The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

51 Random Banners Now Greet Visitors
|| 12/26/2009 || 1:21 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

Banner Graphic Featuring A Detail from The Vicissitude of the Seasons Explained

New banner graphic featuring my name written in Hebrew over
“The Vicissitude of the Seasons Explained” from Bowles 1780 Map of the World

On Christmas night I got a random Facebook message from a Peruvian friend of mine who recently moved to Israel. After we were done chatting, I asked the same request I’ve asked a few other times to friends in distant lands, “Can you translate my name into ____Hebrew____?” A few moments later I was sent the basis for these six new banners. Now my name is now randomly displayed in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Chinese, and Russian.

Below are the rest of the new banner graphics hyperlinked to their original blog entries:

Swampoodle Quilt #2

Banner Graphic Featuring Swampoodle Quilt No.2

Racine Quilt #2

Banner Graphic Featuring Racine Quilt No. 2

West Sahara Lake Circles Quilt

Vassar Quilt Refraction
$Banner Graphic Featuring Vassar Quilt Refraction$

University of Southern California Quilt

Related Entries:

5 More Random Banners Now ‘Greek’ Visitors
|| 9/19/2009 || 3:47 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Banner Graphic Featuring I-35W Bridge Quilt #2

New banner graphic featuring my name written in Greek over I-35W Bridge Quilt #2

About a month ago I had a random friend request on Facebook from a woman named Athina who lives in Greece. Opting to inflate my friend count over potential security fears, I added her without question. A couple weeks later I visited her Facebook page and noticed that she has a blog that was written completely in the Greek language. I had just posted my latest batch of banners using the Cyrillic alphabet, so I sent her an e-mail asking if she’d be interested in translating my name into Greek. She obliged and today I made 5 more banners to be randomly displayed.

Greek is one of the languages I’ve always wanted to learn. I spent some time in high school taking Latin, which I have since found to be an invaluable contribution to my continued exploration of history. But Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean around the time of the birth of Christ, has always fascinated me. The Septuagint, a 3rd century B.C. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, used this dialect of the language. And while modern Greek is considerably different in many aspects from it’s thousand+ year-old counterpart, I would still like to learn both or at least start getting my mind around the alphabet.

Now I would be remiss if I didn’t return the cultural exchange for my friend Athina who did the translation for me. She owns a yacht charter company called Stamatis Yachting, which offers a wide variety of yachts that can take you & your friends around the various Greek islands. They also have skippers that can be contracted so you don’t have to know how to sail in order to experience the joys of sailing on the Mediterranean. If you are planning on a trip to Greece in the near future, please do not hesitate to contact her about chartering one of their yachts.

Below are the rest of the new banner graphics hyperlinked to their original blog entries:

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40 Random Banners Now Greet You
|| 8/31/2009 || 10:27 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

A banner graphic featuring my name written using the Cyrillic alphabet over my map New York Public Library Quilt

New banner graphic featuring my name written using the Cyrillic alphabet over my map New York Public Library Quilt

The last time I added new banner graphics to this website was back in July of 2007 and since I’ve been updating the layout of this website lately, I decided to add some new banners into the mix. Earlier today a friend of mine who specializes in the Russian language responded to an e-mail I sent her about Google’s translation of my name. Her response indicated that the translation was infact an incorrect spelling and she offered a substitute spelling. I was then able to cut & paste the text and make six new banners that feature my name using the Cyrillic alphabet over the top of previously made maps on this website. In conjunction with the first batch of banner graphics that I made, there are now 40 different banner graphics that are randomly displayed each time a page on this blog is loaded.

Below are the rest of the new banner graphics hyperlinked to their original blog entries:

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The Infinite E-mail – An Artistic Potential Security Flaw in Apple’s Mail Application [Inbox Art]
|| 8/12/2009 || 1:53 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

A screen grab showing the Safari browser option of e-mailing a webpage

Imagine that every time you clicked on an e-mail in your inbox, the e-mail showed something different. Well thats what I discovered last night before I went to bed.

A few weeks ago I found out that Mac users can send fully coded HTML e-mails using Apple’s Mail Application. All one needs to do is open up Safari, go to the page you want to e-mail, and select “Mail Contents of This Page” in the File Menu (see image above). The contents of the page are then automatically pasted into an e-mail that is ready to be sent:

A screen grab showing the HTML in an e-mail

But what if the HTML contains PHP scripts that dynamically load content? The HTML (originally from the Grand Juxtaposition via the front page of my website) calls two PHP scripts that randomly selects two images from two different folders on my website. So when you click on the e-mail in your inbox, two new images are displayed because Apple’s Mail Application runs the PHP scripts:

A screen grab from Apple's Mail Application showing a different image in the body of the e-mail because the PHP scripts

Notice that the images in the e-mail are different than what was originally sent
Click to view the full-sized image

Lets say the script was malicious and called a website that attempted to download malware. Would this ‘discovery’ be a flaw in Apple’s Mail Application?

So far I have tested this splendid e-mail out by emailing myself the same page to my GMail, Yahoo Mail, and MSN e-mail accounts. With the exception of MSN, which only loaded the foreground graphic and not the background graphic, neither GMail nor Yahoo worked like Apple’s Mail Application. I have not tested it out on Entourage or any other off-line e-mail client programs and I am curious if they’ll run the scripts or not. Regardless, this is probably one of the coolest e-mails ever!

Related Lost Series Entries:

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Postmodern Cartography: You Are Probably Not Here
|| 8/8/2009 || 2:56 pm || 3 Comments Rendered || ||

Just click!

You’ve probably seen a map sometime in your lifetime that proclaims YOU ARE HERE. Well what if you are looking at a random location? You could actually be there, but you are probably not. I first came up with this postmodern cartographic concept back in December of 2007 when I made the first graphic. Yesterday I decided to expand the concept by adding new graphics and making a webpage dedicated to the concept. It currently features only 8 different foreground graphics that are randomly displayed over two folders of map ‘zoom-ins’ (146 close up & 136 far away) originally used in “American Stereography #3.” I hope to add more foreground graphics over time and I would also like to update the background image folders with newer imagery because the page currently shows only maps that I made in 2006.

Total number of visual combinations: 2256 = (146 X 8) + (136 X 8)

Just click click click to cycle through the images

Related Lost Series Entries:

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New Splash Page Graphic Added: “Come in. Don’t steal anything.”
|| 7/12/2009 || 3:42 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

The other night my housemate had some friends over and left this note in the front of our house. I thought it was cute, so I snapped a photo. Since the splash page of my website is somewhat like a front door, I felt it would make a nice addition to the current images that are randomly displayed each time you visit. I don’t have the exact number of visual combinations at the moment because the folder that contains most of the maps stops counting at 2,000 images, but I think the number is around 2,500 images.

As for the context of the note, I find it extremely interesting how people use the content I have placed on my website. I have a Fair Use link at the bottom of the page, but most people don’t really follow my request for proper citation. I wouldn’t call it outright theft, which would be claiming what I have created here as their own original artwork, but most of the time people will just use an image without the link back or a note about me. Oh well, there is not much I can do except e-mail them the proper link to use.

Note: The splash page graphic was randomly placed over University of Southern California Quilt

The Grand Juxtaposition
|| 11/15/2008 || 6:38 pm || Comments Off on The Grand Juxtaposition || ||

Back in March of this year, I mentioned that I was in the process of making another interactive environment for the Lost Series. The concept behind “The Grand Juxtaposition” is to put two unrelated images originally featured in a previous blog entry together on the same page. This is achieved by giving the viewer two random pictures from somewhere on this website upon each loading of the web page. In the background of the page, the viewer is shown a random image from my posters folder (which contains over 2,000 different images) and in the foreground the viewer is being shown an image from my images folder (which contains over 500 different images). Upon clicking on the image in the foreground, the next page that loads will be the inverse, where a graphic from the posters folder is placed in the foreground and the a graphic from the image folder is used in the background. Generally speaking, most entries on this website feature images from either one of the two folders and by placing them together on one page, I’ve created a grand juxtaposition to showcase this website’s visually diverse content.

Related Interactive Entries:

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Hello Cherubs – A New Splash Page Graphic Added
|| 3/30/2008 || 1:37 pm || Comments Off on Hello Cherubs – A New Splash Page Graphic Added || ||

With the addition of this graphic, my website’s splash page now contains over 18,675 different visual combinations. I’ve been working on a new lost series project called “The Grand Juxtaposition,” which uses all the images of my website. It should be ready in a week or two. This new splash page graphic was created using the letter z from the Oktober 98 font collection. I colored in the image and removed the color on the book’s page to create a transparency illusion that the book has been opened to one page somewhere on my website. Just hit reload to cycle through the different visual combinations.

Above the cherubs are showing a zoom-in detail of Washington Circle Quilt

you are not here – splash page update #2
|| 12/24/2007 || 5:19 pm || Comments Off on you are not here – splash page update #2 || ||

screen grab featuring a detail of Bangkok Mandala

The other week I added 6 new graphics to the splash page and today I added two new graphics. They are two oversized .gifs that force the viewer to scroll over & down (respectively) to click on the X. With 8 different foreground graphics and 1,927 background graphics, the splash page now has 15,416 different visual combinations.

you are not here – splash page update
|| 12/12/2007 || 10:38 pm || Comments Off on you are not here – splash page update || ||

For the last few month’s I’ve been rumenating over what images I should display on my website’s splash page. I’ve enjoyed having the “Socio Ditata Labore” engraving up, it captured that time of my life perfectly. This morning I came up with an ironic catchphrase that I felt would make a humorous graphic that could be used in conjunction with the engraving: “you are probably not here.” It’s quite possibly the antithesis of the popular catchphrase “you are here.” Even the loading graphic on the Festival of Maps website uses the iconic dot with the words “you are here.” What if a random place in America was chosen instead? There is a slight possibility that the dot would indicate that you REALLY are (t)here. Chances are you won’t be (t)here, but you will be at my website at least….

I also added a scan of a 250 Dinar bill featuring Saddam Hussein, an updated armillary sphere, cell phone photo of my You Are Here street art, and SloMo the Statehood Snail.

There are currently 6 randomly chosen graphics to compliment the 1891 images in the directory. By doing the math, that means there are 11,346 different combinations (and counting) on my website’s splash page and every new Quilt projection map will add 30 new combinations.

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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: