«Unleash the beast» – Houdini

On my journey to leave Maya behind me and not being involved in any 3D production work I started to learn some Houdini.

Since I saw it the first time back at Siggraph in 1996 I was drawn to it. But my professional jobs never left any time to dig into it.

I really love Houdini and I find it the best package out there. But… It became very clear very fast that to become proficient in using it would need a large junk of time.

Nevertheless here’s my interpretation of a tutorial by Nine Between.

Stärnefee Panorama & Website

I had the honor to create 360 degree panoramas of this lovely store in Riggisberg called Särnefee. It’s an art-deco store with loads of treasures and beautiful things.


I also did their website and the detail photos in the store (mostly used as backgrounds on the website).

EinAusStellung 2017

I am participating in the 3rd edition of the EinAusStellung in Thun.

I am showing the photographic landscape series «Eiche».

Nikon D810

I a proud to be a new owner of a Nikon D810. This is the best camera I ever hel in my hands. The design is just wow. Already when you pick her up, you ralize that this body is made for professionals (oh, wait, that’s sexist…). The features and the way the buttons are setup is very well thought through. Compared to the Canon D1100 I had, it’s a complete different realm. And off course, the best thing about the D810 is the pictures it delivers. The Sensor is a beast and the dynamic range it produces is phenomanal.
nikond810
I was split between the D750 and the D810. The D810 has the best Sensor you can get in a DSLR today. The D750 has a lot of new features like built in WiFi, swivel screen, awesome filming features etc. But for me the main reason to go for the D810 was the sensor. I am taking pictures of peoples paintings so they can print them in various sizes and therefore I need all the pixels I can get. Plus I was able to score a used body for the price of a new D750 at a professional shop. The body has only 9k exposures and Nikon warranty until the end of next year. So after almost a year of reserch and debates with myslef, the decision was easy.

Block zooming of Google maps

Google maps are used almost everywhere to either implement an address of a business, club, store or anything else on a lot of pages on the internet. It’s a nice and convenient way to do it.

BUT… almost on all pages where this is done, when you scroll down using the mouse wheel, once the mouse ends up inside the Google map, the map starts zooming out instead of the page continuing to scroll down.

Here’s how to make a Google map not zoom in or out when you scroll down a page with the mouse wheel and only zoom, pan or do anything with the Google map as soon as you click inside the map. The following workflow also blocks zooming again once the mouse leaves the Google map area.

I got this from Stackoverflow, reproducing it here in case the zombie apocalypse breaks out and stackoverflow goes bun bun.

First you want to add the following style to your website or custom CSS script in your WordPress installation:

.scrolloff {
  pointer-events: none;
}

Then you want to add the following JavaScript to the page:

<script type="text/javascript">
    jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
    console.log("allLoaded");
        // you want to enable the pointer events only on click;
        jQuery('#map_canvas1').addClass('scrolloff'); // set the pointer events to none on doc ready
	console.log("scrolloffAddedA");
        jQuery('#canvas1').on('click', function () {
	    console.log("clickDetected");
            jQuery('#map_canvas1').removeClass('scrolloff'); // set the pointer events true on click
	    console.log("scrolloffRemoved");
        });
        // you want to disable pointer events when the mouse leave the canvas area;
        jQuery("#map_canvas1").mouseleave(function () {
	    console.log("mouseLeft");
            jQuery('#map_canvas1').addClass('scrolloff'); // set the pointer events to none when mouse leaves the map area
	    console.log("scrolloffAddedB");
        });
    });
</script>

Note that I have a whole lot of echo’s in the code which let’s you debug the code. You might want to consider switching that off for efficiency.

And finally that’s how you want to embed the map itself:

<section id="canvas1" class="map">
<iframe id="map_canvas1" src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d87147.27677140976!2d7.324830610654608!3d46.95476576996358!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x478e39c0d43a1b77%3A0xcb555ffe0457659a!2sBern!5e0!3m2!1sde!2sch!4v1462400079917" width="100%" height="485" frameborder="0" style="border:0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</section>

Here is how this looks like in the end:


DSGVO Cookie-Einwilligung mit Real Cookie Banner