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This article immediately brought to mind a particular conversation in season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer... Jenny: "Honestly, what is it about them that bo
by nmeagent 3y ago
This article immediately brought to mind a particular conversation in season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
Jenny: "Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?"
Giles: "The smell."
Jenny: "Computers don't smell, Rupert."
Giles: "I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly."
- dhosek 3y agoThen there’s the scene in the beginning of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad Love Story where the protagonist is reading a book on an airplane and the young woman next to him complains about the smell.
- ktpsns 3y agoComputers can be smelly, too. Ever booted up your old Windows 95 box from the basement? The dust blown from the fans has a particular smell. It is even more dramatic for real vintage computing like punch card machines, which smell very oily, in a similar way like very old cars and planes.
- stpe 3y agoIndeed so. Once in my youth I brought my Amiga 500 to a friend's place, and he had a cat that peed on the edge of it. The computer was ok, but it was basically a flood of cat pee seeping in into the memory expansion slot underneath. Tried everything to get rid of the smell. Including perfume. Didn't make it better. Especially when it got hot. Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of Motorola 68000 assembly.
- temac 3y ago> Still today, when I smell cat urine I instantly think of Motorola 68000 assembly. I did not expect to read that today. Or ever.
- devoutsalsa 3y agoWhen a friend incorrectly wired up an AT power supply, causing the power cord to explode on power up, that made a distinctive smell.
- 6stringmerc 3y agoRelevant: Ooops, I forgot to put the paste on the processor
- devoutsalsa 3y agoMy personal snafu was plugging a 9 pin CGA cable into 9 pin serial port. White smoke started billowing out of the power supply. Turned it off, fixed the provision, and the computer still worked after that.
- chaxor 3y agoI love the smell of doing a good wipe on my hardware by sticking all of it in the microwave. The smell of burnt silicon in the morning is what keeps me waking up everyday.
- reaperducer 3y agoComputers can be smelly, too Yep. The specific smell of the VOCs burning off a new Commodore 64 or 1541 brings back a flood of memories of cold, dark Winter evenings standing in the driveway waiting for the UPS guy.
- semireg 3y agoI feel like this could be rendered as a 16 bit screen saver.
- biofox 3y agoDisassembling and building computers as a teen, the smell of a freshly booted motherboard was almost intoxicating. The clicking and buzzing of the floppy drive. Crackling of the screen. Warm hum of the fan. It all transported me to another world where anything was possible.
- Retric 3y agoThe complaint is more websites don’t have a distinct smell. Walk through a library and a dozen different books can all have distinct smells. Perhaps this book was taken to the beach a few times while that that one used a slightly unusual glue. Based on book age and the publisher involved you can even encounter similar smells looking at different copies of the same book at different libraries. So yes a computer has a distinct smell the way a library does but that smell doesn’t change based on the knowledge you’re browsing.
- peterleiser 3y agoMaybe we all need DIY home fragrance printers: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-create-a-home-fragrance-printer/ https://www.instructables.com/How-to-create-a-home-fragrance... HN posts could deliver your favorite fragrance for high points articles or deliver something undesirable for articles, say, about Rust (I kid, I kid).
- roguas 3y agoI am from eastern europe, my dad was vice principal in high school. I would pay good money today to smell again that dusty computer lab room filled with good'ol 386 and mario sounds.
- bombcar 3y ago> Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young How come I'm never able to identify where it's coming from? I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I'd probably only sell one It'd be to my brother, 'cause we have the same nose Same clothes, homegrown, a stone's throw from a creek we used to roam But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered Out of student loans and tree house homes, we all would take the latter
- whoopdedo 3y agoThere's some kid today who will experience future nostalgia from opening an Alibaba package.
- listenfaster 3y agoHow about the smell of a dying C64 power supply? Anyone else?
- nuancebydefault 3y agoAs well as teen spirit and napalm
- thret 3y agoIt reminded me of a similar sentiment by Marcel Proust: “So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.”
- Jugurtha 3y agoWe call it "Madeleine de Proust" in French. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_de_Proust https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_de_Proust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_memory "Proust Effect" or something like that in English.
- jwmcq 3y agoI think I've seen "Madeleine Moment" most often in English.
- Sinidir 3y agoFunny i know about Proust from The Sopranos.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoIf we're sharing I learned about him from the preeminent Proust scholar in the United States, while I watched Little Miss Sunshine.
- grogenaut 3y agoSame
- nuancebydefault 3y agoWhen i'm sawing wood and the dust starts smelling burnt, I'm immediately transported back into my late dad's workshop. Easily happens when the teeth are wearing out. Also, somehow the fumes of his sigars smelled very similar.
- el_benhameen 3y agoThe first computer shop that I went to as a kid (back when computer shops were a thing) had a very distinct smell that still evokes very strong memories for me now. I guess it probably wasn’t the computers themselves, but maybe that foamed rubber material used for mousepads and such, plus maybe some static charge in the air from CRTs or something? Any time I catch that smell, I’m immediately back playing Loom and Monkey Island and oogling at Pentiums and 1 GB hard drives.
- YZF 3y agoDust burning in those monitors perhaps?
- hattmall 3y agoAre things just not as fascinating now? Is there anything similarly cutting edge today. I know that part of it I was much younger but I also remember most of the people around were way older and seemed to share in the wonder and amazement at those GB+ hard drives and the thought of 32mb of ram. I guess there's just not anything new that's advancing so rapidly.?.? Like my computer is 13 years old and is still overpowered for 99% of tasks. And they are still selling brand new computers with far lower specs. Imagine in 1997 being satisfied as a developer with a computer from 1984! I also have other interests and it feels like they have plateaued similarly. I guess I'm still getting some dopamine from solar and battery tech, price drops at least, and some neatness around microcontrollers and IOT but like even food has stopped seeming innovate. It used to be worthy of a day trip to drive into the city to eat at new exotic offerings and now every small town has mostly the same stuff and there's nothing really new in the city either.
- grogenaut 3y agoYou missed out on 3d printers in the last 2 decades apparently. Those have gone leaps and bounds from very rickety prototypes like the og MakerBot to cheap workhorses. Stepper motors used to cost like $75 ea and are now like 4 for $15. Smart phones as well. Many of these things you don't notice till they're everywhere. If I spent more time I could list many other things I think but I don't know your filter
- ryanmcbride 3y agoI know it was just a quote in a show but I can call to mind the electricy smell that old computer labs had and it puts me at peace
- LoganDark 3y agoApple trackpads have a certain smell and I don't exactly know how to describe it, but it's similar to Scotch tape. I really like that smell. More things should smell good like that.
- inopinatus 3y agoThere was an attempt to standardise scented content back in the '80s, but it didn't stick. The root cause of market failure was consumers deterred by a format war between the compressed odour format, Nosepeg, and the higher fidelity (but patent-encumbered) WIF
- dmoy 3y agoBut the real failure was the always-bad-smelling PNGent. Not sure why they thought that would have worked at all.
- peterleiser 3y agoBitmac-and-cheese smelled delicious.
- kabdib 3y agoI have some Radio Shack solder that I bought in the mid 1970s. It smells /wonderful/ and takes me back to building kits when I was a teen.
- teddyh 3y agoIt it’s that old, it probably has lots of lead in it, and you probably shouldn’t use it.
- velosol 3y agoEh, leaded solder is just fine with some basic precautions (and still indicated for military and space ratings) but the smell is probably a highly reactive core flux (rosin) that will eat away at anything it's used on and needs to be vigorously cleaned off after soldering. It may also be a sensitizing allergen so maybe kabdib shouldn't use it, at least not without an extractor. If you're doing more than the once a year small project you should have fume extraction, occupational (or hobby-based) asthma sucks. As does metal flu (zinc for welding and tin for soldering although I expect that's rarer).
- WalterBright 3y agoMy brand new economics textbook in college smelled like vomit. I since noticed other new textbooks now and then with the same smell.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoDo you think it might be psychosomatic? The quality of many textbooks' content would be sufficient to evoke the odour of vomit, I tender...
- WalterBright 3y agoI expected a comment comparing the smell to the content, but it really did smell like vomit, from the moment I opened it. I kept my other textbooks, but sold that one as soon as the semester ended. Didn't need it stinking up my bookshelf! I'm sure it was the VOC's in the glue.
- selimthegrim 3y agoOxford UP textbooks always smelled like this, Atkins in particular
- seabass-labrax 3y agoI know; sorry, I couldn't resist :D In all seriousness though, there is a lot about textbook publishing that is inexplicably different from other non-fiction books. For instance: - Why not use the conventional paperback size if the textbook is not reliant on large diagrams? Why do textbooks always have to be massive? - Why are there so many 'infoboxes' and 'did you knows' and 'warnings' (a characteristic that textbooks share with do-it-yourself and self-help books)? - Why do almost all textbooks start with lengthy 'How to Use This Book' chapters? If you're in a course, you should have already been told, and most of those seem pretty common-sense anyway. My favourite business textbooks that mostly avoid these disadvantages (as I see them): - Managing without Profit, Mike Hudson: an almost complete guide to the mechanics of non-profit organisations; perfect if you already have a good grasp of for-profit business fundamentals. - A Manager's Guide to Self-Development, Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne and Tom Boydell: mostly tests in the same vein as Myers-Briggs, explaining various aspects of personality, behaviour and strategy. - Interpersonal Skills at Work, Maureen Guirdham (not the John Hayes book of the same name!): very academic look at the social dynamics of workplaces, with proper citations to actual studies for further reading; very thought-provoking and genuinely useful if applied carefully.
- failuser 3y agoThe smell of new plastic of new components used to be exciting, now it smells different, typically like nothing.
- lobochrome 3y agoThere is new-Mac smell though…
- hyperthesis 3y agoDoes each book smell different, evoking associated memories; or do they have the same smell, evoking a non-specific feeling?
- joveian 3y agoI remember advertisements for iSmell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismell I guess it never caught on (maybe the name :/). Following the first link it sounds like there are a few more that have tried something similar.
- taskforcegemini 3y agoyou can replace smell with audio/music and other sensations. or one could manually add specific smells when studying certain topics. books are great, but they can't fill many usecases computers can
- trollitarantula 3y agoThe smell of my first IBM ThinkPad was quite strong. Today that smell triggers good memories of playing old video games or building my first website. I still keep that laptop only to occasionally smell it.