The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

My Record Cover Was Featured On Current TV Last Night
|| 11/12/2009 || 1:47 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Screen grab from the Current TV program Embedded, which features Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation holding up the record Supreme Illusion

Last night a friend of mine from college, Andrew Wiseman, left a message on my Facebook wall saying that he saw the map I made on Current TV. Knowing that I had met the film crew back in June of this year at the 18th Street Lounge, I was expecting the show to eventually broadcast. Earlier today the full show was uploaded to YouTube:

Around 18 minutes into the episode, while Eric Hilton and Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation are at the record shop Som Records (about 4 blocks from my house), Rob picks up the record Supreme Illusion, which I licensed Pentagon Quilt and Lower Manhattan Quilt as the cover artwork.

If you don’t want to watch the entire show, you can skip to 50 second mark on this truncated version of the show:

[Watch on YouTube]

YouTube Video of Teabaggers Having A Rally On Astroturf
|| 9/16/2009 || 6:43 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

[Watch on YouTube]

Last Friday, on the evening before the Taxpayer March On Washington, a large group of teabaggers, patriots, small-government conservatives, and libertarians staged a rally at CityCenterDC, the site of the old Washington, DC Convention center. Little did they know they were standing on Astroturf.

Astroturfing is a word that describes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior. Being that the Taxpayer March on Washington was promoted heavily by Fox News and other conversation media organizations, it was far from being a grassroots mobilization. So when I realized the demonstrators were actually standing on astroturf, I decided to make this short video to highlight the irony of the spectacle.

As predicted, Russia Today continues to promote 9/11 Conspiracy Theories on the 8th Anniversary of 9/11
|| 9/14/2009 || 11:09 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

As I predicted last week, Russia Today continued their somewhat unusual promotion of the 9/11 Truth Movement during the 8th anniversary of 9/11. Instead of producing one or two news reports, which I expected (specifically one about the Van Jones resignation), the news organization produced no less than seven in the last week. On the flip side, there wasn’t many other articles or videos produced by any of the major news organizations in the same period that address the questions surrounding the world changing event. As I posited last week, I am still curious as to why Russia Today continues to be the only news organization covering this contentious topic. Does the Russian government believe in the conspiracy theory? Does the Russian government hope to destabilize America by producing propaganda that makes American’s question the official story? I still don’t know, but I think its important to understand why no other news organization, privately owned or state sponsored, is aggressively reporting this issue as much as Russia Today.

Below are the YouTube videos Russia Today produced in the last week:

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Photographs of Friday’s Opening Rally of the Taxpayers March on DC at CityCenterDC
|| 9/11/2009 || 11:15 am || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

Earlier this evening I noticed one of my friends had posted photos of the Tea Party Rally taking place at City Center DC on Facebook. I was planning on going that part of the city to attend a gallery opening, so I decided to stop by the event and take some photographs of people in the crowd.

Generally speaking, I’ve always felt this Taxpayer March on Washington reeks of astroturf— a term used for fake grassroots. With this weekend’s Taxpayer March on Washington being heavily promoted on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, it cannot be considered grassroots by any means. The concept of a grassroots movement is that it is organic and not promoted from the top down, but organized from the bottom up.

Upon arriving at City Center I was immediately aware that the “patriots” were actually standing on astroturf. I let out a hearty laugh at the irony many of those present were not aware of. Below are some of the photographs I took earlier this evening. In a couple days I hope to have the videos I recorded uploaded to YouTube.

Manipulated photo showing some of the Tea Party Patriors

Manipulated photo showing some of the demonstrators

View the rest:

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Russia Today Is Paying Google To Promote The 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
|| 9/7/2009 || 11:09 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

For the last few weeks Van Jones, the White House’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, has been vilified in the media and on-line because signed on to a document in 2004 that supported a new investigation on what happen on 9/11/01. Due to the subsequent public relations fallout, he resigned from his position over the weekend. Yesterday afternoon I decided to do a search for news articles related to this episode in 9/11 political theater and came across something I wasn’t exactly expecting.

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The Pentagon Timelapse Animated GIF (2001-2005)
|| 9/1/2009 || 5:00 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Still frame from The Pentagon Timelapse Animated GIF featuring USGS aerial photography from 2005
Click the image above to watch the animation

Last night I was going through one of my external hard drives and rediscovered a cache of “old” satellite imagery. I rarely publish any entries that use satellite imagery due to copyright issues because, generally speaking, the company that owns the satellite also owns all the pixels and this prevents me from legally creating derivative works. Today, however, I decided to test the boundaries with this legacy satellite imagery of the Pentagon and feel that this creation is protected under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law. You can always contact GeoEye if you are interested in purchasing satellite imagery from the IKONOS satellite.

The Animated GIF below features 9 frames consisting of 7 satellite images from the IKONOS Satellite (2001-2002) and two public domain aerial photographs from the USGS (2002 & 2005). It begins with satellite imagery taken four days before 9/11/01 and ends with a USGS aerial photograph taken in September 2005. The frames in between show the aftermath and the subsequent rebuilding of the Pentagon. I did my best to line up the building in my image editing program, but it’s not 100% perfect due to the angle in which some of the imagery was taken.

I have chosen to place the The Pentagon Timelapse Animated GIF “below the fold” so that visitors to the front page of this website are not downloading the somewhat large file. Please be patient while it downloads……

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Lower Manhattan Quilt
|| 9/5/2006 || 6:50 pm || Comments Off on Lower Manhattan Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

This map turned out perfect. The swaths from the airplanes that took the original photographs create an interesting color differential around the center and the site of the World Trade Center fell directly on a seam (check the details).

View the Google Map of lower Manhattan.

View Rendering Details:

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Pentagon Quilt
|| 4/22/2006 || 8:42 am || Comments Off on Pentagon Quilt || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Pentagon Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

I’ve decided to venture over the Potomac River and make a few maps of the Washington, DC hinterland. Up next will be Rosslyn and the CIA building.

I don’t know why I decided to make maps of the Pentagon & CIA, but I figured why not just focus on a couple buildings? Most of my maps are comprised of specific areas instead of specific buildings, so in some respects, while they are not technically different, these two maps are a slight departure from the norm.

View the Google Map of the Pentagon

: detail :

View the rest of the details:

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America Supports You, “Freedom Walk”
|| 9/11/2005 || 7:17 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Today Angela & I took part in the America Supports You “Freedom Walk,” and I must say that we definitely celebrated our freedom….

read my account:

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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: