Steve jobs on consulting

Steve Jobs once did a speech on consulting and how crucial it is for learning and improvement to “stick around” for a long time, several years, to fully “own” the consequences of your recommendations. I have worked as a consultant most of my professional life and it hit very close to home. In the building industry where I am an acoustic consultant, the delay between your first advice to a client to the finalized building is measured in years. And I am finally getting old enough to seeing several of “my” projects materialize. It is equally scary and wonderful.

Acoustics, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistMarch 21, 2024acoustics, consulting, wisdom, construction, buildingsComment

Analogies between AI and Wooden buildings

Since almost ten years, I have been doing a yearly guest lecture at my old university. In the beginning of my presentation, I use a couple of slides where I demonstrate Moore´s law, and how the fastest supercomputer on Earth was beaten by a Playstation less than ten years later. Then I move on to demonstrate where we are now and a hint where we are going. I usually look up what is the state of the art shortly before the lecture, and every time I notice that the monster computer that was the king of the hill, was already old news. And indeed, progress is accelerating. But what does this have to do with wooden constructions?

EngineeringRikard ÖqvistFebruary 23, 2024acoustics, wood, timber, buildings, AI, moores lawComment

An analogy between drum practice and a career

Five weeks ago, on day 1539 of learning Bleed, I doubled my efforts in drum playing from 15 minutes per day to 30 minutes per day. Up until the 9th of October, it felt as if I had almost stagnated for about 6-9 months. It is very nice to see the results now and wow, what a difference it made to increase the efforts. For the past 36 days I have finally felt steady progress again. I suspect that after 4-5 years of daily practice I had reached a skill level on the drums where 15 minutes just isn’t enough to advance anymore. It’s an interesting observation because I have seen similar patterns in my professional life.

Diary, PhilosophyRikard ÖqvistNovember 15, 2023focus, skill, practice, habits, career, drums, acousticsComment

It takes very little to make things nice

Last Thursday I had one of the best cups of tea ever and on Friday I visited the nicest public toilet in a gas station ever. And it was all because of unforeseen events that messed up my original plans. It was a great reminder about how important it is to always snap back into normal mode as quickly as humanly possible and not be upset. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you will certainly miss a lot of opportunities. Good planning and preparation is my personal savior in this regard.

DiaryRikard ÖqvistJuly 4, 2023mindset, peace, acoustics, road trip, travellingComment

Don’t waste your time with daytime noise measurements

Last week I got an urgent call to measure noise from installations as soon as humanly possible, in a project which have had some problems with too loud ventilation. The problem had just been mitigated (hopefully) but they still needed a protocol to give the green light to the building. I basically booked the next possible flight and went to Stockholm. Usually, I hate doing these one-day trips. They can often be exhausting. This time however, it wasn’t a complete disaster. I had planned extreme margins both before and after the measurement. Still, I learned a couple of valuable lessons on why these one-day trips are a bad idea anyway.

Engineering, AcousticsRikard ÖqvistDecember 12, 2022noise, installations, ventilation, acoustics, buildings, quality Comments

Running with a bicycle on your back

I am almost embarrassed to tell you that I haven’t jumped on the dwg bandwagon until 2022. On the other hand, I have a feeling that I am far from alone among acousticians. It is common that we “paint” on PDF files instead of working with “real” dwg files. This has been a thorn in my eye for many years. PDF painting works fine if you are only going to do one (1) drawing and no updates, preferably in a small building. But that’s not how it works! To do multiple revisions of drawings in large multi-storey building can easily take hours to do in Bluebeam Revu, because it is not the right tool for the job. For example, I recently did an update of a school with new floor plans – 18 drawings in total. With Revit, I could update them in minutes, what would previously take at least half a day. I was smiling the whole of last week.

Acoustics, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistDecember 6, 2022revit, cad, dwg, civil engineering, acoustics, drawingsComment

Silence

The shoemaker's children go barefoot. In my case, that was exceptionally true up until today. I’m an acoustician, which means I have devoted my life to improving the world by improving sound quality. That’s why I have been so embarrassed by my own personal living environment. We had in our kitchen one of those old kitchen cupboard FTX ventilation units including a kitchen fan with the suction power of an asthmatic sucking air through a straw. But that’s not even close to the real problem: The noise. The old unit produced an earth-shattering 42 dBA and 62 (!) dBC in our kitchen. Throughout my whole career, I have never come across anything worse in any dwelling. It was up until today the literal definition of how to NOT practice what you preach.

AcousticsRikard ÖqvistSeptember 26, 2022acoustics, ventilation, sound quality, noise, health, sleep, annoyanceComment

Lessons from parental leave

Tomorrow starts my third week of 100% focus on dad duties. It’s been an interesting time, and a fantastic boot camp for learning better micro-management skills. No matter what task you are trying to accomplish, the only person that can have your back every single time is your past self. Preparation and Routines are crucial. From breakfast to dog walks, you won’t have time to look for misplaced stuff. I have found these weeks thoroughly enjoyable, and it has been the perfect healing that I badly needed for my soul.

Acoustics, Engineering, ParentingRikard ÖqvistJuly 12, 2022kids, parenting, engineering, civil engineering, consulting, acoustics, personalityComment

50 years of progress

A couple of weeks ago, I was checking out a musician 2nd hand site. And I noticed something extremely unusual for a site like that, a vintage Bruel and Kjaer type 2209 sound level analyzer. There is something very appealing with the design of vintage measurement equipment. Everything from the big knobs and clunky switches to the choice of text font just oozes with hand made quality. I thought that this would make an excellent addition to our Umeå office. As a conversation starter, it doesn’t get much better than a professional sound level meter from five decades ago.

AcousticsRikard ÖqvistApril 25, 2022retro, vintage, acoustics, engineering, norsonic, bruel&kjaerComment

Sound pressure level from E-drums

The greatest difference between acoustic drums and electronic drums is that you can control the sound pressure level from the electronic drums by turning the volume knob. Whereas an acoustic drum kit will produce a sound pressure level that is what it is. If you want to play rock or metal, you need to hit the drums hard, or it will not sound or feel right. Consequently, the sound pressure level will be very high. The drummer only has one option, and that is to wear proper hearing protection while drumming, or face a near certain risk of permanent hearing loss. With the E-drums on the other hand, you can choose whatever sound pressure level that you like, and your ears will be safe. Or will they?

Acoustics, MusicRikard ÖqvistMay 17, 2021drums, edrums, noise, acoustics, sound, hearing, tinnitus, sound insulationComment

VR Motion sickness

Many years ago, I tried Virtual Reality (VR) for the first time. It was the Oculus Rift developers kit, one of the very first Head Mounted Displays (HMD) that was the result of a KickStarter campaign in 2012. It looked like a pair of ski goggles superglued to an iPad. I remember that I went for a ride on a rollercoaster that was extreme, even with some jumps. I played around for about 15 minutes and then suffered from severe motion sickness for about three hours. The concept was extremely cool, but clearly the technology had a long way to go. Last week I pulled the trigger and got my first VR HMD (HP Reverb G2). My gut feeling is that the technology is now mature enough to provide a lot of value. In the coming months, I will evaluate how VR can be used in civil engineering and acoustics.

Acoustics, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistApril 5, 2021vr, virtual reality, acoustics, engineering, civil engineering, ifcComment

When the tables are turned for a recording engineer

Yesterday I spent a day in a recording studio for the first time – As a client. I have been working in studio environments probably for thousands of hours and have recorded hundreds of songs. But I have always been the one in control of the recording process. A sound engineer recording himself as a musician is a completely different thing than a sound engineer being recorded as a musician, by another sound engineer. By entering the role of a client for just one day, I learned some lessons that aren’t apparent from the perspective of the sound engineer. This is an invaluable experience which can be applied in any domain, not just music.

Acoustics, Music, EngineeringRikard ÖqvistJanuary 23, 2021studio, recording, music, guitar, growth, acoustics, musician

Acoustics and Men’s style

Earlier this year, my wife introduced me to Bailey Sarian’s Youtube channel. She produces a program called “Mystery and Makeup”, where she talks about True crime and Makeup. She is insanely popular with 3,4 million subscribers and I can understand why, even if I have only watched one episode. Her passion is apparent and shines through like a bright light. She is indeed a great storyteller. The episodes start out with Bailey completely without makeup and then she tells a story about some famous true crime while putting on a professional makeup. About 30 minutes later she finishes the story and by then the makeup is finished. Bailey Sarian is perhaps one of the strangest combinations I have come across and it works. She is the perfect example of when two seemingly unrelated ideas are synthesized and produce something new and greater than the sum of the parts. She planted a seed in me. If I were to do something similar on Youtube, what would it look like?

Acoustics, Education, Engineering, Habits, StyleRikard ÖqvistDecember 19, 2020acoustics, elearning, education, synthesis, ideas, youtube, style Comments

Designing the ultimate home studio

When designing a room, you need to balance and prioritize certain aspects against each other. For a home studio, I consider the following three to be the most important: 1) Acoustics, 2) Aesthetics and 3) Functionality. I am currently building my fourth home studio in my garage. Each iteration has had a different priority order and the results have varied accordingly. As with any project, you need to write down the purpose of the room, to understand how the parameters should be rank ordered. In this article, I will describe what I have learned from my different home studios.