The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Abstract Brussels
|| 11/19/2004 || 12:59 pm || Comments Off on Abstract Brussels || ||

Star of Brussels
|| 11/13/2004 || 11:39 pm || Comments Off on Star of Brussels || ||

dreams
|| 9/26/2004 || 12:00 pm || Comments Off on dreams || ||

Last night I had a very interesting dream. Early on in my slumber I witnessed an Air France plane crash. I was in the backseat of some non-descript car and I looked up and saw the plane flying overhead. It looked like it was about to land, but it stalled and began to spin and then crashed about 500 ft from me. We stopped the car and I got out to survey the damage. Then the context of the dream completely changed to something different. Last time I had a dream similar to this, some bad things happened. I hope it was just a vivid dream and nothing else.

primary & adams morgan day
|| 9/13/2004 || 7:12 pm || Comments Off on primary & adams morgan day || ||

Tomorrow is the primary elections here in DC. I am scheduled to work a poll in Anacostia in Ward 7. I have never worked a poll before so this should be interesting!

Yesterday was Adams Morgan Day. I had a blast! I arrived at around noon and passed out hundreds of stickers and flyers for the Adam 4 Shadow Campaign and for the DC Statehood Green Party. Midway through the day I manned a DC Statehood Green Party booth and sold buttons and t-shirts, as well as registering voters. In total we registered 16 voters yesterday. What I ended up discovering is that newness to the party can actually be beneficial. Since I don’t know the history of the party well or know any personal issues people have between them my ignorance can used to help others get along better. Hopefully everyone can put away personal issues of the past and concentrate on the issues of the present. Nonetheless, I am excited about working the polls! Since its the primary and DC is predominantly democratic the literature I’m handing it out is specifically designed for November 2nd, yet these voters are the voters who will be voting on November 2nd and giving them information is the best way to get those extra votes needed.

The rendering is of Brussels with an inner lenz (its hard to explain!) and a torus that uses a randomized satellite Brussels image. Up next is the Ganges River delta.

its starting to get B.A.D.
|| 9/1/2004 || 4:46 pm || Comments Off on its starting to get B.A.D. || ||

This rendering looks really nice. The only problem is that I accidentally rotated the torus 30 degrees, so the image looks slightly off kilter. Up next is the same inner satellite image with a lake for the torus. After that I’m going to photoshop another satellite image to change things up a bit!

Today I sent out faxes to all of the members of the Committee on Government Reform. We are scheduling meetings with congressmen and their staff to discuss Budget Autonomy for the District*. This is my first foray into lobbying but I’m excited about it. I hope the congressmen are receptive and we are able to schedule a lot meetings. If you are reading this, mark your calendars for October 1st so that you can take off work and come & meet up with fellow DC residents at the Capitol Hill South Metro stop at 9am. Its going to be fun. And to steal Move On’s tagline- it will truly be democracy in action.

*B.A.D. Day is October 1st ;-)

Brussels- again
|| || 9:16 am || Comments Off on Brussels- again || ||

I ended up not making an oval shaped version because I didn’t want to wait around for the massive satellite images to load. The inner satellite image is of downtown Brussels, Belgium.

I’m off to go call congressmen- more later…

..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!

fasting fun
|| 8/16/2004 || 4:54 pm || Comments Off on fasting fun || ||

Tonight Adam Eidinger will on Hardball with Chris Matthews (7pm on DC channel 64). I have my Macintosh “tivo” set to record the show, and hopefully I’ll be able to put it on his website.

Last night I decided to make today and possibly tomorrow fasting days. Only water for me- no cigarettes, no food, nothing but water. So far today I’ve drank 2 liters of water, and I’ll probably drink another 4 more (at least). So why fast? Well my friend David of the Superstars of Love explained to me that he would fast a couple times a year to cleanse out some of the toxins in his body. I am really concentrating on using fasting as a vehicle to expel a variety of toxins from my body- including nicotine. David said it helped him, and I think it makes sense- your body will crave food not cigarettes. Also, historically humans did not eat three square meals a day, sometimes not even one square meal a day, and I think its important for my body to experience the absence of food. David did mention that on the third day of his fast he’d get kinda high in that natural, vision-quest kinda way. I’m excited to see how it turns out. For some more info about fasting read this. Also, last week I ate a 75% vegan diet, which should help me out somewhat in the dietary transition.

As for the new renderings, I am very happy with both of the newest ones of Brussels, however the “spiral” rendering has an “error” on the left side of the image. For some reason the texture does not look right. However, the other one has a nicely reflected texture. Version 4.0 will be up shortly. I wonder what satellite image I’ll use next. I think I might use one of the images from Athens, Greece in honor of the Olympics.

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 Daily Render By

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

::LAST 51 POSTS::

Fair Use

47 queries. 4.073 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: