The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Georgetown Quilt #2
|| 7/31/2005 || 7:36 pm || Comments Off on Georgetown Quilt #2 || ||

: rendered at 15,000 X 10,000 :

This rendering marks a new stage in my artistic development. Through better understanding of my tools, I have switched from using flattened cylinders to using infinite planes. The geographic tessellation can now be projected to infinite without any degradation in spatial resolution. While the old way allowed me to do the same, I like having a new way to make new lines of symmetry.

This means the gigapixel or the terapixel(wha?) barrier can be surpassed, but my digital ceiling is limited to my iMac’s processing power- I need a G5. Some of the renderings from the Abstract Series were created at 20,000 X 15,000 (300 megapixels) but I’ve realized that it takes too long to process renderings that large. I’ve chosen to keep my current ceiling at 15,000 X 10,000 (150 megapixels), this way each rendering can fit as compressed TIFF (usually about 400-600mbs each) on a CD so I can easily back them up and make duplicates.

As for the outcome of this new development, the only drawback that I’ve found thus far is that the center tends to be darker. Due to the location of the radial light source and the artificial construct of infinity, the center appears darker and the edges appear lighter. I’m going to experiment with lighting and adding more lines of symmetry for my next rendering.

I’ve also learned that I need to make sure my modified imagery is an exact square in dimensions before I import it. In this rendering, the modified Georgetown imagery is like 4 times wide as it is tall and I noticed that there is some slight stretching of some of buildings on the ground and I want minimal distortions when possible.

Like Georgetown Lenz #2, I sincerely enjoy the way the Whitehurst Freeway and the Key Bridge make some of the most notable elements of this rendering. The lines of symmetry used were (0,60,120) and with each line of symmetry there were two more reflections from the imagery which created a total of 6 lines of radial symmetry. If you look closely you can see the bee’s wax hexagonal shape- love it!

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Buena Park Quilt 2
|| 7/30/2005 || 1:39 pm || Comments Off on Buena Park Quilt 2 || ||

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :
Buena Park Quilt no. 2 by Nikolas Schiller

Over projected, but looks nice. more later….

…later has arrived.

I think its interesting that this rendering is probably one of the smallest in pixel size. I think it will look great printed out. Flora Buena…

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Buena Park Quilt
|| 7/28/2005 || 8:00 pm || Comments Off on Buena Park Quilt || ||

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
Buena Park Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

This rendering is an example of found imagery. An old friend gave me her address in Buena Park, California and on a whim I downloaded the aerial photography of her neighborhood. A few weeks later I decided to open up the TIFF file and prepare it for a rendering. And then a few days later I finally used the imagery in a rendering. Is it found or just delayed? Regardless, it looks cool to me :-)

I truly love the way suburban houses resemble watersheds, albeit square instead of fluid. I would say this rendering and the Mall Quilt are currently my favorite Quilt renderings.

This entry has a better zoom of the center, even though it only has two lines of symmetry.

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Ballwin Quilt
|| || 4:12 pm || Comments Off on Ballwin Quilt || ||

: rendered at 15,000 X 10,000 :

This is my fourth rendering of my childhood apartment in Ballwin, Missouri. While I really like the way the quilt looks, shortly after I started the rendering I realized I could have just as easily made this image in Photoshop. The modified imagery I used was the first derivative of the Ballwin Lenz #2 and what I’ve realized is that since the imagery was derived from a previous rendering that already has the axis’s of symmetry embedded within it, the current template will not reflect the imagery to create a noticeable result.

Basically I am trying reflect something that has already been reflected and it is not going to bend anymore unless I modify the first derivative imagery to an extant that the future line of symmetry will be on a seam that I have not used yet. The first derivative used in this rendering was originally reflected at 45 degree intervals (0,45,90,135,180,225,270,and 315 degrees) so for it to be further reflected I need to either rotate the source imagery or reflect the imagery at an angle that divides into 360 evenly and doesn’t fall on the same degrees as the original. My only second derivative work, rotated at 12 degree intervals, but the final result is a bit too busy for my taste. I am really fascinated by this imagery discovery that I’m working on :) Science + Art = Beauty

atomic visions
|| || 12:16 am || Comments Off on atomic visions || ||

Knott’s Berry Farm‘s roller coaster “The Silver Bullet” – it will be reflected a few more times in tomorrow’s rendering of Buena Park, California.

Today started out with an excellent find in the Bureau of Labor & Statistics Occupational Outlook Quarterly called “Geography Jobs.”(pdf)

snippet:

When people think of geography, they donâ€™t often think of crisis management. But the study of location applies to all sorts of issues that affect people and the environment.

Geography involves more than memorizing States and capitals. Itâ€™s a unique way of looking at the world and solving problems. And for some people, it provides a way to earn a living.

â€œUnderstanding geography can help governments and businesses make better decisions,â€ says Michael Phoenix, a geographer for a mapping software company in Redlands, California. â€œPeople who can think spatiallyâ€”think about where things are in relation to other thingsâ€”are in great demand.â€

Technology is creating new career opportunities related to geography. Read on to learn more about them.

It is full of information and employment statistics concerning the jobs for which my job is based on. It doesn’t get much better than that in terms of timely relevant documents. I had a conference call with Mike back in March if I remember correctly and the “mapping software company” called ESRI.

After work I rode my bike home as fast as I could to avoid the coming thunderstorm. I really really really want to buy a small wind turnbine. I’d like to attempt to run my electronics off a battery being charged by a the turbine during a thunderstorm. There is so much wind energy that is not being tapped during these intense warm fronts coming through the area! With the severity of the storms, and the collective power over-consumption, I’ve been shutting down my iMac often to reduce the chances of a freek, lightening induced, energy spike or worse a blackout. I am trying to do my part in conserving electricity- when I leave my room for work in the mornings, the only item that stays on is my electric clock, unless of course I am renderings something. Click.

This evening I had an excellent conversation with my sister who I haven’t touched bases with in a long time. I found out that her lucky ass just got back from Hawaii! It turns out that her boyfriend was just in a race from San Fran to Hawaii and she was out there greeting his arrival.

Tomorrow should be just as fun. I am going to the Thievery Corporation show with my bestfriend. It should be one of the best shows of the summer for me. Last time I saw Thievery Corporation at 930 Club I hung out in the eagle’s nest with my friend Robin and after the show went backstage with my friend Will. With their three show stint at 930 Club and the coming Operation Ceasefire Concert on the Mall, I am musically eager about tomorrow and the coming months.

The image above is from Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, CA. I recently found one of my old middle school girlfriends (i think we dated for a whole week) on MySpace and she gave me her address, so I downloaded her hood. It turns out that she lives only a few blocks from one of my few California memories from 1986 (I was six then and we visited Knotts Berry Farm). Right now I am rendering another projection of my childhood apartment in Ballwin, MO, but the next rendering will definitely be using this imagery. I believe that the roller coaster will end up looking like an atom….a nuclear vision will be made. But I must first sleep….

Quilt of Guinea-Bissau
|| 7/27/2005 || 3:17 pm || Comments Off on Quilt of Guinea-Bissau || ||

: full size print, rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
Quilt of Guinea-Bissau by Nikolas Schiller

It’s been awhile since I’ve used some imagery that is not aerial photography! Last night I decided to use one of my favorite satellite images from the “Earth as Art” collection. The colorful original satellite image is of Guinea-Bissau, a small country in West Africa, and the colors represent water and different types of vegetation. I decided to use the ol’ Quilt template to make a somewhat intricate design that has two central axises of symmetry. I genuinely like this rendering and will most likely have it printed shortly.

Somewhat related… When I was setting up the scene to be rendered I realized that I could easily make one of these renderings surpass the gigapixel barrier that I’ve recently read about, but I realized that my computer cannot process that much information. I need a G5!

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The Washington National Cathedral Mandala
|| 7/26/2005 || 12:01 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

I used the same imagery that I used to make the The Washington National Cathedral Lenz, but instead of placing the imagery into the Lenz template, I just used the 4 plane mandala template. The 4 planes then reflect 2 times giving a total of 8 lines of radial symmetry. What I like the most about this rendering is that I bent the Cathedral! I should have included that in one of the screenshots above because I have a small series of bent buildings that I’ve created in the last year or so. Of course my favorite is the White House (“Get Bent Bush!”). I’ll try to put the bent Cathedral on-line shortly.

Nonetheless, I think it looks awesome (as usual), but this rendering I actually over-projected by making the rendering larger than it needed to be. The beauty of the raster projection process is that I can merely scale down the final product in photoshop to correct it. Yet, this has happened time and time again with my most recent mandalas. I need to do the math before rendering them to make sure I don’t have to down sample each rendering. Naw— Go big!

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MSN Virtual Earth is here
|| 7/25/2005 || 2:31 pm || Comments Off on MSN Virtual Earth is here || ||

Less than a few weeks after Google Earth was released, the long awaited MSN’s Virtual Earth has finally been given the green light for beta testing.

After spending a few minutes using it today, I can with a certain degree of honesty say that MSN Virtual Earth isn’t all that special. I was expecting a stand-alone application instead of a modified version of Google Maps. Virtual Earth resides in your web browser, and I was under the impression that it was a stand-alone application.

Currently the only advantages of it are (after 5 minutes of use):
1) It uses the full web browser, so you get more map per pixel on your screen.
2) Using the .3 meter USGS imagery from April 2002 (the same imager of DC that Google uses), MSN’s Virtual Earth lets you zoom in quite a bit closer.

Other than that, eh… It’s better than Google Maps visually, but not as sophisticated as Google Earth.

I am waiting for the inclusion of more layers and the Pictometry‘s 45 degree oblique images. These images will allow viewers more spatial information because you’ll be able to see the sides of buildings instead of the straight overhead (nadir) that most imagery is currently taken at.

There is also a user community website already established for Virtual Earth: https://www.viavirtualearth.com

Regardless, I look forward to seeing the next developments… Like maybe a stand-alone application that’s not designed to find you, but something similar to Google Earth. The hacks will be interesting too… Let the (re)development begin!

Read my Google Earth review here.

Gentile eh?
|| || 9:00 am || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Via WJLA:

D.C.’s Shadow Senator Arrested
Sunday July 24, 2005 7:40pm

Washington (AP) – Police say D.C. shadow senator Paul Strauss has been charged with disorderly conduct, following a weekend run-in with authorities.

Sergeant Joe Gentile says Strauss was arrested about
9:15 p.m. Friday on the 900 block of 30th Street Northwest, while with a group of people acting unruly. He’s been released on a personal recognisance bond.

Gentile says the shadow senator was arrested after confronting officers as they arrested another man.

Strauss tells says he was – quote – “only standing up for someone else’s rights.” He plans to contest the charges.

Strauss, a Democrat, is a non-voting representative of the US Senate, which he lobbies on behalf city residents. He was first elected to the post in 1996.

I had a great time at the beginning of the month on Shadow Senator Paul Strauss‘s boat and I’ve found him to be quite an affable man, so I doubt this arrest was really warranted. He is lawyer and I bet he’ll fight this with valor. What I find mildly ironic is that Strauss is jewish and the arresting officer’s last name is Gentile. I really wonder why the article is so freakin’ vague about the circumstances surrounding the arrest. Why was there a group of people on the 900 block of 30th St acting “unruly”? I’ll find out soon enough!

I’m off google
|| 7/24/2005 || 12:29 pm || Comments Off on I’m off google || ||

Last week I wrote an e-mail to Google because someone from Google had decided to visit my website a couple weeks back and cached the page they visited, even when I requested them to not do so.

In response to my e-mail, Google has completely removed even the listing of my website from their database! Before when you’d google “Nikolas Schiller,” the first result would be a link to my website- without any text just “https://nikolasschiller.com,” and now (if you clicked the link above) it doesn’t display that anymore and the first result is the Washington Post article from July 4th, 2004 on the Adbusters website.

I guess I’m even harder to find now :-)

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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: