The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Bird’s Eye View of Little Diomede, Alaska
|| 11/2/2008 || 4:38 pm || Comments Off on Bird’s Eye View of Little Diomede, Alaska || ||

The other day I found this photograph above on a friend’s Facebook page. The photograph was taken from an airplane while the friend was traveling Alaska on behalf of their job in the American government. Around the time current Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, made a gaff about being able to see Russia from Alaska, I remembered how there was only one spot in America where this was the case and it just so happened that my friend had recently been there.

Known as the Diomede Islands in America or the Gvozdev Islands in Russia, the two islands are only split by about 4 kilometers. What I’ve always thought was interesting is that the houses on Little Diomede (above) face tomorrow. Due to the placement of the International Date Line, the Russian side is one of the first territories to start the day. This means folks on Big Diomede can also see yesterday.

NASA satellite image of the Diomede Islands

Related 2008 Election Entries:

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The Obligatory MySpace Birthday Screen Grab
|| 10/10/2008 || 7:09 am || Comments Off on The Obligatory MySpace Birthday Screen Grab || ||

On my birthday in 2006 I noticed that my MySpace profile hit 10,000 visitors on my birthday (10/10) and I took a screen grab for archival purposes. I followed up again last year and again this year with the image above.

What I can extrapolate here is not that MySpace presence has diminished (I have more friends today than in 2006 or 2007), rather people are simply using MySpace less and less. This is exactly what happened with Friendster as MySpace began to take over the social networking “scene.” On a given day, I can find most of my friends using Facebook and in this respect I see history repeating. However there is no profile view counter on Facebook, so screen grabs like the one above are not possible.

Related MySpace Entries:

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Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 4 – Fvck Censorship]
|| 5/18/2008 || 3:56 pm || Comments Off on Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 4 – Fvck Censorship] || ||

For my last experiment I decided to just screw around with Facebook to see if I can get one by their censors. This experiment involves the use of geeky lexical humor to poke fun of the antiquated way of using the letter V in place of the letter U and to see if I could get a quasi-curse word through their filters.

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Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 3 – Twenty Phantom Women]
|| 5/17/2008 || 4:45 pm || Comments Off on Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 3 – Twenty Phantom Women] || ||

Who would have thought that there were 20 phantom women who are between 26 & 28 that exist somewhere between Washington, DC and the District of Columbia?

I’d sure like to meet one of those ladies.

It should be noted that the Facebook entry for DC is missing the definite article, as in “the District of Columbia.” Currently it dsnt reed rite.

Related Facebook:

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Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 2 – Banned Ads]
|| 5/16/2008 || 3:39 pm || Comments Off on Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 2 – Banned Ads] || ||

Today I decided to see if I could link to my Facebook or MySpace page. NOPE.

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Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 1 – Basic Ads]
|| 5/15/2008 || 2:47 pm || Comments Off on Experimenting with Facebook’s advertisement system [part 1 – Basic Ads] || ||

Facebook ad showing a link to my Geospatial Art on-line store

Screengrab from Facebook showing my advertisement being served
___names whited out___

On Monday evening I noticed that Facebook was promoting it’s internal advertisement system on my notification panel. As a curious person I decided to check it out and see why I receive so many stupid ads for dating websites. I remember reading a long time ago that at the height of MySpace’s popularity their servers had trouble keeping up with the demand of the user traffic, and while those times have passed, Facebook seems like a clear alternative for social marketing.

So what should I link to? This blog or my on-line store? I chose the on-line store because if I am paying money for a service I might as well get some money back. I also don’t actively promote the store because it’s become too cumbersome to manage and I haven’t added any new maps in ages.

But what to specifically link to? This is where is gets fun.

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Nexus – Facebook Application visually graphs friends and commonalities
|| 3/26/2008 || 2:55 pm || Comments Off on Nexus – Facebook Application visually graphs friends and commonalities || ||

I am a fan of applications that can visualize the interconnectedness of my digital relations. The first iteration of this type of friendgraph was the Friend Wheel Application. While there is isn’t much difference between the two applications, I like how Nexus groups friends non-hierarchically and shows exactly who is connected to who and by what friend. Visually I can see my past and present friends on the radial friendgraph above. (I think it looks like the iconic Death Star from Star Wars.) Off in the corner are my high school friends who I remain in contact with, the lower right and top are college friends, and the far left are my current DC friends. That, however, is a broad generalization because there are so many miscellaneous linkages. What the Nexus application lacks is color customization beyond dark/light, typographical cloud scaling (like friends who link the most receive a larger font), and the application’s residency in a user’s Facebook’s profile. I am still using the Friendwheel application because it shows up in my profile, whereas the Nexus application is an off-site application.

Below is the less visually engaging spring friendgraph.

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random banners now greet you
|| 3/3/2007 || 9:38 pm || Comments Off on random banners now greet you || ||

In an effort to make my website a bit more Internet Explorer friendly, I decided to remove the eponymous flash animation that used to sit on the left side of the screen (It never really showed up properly on IE anyways). The banner has now been replaced with a php script that randomly picks a file in a folder on my website. I made 15 banners that all feature my second generation digital signature in the southwest corner. Each time you visit a new page you will get a new banner displayed (some exceptions). View the entire lot after the fold…

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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: