The Daily Render

by

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

| FRONT PAGE | GEOSPATIAL ART | DC HISTORY / TIMELINE | NEWS | COLONIST | FOUND MAPS | FRACTALS |
| PHOTOGRAPHY | ANTIQUE | DESIGN | VIDEO | | CONTACT |

version 3.0
|| 8/14/2004 || 6:21 pm || Comments Off on version 3.0 || ||

eartheye monvroviaeartheye monvrovia

[update: I accidentally wrote over my previous entry with this one! Its too bad because the previous entry was written when I was rather drunk, yet very coherent!– its a damn shame too, blame on it on a long phone conversation with my mother! FYI- version 3.0 on left & version 2.0 on right —update#2 actually i found the original post!]

Version 3.0 looks the best! I used the actual satellite image as the texture on the torus and it looks great! In the full size version you can see all the detail of the satellite image and I think you can even see a refugee camp. The only aspect about this image that I do not like is the elongated sphere- I think I should have used the “lenz” rather than the “eye” (the only difference in the templates is that the eye is an elongated version of the sphere, while the “lenz” is a perfect sphere). I think I’m going to make version 4.0 with a solid color torus and that will be the end of the Monrovia series.

Also there is a full keg downstairs, so I think I’m going to drink some beer! Cheers!



g-town
|| || 5:27 am || Comments Off on g-town || ||

eartheye monvrovia

Version 2.0 looks a lot better. I like the way the coloring on the torus turned out. I’m sorry that you the website visitor only gets to look at this image at 100 X 100 & 1,024X768 being that it has been scaled down from 10,000X7,500 pixels. Nonetheless, Version 2.0 looks a lot better than version 1.o!

Tonight I went to Georgetown for a not-so-close friend’s going away party at a bar on the G-Town strip. It was my second time going to Garrettes and for good reason. All I did was sit on a chair and pretend to be interested! Mainstream bars aka meat-markets are not my thang. I saw some cute ladies, but they looked like the rest of the ladies! Oh well, I didn’t go there to find someone special (which made me a minority amongst the men). However, my friends who invited me eventually showed up and it turned out to be somewhat more fun in that “man I’d rather be watching paint dry” way. At least I had a few drinks bought for me. I am always a happy camper in that instance :)

Prior to leaving I opted to record HBO’s Friday night lineup (Real Time, Entourage & Def Poetry)- which I just got done watching, but I was saddened to see that it was the same shows that were on last week- with the exception of Real Time with Bill Maher. I love that show because its the one show on television that says it like it is……er….. Bill Maher says it like it is…. He’s one of the reasons why I came to DC in the first place! I remember watching Politically Incorrect at 2am my senior year in high school :) I also remember waking up late too for school many-a-mornings. Regardless, Real Time had Maureen Dowd (so did the Jon Stewart Show earlier this week) and I must say that I have a crush on her. She puts Ann Coulter in a pig pen. I look forward to reading her book, and I also look forward to her signing it when she comes to DC. Anyways, time to go sleep. Nothing rendering overnight, but when I wake up tomorrow I think I might make a version 3.0 (it will be the first!- normally its just 1.0 & 2.0!) Have a good weekend!



Eartheye Monrovia
|| 8/13/2004 || 3:48 pm || Comments Off on Eartheye Monrovia || ||

eartheye monvrovia

I am not very happy with how this rendering turned out. This is my second rendering using a photoshopped a satellite image. I used an image of Monrovia, Liberia and made it a 4 paneled mirror reflection (which doubled the original size of the image). I enlongated the torus and rotated the satellite image 10 degrees inside of the sphere, but this created some white space on the inside of the “eye.” I’d call this one a defective mistake! I also don’t really like the “earth” color scheme used for the torus. I am rendering version 2.0 now- it is simply the circular “lenz” template with a slightly different (but similar) color scheme. I look forward to see how it turns out. I am leaving to go help campaign in Ward 7 of DC (in South East DC) and it should be finished rendering by the time I return. [update: the event was cancelled! And now I am having issues displaying Flash content on this page!–grrr]



hubris update…
|| || 3:32 pm || Comments Off on hubris update… || ||

taken from Anthony Lappe’s blog on the Guerrilla News Network

Speaking of martyrs. Is Jim McGreevey the new gay martyr? Not even close. He didn’t resign because he was gay – most Jersey insiders already knew that (even I knew). He went down because he was shady – he had hired his lover, a man with no qualifications, to be the state’s Homeland Security advisor. The word is it’s going to get even uglier. Come on, bro. Why did you have to pick Homeland Security, couldn’t he have been an advisor on something more innocuous, like special advisor for tree planting?



coast to coast pride or humility?
|| 8/12/2004 || 6:43 pm || Comments Off on coast to coast pride or humility? || ||

Today on the television I watched San Francisco’s mayor give a concession speach after the California Supreme Court annuled the 4,000 gay marriages the city courts granted. Followed shortly by New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey saying ‘I Am a Gay American’ and essentially resigning.

After the close election between Gavin Newsom & green party candidate Matt Gonzalez, I was not expecting Newsom to be so bold by being the first mayor to sanction same-sex marriages. Yet, as I watched pretty-boy Newsom speak, I couldn’t help but wonder what Matt would have done. As for McGreevey, his wife is pretty cute, and I feel sorry for her more than I do for him. I mean how would you like to stand next to your spouse at a press conference and have him tell the whole world your partner cheated on you with another person. It takes some humilty thats for sure.

August 11th, 2004 is another day where pride met hubris on the political battlefield. I wonder how long the battle will last.



My My My Missouri
|| || 3:22 am || Comments Off on My My My Missouri || ||

In my home state of Missourah a woman just wed Jesus in an ancient rite. Funny that this is front page news even though it took place in 1996. Better yet is this column about St. Louis’s most flamboyantly gay man, Baton Bob. It looks likes some bigots hacked his website. I wonder if the hack attack is due to Proposition 2. I remember two years ago when I was working with MOPIRG, I saw Bob twirling his baton in the middle of the street with a tutu on. I’d like to see Bob strut his stuff in DuPont. I kinda miss Missouri sometimes, but when I ride my bike around DC, I realize what a great town DC is. Friday I’m going to Ward 7 which should be fun :) – new places new faces.



the true cost paradigm
|| || 2:38 am || Comments Off on the true cost paradigm || ||

lenz

I like the way the satellite image reflected. Its almost like a remotely sensed inkblot! The texture in the torus is also one of the coolest yet. Version 2.0 on its way…

I opted to not go to Club 5 tonight, but I listened to a live drum & bass set from from Chicago on Bassdrive instead. Not quite Baron |shrug| The True Cost to me was about $30 ( ten for admission, five for cigarettes, and fifteen for drinks ) But there is the True Cost of not seeing my friends, is that worth $30 +/- I’ll never know.

In this month’s issue of Adbusters there is an interesting article titled “Meet The Neocops.” The article references the DC based Social Investment Forum. Its a pretty telling that in professionally managed portfolio, socially responsible investing out performed “irresponsible” investing by 66%. (Does that sound right?) I checked Adbusters website and found their new “campaign” – its all about true cost economics. Makes sense when the issue is titled “No Future,” why not sell readers that green investments are the way to say with your money “Yes Future” I’m sold. No if I only had the start up capital. In the mean time I’ll calculate my ecological footprint.

Maybe this blog should be called “The Daily Render”
“Mental Masturbation” is a bit over the top, oh well.
I’ll keep on with keystrokes.



and so begins the “eye in the sky” project
|| 8/11/2004 || 6:14 pm || Comments Off on and so begins the “eye in the sky” project || ||

lenzlenz

Now I am rendering my first photoshop manipulation of a satellite image. I reflected & flipped a satellite image of an oval shaped lake to make a 4 paneled mirror. Its going to look cool. Best yet, by doing this the satellite image is doubled in size allowing for the final rendered image to be twice in size. Next one up in about 8 hours.



terrible beauty
|| || 3:10 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

a line from the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Blog

We are connected by that suffering. I didn’t know Cat’s aunt, or Loretta’s husband, or Andrea’s husband, or David’s brother, or Derril’s daughter, or Kristina?s sister. But I now know Cat, Loretta, Andrea, David and Derril. What we have shared has been beautiful and special, a terrible beauty. I don?t know the families that are in anguish and grief, both in this country and in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a result of the current wars, but I pull this stone because their losses are no less significant or tragic than the losses we have experienced. Too many people have died.

It is a terrible beauty to be connected by grief. I have spent the last hour reading their about the Peaceful Tomorrows “Stonewalk” from Boston to DC. If I had the money, I’d definitely like to walk for a day. It would be hard work pushing the stone, but I bet it would be cathartic.

My terrible connective beauty to 9/11 does not involve the death of any of my family members. Yet it is very interesting in regards to spatially connectivity.

I was in DC, my sister Serena was in NYC, and my other sister Noel was in The Hague. Serena was on a business trip in NYC and on September 10th her secretary called her asking if you would like to take flight 93 to get back to San Francisco earlier in the day. She opted for the later flight out of Kennedy. On September 10th, I flew home from Saint Louis after spending a weekend with girlfriend. I still have the Saint Louis Metrolink ticket stub.

After safely flying home into DCA, I went to class, and then in the evening at 7pm I took a nap. I had a beautifully terrible dream that I still remember to this day. I was on top of a building and there were two planes “dancing” in the sky. They were doing circles that no airplane could not possibly do, and one started to come toward me on the rooftop. I ran toward the edge of the building and jumped. I fell through the air flailing my arms and right as I hit the ground, I was transplanted to the exact same spot on the rooftop I had just been. (I remembered it was like a “game over” video game sequence where your car falls off the road and your new car instantly appears at the center of the road) This time I turned around and ran down the stairs toward the basement. As I rounded the first flight of stairs a plane crashed into stairwell, but instead of explosions, it just poked its nose into the stairwell. The nose turned out to be a turret of a gattling gun. I ran down the stairs and as the gun began to fire- the phone rang. It was 10:42pm, my girlfriend was calling to see how I was. I told her about the dream.

The next morning I woke unbelievably early at 9am and turned on the TV to CNN. I called my Mom & my girlfriend and stayed glued to the television. There was a report of a car bomb at the State Department. It turned out to be a hoax. I went to the top of the stairs of my dorm and looked out the window and could see the Pentagon burning off in the distance. At 1pm I left the confines of my dorm room and walked to the heart of the campus. The first person I ran into was my friend Solomain, who was originally born in Afghanistan. He had told me a story a year prior about how when he was 5 he had to put cotton in his ears to combat the sonic boom of fighter planes over his house. He also lost two of his uncles during the war. They are the nameless civilian casualties of war that the “stonewalkers” are telling others about as they drag the memorial everyday this month while en route to NYC.

Terrible beauty such is life that brings both joy and pain. Yet one must experience both to live fully.



wow …its really finished… for now
|| || 6:33 am || Comments Off on wow …its really finished… for now || ||

I have spent entirely too much time working on my website! But DAMN, I am really proud of how it looks now. I added a whole slew of new pages. First off, I created a services page, which I hope will drum up some new business. I feel that I will be updating this page with some more explicit information shortly. I also added a bunch of new renderings which I’ve been waiting for some time to put on-line. The whole “Lenz Project” has really churned out some amazing images! And they keep getting bigger too! The last few designs have rendered at 10,000 X 7,500 pixels (about 300 megabyte TIFFs!)- which means they’ll make some amazing posters someday. When I first started rendering designs I’d make them 1600X1200, and after the 9 day rendering of the “recycling room,” I have become a lot more patient and now the graphics are just getting larger & larger. Now the only drawback is obtaining free satellite imagery that is large enough so that I can render the XXL sizes without massive pixilation.

I am now experimenting with taking the whole Lenz template and elongating the sphere to create an eye. It looks like the next series will be the “Eye in the Sky Project” :) After compiling all the images together for the design page, I opted to make the new design page four pages instead of one. I didn’t know that I had that many graphics, but at the same time I realize there are a few that aren’t even listed on the page itself! (I like the way that page looks with the “earth,” Baghdad, the Pentagon, the Vatican, and Mecca- but I don’t really care for the moon rendering there, but oh well) I also split up the video page into two sections. Doing all of this made me realize that I beginning to build up a decent body of work. Next up is redoing the “site map,” because the XML portion that I toiled away for hours working on last year has been replaced by this blog. I think I am going to make the White House the link to the services page. I’ll post updates when they are completed.

In reference the last post, after checking my website logs (rather excitedly) I ended up getting 5 hits from the U.S. Capitol Police. Nothing from the Department of Homeland Security or the State Department. The U.S. Capitol Police didn’t look at anything on the website except for my animation, my blog, and of course they downloaded my resume. Judging by the speed at which they ran through the pages, it was more of an investigation of Nikolas Schiller than an analysis of my animation. However, I was glad to see that during one of the 5 hits, someone actually looked through the complete analysis. Nonetheless, my encounter with the U.S. Capitol Police Investigations Division Task Force was a lot better than the two reporters with the Common Denominator who were detained! The whole irony is that even the Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police sees no specific threat to Hill. Its 3 year old intelligence! What was that? Did you hear a boy crying wolf in the distance?

The political hardball I’ve been the most privy to as of late has been with Adam’s campaign. This week we are contesting the fact that Adam’s challenger is using the DC government website for his reelection campaign website. I got to be quoted in the press release, but judging by the few hits I received today it wasn’t sent out to many people or the reporters chose not to cover the story. [update: this was not written to insinuate that anyone did not do their job properly] Nonetheless, its my first time appearing in a press release. Next up for the campaign is to make a nice looking promotional campaign video. I have all the footage to make something now, I just don’t have the creative drive at the moment- or more like the framework for which I want to make it. I’d like to work with someone on it rather than going at it alone. Anyways, this Friday I am going to be out in Ward 7 again campaigning without Adam for Michele Tingling-Clemmons (candidate for DC City Council WARD 7). I’ve enjoyed going to Ward 7 & 8 this last month because its shown me a lot more DC than I ever have seen in the last 5 years…errr, well the east side of DC that is. I want to do another event in Adam’s Morgan though! Next month we’ll probably have another one :)

Well the sun is coming up and the vampire must go to sleep. Or should I just stay up? Eh, there is a drum & bass event tonight at Club 5, but I don’t think I’m going to go. I should, I need the exercise, but I’m just kinda bored seeing the same folks every time I go out. We’ll see about it…





The Daily Render By
A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future.

©2004-2023 Nikolas R. Schiller - Colonist of the District of Columbia - Privacy Policy - Fair Use - RSS - Contact




::LAST 51 POSTS::

Fair Use


29 queries. 2.660 seconds.
Powered by WordPress

Photo by Charlie McCormick
Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact:

If you would like to use content found here, please consult my Fair Use page.

::THE QUILT PROJECTION::

Square
Square

Diamond
diamond

Hexagon
hexagon

Octagon
octagon

Dodecagon
Dodecagon

Beyond
beyond

::OTHER PROJECTIONS::

The Lenz Project
Lenz

Mandala Project
Mandala

The Star Series


Abstract Series
abstract

Memory Series
Memory

Mother Earth Series
Mother Earth

Misc Renderings
Misc

::POPULAR MAPS::

- The Los Angeles Interchanges Series
- The Lost Series
- Terra Fermi
- Antique Map Mashups
- Google StreetView I.E.D.
- LOLmaps
- The Inaugural Map
- The Shanghai Map
- Ball of Destruction
- The Lenz Project - Maps at the Library of Congress
- Winner of the Everywhere Man Award

::MONTHLY ARCHIVES::



::LOCATIONS & CATEGORIES::

  • 2004 Elections (2)
  • 2008 Elections (35)
  • 2014 Elections (4)
  • 2016 Elections (2)
  • ACLU (3)
  • Activism (287)
  • Adbusters (13)
  • Advertisements (33)
  • aerial photography (19)
  • Analysis (31)
  • Animals (30)
  • animated gif (7)
  • Animation (25)
  • Antique (104)
  • Apple (1)
  • Arabic (17)
  • Architectural Archeology (9)
  • Artomatic (25)
  • Astronomy (15)
  • Astrophotography (9)
  • Audio (2)
  • Awards (3)
  • Backpacking (2)
  • banner graphics (5)
  • Beat Google to the Map (56)
  • bicycle (23)
  • Birds-Eye View (5)
  • Blaeu (10)
  • Book Covers (7)
  • Bridge (10)
  • Building (15)
  • calendar (28)
  • calligraphy (6)
  • Capital (61)
  • Cars (18)
  • Cartography (74)
  • Cartoon (9)
  • Celestial (31)
  • Censorship (32)
  • Chinese (7)
  • Chronicling America (34)
  • Classroom (5)
  • Clothing (12)
  • Commentary (76)
  • Commissioned (27)
  • Credit Cards (3)
  • Crime (12)
  • Cyrillic Alphabet (1)
  • DAILY LINKS (30)
  • Dance (2)
  • DC History (93)
  • Design (102)
  • Digital Scrap (5)
  • Election (11)
  • ESA (3)
  • Facebook (19)
  • Fantasy (3)
  • Fashion (23)
  • Fast Food (2)
  • FBI (7)
  • Flag (15)
  • flickr (4)
  • Found Map (56)
  • French (9)
  • Gallery (54)
  • Gardening (25)
  • General (256)
  • George Bush (12)
  • GIS (69)
  • GMO Labeling (4)
  • Google (31)
  • Google AdSense (4)
  • Google AdWords (3)
  • Google Earth (28)
  • Google Maps (47)
  • Google Reader (4)
  • Google Streetview (8)
  • GPS (7)
  • Graffiti (5)
  • Greek (4)
  • Green (72)
  • Green Party (18)
  • Healthcare (15)
  • Highway (35)
  • Hiking (2)
  • Hipster (2)
  • history (151)
  • Holidays (10)
  • House Party (2)
  • Hubble Telescope (2)
  • Humor (88)
  • In The News (88)
  • Insects (2)
  • Interactive (74)
  • Interiors (4)
  • IP Trace (28)
  • Latin (22)
  • Law (15)
  • Lecture (11)
  • Legislation (19)
  • Library (21)
  • Library of Congress (66)
  • Location (1,018)
  • LOLMaps (3)
  • Mass Transit (6)
  • Memorandum (2)
  • meta-data (32)
  • Mobile Phone Applications (1)
  • Movie (3)
  • MrSID (4)
  • MSN (5)
  • Museum (5)
  • Music (48)
  • MySpace (6)
  • NASA (10)
  • National Archives (3)
  • News (182)
  • Obituary (2)
  • Oil (4)
  • Ornithology (4)
  • orthophotography (4)
  • OSCE (16)
  • Photography (134)
  • Poetry (18)
  • Portuguese (1)
  • postmodern (8)
  • QR code (9)
  • QTVR (4)
  • Radio (3)
  • Renderings (675)
  • RSS (3)
  • Seasons (12)
  • Sold (40)
  • Spanish (7)
  • Speech (5)
  • Sports (1)
  • Stadium (40)
  • statehood (94)
  • Statistics (2)
  • Stellarium (4)
  • Stereogram (1)
  • Street (21)
  • Street Art (10)
  • Submissions (5)
  • Tattoo (2)
  • Testimony (2)
  • time-lapse (19)
  • Torture (3)
  • Transportation (6)
  • TV (23)
  • Twitter (5)
  • University (41)
  • Update (24)
  • Vegetarianism (2)
  • Video (49)
  • Vimeo (18)
  • visualization (36)
  • Washington Critic (2)
  • Weather (19)
  • Web Crawler (9)
  • Wikipedia (14)
  • Wordpress (4)
  • Wordpress Upgrade (2)
  • World Wind (3)
  • Yahoo (6)
  • YouTube (113)
  • Zodiac (23)




  • thank you,
    come again!