car at the hotel and walked back into town for a couple of bits of shopping, then stopped in at the night markets on the way back to the hotel.

Saturday, day fourteen, was spent around Hobart town. The Salamanca Markets were open this day and they were just down the road from us. This was a very large market of several hundred stalls and it was packed, especially since there was a large cruise ship in port. After her indoors picked up a few items we had coffee in a great little cake shop in Murray Street before heading back to the apartment for lunch. A walk along the waterfront on a beautifully sunny afternoon closed out the day.

Sunday, day fifteen, was a relatively uneventful return to Auckland. Now it's back to reality with a thump...it's 6:30 Monday morning and I am back in the office with a mere 626 unread emails in the inbox (I was expecting 800+)...Tasmania seems a lot further than 2,400 km away!