Its official. This blog has changed its name to a more fitting name. [drum roll]

Nikolas ® Schiller’s blog is now called “The Daily Render”

I mentioned this name change before but I didn’t seriously think about changing it. However after reading through my website logs and finding that someone has blogrolled me (speak up whoever you are!), I went to www.bloglines.com to see if I could find out who. After searching, I found out that someone else had already taken the name “Mental Masturbation.” So why name your blog with a name someone else is already using? Especially with a tagline like “Blowing Your Mind in a Consequence Free Environment,” with all due respect, “Keystrokes for a Better World” just sounds dumb compared to “blowing your mind” (the consequence free environment part is lame, because there are consequences to everything one says). So from now on this blog’s name will be “The Daily Render” and the tagline will be “Your Daily Dose of Visual Stimulation.” I mean, I’ve mainly used this blog as a forum to display and critique my near-daily renderings, so why not follow through and name it properly. Plus, as I mentioned before, “Mental Masturbation is a bit over the top as far as names go.

Since the subject of Daily Renderings is now in the spotlight, I must comment on the rendering above. I really do love the satellite image being used for the torus, but I still don’t like the inner satellite image of Baghdad much. As I mentioned earlier, the original satellite image of the Green Zone in Baghdad was too large for computer to handle (it might have been due to the fact that half of my CPU speed was tied up rendering another graphic) so I had to scale down the image to roughly half its size. This meant that the 1 meter satellite image (meaning that each pixel represented one meter on the ground) was reduced to a 4 meter image (if you half the size of the image you don’t get 2 meters but 4 because the former pixel is square, not rectangular), and with the reduction in size, the new satellite image has half the amount of detail as before. Thus I’d rather have the inner satellite image have more detail. Plus it makes the spherical projection (aka the “lenz”) look more round- which, afterall, is the reason why I began this series in the first place. I am going to snag another image from one of the “Earth As Art” galleries and use the same Guinea-Bissau satellite image for torus. Expect another image in about 8-10 hours!

In other news, if you have a moment download the latest issue of the INDYPENDENT. It is chalk full of what will be going down in NYC next week during the RNC. I wish I could go, but money is tight and I feel I can be more of service here for some reason. I am helping load a puppet for Adam this morning, so at least I am helping out in some way.

This rendering is pretty good. There isn’t too much to say about it, except that I need make a digital installation with all of these renderings. I think I am going to make a page with all the thumbnails arranged in some mildly artistic way. It will look good, but in the meantime I need to fnd some stable income! Bills are due and the money isn’t adding up the way I want it to! Eeek! I added a “donate” button at the bottom of the right panel, but I sincerely doubt anyone will throw me any loot. I mean I’ve never donated to anyone before, but maybe I should start. In the meantime I am going to be submitting my resume to a bunch of different temp agencies and calling my family to ask for money (a first!). If I would have done this earlier this month and not spent so much money last weekend with my guest I don’t think this would have happened, but that is hindsight and its always 20/20. Yet if anyone has anything they need done for them and are willing to pay me, drop me a line!

The next rendering will use the same inner satellite image as the first Guinea-Biassau rendering, but with the torus being one that I’ll create. Expect something special in about 9 hours….