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Using this portion of West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt to make this derivative map.

Upon closer inspection of the aerial photography, I think I know where all that water from Lake Mead went. Swimming pools!

View the Google Map of the West Sahara Lake neighborhood in Las Vegas, Nevada

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: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

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: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

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: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

Using a picture I took of myself in the Iao Valley in Maui, Hawaii on January 6th, 2005, I tessellated the picture (1200X1200) around the edges of a 4800 X 4800 pixel canvas. This allowed for a 2400X2400 square in the center to be filled with an image of my choosing.

In the spirit of my Jefferson Mandala print being at the MOCA DC/A&M Gallery, I chose to use the same source imagery, the first derivative of the Mall Quilt.

I added one extra touch in Photoshop, which I’ve never done before, I added some black glow to the picture of myself. This caused the aerial photograph to appear just below the frame. Almost as if there is a layer of the earth just below the blue sky, the aerial photography seems to float perfectly in the center of the tessellated mosaic.

I chose the quirky picture of myself because:
I liked the angle at which I took it (mountains!),
I liked the “what you lookin’ at,” half-smile, grin
I liked the color of sky (and even the two lens blemishes)
I like the contrast of the green to blue to white tones

The result, is definitely one of my favor works yet. The process of setting up the source imagery in photoshop is probably the most exciting part of it all. I can now do large mosaics with multiple aerial & satellite images. What will come next? We shall see…

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Yesterday I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets in my life. A big thank you goes to my colleague Joseph Kerski for taking the picture and sending it to me!

Tomorrow begins the teacher training conference and I am super excited about meeting the roughly 20 teachers who are going to take part in this awesome exercise. They are getting one of the best gift bags I’ve ever seen! Joseph brought 4 boxes of USGS goodies!!! Today we finished up with the lesson plan, installed all the proper programs to the computers, and drove around the island and visited some of the most beautiful sites. I took so many pictures I ran out of batteries in my camera! I still can’t get over the lushness of the mountains here! I finally saw the top the volcano on the island this afternoon. Its been hidden in the clouds since I arrived :-)

In DC news, 4,000+ miles away, our collective work paid off and we were able to get a Senator to challenge the vote. Although being in paradise is great, it would have been nice to see David Cobb and Jesse Jackson speak about the voter disenfranchisement. I still need to get debriefed from some DC friends to see how the day actually went, but I am very proud that what happened in 2001 (aka the first 5 minutes in Fahrenheit 9-11) did not take place in 2005. Next up January 20th….

Speaking of the 20th, the Inaugural Map got over 20,000 hits yesterday thanx to the Drudge Report’s partisan posting (bleh!). I ended up getting about 20 E-mails from lame republicans who thought I was in cahoots with Michael Moore! Nonetheless, I still feel that I’ve subtly put one of the best political geographical information systems on the net to date. I’ve been so busy that I have been unable to check the logs for this website to see if there has been any government agencies who have connected the dots and came to my website.

Time to go to a bar and meet a cute woman……..

I am sitting in the Digital Bus in Kihei, Maui. The weather is about 75 degrees, sunny, and off in the distance I can see the ocean and the mountains. Its so gorgeous here!