Never stop learning

Throughout May, I have been teaching Building Physics in the course at Umeå University with the same name. The three topics included in the course are acoustics, heat transfer and moisture transfer. I know acoustics by heart and can teach it on autopilot by now. Heat transfer and Moisture transfer on the other hand, is a completely different story. I did not know anything about those topics before this course. And here I am now, teaching the topics that were as new to me as to the students. Can this actually work? Teaching and lecturing in a topic that you are not familiar with is about as scary as it gets.

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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?

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Wax on, wax off

When I was a kid, I watched the movie Karate Kid where young Daniel wants to learn Karate and gets old Karate master mr Miyagi to train him. Miyagi lets Daniel clean and polish his cars using the “wax on, wax off” motion. He also lets him clean a terrace and pain a fence, always using special motions with his hands when appying the wax, paint or cleaning water. All in all, Daniel spends lots and lots of time with these activities until he finally snaps and goes furious – “When are you going to teach me Karate?!” It turns out, that is precisely what he has done. The special movements Daniel used in the activities are important Karate moves, and by doing restoration and renovation work, they have just killed two birds with one stone. A lot of works has been done, and Daniel now has the correct movements in his muscle memory.

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Are there similarities between restoring old computers and old cars?

Since I resurrected my old enormous RGB shining gaming laptop from the dead to a new life as a blog typewriter, I have been trying to figure out if there are any similarities between restoring old computers and for example old American cars? Old cars aren’t really usable as a daily driver either, I told my wife. Yes, but at least old American cars can be beautiful. An old laptop with RGB cannot. She has a point. It got me thinking: Have I ever seen a beautiful computer? I can’t think of one honestly, but I can think of several beautiful cars. Both are tools meant to be used, so what is it that cars have that old computers doesn’t seem to have?

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Do not sugar-coat your words

In the last 5-10 years I have been losing my hair. It started as a little bald spot on the top of my head, which grew and was later joined by a second smaller one on the back of my head. It’s actually not that easy to spot when you look in the mirror, but from behind or above, the hair loss is obvious. I could have painted a big H in the spot and used it as a helipad for small drones. When I became aware of it, I simply decided to just get rid of it all with a clipper, because it was NOT a flattering look. Instead, I let my beard grow out. I have been visiting my barber regularly for at least five years, and I have listened to and followed their advice on what kind of hair- and beard cut I should rock. But a week ago, my wife started to read up on men’s hairstyle and bald shaving. She suspected that I would look much better if we chose the razer instead of the clipper the next time it was time to trim the hair. So, we did it, and oh boy what an upgrade it was!

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The definition of insanity

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expect different results, a wise man once said. However, there is an exception to that rule: Computers. From my experience, trying the same thing and expecting a different result is usually the first thing I try when my IT gives up. And the success rate is high enough to keep doing it. Technology is wonderful when it works. I love technology. It might also be the thing that most effectively can send my pulse to 300 bpm while I am screaming on the top of my lungs (my kind of anger management). I suppose my family is grateful that I am often in another building when the glitch gremlin strikes.

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Resurrecting the Behemoth

I am writing this blog on a laptop from 2006, running an operating system that was released in 2021: Linux Mint 20.1. I have been using PC:s since 1995 and I remember the “good old days” in the second half of the 1990’s. You bought a high-end PC for a small fortune and it would last a year or two until it became an unusable brick, at least with regards to gaming. The performance increases with each generation was extreme back then. But in the late noughties, things began to change with the release of multi-core processors, hyperthreading and 64 bit support. The growth has continued for sure, and Moore’s law implies the growth is exponential. But with regards to the user experience, to me it seems like the computers got fast enough to run most important software, even when they got old. It’s as if the hardware improvements grew much faster than the system requirements of software. I mean the kind of software that you need to have a basic computing experience and not the latest games or special applications.

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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.

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Everything changes, everything stays the same

Social interaction while wearing a face mask is kind of like joining an online meeting without enabling your camera. Even though the eyes communicate a very large part, probably most, of our message, it just feels extremely awkward to me. There is so much information lost with the subtle facial expressions and especially the smile. I do not like it at all. That’s why I am grateful to my past self that I listened to my gut feeling some years ago. My gut told me that we had to get out of town and move to the countryside, as soon as humanly possible. Which we did. Out here everything is exactly the same pre- and post-Covid. Nothing has changed. Mother Nature does her thing regardless of what goes on in the human world. It is a blessing to be reminded of that every single day. She is my immovable, solid foundation to which my life is anchored.

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A little every day goes a long way

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my computer screens to a triple 4k setup. When I was working with CAD drawings on my old lo-res (1680*1050) screens, it felt like looking at the world through a telescope, and my productivity suffered. The new screens are wonderful. I can now fit my entire old triple monitor screen real estate on just one screen! But anyone who has ever considered a triple monitor setup should also consider cable management. LOTS of cable management. Every screen requires a displayport cable and a power cable, so that’s six cables right there just to turn them on. I did some other upgrades as well. Let’s throw in a couple of active loudspeakers, camera, sound card, USB hub, conference speaker, mouse, keyboard, mic, Stream deck… the list goes on. And all this should be mounted on a sit/stand desk with a flexible length. This weekend I spent several hours doing cable management. And oh boy, did it turn out great! I was also reminded of a crucial life lesson.

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Time to change my blog schedule

There is a saying that “He who stops becoming better, ceases to be good.” That pretty much sums up my life philosophy. I currently have four daily habits and one weekly habit. Every day I practice French for a couple of minutes, draw a picture, publish a short video, and play the drums for 15 minutes. And every Saturday I write a blog post. I´m in my second year now of these five simultaneous habits. These last weeks my gut tells me that I need to make some changes in this schedule, especially the writing habit. For over a year, I set my alarm clock very early every Saturday and got up before my family woke and wrote a blog post. But now I feel that the sacrifice to get out of bed in the weekend is too great. My son just turned two, and he is so much fun to be around that I can’t describe it. That’s why I have chosen to prioritize that morning hour with my family instead. It is now more important than writing. That, and the combination that work has been exceptionally intense the past month or two, and in times like that, those cozy morning hours and a day where you are completely “free” is more important than ever.

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Slow and steady wins the race

Six years ago, I opened an account where I put aside ~50 EUR every month. The purpose of this account was to slowly build up a buffer so that I can buy musical equipment whenever a I come across a good deal of something I desire. I have been looking at a pair of Finnish Genelec studio monitors for about 15 years. They are called the 8050 and they are ridiculously expensive, and they are also quite rare on the 2nd hand market. I have been scanning the trading sites for years and have only seen them a couple of times and when I did, I wasn’t fast enough and someone else grabbed them before me. But if you keep your eyes on the target and are consistent, there are only two options: Either you will find a used pair, or you will save up enough money to go and buy them brand new.

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The Catch-22 of drumming

I started playing the drums in July 2019 and am in my second year now of daily practice. First and foremost, I would consider myself a guitar player because I have played for more hours on the axe than on any other instrument. If you already know one instrument, it will be easier for you to learn a second, even easier to learn your third and so on. Mastery on multiple instruments is comparable to polyglots who speak several languages. It gets easier and easier to acquire a new one, the more you already know. In this post, I will focus on how some important lessons I have learned in my drumming. Some techniques translate well from the guitar, and others do not translate at all.

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An amazing mistake

My greatest weakness is that I am a perfectionist. My whole life I have been obsessed with quality and it is a big advantage as a scientist/engineer. But it is also a curse. If the world were run by engineers, I don’t think anything would ever be accomplished. We would be too busy tweaking our products to improve it beyond that 99th percentile. Luckily, since a couple of years I have constantly challenged myself to produce content with low quality and instead go for quantity. This week I made an amazing discovery, which proves that I am now on a much better path.

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Upgrading my live streaming setup with a system camera and a studio microphone

My YouTube channel has seen some serious growth lately and I realized that it is time to up the ante regarding the production value. Up until now I have been using a Logitech BRIO webcam, and a Jabra Speak conference phone. They get the job done fine, but the camera struggles with White balance and focus and the microphone picks up a ton of room reverberation. So, I pulled the trigger and invested in a proper mirrorless camera with real optics and a spring-loaded studio arm to mount a large membrane microphone. This gave a huge boost in production quality and my online meetings have never looked and sounded this good. I am also proud that I kept going with basic equipment for almost 1½ years before upgrading. My past self had a tendency to get stuck in gear acquisition syndrome instead of producing content. You should always let the content come first, and then invest.

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The perfect work week

After Covid, many of us have realized how much time we save by not travelling to various meetings. However, is it possible that we are now having more meetings instead? And perhaps they aren’t as disciplined? Yesterday I had a conversation with an architect and we both felt that some weeks there are so many meetings that it is difficult to clock in any productive work at all. In our conversation we did some brainstorming and came up with an idea that might work. What if there was an industry standard within civil engineering that looked something like this: Mondays – Internal meetings, Tuesdays – Client meetings, Wednesdays – Productive work, Thursdays – Client meetings and Fridays – Productive work again. Imagine how much easier it would be to focus and to optimize scheduling.

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How to learn any song

Back in 2012, a friend of mine asked me if I would like to come along to a concert with Tommy Emmanuel. I had never heard about the guy, but apparently, he was some kind of world class acoustic guitarist that was touring in my hometown Umeå. I said sure, it is always fun to expand one’s musical horizon. I went to the concert with zero expectations and it turned out to be one of the best things I have experienced in my life. Tommy Emmanuel is an absolute genius and a treasure of a human being. The things he creates with his guitar does not resemble anything else I have ever heard. He is the literal definition of a one-man band. In his own words: “When I was a kid, I wanted to be in show business. Now, I just want to be in the happiness business. I make music, and you get happy. That's a good job.” I don’t know of anyone who does a better job at that, than Tommy Emmanuel.

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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.

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Questions are a sign of quality

When I give a lecture or do a presentation, a bullet-proof way to know whether I did a good job or not, is if I get questions afterwards. Take note of this the next time you listen to an awesome presentation. When the lecture ends, that is where the real conversation starts. The best lectures get the most questions, and the inferior presentations get few or no questions at all. If the audience could not understand a single word of what you were talking about, how are they supposed to ask a question then? And on the contrary, if they clearly understood your message, asking questions will be simple.

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Divine intervention

A long time ago I was introduced to Stanley Jordan’s rendition of Elanor Rigby. When he plays the part at around 1:00 into the song my jaw dropped. He used the guitar in a new way that I had never seen before, and it sounded beautiful! I believe he called the playing style “touching”. It is basically two-handed tapping where your left hand plays the chords, and the right hand takes care of the melodies. I instantly started to read up on the method and practicing on my electric guitar. It soon dawned on me that the guitar would need some adjustments and optimization to play the touch style. Some examples are alternate tunings, extremely low string height and deadening the strings on the first fret with a piece of cloth so that they stop ringing as soon as you lift your fingers. However, that would have rendered the guitar unusable for normal playing. Touch style is very difficult even on a properly setup guitar, and if you try to play it on a regular guitar it becomes even harder. Frustrated, I started looking for a smarter way to do it, and that is when I learned about the Chapman Stick.

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