The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

[Commissioned Map] National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt – Tessellation #1 / Drafts #1 & #2
|| 8/17/2009 || 6:00 pm || Comments Off on [Commissioned Map] National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Quilt – Tessellation #1 / Drafts #1 & #2 || ||

:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::
Sculpture Garden Quilt - Tessellation 1 featuring the Hexagon Quilt Projection by Nikolas Schiller

Today I started on a new commissioned map. The client desires a map of the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Earlier this afternoon I e-mailed a series of eight draft maps so that they could select which one they liked best. The client made it somewhat easy for me because they were interested in either a Hexagon Quilt Projection map (above) or an Octagon Quilt Projection map (below). However, I made the choice somewhat more difficult by providing a map of the location at different spatial scales. The two drafts shown here reveal more of the area around the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art, while tomorrow’s drafts will show the area close up. Over the week I plan on posting the rest of these draft maps, and like my previous commissioned map, the final map of the series will be the one that gets printed out.

Please contact me if you would like to have a custom map designed for your home, your office, or as a gift for someone special!

:: Rendered at 900 x 600 ::
Sculpture Garden Quilt - Tessellation 1 featuring the Octagon Quilt Projection by Nikolas Schiller

“You Are Probably Not Here” featured today on the front page of We Make Money Not Art
|| 8/13/2009 || 1:40 pm || Comments Off on “You Are Probably Not Here” featured today on the front page of We Make Money Not Art || ||

Screen grab of the front page of We Make Money Not Art --- links to the actual review, not front page

This morning I woke up to find that Régine Debatty used a screen grab from my “You Are Probably Not Here” project for her book review of “Experimental Geography.” Take a moment to read the review and/or purchase the book.

As you may or may not know, my map Pentagon Quilt #3 is featured on page 149 of the book and is also on display in the traveling exhibition that is touring North America for the next year or so. The exhibit is currently on display at The Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico until September, 20, 2009.

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

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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Groupon.com is illegally using my map “DC Stencil” for a Facebook advertisement
|| 8/10/2009 || 6:09 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

Screen grab from Facebook showing my map DC Stencil being used without my permission -- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image

About 15 minutes ago I visited my Profile Page on Facebook and noticed a familiar map of mine was being used without my authorization:

DC Stecnil by Nikolas Schiller - created August 22nd, 2005

My website’s Fair Use policy states “For any intended commercial use of content on this website, I request that you contact me so that we can arrange appropriate compensation.” There was no effort to contact me before using my map in the advertisement and had they chosen to contact me, I would have requested some form of compensation. I decided to report the advertisement to Facebook:

Screen grab from Facebook showing my map DC Stencil being used without my permission and my message to Facebook as to why the ad should be removed-- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image
(Yes I am aware of the grammatical error!)

I also sent the company, which I am purposely not linking to in this entry, a polite cease and desist e-mail asking them to either take down the advertisement or pay me and I sent out a tweet linking to this entry. Maybe I should pursue further action? Let’s see how they respond…

UPDATE – A few minutes after I sent my Tweet, I received the following responses:

Twitter replies about the illegal Facebook ad

Later in the evening I noticed that they merely changed the graphic and kept the original ad:

Screen grab from Facebook showing the same ad with a new graphic-- click to see full size

Click the Screen Grab to see the full-size image

Makes me wonder if they are using someone else’s image illegally?

UPDATE – This morning I received this e-mail:

So I get to BUG him about a $10 coupon after my copyright was violated? That ad was probably seen by thousands of people! What a crock.

UPDATE – August 12th, 2009 – I decided to do some sleuthing and found that the image that Groupon.com replaced my image with was also a copyrighted image! Using the website TinEye.com I was able to eventually trace their current image to this blog entry. I contacted the copyright holder and he said that he had not given them permission to use his photograph either….

Photo of the Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt Printed on Polyester Fabric
|| 8/7/2009 || 6:00 pm || Comments Off on Photo of the Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt Printed on Polyester Fabric || ||

I gave this map to the client Wednesday afternoon, but not before snapping a photograph of the final version of the map. I have to say that seeing a map on my website is a completely different experience than seeing one in person. When you are actually looking at the map, all the details come through, as opposed to viewing them on-line, where the map’s scale is reduced considerably. This map was printed at 60″ x 40″ on polyester fleece and I am quite happy how the printing turned out! I sincerely hope the final recipient enjoys it :-)

As always, send me a message if you interested in purchasing a map or having one commissioned for yourself or as a gift.

– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation One
– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Two
– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Three
– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Four
– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School – Tessellation Five
– [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt

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[Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt
|| || 3:35 pm || Comments Off on [Commissioned Map] Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt || ||

: rendered at 9,000 X 6,000 :
Sandy Spring Friends School Quilt by Nikolas R. Schiller

Of the draft maps created for this series, it was the scaled down version of Tessellation Number Three that was ultimately chosen. Up next, a photo of the map printed on fabric :-)

Click here to view the Google Map of Sandy Spring Friends School in Montgomery County, Maryland .

: Close-up Detail of the Sandy Spring Friends School :
Close up view of the school