The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Saint Paul Quilt
|| 9/29/2008 || 11:42 am || Comments Off on Saint Paul Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Saint Paul Quilt

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve made one of my signature quilt projection maps. On one hand I haven’t been inspired lately to make any new maps based on this technique. On the other hand, there are only a few American cities that I have yet to map, and Saint Paul, Minnesota was one of them. I was originally going to make this map during the Republican National Convention, but was sidetracked due to other work. Unlike the previous quilt projection maps that I have made most recently, which involved at least one recursive tessellation, this map employs the original style of my hexagon quilts.

This coming Saturday I will be in New York City for the New York Map Society’s monthly meeting. In preparation for my talk, I don’t expect to be blogging much this week because I intend on spending much of my spare time preparing my notes for the talk. If you are in New York, I hope you can make it!

View the Google Map of downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

: detail :

View the rest of the details:

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Kiss My Art, Just Kiss It
|| 9/26/2008 || 4:05 pm || Comments Off on Kiss My Art, Just Kiss It || ||

Kiss My Art - Featuring Super Dome Quilt 1st Derivative Number 2

A couple weeks ago one of my housemates had some of her friends over for dinner. Near the end of the evening one of guests got out their camera and started taking some random photos. I found the photograph above on their photobucket page and decided to repost it here because it made me smile. On the left is gnome mooning everyone, in the back center is a gallery wrapped 32″x48″ print of Superdome Quilt First Derivative #2, and on the right is musician Sean McArdle. I don’t know why the gnome was making an appearance at the dinner party, but at least he decided to show his sincere disdain for proper decorum by mooning the guests. I’m told not many gnomes are not that nice.

As for the title of this entry, its a play on words of a slogan from a Washington, DC-based car insurance company’s television commercial series. And marginally related, there is an event taking place in San Francisco this weekend called Arse Electronica, which is a play on words for Ars Electronica. Consider this photograph decided to all three :-)

Related Humor:

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The Geography of Personality Interactive Map
|| 9/25/2008 || 7:07 pm || Comments Off on The Geography of Personality Interactive Map || ||

The map above is from the Wall Street Journal’s on-line article about the paper A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics[pdf]. The researchers poured through 600,000 surveys and came up with some interesting results on the spatial distribution of the big 5 personality traits in America. I found it interesting that Washington, DC leads the United States of America in Openness, is third in Extraversion, and is second to last in Agreeableness.

Video from the Art Whino Block Party @ the Adidas Store
|| 9/24/2008 || 5:34 pm || Comments Off on Video from the Art Whino Block Party @ the Adidas Store || ||

Art Whino Films presents the art of Daniel Fleres

This video was filmed on the evening that I went to the Adidas store in Georgetown. The music is the dub mix of “One Time” by DJ Thomas Blondet and I believe the vocalist is Rootz, who performs with Thievery Corporation and SEE-I . At the end of the video street artists Mark Jenkins and DECOY make appearances. I tried to see if I was in the video, but I think the editors left me on the cutting room floor.

Related YouTube Videos:

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Pondering Digital Existentialism Through Query
|| || 3:29 pm || Comments Off on Pondering Digital Existentialism Through Query || ||

Screen grab of Yahoo’s search result (#9) for “Nikolas”

Having a eponymous website means that both my first & last name are combined to create the name for my website. The other day I decided to see where my first name (Nikolas) and my last name (Schiller) showed up in the search results of the three major search engines Google, MSN and Yahoo. The results are somewhat surprising.

As you’ll see below, “Nikolas” was ranked #8, #9, and #11 and “Schiller” is #31, #114, and #106 on Google, MSN, and Yahoo, respectively.

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Radio Retaliation by Thievery Corporation is in stores today
|| 9/23/2008 || 5:20 pm || Comments Off on Radio Retaliation by Thievery Corporation is in stores today || ||

Image above links to the iTunes Store

Thievery Corporation’s 5th studio album is in stores today. I think it’s their best album yet. It’s well-produced, well-designed, and makes a strong political statement. Click here to listen to the album on Facebook. While I am linking to the iTunes store above, I strongly recommend buying the CD because it comes with a nicely designed poster that features the lyrics as well as quotes and photographs. It’s by far one of my favorite CD’s of 2008.

From Thievery Corporation’s MySpace Page:

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Video of “Dub Prices” by Hutchy
|| 9/19/2008 || 11:30 pm || Comments Off on Video of “Dub Prices” by Hutchy || ||

Last month I posted Hutchy’s video of “Gas Prices” and today he released the video of the Gas Prices’ B side called “Dub Prices.” The dub sound consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is created by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, emphasizing the drum and bass frequencies or ‘riddim’, adding extensive echo and reverb effects, and dubbing occasional snippets of lyrics from the original version. In regards to “Dub Prices,” the chorus can still be heard throughout the song, but the vocals have been removed in place of a more “dubbed out” sound. The video takes some of the funnier parts of the first video (like “I <3 Dub”) and mixes it up for one cute video. I especially like the visual reverb effect that the director uses near the end.

Related Music Entries:

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Harvest Moon in Washington, DC Timelapse Video
|| 9/16/2008 || 11:04 pm || Comments Off on Harvest Moon in Washington, DC Timelapse Video || ||

Harvest Moon in Washington, DC Timelapse Video from Nikolas Schiller on Vimeo.
Click here to view the video on YouTube

This video was recorded this morning using a tripod and a Canon SD750 on 2 second shutter speed. The Harvest moon‘s apparent size & luminosity change as the clouds drift by her slow transit through the night sky of Washington, DC. The music is “The Transit of Venus” by John Phillip Sousa (1893) performed by the Virginia Grand Military Band (2003).

Related Vimeo Entries:

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Ordered Today: New York Public Library Quilt
|| 9/15/2008 || 11:11 pm || Comments Off on Ordered Today: New York Public Library Quilt || ||

In conjunction with my upcoming presentation at next month’s meeting of the New York Map Society, I decided to order a copy of the map and will be donating it to the Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division at the New York Public Library. It will printed out quite large at 60″ x 40″ on HahnemÃ¼hle Fine Art Pearl 285gsm paper and should be a splendid addition to their permanent collection.

Nearly Infinite Geographic Jest – A David Foster Wallace Reference
|| 9/14/2008 || 11:48 pm || Comments Off on Nearly Infinite Geographic Jest – A David Foster Wallace Reference || ||

The title of this entry comes from note #6 of the Geocolonial Slots, an interactive game I created in March of last year. The specific note is a subtle reference to the massive literary tome by David Foster Wallace called Infinite Jest and to the fact that my little game can produce are over 2 million different visual combinations (hence nearly infinite).

Today I found out that David Foster Wallace committed suicide and felt it would be apt to repost this reference to his novel. Below are some of my favorite writings of his that I’ve found on-line as well as some video interviews with David Foster Wallace:

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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: