The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

welcome to the greenzone
|| 9/20/2004 || 2:04 am || Comments Off on welcome to the greenzone || ||

Today I “Greened the Festival” at the Green Festival. Which is simply a glorified way of saying I worked a recycling center. Being that I have my own recycling center concept, I loved my job! However it was amazing to see how little people knew about recycling; more specifically recycling plastics. Even the little pamphlet given out by the DC department of Public Works, which oversees the recycling initiatives, has no mention of the plastic resin codes! I completely understand why there is such a disconnect in this simple but important chore. It could easily read “Look under the bottom of the plastic container and find the recycling triangle. We only take plastics with #1& #2” Instead it reads:

Plastic Bottles and Jugs: Narrow-necked containers only.
Some examples include:
-Soda, juice, pop, and liquor bottles
-Shampoo, conditioner, and laundry detergent bottles
-Window, bathroom, and kitchen cleaner bottles

There needs to be some PSA’s about looking at the bottom of plastic containers. Or maybe not…. I mean, people would then realize that they throw away a lot of plastics. I am still working out my plan to recycle polypropylene aka plastic #5. Grrr. Regardless, I am very happy that I was able to spread some ecological wisdom to some fellow festival goers. I just hope they recycle more. I plan on it.

Ironically, this rendering is of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad. I made it because I overheard some news about how both the U.S. & Iraqi military were having trouble keeping the area safe. It just turns out that I was at the Green Festival all weekend! I also opted to upload a higher resolution version of the rendering to give a better look at the area. The graphic was rendered at 16,000 X 12,000 and the original satellite image of Baghdad was a 1 meter image (aka 1 pixel represents 1 meter on the ground), but the high resolution version is only 5,000 X 3,750, which means that what you see on the ground is roughly a 16 meter image (aka 1 pixel equals 16 meters or so). Sorry if this is confusing jargon, but its important to me :-) Just imagine what the full size will look like printed. Yet in reality the Daily Render for today should be this old one!

party on down
|| 9/19/2004 || 7:11 pm || Comments Off on party on down || ||

After returning back from the Green Festival I made my way over to Adams Morgan for the block party. When I arrived I found that somehow the inverters, which are used to power the sound system, were missing. After fretting for a bit, I asked a friend of Adam’s to go ahead and ask the police if we could use their power. The main talking point was that we used the police station’s power before without a problem*. Luckly with a little elbow grease we were able to play music.

Since it was Adam’s birthday and I wanted it to be a big ass party, I had contacted some friends in advance about DJing the event, but since I couldn’t secure in Technics, I opted to not have them DJ. Instead I had the opportunity to DJ the block party. Normally I never DJ events that I am working on, but last night I made a special exception! I selected nothing but my favorite Thievery Corporation & ESL music tunes. I am happy that I started listening to them back in 1998 before I even came to DC because it gave me a good knowledge of their entire discography and it also helped being on their promo distribution list when I was the director of the electronic music department at WRGW. I dunno what it is about their sound, but I love it. I sincerely just wish that I had all my vinyl here in DC, but that wouldn’t have helped any yesterday.

The worst part of the night was when some drunken fool from Maryland snatched the microphone from Adam while he was giving a speech. After haranguing the dolt for a bit, we got the microphone back and I dropped Thievery’s “Assault on Babylon.” It was the perfect tune for that moment and the crowd liked it’s ragga overtones.

The best part of the night was the beautiful belly dancers. They definitely stole the show! There were at least a hundred people watching them dance. I took advantage of the captive audience and passed out every flyer I had. Afterwards, when I made my way to a house party to meet up with a friend (the same friend who said, “you are doing another green party thing again tonight?”), she was ecstatic about the fact that I had just missed the belly dancers performing at the house party. I slyly said to her, that she had missed the belly dancers at the block party. All I could do was laugh and think to myself “dam this is a small city.” All in all, the campaign events were fun this weekend and I hope we made some minute impact. I know I had fun at least.

*Well there was a slight problem at the last event when the police officer decided to pull the plug after the comedienne used the same cuss words our vice president used in a bit about him cussing

geolopes
|| 9/18/2004 || 6:13 pm || Comments Off on geolopes || ||

The Fun*raiser went well. Not as many heads turnout due to the weather but I had a great time. I hope the block party goes better.

I am sad that I wasn’t able to go back to the AAG conference but the Green Festival zapped my time. However I found a great eco-friendly geographical gift item called Geolopes:

Geolopes are common sized envelopes and stationery recycled from outdated government surplus topographic maps published by various U.S. and Canadian government mapping agencies.

Topographic maps are responsible for my love for geography. I have fond memories of looking at my first topographical map when hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park when I was 8 years old! (after getting the link to Rocky Mountain National Park I noticed that I’ve climbed the 3 mountains in the background- Flattop Mountain, Hallets Peak, and Mount Otis) Nonetheless, I think I will be buying some Geolopes for myself! Maybe I can get a set for my birthday :-) I’ll definitely write more letters this way. Plus I used to make all of my own envelopes back in the day from magazines (mainly Vogue), and this recycling project uses. I think it would a cool way to send out resumes to potential earth science employers. I can also see this company having a booth at the AAG’s annual meeting.

This rendering has a unique torus- even better when viewed as 200 megapixels. I think its time for another near full-size upload- but which one?

bizzy bizzy
|| 9/16/2004 || 9:34 am || Comments Off on bizzy bizzy || ||

Today is a big day… Lots of things planned!

1) Drop off resumes at some local restaurants & make call backs to some places I sent resumes to the other day. I desperately need to get stable employment arranged- although working for myself is fun, I need to make more connections to ensure stable employment so that my bills get paid. Bills suck.

2) Drop off my printed out geography portfolio at the GWU Geography Department. I spent hours making a professional digital portfolio CD, but it turns out that I should have just printed everything out like the rest of the pack. I hope the printed portfolio’s tardiness is excused. Fingers crossed.

3) Help set up the Conference on Race/Ethnicity and Place. I look forward to meeting some active members of the Association of American Geographers this weekend during the conference. I hope that the Green Festival doesn’t suck out all my time this weekend :-(

4) Go to the volunteers meeting for the Green Festival and find out exactly what “Greening the Festival” is all about. I am so excited about this event! I hope tons of people come out to this event! I need to finalize one of inventions too. I look forward to seeing if it is being sold by some green entrepreneur at the festival.

Last night I redesigned the front page of the Adam4Shadow campaign website. I moved the “top campaign news” to the right panel. I feel it looks better this way because main info on U.S. “Shadow” Representative is at the top of the page now.

I am very excited about the campaign events this weekend. Tomorrow night we are having a Fun*raiser at my house and I am really excited to see who shows up to mingle & schmooze. I also look forward to seeing how people dress up to look like Adam! And on Saturday, we’re celebrating Adam’s 31st birthday by having a block party at the corner of 18th & Columbia. There will be Djs, fire spinners, stump speeches, and belly dancers! Hopefully we can get some people from the Green Festival to come out and party it up! This weekend is panning out to be a lot of fun! I just hope I can balance it all and not overextend myself! We’ll see!

you a size large, not extra large
|| 9/15/2004 || 10:09 pm || Comments Off on you a size large, not extra large || ||

Its been one of those days where you have so much planned to get done and none of it gets done and you can’t quite figure out why. Sometimes this baffles to me. However, I did get my closet cleaned up and in the process found some classic clothing circa 1995. I don’t understand my predilection for oversized clothing. It seems all of my clothing from middle school was extra-large! I am roughly the same size now and I can’t believe what possessed me to wear such oversized clothing! Must have been that poser skater! At least I found some hot striped tops from my father that were made circa 1985! I am going to wear one tomorrow…

I did get my confirmation e-mail back from the organizers of the Green Festival. It looks like I am going to be “greening the festival” on Sunday- what ever that means, I’ll find out tomorrow night.

This rendering is of Bolivian rainforests, specifically areas in which the rainforest has been clear-cut by farmers. You can see exactly the amount of land that has been damaged by human involvement. Up next is a satellite image of a cloud vortex created by fast moving low laying clouds colliding with a mountain peak. …Man I miss the mountains….

True Cost Organic
|| 9/11/2004 || 9:30 pm || Comments Off on True Cost Organic || ||

From ENN

“We felt like we actually impacted the local economy and reduced the fossil fuel involved in hauling all that food from 1,300 miles away,” said Masi.

This made me realize that even if you feel like you are doing your part buying your organic produce at Whole Foods, you are not. I’ve never made that connection between food locality & fuel consumption and within the spatial context of a food’s true cost. I think it would be funnny to infiltrate some Whole Foods and place small cards with info about how far the produce came and the amount of CO2 that was released in the transit. Stickers would do this task even better! Oh the fun… Maybe what would be even better would be to have an organic produce cart outside of a Whole Foods with a big sign that says “Local Organic Produce Here” – it might work, but I know there are probably some vapid anti-free market rules against vendors doing this. I’ll look into this.

morning notes
|| 9/10/2004 || 7:23 am || Comments Off on morning notes || ||

So last night I went to Club 5ive to see Storm & Fierce as a part of the FIVE:DNB:Sessions series. I was kinda bored by the DJ’s sets (Storm was a bit off on her mixing), but what really made the night was finding out that I was mentioned in this month’s issue of Rinse Magazine. It turns out that my old friend Mary Ishimoto Morris wrote an article about the DC Drum & Bass scene and she mentioned old radio show at WRGW. She even spelled my name “N!k” which I thought was cute. I would have probably known about it being printed if I would have been checking my other e-mail account that deals with DC DnB. Nonetheless, I was told about the article by my friend & DJ replacement at WRGW, so it made the article slightly more poignant.

On somewhat related note, shortly after I got my haircut, when I was looking in the City Paper, I saw the ad for the event and I had a quick moment of dyslexia and thought it said “Fierce Storm.” The lame junglist irony is that it was raining outside due to the remnants of a fierce storm called Hurricane Frances.

In my last post I mentioned the greening of the city, and very related to that, I am excited about going to the Green Festival, which is set to take place on September 18th & 19th. I signed up to volunteer some of my time to help out. I am also eager to see Greg Palast, Naomi Klein, and Amy Goodman speak at the convention. Also I am looking forward to seeing the various booths at the convention center because I want more information on various green businesses. I have an invention idea that has been circulating in my head for about a month that is somewhat related to one of my older concepts.

There is also another event taking place in DC that weekend that I plan on attending. My professional society, the Association of American Geographers is having a conference titled so aptly, “Conference on Race/Ethnicity and Place.” I also plan on volunteering some time at this event as well. I had a blast at the “Mapping the News” conference back on May 15th. I really hope to make some good contacts at this event, and hopefully I can convince some random professionals to come to the Green Festival. I mean, those that have a deep understanding of geography should know the importance of environmental sustainability. I wonder if I could add a flyer for the Green Festival in the gift bags- lol.

About the two renderings- Since I don’t have my other external hard drive hooked up, which has my cache of satellite images, I used the two images I did have on my iMac- the unedited Dutch Delta graphic & a four paneled reflection of downtown Manhattan. I made both of the toruses random samplings of the images and in the center I used the opposite graphic. I also decided to render the background white instead of black to change this up just a little bit. Overall, I am happy with how they turned out. I really like the complexity the random sampling gives, yet I wish I could have more control over how the sampling takes place in order to add more complexity to the torus. Nonetheless, the next rendering, which should be done in a few hours, will have both the inner and outer image randomized. I look forward to seeing how it turns out!

..still fasting..
|| 8/17/2004 || 9:00 am || Comments Off on ..still fasting.. || ||

Image Links to Flash Player:

Above is a screenshot of today’s rendering– a 5 second animation of the most recent “Brussels Lenz” (see previous post). If you look closely, you can see why I’ve been so fascinated by the use of the glass sphere with embedded images. Well if you don’t want to look closely, I’ll explain it anyways- I like the way the sphere refracts the satellite images to look similar to the curveture of the earth. If you’ve ever been on top of a high mountain (one that goes above tree line) you might get what I’m talking about. Anyways, I’m not sure what graphic I’ll render next…. oddly at 30 frames per second at 720X480 size, a five second animation takes less time to make than a conventional still image….. hmmm, I think I’m sold on the idea of really large posters.

Adam kicked ass on Hardball last night. I recorded the show and put it on his campaign website. I was amazed at how Chris Matthews kept on insinuating that protestors are violent and bent on destruction. Yet Adam managed to keep his cool the entire time. Much respect!

I encoded the recording using Real Video. This was my first time using this A/V format. I was able to download the Export Plugin for Quicktime, and I am very pleased with the compression that I was able to get. However to encode the 13 minute segment of the show from DV format to Real Video format took over 3 hours! Way too long but the export plugin was able to take a 5,500 megabyte video file and compress it to 35 megabytes….that pretty impressive, albeit time consuming.

On the fasting front, this morning I ate a cayenne pepper. My friend David mentioned how the pepper is supposed to help cleanse the body by way of heat. After not eating any food for 36 hours (while drinking about 3 gallons of water) the cayenne pepper actually made my body temperature rise slightly. It was kinda cool. I am expecting a ketosis buzz sometime this afternoon. It should be interesting. And tomorrow a special friend will be coming to DC to visit me. I’m excited!

Brussels & the American Candidate
|| 8/15/2004 || 9:55 pm || Comments Off on Brussels & the American Candidate || ||

Version 4.0 of the Monrovia series is very simple with a black torus & some blue smoke. I started a new series using a satellite image of Brussels, Belgium. The Brussels rendering image looks pretty good. I tried to make the texture of the torus similar to the rooftops in the city and it turned out well. The only problem is that the satellite image is not as large as it could be (about 8,000 pixels) so when the rendered image is looked at in full size it looks slightly pixilated. That kinda sucks, however the actual rendered image looks good the way its reflected. I am going to start on version 2.0 shortly.

Right now I’m watching American Candidate on Showtime. Its a pretty good show! I think I’ll record it next week. There is actually a green party candidate “Bruce” who has some intelligent words to say. More importantly, the show actually gives 3rd parties a platform to speak. Bruce is making a point of putting animal rights into political discourse. I wish the actual presidential candidacy was like this- minus all the psuedo-drama of the reality show. Next up is Entourage, Ali G, and Def Poetry- probably my favorite night of television :-)

The party at my house last night was a lot of fun. I got rather drunk and met a bunch of people. Good times!

the true cost paradigm
|| 8/12/2004 || 2:38 am || Comments Off on the true cost paradigm || ||

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.

The Daily Render By

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

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Hello! Thanks for stopping by! My name is Nikolas Schiller. I am an American citizen currently living in New York City and working remotely to support structural change in Washington, DC.

This blog is my online repository of what I have created or found online since May of 2004. I've been on hiatus since 2018 but plan on contributing more content in the not so distant future.

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