With the addition of this graphic, my website’s splash page now contains over 18,675 different visual combinations. I’ve been working on a new lost series project called “The Grand Juxtaposition,” which uses all the images of my website. It should be ready in a week or two. This new splash page graphic was created using the letter z from the Oktober 98 font collection. I colored in the image and removed the color on the book’s page to create a transparency illusion that the book has been opened to one page somewhere on my website. Just hit reload to cycle through the different visual combinations.
Above the cherubs are showing a zoom-in detail of Washington Circle Quilt
12/24/2007 || 5:19 pm
you are not here - splash page update #2
screen grab featuring a detail of Bangkok Mandala
The other week I added 6 new graphics to the splash page and today I added two new graphics. They are two oversized .gifs that force the viewer to scroll over & down (respectively) to click on the X. With 8 different foreground graphics and 1,927 background graphics, the splash page now has 15,416 different visual combinations.
12/12/2007 || 10:38 pm
you are not here - splash page update
For the last few month’s I’ve been rumenating over what images I should display on my website’s splash page. I’ve enjoyed having the “Socio Ditata Labore” engraving up, it captured that time of my life perfectly. This morning I came up with an ironic catchphrase that I felt would make a humorous graphic that could be used in conjunction with the engraving: “you are probably not here.” It’s quite possibly the antithesis of the popular catchphrase “you are here.” Even the loading graphic on the Festival of Maps website uses the iconic dot with the words “you are here.” What if a random place in America was chosen instead? There is a slight possibility that the dot would indicate that you REALLY are (t)here. Chances are you won’t be (t)here, but you will be at my website at least….
I also added a scan of a 250 Dinar bill featuring Saddam Hussein, an updated armillary sphere, cell phone photo of my You Are Here street art, and SloMo the Statehood Snail.
There are currently 6 randomly chosen graphics to compliment the 1891 images in the directory. By doing the math, that means there are 11,346 different combinations (and counting) on my website’s splash page and every new Quilt projection map will add 30 new combinations.
7/20/2007 || 2:35 pm
random banners now greet you - continued
In March of this year I created 15 banners that are displayed randomly each time the website loads. Earlier this week a friend of mine in Shanghai, China sent me my name in Simplified Chinese. She also sent me some useful words I plan on adding to some future maps. I’ve decided to make another batch of banners using this text. There are now a total of 34 different banners.
View the new banners after the fold…
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7/19/2007 || 4:40 pm
Socio Ditata Labore - Revisited
Discovered & translated in May, this engraving is now on the splash page of my website- an interactive Atlas Nouveau so to speak.
There are now over 1600 different images that randomly showcase the cartographic labor involved in the creation of this website. Just hit reload to cycle through them.
Related:
• Enriching Results
• Socio Ditata Labore : Society is Enriched by Labor
from the Lost Series
6/20/2007 || 6:57 pm
LOLpoverty
While this meme is rather old, the other week I thought of a meme morph and decided to make it a reality today. Using the same php script that powers the Lost Series, I decided to take an image that represented poverty and add the LOLtext. Originally it was only going to say “I CAN HAS A CHEESEBURGER?” and when the user clicks on the kid, the background would change. This was to represent that while the mesage stays the same, the American people represented behind the kid would change, and thus the message would continue to be the elephant in the room. I decided to modify the original plan slightly and incorporate an animated gif (I am not aware of any LOLmeme that has used an animated gif) that represents the child speaking to you the viewer. Not only asking for the cheeseburger, but telling you why, and hopefully making you desire to do something about it.
(photo from a google image search result for “poverty”)
4/27/2007 || 8:31 am
1,423 maps now greet visitors
Using the same php script that I have been using for the lost series, this morning I changed up the intro page on my website. The php script was placed in the folder that contains every single map, detail, and zoom-in on my website (as well as some random maps I forgot that I had placed in the folder!), so each time a visitor comes to my website’s splash page they are greeted randomly by one of 1,423 (and counting) images.
See for yourself: http://nikolasschiller.com (hit reload to switch it up!)
I’ve changed it up because I found a lot of people visited the old splash page, but never clicked on the image to enter the website. This modification poses a question to the viewer “You’ve found my website, but can you find the image below?” which is a friendly way of saying, “Look around!”
Continuing on the observations I made before, one thing I have noticed is that people very rarely explore my website. They check the front page, but thats about it. Maybe this new intro page might foster some more exploration.
3/26/2007 || 3:32 pm
The White House is Off-Limits to the Public: An Exploration of Censorship’s Perimeter
click the image above to view my latest installment in the Lost Series
LEGEND:
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3/25/2007 || 9:46 am
The U.S. Capitol is Off-Limits to the Public: An Exploration of Censorship’s Perimeter
click image above to view my latest installment to the Lost Series
LEGEND:
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3/22/2007 || 9:36 am
THE GEOCOLONIAL SLOTS - Match 3 for Statehood!
I mentioned that I was thinking about doing some sort of gambling themed lost project. And after about 7 different random image generator scripts I settled on this one. On Firefox & Safari it doesn’t appear to work as I intended. When attempting to gamble for representation I found that the images were not randomly loading. So you will probably have to manually hit reload for equality. I tried a few different javascripts to directly reload the page, but none worked. So I am stuck with this slightly substandard geographic casino. Casinos are substandard anyways; just like taxation without representation.
This interactive geographic environment consists of the 2 types of map details from my Washington, DC map collection. The folder consists of the {name}-zoom.jpg, {name}-zoom2.jpg, {name}-cut.jpg, {name}-cut2.jpg- related to each map. The Zooms represent central details that geographic tessellations at two different scales. The Cuts are details of places and spaces around the map. The 144 different Zooms & Cuts were placed into 3 folders: right, middle, left. Each time the page reloads there is a 1 out of a 2,865,984 chance of winning statehood!
3/20/2007 || 9:58 am
Interactive Inequality #3
Screen shot below features University of South Florida Quilt with Clouds & U St. NE Quilt
Building off the added interactivity in American Stereography #3 and the principles behind Interactive Inequality 1 & 2, this version allows the viewer to choose right or left, citizen or colonist, geographic tessellation or reflection of a location.
Visual Combinations:
145 * 67 = 9,715 = Left
280 * 144 = 40,320 = Right
Total Number of Visual Combinations:
9,715 + 40,320 + 1 (intro page) = 50,036
3/19/2007 || 8:42 am
Interactive Inequality #2
Screen shot below features Sacramento Quilt & Grant Circle Quilt
When I created the first “Interactive Inequality” I did not have the folder structure created properly to retrieve the desired maps. The colonial side was pulling all the Zooms and the Details (Total: 266) and the represented side was pulling only the Zoom Outs (Total: 147). What made this unique was that the American side would always feature a geometry and the DC side would sometimes feature a non-geometric Detail making the inequality more pronounced.
This new version reflects the new folder structure perfectly. The side that features places where people have two senators and one representative will now feature only their map’s Details (Total: 280) and the side that shows places where second-class citizens reside will also features only the Details (Total: 144). Unlike the Zooms, which I created standardized scripts for, I never followed a specific pattern when making the Details. All I would do was look for a spot on the map that appeared interesting and I would then cut & paste that copied portion into a new page and then reduce it to 800×800 in size. If I would copy a portion that was under 800×800 I would try again. Thus some show a lot of scaling, others show very close-up detailed views of the two different Americas that exist today.
Number of Visual Combinations:
280 * 144 = 40,320
Or as I’d rather put it: 40,320 questions related to how democracy can be brought to Baghdad but denied to the 570,000+ residents in Washington, DC?
3/17/2007 || 7:19 pm
American Stereography #3
Screen shot below features zooms of Boise Quilt & Pentagon Quilt and RFK Quilt #2 as the background image
American Stereography #3 is an interactive geovisualization webart environment that randomly projects two geographic tessellations side by side. By clicking on either the right or the left image, the viewer can alternate between scales of the original kaleidoscopic aerial photography. The foreground contains only places in America and the background features the reversed scale of places throughout Washington, DC.
Total Foreground Images:
136 = ZOOM-OUT
145 = ZOOM-IN
Total Background Images:
45 = ZOOM-OUT
67 = ZOON-IN
Number of Visual Combinations:
(136*67)+(145*45)+1[intro page] = 9179 + 6525 + 1= 15,705
##ADDED##
I decided to add a SMALL, MEDIUM, and LARGE link to project. I added this so that users can adjust the size of the images displayed on the computer screen. By adding these 3 options the project now has 47,115 different visual combinations
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3/16/2007 || 7:33 am
American Stereography #2
Screenshot below features Chicago Quilt #2 and Dupont Circle Quilt #2
Building off of American Stereography #1 this map uses the same HTML template.
These “zooms” aka details from the center, were created by taking the 800 x 800 center of an 18,000 x 12,000 map and were originally created to show central scale. Not all the maps I made in 2006 have this second zoom because the exact ceter was water, which doesn’t look very interesting.
The backgrounds are also the “zoom to the center” of the various DC maps.
Total Foreground Maps: 136
Total Backgrounds Maps: 45
Number of Visual Combinations: 6,120
3/15/2007 || 1:18 pm
American Stereography #1
I mentioned before that I was working on a means to do stereo projections. Well it turned out to be easier than I thought. I simply had to make the random image be the same image displayed on the left and right. It’s not what I’d call perfect stereography, but it’s a good start. I plan on making at couple more of these using the details from the exact centers of the maps.
The pixels used in this interactive map are, follow me here, a 4,200 by 4,200 section from a 18,000 by 12,000 map made in 2006, reduced to 800 x 800, then reduced again to 400 x 400. The reductions are done so the map zoom-ins both fit on the screen. The first reduction is what you’ll find if you click on the (more..) link on my quilt projection blog entries. The second reduction is done via the HTML on the webpage so people with screen width’s less than 1600 pixels wide will be able to see the imagery side by side.
The background is the opposite of Lost in America’s Last Colony and features places & spaces in Washington, DC. I might remove this altogether to make it easier on the eyes….
3/11/2007 || 10:23 pm
Interactive Inequality
This interactive map is pretty simple. On the left are places around America and on the right are places in Washington, DC. Above each image I have written “CITIZENS” and “COLONISTS” to denote the fact that DC residents are second-class citizens who currently suffer taxation without representation. Each time you click, you get two new locations in America, but because of geography, the people living in the respective locations are not equal. Interactive Inequality.
3/10/2007 || 9:05 am
Lost in America’s Last Colony
Click the image above to view my first map in the “Lost Series”
View the map’s Legend after the fold:
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3/6/2007 || 2:02 am
The Lost Series
Using the same php code that rotates my banners, I have begun to make my next generation of maps. Since I am not actively making too many new maps at the moment, I’ve decided to start dabbling with methods of displaying my maps.
Five files were placed on-line for nearly each map I made in 2006: the full-size map (18,000×12,000 pixels reduced to 1,200×800), a zoom-to the center (reduced from 4200×4200 pixels to 800×800 pixels), a direct zoom-in to the center (at 800×800 pixels), and two details picked randomly from somewhere on the map (Harvard Quilt - NE linked for visual explanation).
By copying these various files to new folders on my website I’ve developed a means to randomly select any of the five different files. The result is a series of interactive web pages that are defined by geography and type of cartographic detail. The main drawback to the php script I am using is that you never see the name of the map you are looking at. Paradoxically, this also means you really are lost in the maps. A compass will not help you much 
3/3/2007 || 9:38 pm
random banners now greet you
In an effort to make my website a bit more Internet Explorer friendly, I decided to remove the eponymous flash animation that used to sit on the left side of the screen (It never really showed up properly on IE anyways). The banner has now been replaced with a php script that randomly picks a file in a folder on my website. I made 15 banners that all feature my second generation digital signature in the southwest corner. Each time you visit a new page you will get a new banner displayed (some exceptions). View the entire lot after the fold…
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The Daily Render: A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, & Future
