What cheeses me off

[Lynda2475]

TVs and monitors both come with cm measurements as they should, they may also mention inches but anyone aged under 52 born in Australia is unlikely to be thinking in inches, feet, pounds etc, as they would have only learnt metric at school.

Metric is just so much simpler when it comes to temperature, measurements and currency.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

TVs and monitors both come with cm measurements as they should, they may also mention inches but anyone aged under 52 born in Australia is unlikely to be thinking in inches, feet, pounds etc, as they would have only learnt metric at school.

Metric is just so much simpler when it comes to temperature, measurements and currency.

Maybe a victoria thing? JB for example only advertises TVs here in inches!

I guess for me it’s a relativity thing… I ‘know’ big a 55inch tv is, so I can work up or down based on that.

Same with seat pitch on a plane… 30 or 31 inches is standard in main cabin, and 73-80 is a standard bed length in business. I can work up or down from there.

Currency and temperature.. I guess both of those are easier in metric? So I prefer those!

 

[Lynda2475]

Maybe a victoria thing? JB for example only advertises TVs here in inches!

Pre LCD the inches for a TV always refered to the size of the picture tube not the screen. However where a 55"TV is advertised, when you click on details all the pertinent details you need to consider are given in mm (because majority of the population cant actually visualise how big an inch is). For example:



So if mounting on the wall you know will be just under 2mwide and just over 1im tall. Or if using the stand you know the table/entertainment unit/shelf you are mounting it on needs to be at least 35cm deep to accomodate the feet.

 

[Forg]

Yes, very, especially to both maritime and aviation industries who both use knots, which isn’t actually imperial but a third system which makes far more sense for navigation than both metric and imperial. (A knot being one nautical mile per hour, and a nautical mile being exactly one minute of latitude).

I thought knots were an Imperial measurement?

With TV & monitor sizes, it’s in inches not because people can visualise what ”X inches” means, but because people know what “a 55 inch TV” is and what “a 75 inch TV” is and “a 24 inch monitor” is. It’s not that people get inches any more, it’s more they’re used to what each size means.

 

[RooFlyer]

I thought knots were an Imperial measurement?

Arrr, me hearty! Knot comes from the way they measured speed on board sailing vessels in ye olden days. Chuck a log with a rope, with knots at measured intervals, out the back and see how fast it plays out over 30 seconds, knot by knot. "Five knots and one fathom, Captain, if you please."

Personally, I think anyone who relies on a commercial radio weather forecast announcement to go boating is living very dangerously. BOM weather app at the very least.

 

[serfty]

I really hate missing 3 foot putts but love hitting 250 metre drives. Go figure....

273 yards seems so much further ...

 

[justinbrett]

I thought knots were an Imperial measurement?

No. Miles per hour is the imperial unit for wind speed.

Personally, I think anyone who relies on a commercial radio weather forecast announcement to go boating is living very dangerously. BOM weather app at the very least.

I think it’s more the initial info to suggest good/bad times to go boating and then they get the precise forecast/observation from BoM (not the app, they have specialist sections of their site for maritime and aviation)

I reckon the average person on the street wouldn’t know what the difference is between 15Km/h winds and 30Km/h winds other than one is more than the other. People in settings where they need to know the actual wind speed are usually much more familiar with knots. I’m not sure a numerical measurement is all that useful for the general public.

I think maybe surfers too work in knots, although most surfers I know are also pilots.

 

[RooFlyer]

I reckon the average person on the street wouldn’t know what the difference is between 15Km/h winds and 30Km/h winds other than one is more than the other.

That's me not withstanding I have gone boating regularly, most of my life. I always have to convert knots to km/h to make sure of a forecast. Wave height given in metres, not fathoms, thankfully.

 

[Quickstatus]

imperial measurements?

Australia has been metric

Note that Metric system is technically not SI. Metric simply means a coherent system of measurement that is a derivation of SI
......
OZ uses all sorts of non SI units.

Note there are derived SI units and then there are the true "base" SI units of which there are only 7.
Such as:

Celsius - it's actually not the SI for temperature technically a derived SI but falls under metric.

Tyres and wheels - you would know about this one and is possibly the worst combination of SI and non SI units

Everyone uses days, hours and minutes - these are strictly non SI and non metric. Time in SI units is measured in seconds.
So the km/hr is non SI and non metric

Tonne as in metric ton (1000kg) is actually non SI but metric

Realestate still use hectare which is 10,000 sqm or but is actually not SI and arguably metric but very few people know its relationship to the metre

And everyone uses calories which is not SI or metric. The derived SI unit for work is Joule. But actually the SI base unit for Joule is the same as torque - see below

While the derived SI units for Torque is the Nm, to be really technical (aka OCD) the actual SI base unit is m2.kg.s-2

The reason joule and torque has the same units is because both are a measurement of work.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

……………… is the never ending profanities emanating from the Ettes mouth after I passed my Covid onto her - she had also avoided it for > 3yrs - and here is me thinking sharing is caring

So the Ette still pretty crook so I shot home from office this morn to check on her and found this on TV - I think payback is coming!

 

[Pushka]

I reckon the average person on the street wouldn’t know what the difference is between 15Km/h winds and 30Km/h winds other than one is more than the other. People in settings where they need to know the actual wind speed are usually much more familiar with knots. I’m not sure a numerical measurement is all that useful for the general public.

I think maybe surfers too work in knots, although most surfers I know are also pilots.

Boat owners sure do. Husband also a surfer. Not a pilot though.

Post automatically merged: Apr 11, 2023

So the Ette still pretty crook so I shot home from office this morn to check on her and found this on TVView attachment 323102 - I think payback is coming!

Gosh. Husband gave me Covid even though I wore a mask around him and different bedrooms. It's a sneaky virus and no one is to blame.

 

[Quickstatus]

Boat owners sure d

Sailors I know do windspeed in knots. And they seem to have a knack of correctly estimating windspeed by just looking - which led to the Beaufort scale which is a system of estimating wind speed by looking at surrounding conditions (definitely not metric) - so what a sailor sees is more of less standardised. And then there is apparent windspeed and true wind speed

 

[justinbrett]

Sailors I know do windspeed in knots. And they seem to have a knack of correctly estimating windspeed by just looking - which led to the Beaufort scale which is a system of estimating wind speed by looking at surrounding conditions (definitely not metric) - so what a sailor sees is more of less standardised. And then there is apparent windspeed and true wind speed

Also speed limits are in Knots as are boat speedos.

Seems easier to just think in knots rather than be constantly converting to and from Km/h.

 

[mel-world]

What is SI??? Standard Imperial? Sometimes it just becomes so hard to understand posts.

OZ uses all sorts of non SI units.

 

[Quickstatus]

SI units can be problematic.

Ill let someone work this one out

Many medicines are described in %.
On the label a 1% solution will be something like 50mg in 5mls (or 10mg/ml)
How did the % come about?.....

 

[justinbrett]

What is SI??? Standard Imperial? Sometimes it just becomes so hard to understand posts.

It’s a backwards acronym - international system of units. Fancy name for metric.

 

[Cossie]

What cheeses me off? A certain private health fund recently in the news for their database being hacked. Get an email stating this:

Here's what this means for you: on 1 June 2023 your current hospital product, Gold Top Hospital will no longer be available. Instead, you'll be moved to Medibank Gold Complete Hospital and Super Extras ACT which has the same features and benefits as your current product. To keep things simple your premium and product change will happen together on 1 June 2023 and your new hospital product cover summary is attached.

You don't need to do anything - these changes will happen automatically

Oh and by the way we have increased your premium by $27.76 a month............

This other bit pisses me off no end:

Membership number: xx_xx_xx_xx_xx

These are the lovely people listed on your policy:

• xx_x xx_xx_, Main Insured, Active
• xx_x xx_xx_, Partner, Active

My high lighted comment, not happy, Jan.

 

[kookaburra75]

it ain’t difficult - it’s simply a cricket pitch x a furlong - how is that complicated? Tomorrow I’ll explain roods and perches to you all

Metric is just so much simpler when it comes to temperature, measurements and currency.

As a Registered Surveyor for many years, metric is the best thing since sliced bread - except for maybe links and chains, where a chain is 100 links. But then the "old system" falls apart when you get to areas, of acres (10 square chain), roods (4 roods per acre) and perches (16 perches per rood). As long as you can remember the conversion factor of 1 link = 0.201168 metres, you can work out anything.

The worst bit, was re-establishing boundaries in old urban areas. I would have a collection of copies of old survey plans and fieldnotes going back 100 years in some places, which could be in chains/links, feet/inches/fractions of inches, decimal feet and then metric. The copies would be spread over the bonnet, covered in notes to get everything into metric. And of course, different states used different approaches - WA was the cleanest as they went from chains/links straight to metric for survey plans. NSW (shudder) did everything it could to make life hard.

And as for everyone else, I use a mix of units in everyday life - really without rhyme or reason, but it works for me.

 

[Quickstatus]

Seems easier to just think in knots

The point is that whatever system is used, the system (whether SI, metric , imperial, finger in the wind, dead reckoning) is well understood and in common use among users of a particular group.

Time and tyre size will never go completely metric IMO...

Then there are hands for measuring horse size - this one does my head in. I can't find a hands measuring tape at Bunnings.
And Horse races still being called in furlongs or yards

And everyone knows when they order beer at the bar it is still pint/schooner though legislatively a standard drink in AU contains 10g alcohol - which has a metric flavour to it. To make it confusing AU visitors to US should know a standard drink there contains 14g. Ive never heard anyone "can I have 1 standard drink". But when the RBT asks "how many drinks have you had" I suspect they are referring to "standard drink" not schooners.

 

[justinbrett]

The point is that whatever system is used, the system (whether SI, metric , imperial, finger in the wind, dead reckoning) is well understood and in common use among users of a particular group.

Time and tyre size will never go completely metric IMO...

Then there are hands for measuring horse size - this one does my head in. I can't find a hands measuring tape at Bunnings.
And Horse races still being called in furlongs or yards

And often those units are used because they are meaningful to the industry.

For example - a nautical mile is exactly one minute of latitude, for altitude, every thousand feet is a reduction of 2 degrees Celsius from standard atmosphere. Plus a thousand feet separation between aircraft is simple. If we did 350m that gets ugly very fast.

Converting aviation to metric (which is a stated aim of ICAO) would achieve nothing but make some suits in Brussels happy.