[unofficial weekender] Back to the mines

[sundancer 43713xp 1]

Why are they all naked? oO

[zoidpinhead 12705xp 1]

Why are they all naked? oO

@sundancer So they are easier to paint?  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that they are Gaesetae and are recorded as fighting naked.  Polybius postulates that they did this so as not to get their clothes caught in the undergrowth and to show their ‘confidence’ to their allies and the enemy.  We don’t have any sources to expalin this from the Gallic side so it could have been that, or for some devotional or religious reason, or just because they had always done it like that.  Who knows?

[horati0nosebl0wer 19819xp 2]

@pagan8th That is a plan I fully endorse! Good luck with all the week’s “work” before work

@zoidpinhead For shame! Your little Celts aren’t reveling in nakedness that they should be proudly displaying their banners flown at full staff as was sung about by Warzan The Girthy. If for nothing else we can all have a laugh at the strategic shields probably placed by Justin. 😆

On the competition side I think that you’ve got a good idea. To have it rotate between members would engage more people for the theme and to keep up on the forums. I can say I’m not as prolific as dear Pundancer but the reminder to get back on keeps me around more than I have been. It should keep atleast one more person coming back to tend a thread.

[sundancer 43713xp 2]

@zoidpinhead  Fair point!

Monday. 50% done. Already want another leave XD

[limburger 22079xp 0]

@grantinvanman to each his own, right ?
Only music I really despise is that modern bleepy bloopy musak and whatever passes for music at the Eurovision.

I need guitars twanging and screeching like the lord of rock himself intended.

There’s a few exceptions though …

Not sure what they feed folk in Germany that makes them do crazy stuff :

 

[grantinvanman 5843xp 0]

I have no words … 😂

[sundancer 43713xp 0]

Seems legit

 

[danlee 22595xp 2]

Finished my next skin project. I’m happy with the skin, but to be honest I’m happier with the transition in the brown feathers of the wings, and with the marble effect on the plinth she stands on.

 

Dan’s 2025 Side Projects

 

[sundancer 43713xp 0]

Nice work mate!

[zoidpinhead 12705xp 2]

I had a productive evening watching/chatting on the UHH.  Thanks @sundancer and Gerry 🙂   I managed to finish the Latin Hastati for my Latin Allied legion to go with my Republican Romans.  They are a mix of Victrix kits with a few Agema heads and arms and all have a small conversion to remove the sword grip from the top of the scabbard.  The metal heads are Agema.  Now on to the Principes.

@horati0nosebl0wer  I’ve never heard that song before so you get first prize for that one 😉  I agree with you about the rather silly coy posing of the Warlord Epic Gaesetae.  I guess it was easier to sculp like that but that is very much not the look I would have gone for.

[blinky465 17178xp 0]

Just catching up on the thread – I’m still not sure about BabyMetal. I think I like them. But how can the singers have been in a band for around 15 years and still all look like 15-year-old school girls? I’m not sure if the singing in English is an improvement – I think I preferred it when I had no idea what they were singing about!

Can we make anything real anymore? Will we want to?

Interesting to see how we’re all being affected by AI.
In my line of work, it really does feel like the “offshoring to India” thing all over again – when coding jobs were being outsourced and it took the industry around 10 years to realise it’s not really solving anything, just reducing costs for lower quality results. That’s my take on AI in software development, anyway – if we can all survive the next ten years, those of us still standing will have a lot of work to do.

That said, I’m sure experts in every sector look at AI and think “nobody would be willing to accept that slop, surely?” – yet we’re all using it for things we’re not expert in. For example, I love those videos that turn photos of painted miniatures into “live action” videos and even though I can see the errors, they’re “good enough” that I can let the mistakes pass – I’m not an expert in animation and it looks good enough to me. But to an trained animator, they probably shudder at it and see every single flaw.

The biggest fear for me with AI is that we all learn to accept “good enough” instead of striving for excellence.
And I don’t know if that’s why I think we will still want to keep making stuff.
Maybe it’s not even the striving for excellence at all – sometimes making stuff is just fun. There’s no fun in pressing a button and having AI go beep, boop, here’s your thing you asked for.
I make music. It’s not perfect. It’s not even as good as a lot of the stuff I listen to (though admittedly, a lot better than some of the dross that streaming platforms push – and even they are getting swamped with AI slop). But I make it not for the end result, but to enjoy the process.

The same goes for painting miniatures – yes, a nicely painted mini at the end of it is a “nice thing”. But I paint because of the process of painting, not so I can be the owner of loads of armies of painted miniatures.

Hell, even the same thing goes for reading. If you’re only focused on the end result, not the process, it’s easy to ask “why do anything?” when it can all be done for us. Why read a book, when you can get a synopsis of the story in a few sentences?
Yes, I think we’ll keep making real things.
Not because we want those things to exist, but because we love to process of bringing them to life.

 

[limburger 22079xp 0]

We’ve been accepting ‘good enough’ since forever.
That’s why McDreck manages to survive while actual places that know how to make tasty fries are going under …

‘AI’ simply the latest iteration in this eternal quest for low effort maximum profit production.

(and I refuse to call any of this ‘AI’ … there’s nothing intelligent in there. It simply is a freakishly fast search engine IMHO)

It can work brilliantly for code, but that’s because code has syntax that can’t be messed with.
However because thse things don’t understand what they’re producing that doesn’t mean they will produce code that can be maintained. long term and it relies on someone somewhere solving the problem first …

I’ve used Github co-pilot .. and it really takes ‘intellisense’ in Visual Studio to the next level. When you use it in incremental bits it does make writing code faster and more efficient.

As such it is great as an advanced templating tool, but it can’t replace actual humans no matter what the marketing droids say.

(if anything it will replace marketing droids and models … as that’s a job where hallucinating answers won’t cause any problems whatsoever.)

It’s also a hell of a lot better than search engines these days, but that’s also because Google results are flooded with generated nontent and ads. I get better results from talking to Claude.AI as opposed to Googling, which is ironic as that’s kind of how Google became great …

Outsourcing killed what little engineering knowledge we had.
‘AI’ will eliminate the rest.

‘Idiocracy’ is a scarily accurate prediction of the USA in a few years if they don’t find a way to stop the orange cheetoh and is fellow morons before they can do more damage.

// —

Anyway … back to hobby.
Use ‘AI’ responsibly and all will be ok.
I’m sceptical when it comes to ‘AI’, but I see opportunities for it to help us with some of the less interesting/boring aspects within our hobby as well.

Asking it to generate an army list is fun, no matter what anyone else says .

https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/95ca4510-5b8b-4e9f-a4a5-343445230a82
There were a few negative comments when I posted this on the Blood&Bayonets discord channel.
I like that it managed to generate something that sounded similar to something I had in mind myself.
The only problem is that I can’t verify if it is any good, because I lack knowlledge about the setting and the rules have yet to be released.

[sundancer 43713xp 1]

The weird thing to me is: usually new stuff in IT (at least with most of my customers) is usually treated with “why should we change, it always worked the way we do it now and have been doing it for 20+ years”. Adoption of new tech is slow and rare.

But AI/LLM crap just went in and everyone wants it. Partially because just “playing around” with it is fun for most people (“Hey AI, make a picture of me, but like Conan and I stand on the white house with sword in hand and victorypose”) and “if it makes fun stuff this easy, how easy will new stuff be?”

I hate AI in it current state. It’s based on stolen goods, ideas and talent. It deprives real artists, writers and coders of their pay, makes everything worse and the environmental impact is insane.

Getting close to politics here, so here’s hoping my game of Frostgrave tonight will go well for me. I have two magical weapons. My friend has non. And tonight we rolled for a scenario where only magical attacks can hurt the uncontrolled creatures. So there is that 8)

[blinky465 17178xp 0]

I have two magical weapons. My friend has non(e)

So you’re going to play nice and share then, aren’t you?
One magical weapon each – just like you were taught to as a kid.
You’re going to do that, aren’t you?

I’d say that obviously you get first picks, but if it were me, and my mum was watching, I couldn’t even guarantee that!
Enjoy your game.

[sundancer 43713xp 1]

Well… let’s say he’s getting “a stab” too.

*muahahaha*

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