The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

[Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation One
|| 7/21/2009 || 8:50 pm || 6 Comments Rendered || ||

: rendered at 900 X 600 :
Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

I was recently commissioned by a person who wishes to have me a make a map of Sandy Spring Friends School as a gift for their friend. The person asked explicitly for a map on fabric that uses the Octagon Quilt Projection. This made the process somewhat easier for me because all I needed to do was create different tessellations of the aerial photography around the school. Often the client does not know the map design they desire most, so I have to spend extra time rendering different designs based off of one or two tessellations. This time around I was able to focus on making numerous tessellations for the client to choose from.

Click here to view the Google Map of Sandy Spring Friends School in Maryland.

Below is the same tessellation, but shown at a different scale:

: rendered at 900 X 600 :
Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

A passive-agressive note to my Dear Neighbor in the English Basement
|| 7/20/2009 || 8:39 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

You’ve seen the website? This is my quasi-contribution. Its too bad the neighbor never followed up and contacted me. I just hope he doesn’t get mugged!

Before & After Aerial Photographs of Ground Zero in Nagasaki, Japan
|| 7/19/2009 || 8:15 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

I was looking at the Wikipedia entry on Aerial Bombing of Cities and came across the World War Two aerial photograph above. It shows the absolute destruction of the Nagasaki, Japan after the atomic bomb known as “Fat Man” was dropped from the sky and detonated in the heart of the city. Below is a screen grab from Google Maps showing a contemporary view of ground zero:

…from life to death to life… Its rather amazing how much development has taken place since the war ended over 60 years ago. I just hope this type of bombing never happens again.

[FOUND MAP] Dear WMATA, is it called the Hirshhorn Gallery or Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden?
|| 7/18/2009 || 7:55 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Photograph of a DC Metro Map taken at the Navy Yard Metro station showing Hirshhorn Gallery

Earlier this month when I was returning home from Artomatic, I snapped this photograph in the Navy Yard Metro station. I found it interesting that the cartographers at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority decided to use Hirshhorn Gallery instead of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. I could tell the map was somewhat current, but how current is the usage of Gallery vs. Museum and Sculpture Garden? I did some google searches and my general conclusion is that its commonly & mistakenly called Hirshhorn Gallery, but does that mean WMATA should too?

Related Found Maps:

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Revisiting the Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation
|| 7/17/2009 || 7:16 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Embedded from Facebook

In August of 2007 I posted the Quicktime Movie of Dupont Lenz Quilt Animation on this blog. I had not joined YouTube yet, nor had I released the contents of this website to search engines, so only recently have I begun to port some of my animations to other websites. Today I decided to upload the animation to Facebook and to YouTube.

The animation uses same layout from my map “Dupont Circle Quilt 2005.” The 30 second animation features two 15 second segments of the same imagery shown from two different perspectives. The modified aerial photography of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC is magnified using transparent glass spheres to create unique cartographic perspective.

Related Animations:

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Growing a Jaloro plant on my back deck – Part One
|| 7/16/2009 || 6:57 pm || 3 Comments Rendered || ||

Photograph of my Jaloro plant taken on June 1st, 2009

Photo taken on June 1st, 2009

Back in February I sprouted a yellow jalapeno plant (Capsicum annuum) known as the Jaloro (sometimes spelled Jalaro) in my window and began growing the pepper plant indoors. Around late April I moved the plant outdoors. This series of photos documents the growth of the plant. I am told it produces decent yields and the peppers turn from yellow, to orange, and to red when maturing. According to numerous sources on-line, the cultivar was developed by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and is disease Resistant to 6 types of pepper viruses.

WETA’s Late-Night All-Access Programming Sponsored by the FBI
|| 7/15/2009 || 6:49 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Back in April, I was home late on Saturday evening / Sunday morning and stumbled on to the Washington, DC PBS affiliate station WETA showing a Federal Bureau of Investigation recruitment video on their All-Access programming. It’s the first time and only I’ve seen this type of sponsored recruitment video on public television before.

A message to MTV’s Real World DC cast members: IN THE REAL WORLD ALL AMERICANS DESERVE FULL REPRESENTATION IN CONGRESS
|| 7/14/2009 || 11:58 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

MTV’s show “The Real World” is currently filming their next season here in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. There has been a lot of hoopla regarding the cast & crew being in DC; from a pop culture blogger hoping to actually get inside of the house to neighbors who started an Anti-Real World DC blog which describes in detail the comings and goings of the cast to even a Twitter user that only tweets gossip, errr, Newz about the cast. I haven’t watched the show in years, so I’m mildly amused by this type of hype.

For the last few weeks I had been brainstorming about a way that would hopefully spark a discussion about DC’s lack of congressional representation on the show. I came up with phrase: “IN THE REAL WORLD ALL AMERICANS DESERVE FULL REPRESENTATION CONGRESS.” Earlier today I went to Kinkos, printed up 10 copies, and this evening I put them all up around a one block radius of the house. I am curious how long they’ll stay up! I am even more curious if they’ll even discuss this civil rights issue on the show.

Update: below is a TwitPic photo by Mehan Jayasuriya that taken the following day. It’s been viewed over 1,500 times!

The message made its way to the Washington Post on Sunday, August 16th, 2009:

Screen grab from the Washington Post article about the Real World in DC where the text of my sign is transcribed

Dear Yahoo! & Navteq, it’s not the National Msm of the American Indian!
|| 7/13/2009 || 3:49 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Back in March of 2008 I discovered that Google Maps was incorrectly displaying the official title of the National Museum of the American Indian on their maps. They had truncated the word museum to MSM. A friend of mine who works at Navteq, the supplier of the data, confirmed that the length of the title was too long, so they shaved off a few characters by truncating the word museum to msm. This lexical error was eventually corrected on Google Maps….

However, last night I had someone in India do a Yahoo! search for National Msm of the American Indian and ended up visiting my page. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that Yahoo! Maps was also doing the same type of truncation with Navteq’s data. I think NavTeq should to change it’s dataset so all the museums names are spelled correctly.

Note: the links in the images in this entry go to the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden because it was the closest result for my query “National Msm of the American Indian”

New Splash Page Graphic Added: “Come in. Don’t steal anything.”
|| 7/12/2009 || 3:42 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

The other night my housemate had some friends over and left this note in the front of our house. I thought it was cute, so I snapped a photo. Since the splash page of my website is somewhat like a front door, I felt it would make a nice addition to the current images that are randomly displayed each time you visit. I don’t have the exact number of visual combinations at the moment because the folder that contains most of the maps stops counting at 2,000 images, but I think the number is around 2,500 images.

As for the context of the note, I find it extremely interesting how people use the content I have placed on my website. I have a Fair Use link at the bottom of the page, but most people don’t really follow my request for proper citation. I wouldn’t call it outright theft, which would be claiming what I have created here as their own original artwork, but most of the time people will just use an image without the link back or a note about me. Oh well, there is not much I can do except e-mail them the proper link to use.

Note: The splash page graphic was randomly placed over University of Southern California Quilt

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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: