The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

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Meridian Hill Park Quilt #4 by Nikolas R. Schiller

I’ve been doing some research on an old sculpture that used to be in Meridian Hill Park that will be featured in an upcoming posting. In preparation, I decided to make a quilt projection map of the park using the newest available imagery. Unlike the previous three, which were some of the first to use my recursive tessellation technique, the newer imagery captures less of the area surrounding the park and more detail of the park itself. This is simply due to the fact that the newer imagery has a high spatial resolution than the older imagery, which correlates to more detail, but less geographic coverage. Since the aerial photography was taken in the early spring, the fountains were still in their winter slumber and I imagine that if it were taken in the summer the coloration would be vastly different.

When constructing this map, I used my new technique hypothesized in May and first rendered a hexagon tile and then took a portion of that tessellation and used it here. The result, which I am seeing for the first time, is that you can see the hexagon shape around the center of this square quilt projection map quite easily. From my understanding, depending on the location of the recursive sampling within the first map, I’ll be able to see it’s respective geometry embedded in the second map. However, I think it’s nearly impossible to fully gage the geometry of the original map after two recursions because each subsequent sampling makes it more difficult to see the geometry present in the previous map.

View the Google Map of Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC.

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4/3/2008 || 4:26 pm
Saint Louis Quilt #4

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Saint Louis Quilt #4

Unlike the previous three maps of Saint Louis which use imagery from 2002, this map uses poor quality imagery from 2005. I really like how the old Busch Stadium shows up and the new Busch Stadium is still being constructed. Up next will be another map of downtown Saint Louis, but will feature better quality aerial photography from 2006 and the new Busch Stadium. The 2006 aerial photography was used in my Geospatial Natal Chart that I made in December, as well as the two most recent maps of my childhood neighborhood in Ballwin, Missouri.

View the Google Map of downtown Saint Louis, Missouri.

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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: What a difference a year (and an internationally syndicated story) makes!

3/12/2008 || 2:44 pm
Union Station Quilt #3

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 : Union Station Quilt #3 .

I find it quite interesting being able to see the difference between spatial scales when comparing the two previous Union Station maps. Since this map uses .16 meters per pixel aerial photography and the previous two maps use imagery that was .3 meters per pixel, you can quite easily see how much less I am now showing of the area around Union Station. Specifically, this map only shows the U.S. Postal Museum, Union Station, the Thurgood Marshal Federal Building, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.View the Google Map of Union Station in downtown Washington, DC.

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2/7/2008 || 7:57 pm
The Mount Pleasant Cross

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Charlotte Spheres 2

I’ve known about the way to use an offset square quilt projection to create the cross design, but never made a full map until now. I can theoretically use this projection style on any future map— quite cool. I wonder what geography should be crucified next? {chuckle}

The street that creates the cross’s frame is 16th Street, which up until 1884 was the prime meridian on American maps.
###update– actually I found that this is not correct– not ALL maps, just some maps

View the Google Map of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood in Washington, DC.

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1/21/2008 || 10:40 pm
Federal Triangle Quilt #4

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Federal Triangle Quilt #4

Using this portion of Federal Triangle Quilt #3, I created this derivative map. Unlike the other maps in this series, I decided to *not count* the total number of Freedom Plazas located with in the map. I place my guess at somewhere around 200…

View my previous entry about Federal Triangle.

View the Google Map of Federal Triangle in downtown Washington, DC.

This map is/was on display at Art-O-Matic 2008.
(printed on canvas at 60″ x 40″)

Alfonso & Farrah @ my Art-O-Matic exhibit space
Photo by Alex from There Were Ten Tigers

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Polar Coordinates of the George Washington University [octagon]

12/10/2007 || 9:26 am
Concentric Quilt Full

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Concentric Quilt - FULL

This is the final installment of the series. The source imagery was reduced to 1 foot per pixel. I am thinking about sampling one to make a derivative map.

Read more about this series here.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Park La Brea Quilt #3

12/8/2007 || 8:59 am
Concentric Quilt SE

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Concentric Quilt - NE

Read more about this series here.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Park La Brea Quilt

12/7/2007 || 10:57 pm
Concentric Quilt SW

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Concentric Quilt - SW

Read more about this series here.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Sacramento Quilt #2

12/6/2007 || 1:54 pm
Concentric Quilt NE

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Concentric Quilt - NE

Read more about this series here.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Self, Sacramento Quilt

12/4/2007 || 8:51 am
Concentric Quilt NW

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Concentric Quilt - NW

Read more about this series here.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Advice from Banksy

10/23/2007 || 2:59 pm
Silver Spring Quilt

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Over the last few months I’ve been going to Silver Spring for business and I decided to get around to making a map of the central business district.

View the Google Map of the Silver Spring, Maryland

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9/15/2007 || 4:09 pm
Los Alamitos Circle Quilt #3

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Using this portion of the Los Alamitos Quilt #2, I created a derivative tessellation to create this map.

View the Google Map Los Alamitos Circle in Long Beach, California.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: The DC Colonist is in a Scripts Howard wire report

8/20/2007 || 12:19 pm
Orlando Quilt

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After spending much of last week working on the LA Interchanges series, I decided to switch it up a tad and make a map of Orlando, Florida. I am not sure what maps I’ll be making next….

View the Google Map of Orlando, Florida.

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Render A Comment || || Posted One Year Ago: Hospital for Horses & Dogs

7/23/2007 || 8:01 am
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor Quilt

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In November of 2005 I went to Ann Arbor, Michigan for Thanksgiving. While riding in a bus from Toledo to Detroit I saw the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor off in the distance. When I was making the maps of Detroit last year I tried to download the imagery of the reactor, but was unable to because the USGS coverage of Detroit did not reach far enough south. And now it does

This map uses the same cloud motif that Baton Rogue Quilt uses, but there is a larger issue I am expoliting in this map. No, it’s not Homer Simpson job, but national security. In my opinion, nuclear power plants are some of the most dangerous places on earth and should be guarded heavily, even through redaction. Yet while Google is censoring downtown Washington, DC, anyone in the world can download high resolution imagery of a nuclear power plant in rural Michigan. Where is the security? Well at least I see beauty.
View the Google Map of the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Reactor outside of Detroit, Michigan.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Howard University Quilt

7/16/2007 || 1:20 pm
U.S. Department of State Quilt

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Following up on my discovery of Google’s censorship, I’ve decided to make my next maps be in the area in Washington, DC that is currently censored. By mapping this area, I can easily claim that I’ve beat Google to the map for each location.

The area around the State Department is one that is quite familiar to me. The dorm that I lived in for 2 different years at GWU is located in this map. Alongside the State Department Building (the largest building in the map), there is the Federal Reserve Building, Office of Personnel Management, National Academy of Sciences, and a few other of buildings of note, like the Red Cross HQ and the World Health Organization.

View the Google Map of the area around the State Department in Washington, DC.

Related Maps:

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Wilmington Quilt

7/3/2007 || 12:03 pm
Adams Morgan Quilt 2005 #4

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Read my comments concerning this series here..

View the Google Map of the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Israel / Palestine 1993

7/2/2007 || 11:58 am
Adams Morgan Quilt 2005 #3

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Read my comments concerning this series here..

View the Google Map of the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC.

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6/28/2007 || 3:43 pm
Queen Anne Quilt

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I made this map for a friend of mine. I am excited to hear that it might be hung in quite a nice place.

View the Google Map of the Queen Anne neighborhood in Seattle, Washington

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Park City Quilt, phase one

6/9/2007 || 12:23 pm
Pearl Street Quilt #2

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See my comments on Pearl Street Quilt #1 for more details.

View the Google Map of Boulder, Colorado

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6/8/2007 || 12:20 pm
Pearl Street Quilt

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A couple weeks ago my old friend from summer camp came and visited me here in DC. In honor of our 13 year friendship I decided to make a couple maps of the area around the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado where he works as a bartender.

While the two maps might look almost the same, they are slightly different. They were created using two different tessellations of the exact same area, which is the same process that was used for the Beverly Hills maps. I also have the imagery of CU Boulder and will probably make that next.

View the Google Map of Boulder, Colorado

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: You are here #2

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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5/4/2007 || 8:38 am
San Antonio Quilt

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The other day I realized I hadn’t made any quilts of San Antonio, Texas yet….

View the Google Map of downtown San Antonio, Texas.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: RFK Quilt

4/27/2007 || 7:43 am
University of Southern California Quilt #2

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Read my brief comments about USC in my previous entry.

Of note, is that after posting the last map I looked at the number of maps I’ve made of Los Angeles and realized that I have enough for a 2008 Calendar! I will definitely put one together in time for this Christmas season. And after even further review, I actually have enough maps for a series of different calendars- DC, California, Texas, various universities, and fractals.

View the Google Map of University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: C.I.A. Quilt #2

4/1/2007 || 4:18 pm
Quilt of Charleston South Carolina

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I’ve waited for some time for this imagery to be released and I am somewhat disappointed that it was released at .6 meters per pixel (roughly 2 feet per pixel). This spatial resolution allows for more area to be covered, so the benefit was that I able to get most of the southern portion of the city covered.

On a different note, I’ve found a slight limitation with Wordpress’ category naming system. For each map I’ve made a category for both the city and state, with the state being the parent category. Months ago I made a couple quilts of Charleston, West Virginia and I found that I could not add another category named Charleston because it technically already existed even though it was nested with West Virginia. I was thinking of naming the category “Charleston2″ or “CharlestonSC,” but I haven’t yet. I will figure something out….

View the Google Map of Charleston, South Carolina.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Jackson Quilt

1/18/2007 || 4:27 pm
Polar Coordinates of Austin, Texas [square]

8 tiled map

I recently read through the work of Dr. Andrew Hudson-Smith (located at the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis in London). I was intrigued by his use of Polar Coordinates to create panoramas and synthetic planets. I had been shown how to make the panoramas before, but I hadn’t actually figured out how I could incorporate my current work with this design technique. After some experimenting I figured out some interesting new methods to display tessellated aerial photography using the Polar Coordinates filter. The results are quite amazing and show definite promise for further research…

For this experiment I used the “zoom” of Austin Quilt #2 (a square quilt projection) as my test tessellation to begin working with. I could have used any zoom from any previously made map, but since it was snowing in Austin yesterday, I thought it would be ironic to use the Polar Coordinates filter.

The process to create the panorama planets is relatively simple:
- Stitch together series of photographs
- Reduce the panorama (by default a rectangle) to a square
- Apply Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop

What makes my experiments unique is that instead of stitching together a photograph, I am I am stitching together perfectly symmetrical square tiles (composed of tessellated aerial photography) to create a rectangle. Moreover, I am maintaining perfect ratios throughout: 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, 6:1, 7:1, and 8:1. For example, the source tile is 800×800 and for each polar coordinate created (below) I merely added one more tile to rectangle ([1600, 2400, 3200, 4000, 4800, 5600, 6400]x800).

For each ratio there are three images shown below:
- Rectangle with number of tiles
- Conversion of the Rectangle to Square
- Application of Polar Coordinates filter

Note: The first image of each ratio below appears to reduce in size after each tile has been been added. In order to maintain a constant width on my website, I’ve chosen to reduce each rectangle to 800 pixels in width (otherwise this entry would be 6400 pixels wide right now!). When originally manipulating the rectangles they were not reduced in size. Essentially, it was done to show the scale of the panorama at a fixed width of 800 pixels.

1 : 1

:Original:

:Converts To:

2 : 1

:Rectangle 2 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 1600×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

3 : 1

:Rectangle 3 Tiles Wide (reduced from:2400×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

4 : 1

:Rectangle 4 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 3200×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

5 : 1

:Rectangle 5 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 4000×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

6 : 1

:Rectangle 6 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 4800×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

7 : 1

:Rectangle 7 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 5600×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

8 : 1

:Rectangle 8 Tiles Wide (reduced from: 6400×800):

:Rectangle reduced to a Square:

:Converts To:

I am excited about what directions this technique might take my cartographic activities My next experiment will be to see how the application of the Polar Coordinates filter will effect each geometry of the quilt projection. This experiment was conducted using the square quilt projection, up next with be the diamond. The results should be interesting.

Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Home Quilt #2

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

12/11/2006 || 8:30 am
San Diego Quilt

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I used .65 meter resolution from March 30th, 2003 and released to the public on October 1st, 2004. There was also .3 meter imagery available taken at a newer date, but I chose to use the older imagery because the download size would be smaller. More later….
View the Google Map of Downtown San Diego, California.

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Comments Off || || Posted One Year Ago: Warning! - a bitter pill to swallow

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

11/30/2006 || 1:40 pm
Temporal Diptych of Schiller Park, Illinois - 2005

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This imagery of 2005 is not yet on Google Maps or Windows Live Local… hence seeing it here first is kinda like seeing what will be seen in the future, while actually seeing an interpretation of the recent past. Time is relative anyways.

View the Temporal Diptych of Schiller Park, Illinois - 2002
View side by side as Stereographic Projection

View the Google Map of the Village of Schiller Park near Chicago, IL.

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