The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

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Saint Paul Quilt

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve made one of my signature quilt projection maps. On one hand I haven’t been inspired lately to make any new maps based on this technique. On the other hand, there are only a few American cities that I have yet to map, and Saint Paul, Minnesota was one of them. I was originally going to make this map during the Republican National Convention, but was sidetracked due to other work. Unlike the previous quilt projection maps that I have made most recently, which involved at least one recursive tessellation, this map employs the original style of my hexagon quilts.

This coming Saturday I will be in New York City for the New York Map Society’s monthly meeting. In preparation for my talk, I don’t expect to be blogging much this week because I intend on spending much of my spare time preparing my notes for the talk. If you are in New York, I hope you can make it!

View the Google Map of downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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4/18/2008 || 1:29 pm
Boston Common Quilt #2

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Boston Commons Quilt #2

Using this portion of yesterday’s map, I constructed this derivative Diamond Quilt Projection map of the area around Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House.

View the Google Map of Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Roll Call's Photo of the Week features the DC Colonist

4/17/2008 || 6:59 pm
Boston Common Quilt

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Boston Commons Quilt

I’ve had a couple geographers contact me asking if I was attending the AAG’s annual meeting in Boston. My answer has been that I’m too busy on various projects to attend. As a former employee and someone who helped facilitate two annual meetings (Denver & Chicago), I realized that the next meeting I plan on attending will be as either an exhibitor or if the trip is paid for by an employer. I would like to give another presentation again or organize a panel discussion, but, as with most things in life, I’m in no hurry.

Since I have not made any maps of downtown Boston since August of 2005, I decided to download the city, in lieu of going to the city. Pleasantly, I was able to download the city at two different spatial scales and from two different years: 2004 & 2005. So far the imagery looks a lot better than the patchwork design that was previously placed into the public domain. Eight different tessellations later, the entire downtown area will be remapped in the next week. Today’s map features the area around Boston Common, which is the oldest public park in America (created in 1634), and the Massachusetts State House. I chose an Octagon Quilt Projection because I liked the way the center creates a compass rose. Up next will be a derivative of today’s map.

View the Google Map of Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Voting Rights March Recap

8/25/2007 || 12:00 pm
Annapolis Quilt

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I recently noticed that most of the state of Maryland has been released and now I can make the maps a few people have asked about, but was unable to make due to the lack of availability. Today’s map shows the area around the state capital of Maryland.

I’ve actually been to Annapolis a couple times. The last time was in June of 2006 when I went sailing with a friend of mine who’s from the area. The before that was on my 24th birthday in 2004 when a friend randomly picked me up that Sunday afternoon and drove me there on a whim for dinner. I remember getting a kick out of how the map I was making that day eerily looked like an anchor. And finally the first time I went to Annapolis was for a field trip my freshman year a GWU. We got to go on the nuclear submarine, the USS Pittsburgh. That was quite an interesting experience to say the least.

View the Google Map of Annapolis, Maryland.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Donations to the Library of Congress Geography & Mapping Division

8/8/2007 || 12:16 pm
Des Moines Quilt

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Finally I have a map for Iowa! The only states left to map are Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey….

Since the source imagery was .4 ft per pixel, which is extremely high resolution, I was able to only use the area around the capitol dome. This means there are only a couple of features of the area’s geography that come through.

View the Google Map of Des Moines, Iowa.

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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Bismarck Quilt

5/7/2007 || 3:45 pm
Columbia Quilt #2

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View the Google Map of downtown Columbia, South Carolina.

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5/6/2007 || 7:39 pm
Columbia Quilt

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Add another state capital to the list…

View the Google Map of downtown Columbia, South Carolina.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: blogging break

1/14/2007 || 12:25 pm
Austin Quilt #2

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View the Google Map of Austin, Texas.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Meridian Hill Park Quilt

1/13/2007 || 11:23 am
Austin Quilt

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“Keep 2007 Weird” is the secondary title given to my first two maps of 2007. It’s play on Austin’s “Keep Austin Weird” slogan that I felt was somewhat relevant to my feelings toward what I predict to be a very interesting year ahead. While no one has asked for my 2007 predictions, I’ll give one that relates to the weather, which is actually where the idea behind the secondary naming came from: I think 2007 will feature the weirdest weather patterns in my lifetime.

View the Google Map of Austin, Texas.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Philly Mandala

12/7/2006 || 10:52 am
Sacramento Quilt #2

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View the Google Map of Sacramento, California.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: La Haine - tonight

12/6/2006 || 9:42 am
Sacramento Quilt

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View the Google Map of Sacramento, California.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: DC Department of the Environment

11/8/2006 || 10:42 am
Indianapolis Quilt #2

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I am very pleased with how this map turned out. The geometry of downtown Indianapolis is complimented by my geometric projection.

View the Google Map of Indianapolis, Indiana.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: ISO - La Haine

11/7/2006 || 7:42 pm
Indianapolis Quilt

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It’s been over a month since I’ve posted anything to my blog and it’s been nearly two months since I’ve made a map for the Quilt Project. There has been a lot that has transpired since I last updated my blog and I’m going to do my best and go back in time and add some entries that I skipped.

I chose Indianapolis because for the last month and a half I’ve been receiving a couple visitors from Indianapolis on a near daily basis and I figured I’d thank them for their patronage by making a map in their honor. I hope you enjoy what you see. I do.

View the Google Map of Indianapolis, Indiana.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Found Geospatial Art

9/1/2006 || 8:19 pm
Cheyenne Quilt #2

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I like how this 6 seamed quilt turned out… I can almost count the number of capital buildings.

View the Google Map of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: U St. NW

8/31/2006 || 2:48 am
Cheyenne Quilt

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It appears that I beat Google to another Capital.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of our Vice President, and a state with less population than Washington, DC. This .16m imagery of Cheyenne was released the same day as .60m imagery of NYC. I only downloaded the area around the state capital because the source spatial resolution was so high (.16m = bigger file), maybe they can integrate a feature that allows the dataset to be deciminated in different spatial resolutions. Just think if they would have released NYC at .16m! Since NYC was released at .60m (almost 4X more space per download) I was able to download a few large datasets of the Chelsea, Tribeca, Central Park, and Willamsburg. I am looking forward to the next set of maps.

View the Google Map of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: U St. NE

8/9/2006 || 2:02 pm
Bismarck Quilt #2

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View the Google Map of Bismarck, North Dakota.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Mall Mountain

8/8/2006 || 3:49 pm
Bismarck Quilt

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So I’ve been waiting for the USGS to release imagery from North Dakota for awhile and they finally did so in May. However they released the imagery at .15 meters per pixel (about 6inches per pixel), which has incredible detail, but results in huge files sizes. Thus it’s nearly impossible to download a large plot of land (like downtown plus the state capital) like I have with most other cities. For example, a city like Washington, DC has imagery at .3 meters per pixel and since the spatial resolution is one half that of Bismarcks, I can download twice as much area. So far Bismarck, I settled on downloading just the area around the state capital and then I reduced the spatial resolution to .3 meters so I could tessellate the resulting image effectively.

View the Google Map of Bismarck, North Dakota.

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7/14/2006 || 10:29 am
Charleston Quilt #2

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Both #1 & #2 came out nicely. I like number one slightly more…

View the Google Map of Charleston, West Virginia.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Google Earth review

7/13/2006 || 3:22 pm
Quilt of Charleston West Virginia

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I recently acquired some new photography of states that I have yet to map. Up next will be Wilmington, Delaware and then San Juan, Puerto Rico (another colony!).

I realized my favorite maps are those that feature confluences of rivers. Check Pittsburgh….

View the Google Map of Charleston, West Virginia.

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6/10/2006 || 9:30 am
Jefferson City Quilt #2

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View the Google Map of Jefferson City, Missouri.

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|| 9:18 am
Jefferson City Quilt

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Both #1 & #2 came out nicely. I like number one slightly more…

View the Google Map of Jefferson City, Missouri.

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4/21/2006 || 8:35 am
Raleigh Quilt

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So I made two Raleigh maps, but I totally screwed up on the second. Instead of intersecting two different planes, I only had one plane. I can’t believe I rendered such an incomplete map, but alas I did. I’ve opted to not post the second one because of it’s inherent error. Maybe I’ll get around to making another….but not anytime soon.

View the Google Map of downtown Raleigh, North Carolina

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