The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

more morning notes
|| 9/10/2004 || 9:33 am || Comments Off on more morning notes || ||

This is my first rendering of this series that I used randomized satellite images for both the inner and outer parts of the rendering. I think I have now come up with a suitable offshoot for this project. In the next few renderings, I am going to try using only one satellite image- a randomize image for the torus and the same non-randomized image for the center. It should look nice.

On a different note, today is September 10th, 2004 and 3 years ago today I flew from Saint Louis to DC. At the time, I was visiting my girlfriend for the weekend and she said goodbye to me at the gate- the last day that happened in America. When I asked her about that day and the subsequent dream, she said that I joked about how weak the security was and how the screeners didn’t check my bags at all. On a slightly more synchronous note, John Kerry is in Saint Louis today campaigning.

morning notes
|| || 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!

embedded hurricane reporters
|| 9/4/2004 || 11:06 pm || Comments Off on embedded hurricane reporters || ||

Its the war on nature.

Watch out for those strong winds of change!

The climate revolution will be televised….

MHz
|| 9/3/2004 || 9:10 pm || Comments Off on MHz || ||

I just got done watching MHz Network’s evening news. I must say that this is the best station for world news. Its puts the rest of American networks to shame- at 6pm you get BBC World News, followed by South Asia Newsline (in English), Today’s Asiavision (in English), Le Journal (in French with English subtitles), and Deutsche World’s Journal (in English). Watching the coverage from London, Paris, Tokyo & Berlin, it was amazing to see the lack of depth the American media has. If you have a chance watch MHz some evening on Comcast’s channel 4. A world perspective is so important!

I am rendering another image like the one above with a slight modification. It turns out that the full-size rendering of the image above has a slight error in the way the center lines up, but its not really that noticeable.

teaser
|| 9/2/2004 || 9:21 pm || Comments Off on teaser || ||

Since Bush is about to speak at the RNC and I am planning on recording it, I figured it would be best to not have anything rendering. Sometimes the ol’ 800 Mhz of my iMac makes the recordings choppy… I recorded Kerry’s DNC speech and I look forward to hearing the slop Bush is going to present. Outside of Madison Square Garden is a bigger scene. I’ve been reading the NYC Indymedia website and it looks like there are a few thousand outside protesting. It would be very interesting if there were more “delegates of peace” protesting outside than Republican delegates inside….

Anyways, I was able to format the satellite image of a river delta in the Netherlands and I created a 3D quicktime panorama of it. After the speech, I’ll begin rendering the full size version (it will be the largest rendering yet!). So enjoy the teaser

pearl earring
|| || 3:26 pm || Comments Off on pearl earring || ||

I am panicing about my money troubles- it sucks. I need to find work pronto! Ack!

Last night I watched Girl with a Pearl Earring. It was a cute film. Johannes Vermeer was one of my favorite Dutch painters. In my travels, I’ve seen 13 of his 39 paintings in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, and DC. I know my oldest sister probably has seen the movie. I am going to call her tonight and see if she saw it and if she liked it. Quite a few scenes looked just like some of his paintings and it made the movie seem like a Where’s Waldo of Vermeer, but I’m not sure if the director had some embedded paintings in the movie or not. Anyways, its a good movie to watch with someone you love. The plot isn’t too deep but I felt the photorealism was great. I enjoyed how the director accurately showed how life was in 1600s. I’ve been trying to look at those clues like that as of late. Basically, I realize how far we’ve come as a civilization and the degree of specialization that has taken place. I can’t help but wonder how people will survive if they were forced to live back then, or possibly in the future where energy is not plentiful and people are forced to farm themselves. I’d like to take up farming someday simply so that I can take that skill with me to the edges of the earth.

The two renderings are decent. I photoshopped an image of Manhattan (on the left), which makes an interesting looking inner eye. I am rendering another image of NYC, but without the inner lenz. It should be ready in about 4 hours or so. After that I’d like to render an image I snagged of a delta in the Netherlands (its beautiful!). I think the movie was the stimulus to make this next one. It should look nice. Hopefully I’ll have it rendered by tomorrow or so!

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…

nice
|| || 3:24 am || Comments Off on nice || ||

NICE!

All I can say is that this is my favorite yet….

Time for bed.

In the meantime, I’ll render an oval version of this rendering…

what next?
|| 8/31/2004 || 6:15 am || Comments Off on what next? || ||

This rendering looks pretty decent. I’d like to make a grand total of 50 renderings for this series (I have made 39 so far). I am now pondering ways I can create a new series. I definitely want to keep the satellite image motiff alive because I feel it makes these renderings interesting yet different. In the meantime, I think I am going to make another rendering with the Himalayas satellite image. I also added a nifty animation in the upper left-hand corner that is a link to all of the renderings I’ve made for Lenz Project.

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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: