The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Washington Circle Quilt #2
|| 2/29/2008 || 11:46 am || Comments Off on Washington Circle Quilt #2 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Washington Circle Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

By using the exact same tessellation process, I was hoping that this derivative map would look similar to Dupont Circle Quilt 2005 #2 and Logan Circle Quilt #2. Alas, I must have not used the EXACT tessellation process because the circle looks slightly different, but I am still pleased with the result. I intend on making maps of the rest of the circles in Washington, DC.

View the Google Map of Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC.

View the rest of the details:

+ MORE

In today’s Washington Jewish Weekly newspaper
|| 2/28/2008 || 4:05 pm || Comments Off on In today’s Washington Jewish Weekly newspaper || ||

My piece at the JCC is mentioned in an article in today’s Washington Jewish Weekly:

The piece by D.C. resident Nikolas Schiller portrays the Palestinian refugees’ perspective and, he says, “dissent.” He is dissenting from the 1993 map of Israel and the Palestinian territories, upon which he based his kaleidoscope image, because he sees it as “biased” in showing the territories in stripes, he says.

He also has included an image of Handala, an iconic Palestinian cartoon that he found on the Internet, on the map. Handala, which means “bitterness” in Arabic, “represents the abused Palestinian refugees,” he says.

I don’t remember saying the word “abused” the entire time I spoke with the reporter, but I’ll let it slide.

Read the entire article:

+ MORE

Featured on-line with the Maps exhibition at the Walters Museum
|| 2/27/2008 || 7:17 am || Comments Off on Featured on-line with the Maps exhibition at the Walters Museum || ||

Screen grab showing a small detail of a Concentric Quilt

Starting in mid-November I’ve been volunteering my time with the Walters Museum‘s upcoming exhibition. They have a small technology center (4 iMacs) in their cafeteria which I was given the opportunity to review. I look forward to going to the opening later this month!!

The Walters Museum has also included a layer for Google Earth that I produced for the exhibit. You can download the layer here or here.

Washington Circle Quilt
|| 2/26/2008 || 3:36 pm || Comments Off on Washington Circle Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Washington Circle Quilt

View the Google Map of Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC.

View Details:

+ MORE

Photos from the PEACE NOW! exhibit at the Warehouse
|| 2/25/2008 || 3:33 pm || Comments Off on Photos from the PEACE NOW! exhibit at the Warehouse || ||

I ran into my friend Brendan Hoffman at the L(A)TTITUDES opening. Recently he had one of his photographs published on the front page of the New York Times and since I have so few photographs of my maps hung, I asked him if he’d be interested in taking pictures of the PEACE NOW! opening. He agreed and when I arrived at the Warehouse he was already taking pictures. In all he took over 100 great photos of the opening and below are my 40 favorite photos.

+ MORE

87 & 280 Quilt #4
|| 2/24/2008 || 3:32 pm || Comments Off on 87 & 280 Quilt #4 || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
The 87 & 280 Interchange in San Jose, California

Using this portion of 87 & 280 Quilt #3, I constructed this derivative map of the California State Route 87 & interstate 280 interchange. This is the final map of the series. It reminds me of a braided highway!

View the Google Map of the interchange.

View Details:

+ MORE

MySpace has fixed it’s front page—- 7 months later…
|| 2/23/2008 || 9:36 pm || Comments Off on MySpace has fixed it’s front page—- 7 months later… || ||

Back in August of 2007 I discovered something I thought was awry on MySpace’s front page. It was showing the exact same number of videos uploaded each day. I was like, “this is a lie,” its impossible that the EXACT same number of videos were uploaded each day. The only way this was theoretically possible was if there was an upper ceiling on the number of videos that MySpace could handle. As in, their servers could only process X number of videos each day. Yet that theory is based on the premise that there was ample content being uploaded on a daily basis. I concluded that this lack of updates was out of laziness. The worst part of this lack of genuine updates was that MySpace was trying to combat phishing, which was based on people being taken a to fake login page and entering their login & password information. So if MySpace’s login page was static and not changing, yet at the same time incorrectly stating that there were X amount of new videos uploaded each day, I wanted to document this egregious error. Nearly every other day when I was asked to login on MySpace’s front page, I would do a screen grab similar to the ones shown above & below. In all, I collected over 100 different screen grabs and in due time I plan on making an aggregate graphic of all of the screen grabs in the order that they were collected. I am posting this today because I believe that this project is now over. It looks as if MySpace has now fixed this error; it only took 7 months.

Spotting a Slovenian Splogger
|| 2/22/2008 || 8:15 pm || Comments Off on Spotting a Slovenian Splogger || ||

On April 14th, 2007, Quang at the popular blog Haha.nu posted the entry above about my maps titled “Patterns from Google Maps.” When I discovered this blog entry I left a comment with the author stating that I DID NOT use imagery from Google Maps. I was hoping that he’d change the name of the entry so that others would not illegally use the imagery from Google Maps. I was also hoping that he’d follow my on-line usage request and include the name of the map and a direct link back to it’s respective blog entry. He ultimately edited the blog entry to include the names of the maps, but he kept the name of the original posting.

Last night I noticed a new link coming to my website with roughly the same name, but from a completely different website. Essentially, the person scraped some text from Quang’s original entry and used the exact same map of Charleston, South Carolina (without mentioning that it was Charleston, South Carolina– which was my original issue!). If the person would have simply changed the name of the posting I would have simply suspected this outright plagiarism, but gauging from the stats below, its quite clear that it was a direct copy with minimal revision. I had not received a visit linked from Quang’s entry in months, so I chose the screen grab below because I believe that I was able to isolate when the splogger copied the content and where the splogger is located.

Wikipedia defines as splog as:

Spam blogs, sometimes referred to by the neologism splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen (see blog scraping) from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.

Since the author didn’t directly copy the text, rather summarized it, I wouldn’t have automatically suspected it to be a splog. However, at the end of every posting the author asks for a donation (yum, coffee!) and if you look at the screen shot above, you can see that the blog is completely full of ads. If the splogger took a few minutes to layout the website so that it wasn’t booby trapped with ads I might have not put it all together, but in the end, I believe I spotted a Slovenian splogger. What I find interesting is that there are people who actually read this splog! I wonder if the readers know the source of the pillage content? or if they even care?

TONIGHT: L (A) T T I T U D E S
|| 2/21/2008 || 2:47 pm || Comments Off on TONIGHT: L (A) T T I T U D E S || ||

The Washington Post has this listing:

Time for an Arty Party Weekend
By Lavanya Ramanathan
Thursday, February 21, 2008; Page C13

The box wine is guaranteed to be flowing through the weekend, as several exhibitions open with bashes at galleries as well as unconventional spaces across the city.

Just a few you might want to drop by:

Tonight at the Washington DCJCC’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, catch the new show “L(A)ttitudes,” which features 10 contemporary artists from five countries; their work dissects the fluid and subjective nature of the idea of “borders” marking Israel and Palestine. Included are two installations, photographs of the separation wall and works re-imagining the landscape via maps. The reception is from 5 to 7 p.m. The show is up Sundays-Thursdays 10 a.m.-10 p.m. and Fridays 10 a.m.-4 p.m., through June 2. 1529 16th St. NW. 202-777-3208.

Hope to see you!

Map of the Languages of Europe
|| || 10:26 am || Comments Off on Map of the Languages of Europe || ||

Following up yesterday’s posting about languages, I am posting this map I found on Wikipedia that shows where different languages are spoken throughout Europe. I find this type of map quite interesting to view, yet I feel it lacks one important cartographic aspect: overlap. Basically, the simplified map above does not show where multiple languages are spoken, rather only where the dominant languages are. By not including this important aspect we are given a nicely colored map, yet in reality there is a lot more merging of colors because there are geographies that have multiple languages spoken.

It’s too bad I don’t know Hebrew because tonight’s exhibition will most likely include some Hebrew on maps of Israel.

#UPDATE – I have updated the map to the latest version on Wikipedia, which was made in February 25, 2009.

Related Europe Entries:

+ MORE

The Daily Render By

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future.

::LAST 51 POSTS::

Fair Use

41 queries. 4.175 seconds.
Powered by WordPress

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: