Irish webapp to recreate pub atmosphere at home | Hacker News Reader

Irish webapp to recreate pub atmosphere at home

soundsofthepub.com

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To recreate it more authentically, additionally dip an old towel into stout and frying oil and hang over a radiator.

But why? What does this accomplish?!

Ambiance

You want to tap into vivid memory? Recreate a smell.

Olfaction is the first sense we developed from an evolutionary viewpoint.

You forgot the piss.

also missing are girls crying in the loo and occasional muffled sounds of a fight unfolding outside

Ah the best few minutes of anyone's day.

"Every Irish Pub ever." (Absolutely hilarious)

https://youtu.be/Hy2AYdBtzBo

and the bathroom attendant in the guys bathroom not letting two guys go in the stall together to do cocaine, while getting berated by everyone in line about equality because the girls go in stalls together routinely

You guys have security in the bathroom?

It was actually my day job from which I eventually pivoted into infosec. The industry is full of people like myself who aren't bothered by the smell of human feces dressed up as technological solutions. Thinking back, I guess I came a long way. But it all started in that loo! Always remember your roots!

for a more authentic experience here are some visuals (free of charge) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o4iZqa2VEg

That was Game of Thrones!

You had Cercei, Mormont, Hodor and Tyrion!

I would add the smells of rain, wet wool, sweat and breath, and sawdust. Fragrance is so evocative and complex, but it'll be a while before we can call it up in our browser.

I remember a Disney World hang-glider ride where they puffed cool humid forest-scented air in my face. That was a very effective ambiance enhancer.

I also remember getting an Odorama card [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smell-O-Vision#/media/File:Odo... ] when I saw the movie Polyester. Amusing, but not exactly Proustian.

I sure hope it's a while before smells come to the browser. I'm annoyed enough by autoplaying audio, although now that I think about it, it seems not to happen much at all these days.

>although now that I think about it, it seems not to happen much at all these days.

Thank you Mozilla!

"smells come to the browser"

That little pit in the border of your laptop screen near the camera could be both a puffer and a mic pick up! I'm not sure what would be behind it but I'll be putting on a full noddy suit before I do maint. on your lappie, having noted the piece of tape over it. I'm not sure what would end up trapped inside the shell over time but I suspect both of "BC".

(noddy suit: NBC suit - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_suit)

Imagine getting rickrolled with the smell of rotting pig.

Don't worry, you'll be protected by the HP firmware. It'll detect that you're out of butyl compounds even though the scent requires none, refuse to spray the scent, and automatically place an order for you.

Disney ride was soarin' https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soarin%27

A bit of short fiction (not mine) from 2007, on recreating experiences for those who are stuck at home: https://everything2.com/title/We+control+the+algorithms+for+....

The military does that. The USS Trayer is a ship disaster simulator. "Suddenly, we're on a pier, the Trayer rising above us. We're indoors, but a gentle breeze carries the distinctive tang of the sea. Gulls caw somewhere overhead, and waves lap between the pier and the hull." It looks and smells like a real ship, but it's indoors in North Chicago, at the Navy's training center.

The army version, a section of a Third World city: "From the control center AFSOC can observe and change everything from lighting to sounds and smells. “They can simulate the smell of a bakery right down to burning cars or rotting meat.” The US military has several facilities like that.

Don’t you actually need something that smells like burning car though? I really wonder how you’d create that artificially.

Burning rubber, oil, plastic, and leather probably do most of it.

Irish musician here, missing regular sessions at Patrick's Pub in Providence, RI. Smithwicks' Ale for the players, random audience members singing Irish songs in Irish and English, we are all missing the community, especially since our outdoor jams ended 5 months ago.

My father has been playing in the same pub session with the same friends almost every week for close to 40 years. Pubs in Ireland have been closed for a full year now (gastropubs could operate over the summer for a bit but in a limited capacity) and it’s been very hard for them to adjust to the loss of community, especially since they’re all relatively recent retirees. Here’s to some normality soon.

I think everybody is just holding their breath waiting for everybody else to go first.

I say: GO FIRST!

Hope to see you there when they reopen!

There's also http://imissmybar.com/ which was posted in the comments here a few weeks back.

only slightly relevant... your comment reminded me of a song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fulz4ytZ54

I've been playing with this one for a bit, and there's a strange "pause" in audio from a couple of the options. It's almost like the loop gets to the end, and then goes silent while the loop "rewinds". Obviously, that's not what is happening, but that is what it sounds like. It's too distinctive than the random lulls in large crowd noises that occur naturally.

Either way, both of these are fun. I've been on film shoots where we've had all of the cast and crew involved to record walla walla. It's a tough one to get right for long enough that it's not easily discernible as fake and so short you hear it looping. Adding music helps. All of that to say, these types of generators might make that a thing of the past.

That's a well made one, pretty cool. And you can get the sound of loneliness in two easy steps: just turn on Bartender working and Night ambience

That one works for me. But soundofthepub doesn't.. the play/pause buttons don't work here (the sliders work) - what in ublock's list do I have to enable to get it working? Everything from the actual site is green, it's only blocking google analytics stuff as far as I can tell.

I turned off ublock origin for soundofpub on my google chrome and it worked

But I don't want to just turn it off - there are way too many 3party trackers there.

Replying to myself - updating Firefox from 86.0 to 87.0 and leaving everything else the same somehow fixed it. Play/Pause now do their things.

The play/pause buttons work fine on my side with default settings/lists. You may have enabled non-default filter list(s) which interfere, or you have custom filters/rules. Use the logger to find out what is being blocked to cause the breakage, and by what.

Here is the discussion if anyone wants to go copy the top comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26188710

I love these kinds of projects.

My favorite of online noise is https://mynoise.net/

Infinitely configurable, can save personal settings in a cookie. Good stuff

>My favorite mynoise.net/

Possibly the best, and very comprehensive. Great user interface. I am in touch with the owners, they're looking at creating a 'pub' option. Authenticity is important so until pubs are open, it sits in the planning stage, as all the appropriate recordings can't be made.

The myNoise pub is actually already open : https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/jazzBarNoiseGenerator.php

That was quick. Sounds good. I'm currently trying to discern the difference between the barman and the barmaid...

This looks great! I've been using https://asoftmurmur.com/ because I like the "meander" feature which gives a randomness to the noise. Strangely I find "flat" noises (like a fan running at a constant speed) to be too distracting. Looks like mynoise has a similar feature called "slider animation" and lots more selection.

Funny that rain is part of the sounds :D. As an italian I'd never thought about adding it. Btw it's sounds amazing, but the sounds are a bit short in length and you can "feel" the repeating loop.

After listening for a while, I came back to say exactly this. It's certainly much more work, but I think worthwhile for people want to spend a length of time with it on. Perhaps 10 minutes plus. Also, make the durations of each track different lengths so they cycle asynchronously.

This was my exact problem with the last implementation of this posted on HN. The “bartender” track asked “want another one?” Roughly once a minute. Thunder cracked on a short cycle in the rain loop. Just too many identifying marks. And after I spotted those pattern sounds I couldn’t not hear them.

yes, great idea but they could have smoothened the transition when it loops a bit. Nevertheless, thanks for the good 30 minutes!

> Funny that rain is part of the sounds

Ireland. Rainy country. That's why, I guess.

I love the Paddy Losty (45 pints) reference in the old man chat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkcXjholnGk

If the website author is around: On my screen, all I could see was the top of the page, none of the controls. I was confused for an embarrassing amount of time before scrolling. On my end, I have scroll bars always on so I should've figured it out sooner, but that isn't usually true for others.

This is how AirPods might work in a few years. In any environment you will be able to turn up/down the different sound sources around you.

Creepy shit

Apple brand hearing aids

Creepy will be when augmented sensory enhancements emphasize certain people, objects, and themes while obscuring others. I can't remember if that was a Black Mirror episode or not.

It was — specifically, it was the 2014 Christmas special ("White Christmas").

Funny how we keep using technology to recreate dystopias. In this case, personal "flappers" ala Swift's Gulliver's visit to Laputa

Can you imagine a world where politicians could have headphones tuned to cancel out non-approved voices 24/7? Protesters could camp outside offices and scream as much as they wanted to no avail

Isn’t this already the case? Legislative offices in some countries are eavesdropping-proof, so one would imagine that drowns out sound coming from the outside. Protestors these days are under no illusion that politicians are looking at them as they protest, rather their goal is to win over members of the general public walking by, and make a splash in the media that might then get the business world and politicians’ attention.

I'd like this a lot, if it was discrete. I lived in Dublin for two years, and in my limited experience of going out the experience could always be summarised as "loud, couldn't understand anyone". If I could hear a little less of random people and noise and a little more of the people I'm talking to I might have enjoyed it more.

Where is the "fight after 8 pints of Guinness" toggle?

That would break the screen and lead to hospital.

I just immediately turned "old man" up to max and all others down to zero.

What do you make of his accent?

Fairly typical old man Dublin accent, I had a good chuckle listening to his stories.

This reminded me of the NPR Planet Money episode [0] about the design universality of international Irish pubs

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/04/12/523653040/epis...

Reporting no sound when click play on iPhone 12 Pro Safari on iOS 14.4

Same for me. It worked after adjusting one of the sliders.

Works for me once I take my phone off silent.

Am I missing something? The Play button isn't even clickable on my Catalina Safari, Firefox and Brave.

This is a lot of fun! Definitely makes me miss my favorite Irish pub (located in the Midwest).

Nit: I wish the traditional music cycled between a few different songs. What's provided is pretty repetitive, and is already stuck in my head.

Love the idea!

Where do I make a bug report? I think turning down the old man doesn't work; if you turn off all sliders, you still get the voice telling the story.

I don't think that's a bug. The old man NEVER stops talking!

It's not a bug; it's a feature.

This.

A decent imitation can be had at Half Time Rec in St. Paul, Minnesota. Just ask any of the older bartenders about the Saints/Cats brawl after the 2006 American Association baseball championship. https://www.abqjournal.com/sports/apbrawl09-12-06.htm

Love it! If you make the sliders update the URL I bet people would feel more inclined to share their settings rather than just play it.

Love the idea! I would. /end-positive-tone

This is a disease nowadays in modern websites which are reactive or ajax-driven - you have to explain to people step by step how to reproduce something (or send screenshots), as opposed to back in the day when everything was a GET request.

I like it, but the loops are a little short.

I did a little searching & found this Irish pub ambient track which I'm enjoying right now, reminds me being in pubs back home :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYMw-ESqCUE

It's nice, but also a hot mess! Try sliding some sliders, then clicking on the about page (mismanaged as a plus sign), and then clicking back - a sweet whiskey laden cacophony! At this point, every slider needs to be explicitly interacted with in order to toggle it.

Thanks for the ambiance!

Love this!

Small bug: if you adjust the sliders while the sound isn't playing, the next time you click "Play" the adjustments won't take effect. This includes if you Play -> adjust -> Pause -> Play (the levels get reset but the sliders don't)

Cheers for that! I also miss going to the pub, so I created midnight.pub.

Classic version: I'm Gonna Hire a Wino - Shawn Diddy [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/obZLlIDVpnE

Coffitivity [1], created well before the pandemic, provides similar ambiance for coffee shops.

[1]: https://coffitivity.com/

Love it :). Similar to http://imissmybar.com/!

As a Brit with 12 pubs within 60 mins of country walking - I need this!

This is actually way better than those boring white noise generators.

Do you mean politicians?

That's insulting to white noise generators.

TV reporters are so insecure these days.

I love it when you press play and nothing happens.

Developer should limit the height of the main image to something like 80-90% of the viewport so that it doesn't hide the play button.

Without being vomited on and/or having your head punched in, it's really not the same.

Maybe look into those for version 2.

Reminds me of https://purrli.com/

how common is it to have this type of traditional music playing at public bars / restaurants in Ireland?

How do these things work? Are they just N looped audio clips inside N <audio> tags?

Its only good once a year but I'd love a Halloween version of this.

Any ideas on how to pipe this through, Sonos?

just in time for the great reopening after the inoculations...

It's awesome

Why not just use a real recording

Where will you make it?

Feel free to do the work to record a dozen stems to make it adjustable.

There are signal processing techniques to cleanly separate audio into different logical tracks, using an array of microphones. These techniques are used e.g. when recording concerts, but also to reduce echo and background noise in voice calls.

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