The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

White House Peace
|| 3/13/2008 || 2:56 pm || Comments Off on White House Peace || ||

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 : White House Peace by Nikolas Schiller .

Similar to the Shanghai Map, this map uses Chinese characters as a decorative element. The source aerial photography of the White House was censored by the government before it was released to the public. I documented this about a year ago with my Lost Series project “The White House is off-limits to the public.” Unlike the Shanghai Map, I made a tessellation using the words for PEACE instead of placing the glyphs at the bottom. I was, however, thinking of revisiting this map in the near future and adding more text. As it is now, I think it’s somewhat plain, and deserves something else. I’m not sure what that ‘else’ is yet.

View the Google Map (which shows older imagery) of the White House.

View the rest of the details:

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Within Sight of the White House [Overlay of Hooker’s Division]
|| 12/9/2007 || 2:30 am || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

[image links to .kmz file]
Google Earth Screen Shot of the Antique Overlay

One of the maps I recently downloaded was from a newspaper clipping showing the area near the White House. With 50 Saloons and 109 Bawdy-Houses the map was drawn to highlight business owners who were paying Federal taxes but not DC taxes. Of importance is how nearly all but four of the business owners were female. Were they not paying taxes because they were disenfranchised? Women’s suffrage didn’t come for another 30 years with the passage of the 19th Amendment. By taking the map and importing it into Google Earth, I was able to arrange it so that the buildings line up with minimal distortion. It’s not a perfect map, but it is truly an interesting glimpse into downtown Washington, DC in the 1890’s.

Today most of the buildings are all gone. There are some exceptions, like City Hall (Central Powerhouse) and the Old Post Office, which is written as the “New Post Office” on the map. In the place of the 109 Bawdy-Houses and 50 Saloons was the creation of Federal Triangle. Ohio Ave- gone, DC’s entertainment center, gone as well. Later built, on the year of my birth, was Freedom Plaza which was designed to look like L’Enfant’s map no less. By adjusting the antique map’s transparency you can see a approximately 117 years of development. From brothel to federal, what a strange entity time is.

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A new change in Washington, DC’s imagery on Google’s servers
|| 7/10/2007 || 9:42 am || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

For the last 3 years I have followed how the aerial & satellite imagery of Washington, DC has been released, redacted, and remixed. This entry marks another important observation and a new discovery in Google Maps.

Last week I discovered the extent to which Google has updated their servers with the 2005 USGS aerial photography. My findings suggest that Google has censored much of downtown Washington, DC by not using a substanial amount of newer imagery.

Continue reading:

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Ball of Destruction
|| 9/29/2005 || 9:00 pm || 1 Comment Rendered || ||

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
Ball of Destruction by Nikolas Schiller

Ball of Destruction

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The Modern Geographer
|| 3/25/2005 || 11:55 am || Comments Off on The Modern Geographer || ||

This is my first draft of what I am calling “The Modern Geographer.” The background is a painting titled “The Geographer” by one of my favorite painters of all time, Johannes Vermeer. I scanned a picture I had of the painting and modified it to give it symmetry. I used a poser from one of my programs and mapped her body with the 2002 USGS aerial photography of the area around the White House in Washington, DC. I ended up rendering it at 8000X6000, but I realized that when I scanned the painting, I scanned it too large so that if you look closely you can actually see the RGB colors dots from the printer. I am going to rescan to the painting so I can downsample it slightly and make the colors a bit more richer. I’m still not sure where I should place the poser, or if I should include more posers, possible give her a globe to gaze at, she is a Modern Geographer afterall…

Related White House Entries:

Related Mother Earth Entries:

DC Lenz #3
|| 2/8/2005 || 10:22 pm || + Render A Comment || ||

Thank Spacing Imaging for providing me with that image. Its the same image that I used in the “site map” and on the newly formed intro page. This time I used the fact that the source image had limited resolution (1280 x 1024 pixels) and I multiplied it a total of 36 times to achieve a larger mendala. The lenz was the same size as DC Lenz #2, as well as the same backround layout. This is one of my favorites, but the pixels are owned by someone else. :-(

Last week at the ESRI Federal GIS Users Conference I picked up a MASSIVE print of Las Vegas, Nevada and this week some of my friends began discussing the possibility of going to Las Vegas this spring. The Digital Globe print has all of the mega resorts and even a perfect zenith over the Luxor. I, however, do not have any plans to go there. Its a place I want to go to when I have a lot of money to blow.

So it turns out that the guy who gave me the dinars was actually an ROTC Guy who is studying law in DC. He is currently “undeployable.” I think once he graduates he’ll be off to the front lines. God speed soldier. Bring me back more worthless money that shows the price of liberation.

view detail of the center:

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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: