Diary — Blog — Creative Acoustician

Creative Acoustician

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The car upgrade process has begun

The car upgrade process has begun

When I was 18 with a fresh driver’s license, my top priority was to upgrade my car – a W124 200D – with a subwoofer. The only thing I cared about was to get maximum bass. I put a 12” closed box and power amp in the trunk and from what I remember, it worked quite well! Thinking back now, I do have some serious doubts regarding sound quality when matching terrible factory speakers from the 1980’s with a (then) modern powerful sub. But that was not important then. Bass was. Two and a half decades later, here I am, designing a car audio system for a W124 again. The circle is closed. But this time however, I intend to do it right.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistNovember 15, 2024car, driving, car audio, w124, DIYComment

Unexpected benefits

Unexpected benefits

The last time I moved, I found some moving boxes that hadn’t been unpacked…since the previous time I moved! This is obviously one of the most pointless things ever. If the contents were so unimportant that you haven’t used them in years and honestly forgot about them, chances are they belong in the trash or the 2nd hand market. However, sometimes there can be exceptions.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistNovember 8, 2024minimalism, organize, home, carsComment

Old vs New car

Old vs New car

Just after 15:00, a beautiful autumn sunset, perfect traffic conditions and around 4 hours on the Swedish main road E4. A full tank of diesel and two nights of proper sleep. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was just smiling in a state of total relaxation. This is what driving is all about. And I haven’t felt it this strongly in years. The W124 has finally arrived in my garage.

Engineering, Diary, TravelRikard ÖqvistNovember 1, 2024cars, driving, safety, evolution, designComment

Why a real car should be analogue

Why a real car should be analogue

Nowadays, all cars have electronic parking brakes. This makes me worried, when I consider the declining birth rates and the threat of population collapse. Up until the turn of the millennia, the handbrake was an important component in human reproduction. When a male identified an attractive female, he would usually engage the handbrake and slide the car. This manoeuvre was very effective in attracting female attention, and usually resulted in 2,5 kids and a Volvo on the driveway some years later.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistOctober 11, 2024cars, motorcycle, petrolhead, driving, futureComment

A proper barn-find?

A proper barn-find?

I recently sold my Kodiaq L&K SUV, and now I plan to replace it with a 31-year-old classic W124. It all started out as an obvious way to save money because my wife is not commuting while on parental leave and it did not make sense to have two expensive cars rusting away in the carport. We decided to try and get by with only one car. Before long, we realized that a 2nd car is indeed a very good idea when you’re living in the countryside. But it does not have to be anything fancy if you only need it a couple of times per month. I then remembered that my grandfathers very nice W124 has been collecting dust in a garage for at least a decade. Is this a proper barn find perhaps?

DiaryRikard ÖqvistOctober 4, 2024cars, retro, sustainability, classic, mercedes benz, analog, petrolheadComment

Canine early-warning system

Canine early-warning system

Dogs and humans have been together for some 30 000 years or thereabouts. We are so intertwined that our evolutionary progression is linked. Apparently, when hunter-gatherers domesticated dogs back in the day, they obviously served as an excellent early-warning system. Dogs are more alert and will detect any incoming danger well before us humans. This is a killer feature and no wonder that we have become good friends over the years. Here’s a cool fact about dogs. Your sleep quality improves if you have a snoring dog nearby.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistSeptember 19, 2024dogs, sleep, rest, labradorComment

Train or airplane?

Train or airplane?

This Monday, I had a morning meeting in Gothenburg. Since I am a tired old man nowadays, I detest the morning flights, especially with connections. It means waking up before going to bed and feeling like a flipper ball with all the transfers, security checks and stress. I sincerely hate it. However, a mate of mine advised me to grab the night train. When the train works, it is fantastic. There are two killer features with the train. No connections and when you wake up you are precisely in the city center.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistSeptember 5, 2024travelling, train, flying, business tripComment

An antidote to stress

An antidote to stress

A week ago, we christened our daughter. We had just left for the church with not much extra time to spare when I realized that we had forgotten an important detail – The christening gown… After the child, this is perhaps the second most important thing for the ceremony, so forgetting it at home is quite the achievement. In a case like this, you better make sure that you left too early because doing an unplanned detour back home to pick something up costs a lot of time that you do not have. At least that is the obvious solution; never leave at the last minute but instead wait a while at the destination. That will give you the margin you need. But i think there is another way that is even more important, at least for me.

Diary, HabitsRikard ÖqvistAugust 15, 2024stress, preparation, habits, efficiencyComment

Period correct hardware and friends

Period correct hardware and friends

Last weekend we did a trip down memory lane; a LAN party using period correct Windows 98 hardware and four old (also) period correct friends. I played a ton of LAN parties back in the day and was often the organizer of large ones, sometimes up to about 20 people. Then there was a big gap when everyone was busy building families and careers for a decade or two. But rest assured, it is still just as fun today as back then. It might be even more fun today, because grumpy old men like us have now learned to value time in a completely different way. I am hard pressed to come up with any better way to spend time than an event such as this.

Computer, DiaryRikard ÖqvistAugust 2, 2024friends, retro computers, gaming, tinkering, cultureComment

Difficult problems are also Easier

Difficult problems are also Easier

Two months ago, I became a father for the third time. I have heard countless times that “when you become a parent, you will never have any more time of your own again” or something similar. Which is a big fat lie, of course. It just requires priorities and planning. A very good approach to a problem that seems too difficult is to realize that the reason you are stuck is because the problem is too easy. By increasing the difficulty level, you eliminate more of your options, until only a handful or preferably only one option remain. If you only have one choice, then the path forward becomes rather obvious.

Diary, HabitsRikard ÖqvistJuly 5, 2024habits, routine, consistencyComment

Vacation crescendo

Vacation crescendo

The usual pattern again. Everyone wants to deliver important projects before the vacation and the final weeks up until the last Friday feels like a metronome that speeds up exponentially. Let us also throw a couple of urgent surprise problems that require you to drop everything and hyper-focus without interruption for 8 hours straight. No, we are not saturated enough, we also need sick kids that must go to the emergency room, dogs with wounds, and a computer that blows itself up in the middle of an important delivery. Then I went outdoors, the rain started pouring and I inhaled a mosquito and almost puked. What a wonderful day!

Habits, Family, Parenting, DiaryRikard ÖqvistJune 21, 2024preparation, parenting, computers, mindfulness, focusComment

To-do lists and vacation

To-do lists and vacation

Vacation is rapidly approaching, and there are 10X more things to do compared to available time. The usual approach has been to go for the more boring list and as a house owner there is an endless supply of things to attend. I have things on that list that has been there for five years. But one has to prioritize… Me and my wife just tried a new approach. We wrote both a “chore list” and a “fun list”. Consequently, this shall be our best vacation ever, Inshallah.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistJune 13, 2024scheduling, vacation, planning, habitsComment

Less is more

Less is more

After finding my destroyed Airpods a week ago, I did a little experiment and dug out my unused pair of cable headphones that came with the phone. Now I have been using them for a week and I have made some interesting observations. In a full week, I have used them only two times. I took a phone call while walking, and I listened to some Youtube stuff tonight for around 10 minutes. And it is not that I have improved my self-control. Simply put, the cable headphones are lightyears worse than wireless Airpods. They are extremely bad from a usability perspective. Paradoxically I can now confirm that it is also their greatest strength.

Diary, HabitsRikard ÖqvistMay 23, 2024apple, airpods, focus, habits, disciplineComment

Good riddance!

Good riddance!

Some months ago, on a dog walk this winter in a rough snowstorm, I dropped my Airpods. I didn’t notice they were gone it until I got back home. I instantly returned and backtracked to look for them. But a white Airpod case is near invisible in snow, and even though I was back in the same place just a couple of minutes later, they were already buried. They were gone. And that turned out to be a very good thing.

Habits, DiaryRikard ÖqvistMay 17, 2024apple, airpods, habits, coffee, attention Comment

Sleep habits in the land of the midnight sun

Sleep habits in the land of the midnight sun

I listened to a long podcast about the importance of sleep and to keep a solid routine for your circadian rhythm. It was nothing new under the sun, except for a couple of eye-opening facts such that shift workers die 15 years earlier on average (!). A proper sleep habit with enough hours in bed gives massive, massive health benefits and reduced risks for just about everything. It all sounds great on paper, but to apply it up here in the north of Sweden is slightly frustrating…

Diary, HabitsRikard ÖqvistApril 19, 2024Comment

Quality time

Quality time

My oldest son (5yo) is a petrolhead and loves anything with an engine. That’s why I got the brilliant idea of using up a bunch of airline and hotel bonus points to book a father-son weekend in Stockholm. We would go on an airplane, buses, trams, trains, and metro. Those things that I usually couldn’t like even if I tried, but with petrolhead junior, just about any boring chore can be fun again. What a blessing it is to experience it all once again through him. We threw in a couple of museums and a zoo into the equation too.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistApril 12, 2024parenting, travellingComment

The importance of a clean mind

The importance of a clean mind

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my weekly writing is the importance of a clean mind before writing. The first hundred posts or so, I wrote first thing in the morning. And the past few months it has usually been the final activity before bed. That implies a very high probability that I have recently used my smart phone just before writing. Or watched something on YouTube or read something… whatever. It doesn’t matter because the effect is the same. It feels almost impossible to come up with something original topic when you have saturated your mind with someone else’s thoughts.

Habits, DiaryRikard ÖqvistApril 5, 2024writing, focus, habitsComment

Dreams and stress

Dreams and stress

I just exited a streak of around ~100 work hours in nine days. It has been quite high stress level in general and intense periods of focus. It is fascinating how the body enters a high alert state and how I have been able to function in a state of sleep depravation with sometimes down to 4 hours per night. But today, when I finally lowered my guard and rest mode activates, I was unable to stay awake at all. The mental realisation that the crunch is over for now, takes a bit of time to process into a physical realisation. It is a damn nice feeling though when it happens.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistMarch 29, 2024stress, burnout, work, healthComment

To long for the dentist

To long for the dentist

Two weeks ago, I tried out a proper toothache for the first time. It was just as enjoyable as it sounds. I don’t know why it is perceived worse than for example a pain in a leg or an arm? I’ve had my fair share of those, and I don’t recall it to ever being as bad. Maybe it is because pain in your teeth is inside your head, and if you ask anyone where they “are” in their body, I guess that many would consider their brain as the most important part of the machinery where your soul resides. And in that case, the closer any physical pain gets to the perceived center of your soul, the more painful it becomes? You can’t hide from it or think about something else when you have a migraine.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistMarch 8, 2024Comment

Tech-savvy kids

Tech-savvy kids

This weekend I had a big wow experience. I introduced my five-year-old son to Minecraft. I just put a gamepad in his hands, and a short time later, I glanced at the screen and stopped in my tracks. He had just built a little house with a kitchen and a library, with an additional lookout tower complete with an internal ladder to get to the top. To keep the monsters away, there were some bonfires and torches. The learning curve will never cease to amaze me. It is not too long ago that he was pushing the go pedal in Mario Kart straight into a wall. Fast-forward 1-2 years and he beats me. And now he’s creating things in Minecraft. Playing a first- or third-person game is more challenging than understanding a racing game. It is mind-boggling how fast it happened.

Computer, Diary, ParentingRikard ÖqvistFebruary 29, 2024minecraft, computer, gaming, parentingComment