The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Bicycle Freedom! [Vélib’ in DC]
|| 6/3/2008 || 6:33 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

With Washington, DC about to begin the first bicycle sharing program in the United States, I’m posting some videos featuring the Parisian bike sharing service called Vélib’. The names in French is a combination of vélo liberté or vélo libre and in English it means free bicycle or bicycle freedom.

I think these YouTube videos are a fitting follow-up to my new bicycle freedom in Washington, DC :-)

Bikes Belong presents: Velib
Bikes sharing is transforming how cities look at public transit. We went to Paris in November 2007 to see for ourselves what Velib is all about.
[I really like the use of the infographics]

VÃ©lo LibertÃ© – Parisian Bike Culture
The author of Copenhagen Cycle Chic rides around Paris with his wife:
“In ten short months the urban landscape of Paris has been transformed by the Vélib’ bike share programme.” See Blog Entry

Bicycle Freedom
TV News Footage from Canadian Global Television Network:
The city of Paris rolled out a citywide bicycle program involving 10,600 bikes in a bid to cut gridlock and give citizens a greener way to get around town. The program, named Vélib’ a blend of vélo (bike) and liberté allows users to swipe their credit card and take and return a bike from one of 750 stations in the city.

“In the morning, you can go to work in the tram and come home by bike; it depends on the weather, it depends on your mood and on your friends,” said Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe Sunday.

Delanoe aims to cut car traffic in the city by 40 per cent by 2020.

Velib’
[en FranÃ§ais]Voici un reportage sur Vélib’, le nouveau service public offert par la mairie de Paris que j’ai rÃ©alisÃ© pour le magazine Webcarnews. Retrouvez le sujet complet sur www.webcarnews.com
Here is a report on VÃ©lib, the new public service offered by the mayor of Paris that I produced for the magazine Webcarnews.
Find the subject comprehensive www.webcarnews.com

I post more when I find them….

Related Bicycling Entries:

Tabvla Temporis [Semidiurni in fignis Borealibus / Australibus]
|| 5/25/2008 || 12:17 am || Comments Off on Tabvla Temporis [Semidiurni in fignis Borealibus / Australibus] || ||

This is the reverse side of Willem Janszoon Blaeu’s Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula (Amsterdam 1606) which I used in my recent creation A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum. If you look closely, you can see the reverse of original map that bled through the paper after couple hundred years and some image manipulation. The table shown is similar to an Ephemeris, which is table of values that gives the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time. I would love for someone to sit and explain the way one goes about reading these types of antique charts. I understand a fair amount of what is being shown, but I do not fully grasp how to apply the calculations.

A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
|| 5/23/2008 || 10:43 am || Comments Off on A New & Arabesque Map of the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden || ||

:: saved at 6,480 x 5,040 ::

To celebrate the new procedure I decided to get around to editing the Library of Congress‘ copy of Willem Janszoon Blaeu‘s Nova totius terrarum orbis geographica ac hydrographica tabula, which was published in Amsterdam in 1606. I removed the original map from the center and kept the decorative border similar to Nova et Accvratissima Totivs Terrarvm Orbis Tabvla, A New Map of the Terraqueous Globe : according to the the Ancient discoveries and most general Divisions of Geospatial Art, America as a Cloverleaf, and A New And Accurate Map of the World by John Speed. However, unlike the previous antique map mash-ups, which usually feature the earth laid out in two hemispheres, this map uses a rectangular space (Mercator?). The beauty of this open layout is that I can place any of my previously made maps inside of this 402-year-old template.

A common naming practice I’ve noticed in old map is the use of “New & Accurate” and since I like to play around with words, I changed Accurate to Arabesque to create a visual pun. The source map was about 6,500 pixels wide, I underlaid a rotated 9,000 x 6,000 copy of Hirshhorn Quilt to fit perfectly in the center of the new map. I think it would be fun to actually hand-color the engravings on this map to match other copies of this map which have the various figures colored in. The LOC’s copy is uncolored which means that its actually easier to add color to it than if it were already colored because pigment matching is not needed.

: detail of the planet Goddess Venus :

Across the top (left to right) you have the planet gods:

Luna guiding ships at night
Mercury holding his Caduceus
Venus with Cupid
Sol riding a Quadriga
Mars being lead by the dogs of war Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Dread).
Jupiter with lightening bolts in his hands
Saturn holding a scythe

Drawn within each of these engravings are the signs of the Zodiac that the planets rule:

Moon rules Cancer
Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo
Venus rules Libra and Taurus
The Sun rules Leo
Mars rules Aries and Scorpio
Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Piscies
Saturn rules Aquarius and Capricorn

Below I dissect the rest of the border of the map:

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Rush hour bicycle traffic congestion in Copenhagen, Denmark
|| 4/16/2008 || 4:34 pm || Comments Off on Rush hour bicycle traffic congestion in Copenhagen, Denmark || ||

The last couple days I’ve been posting about bicycling, so why not add another one of my favorite examples of how people in another country have embraced bicycling? Everyday I check out Copenhagen Cycling Chic , which is a blog about styliciousness of bicyclists in Copenhagen, Denmark. More specifically, the blog usually features well-dressed, attractive women on bicycles. As xenophile, I love seeing how the people commute and how drastically different it is from the American way of life. It seems that the majority of bicycles for sale at my local bike shops are racing bikes, mountain bikes, and single track bikes. Thus it appears that the stores mainly cater to the athletic folks who treat bicycling as a physical activity (or business: couriers), and not a simplified, slowed-down, lifestyle as the author of Copenhagen Cycling Chic and myself view bicycling. I have not owned a car in nearly 10 years and I don’t miss being car-crippled one bit. The money I’ve saved in car payments & car insurance is astounding and I’m healthier because my transportation is also my exercise. Yet this is the difference– I view the exercise as a lesser byproduct of a conscious decision to live a more mentally & ecologically sound life. I’ll pick the rush hour in the YouTube video above any day over sitting in traffic enclosed in a metal box pumping toxins into the atmosphere. Better views too.

GPS Drawing in the new Mercedes advertisement
|| 4/11/2008 || 7:41 pm || Comments Off on GPS Drawing in the new Mercedes advertisement || ||

GPS Drawing was created by Hugh Pryor and Jeremy Wood. This artform involves the use of a GPS device to record people’s movements on the surface of the earth. It works on the premise that as one moves through their day, the GPS device continuously records (or tracks) the exact coordinates of the owner. Here it has been copied by Mercedes in their newest advertisements related to their line of cars with built-in GPS devices.

Now say “Ahhhhh” — huh? At first I didn’t get the correlation between the GPS drawing and the location. The GPS drawing shown above appears to be teeth with a starting point of Paris and terminal point at Cordes sur Siel. Upon further inquiry, I found that Cordes sur Siel is home to the Musee de l’Art du Sucre. Yum!

World Vision : You can’t ignore child labor
|| 4/7/2008 || 10:29 pm || Comments Off on World Vision : You can’t ignore child labor || ||

While I am not a big fan of pervasive advertisements, I found this guerrilla marketing campaign designed by Ogilvy to be highly effective. It comes directly from the same vein as Amnesty International’s award-winning campaign “It’s Not Happening Here But It’s Happening Now.” However, instead of being merely a billboard campaign, this iteration is interactive. As one pushes the revolving door, they are trapped between two photographs of child laborers also pushing the door. Above each the child is the text “You can’t ignore child labor – www.kinderarbeid.nl” [kinderarbeid= child labor]

Watch the video to get the idea:

Related Activism Entries:

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Astrophotography by Anthony Ayiomamitis – Analemma with the Parthenon
|| 4/1/2008 || 2:28 pm || Comments Off on Astrophotography by Anthony Ayiomamitis – Analemma with the Parthenon || ||

Following up on my antique sundials posting, I just came across this stunning photography by Anthony Ayiomamitis that shows the sun’s yearly orbit seen from a stationary points around various ancient ruins in Greece. The figure 8 design that the sun creates is called an Analemma. It’s a curve representing the angular offset of the sun from its mean position on the celestial sphere as viewed from Earth. The sun’s position in the figure 8 varies by geography and time of year, but when a series of photographs are taken from one location you can see the sun’s relative path through the seasons.

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Cambio de Vida
|| 3/15/2008 || 1:54 pm || Comments Off on Cambio de Vida || ||

Although I don’t have an exact translation, I really enjoy this little rap (even if its a commercial). Releasing the contents of this website is a significant Change of Life in many respects. Anyways, I am now a fan of Sara Da Pin Up and will see if I can get her to come to DC sometime.

ordered last week: New Blaeu
|| 3/10/2008 || 9:25 pm || Comments Off on ordered last week: New Blaeu || ||

Originally created last summer as “NOVA ET ACCVRATISSIMA TOTIVS TERRARVM ORBIS TABVLA [2007 Remix],” when this map was published in the December 14th issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the editors truncated the name and simply called it “New Blaeu.”

Last week I decided to update the map slightly by trimming the edges and doing some color correction. It’s being printed at 20″x16″ and preserved behind glass in in an ornate gold frame. I am also planning on framing some of the other antique maps I purchased recently to compliment this map. I think they’ll look really cool all hung together; the real old with the fake new.

View the other detail:

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Thats the Kurti…
|| 3/3/2008 || 12:10 pm || Comments Off on Thats the Kurti… || ||

Screen grab featuring Home Quilt #6

So as I mentioned back in January, I was looking for a blog where my website was linked using the words “Kurti.” Today I found what I was looking for! It’s a blog entry in Latvian from April. Now I just need to get it all translated…

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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: