Things that make you :)

[Sidecar Racer]

 

 

 

[Martino]

I have no problem with people being vegetarian, or vegan.  That’s their choice. Just don’t impose it on me and please don’t try to convert me.

 

I do have a problem with cannibalism as I think I may be quite tasty.

 

I don’t have a problem with anyone’s private beliefs as long as they don’t impose it on me or try and convert me.

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

52 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Nearly as bad as American cheese....

Like this one?

 

NYT: The World’s Best Cheese? It’s Blue and Comes From Oregon

[KeithMacdonald]

17 minutes ago, Reorte said:

If you want an abomination of a measurement, the Navy uses kiloyards...

 

...and cables. Although the depth on Admiralty charts has been in metres since c.1967. What your depth sounder measures in may be set to read in metres, feet, or maybe even fathoms.

But the nautical mile is still a thing, based on 1/60th of one degree of latitude at the equator, and the knot (defined as one nautical mile per hour) is still used for speed on water.  Ten cables in one nautical mile.

 

[MJI]

33 minutes ago, Reorte said:

If you want an abomination of a measurement, the Navy uses kiloyards...

 

I was on about the money pre decimalisation.

[MJI]

We had to convert our software for teh yanks.

 

Everything stored in mm and converted on entry and display to inches.

 

15% of work writing screen entry classes.

89% rolling them out

5% the wierd bits.

[Guest]

IIRC the Soviets built DC3 aircraft under licence. The US design was in imperial units, but the Soviet one had to be built using metal stock in metric thicknesses etc. Cue lots and lots of design tweaks.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Tim Dubya said:

*Thatcher'd nicked mine anyway by that point 🙄🤣

 

Warm school milk 🤮 I mostly managed to palm mine off on someone else.

[MJI]

7 minutes ago, Tim Dubya said:

 

I think we'd be quite tasty but I'm not too sure as we only tend to eat species that are naturally veggies themselves, the exception being chicken I guess.

 

I've always found it odd, even from an early age*, that humans drink the milk meant for the young another species.  

 

*Thatcher'd nicked mine anyway by that point 🙄🤣

 

It was disgusting.

[Reorte]

36 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

...and cables. Although the depth on Admiralty charts has been in metres since c.1967. What your depth sounder measures in may be set to read in metres, feet, or maybe even fathoms.

But the nautical mile is still a thing, based on 1/60th of one degree of latitude at the equator, and the knot (defined as one nautical mile per hour) is still used for speed on water.  Ten cables in one nautical mile.

Nautical miles and knots are a logical unit for navigation purposes, your definitions show why (1/60th degree being one minute of latitude). You could argue that it doesn't matter when a computer's doing it all anyway, although navigators are still expected to be able to manage without them if they need to, but the same computer argument renders the convenience argument about any unit set moot.

[KeithMacdonald]

25 minutes ago, Reorte said:

You could argue that it doesn't matter when a computer's doing it all anyway, although navigators are still expected to be able to manage without them if they need to

 

I concur. Basic sea-skills training does use the new-fangled GPS and electronic charts, but it also insists on olde-worlde manual skills and knowing how to do manual navigation with eyeballs, compass and paper charts. Which is a good thing for the rare (but real) ocassions when the electronics goes titsup.

 

It matters if you are navigating by GPS and using a marked location as a way-point. There are already urban myths (sorry, make that sailors' tales) of boats having head-on collisions at some frequently-used GPS way-points. While the crews of both boats were relying on the electronics and dozing instead of keeping a proper lookout.

 

 

[big jim]

This is brilliant, for those who don’t know the song is called ‘bits and pieces’ and is an absolute banger of a tune from 1997 that still gets an airing today, Glaswegians go mental for it 

 

 

[pH]

27 minutes ago, big jim said:

This is brilliant, for those who don’t know the song is called ‘bits and pieces’ and is an absolute banger of a tune from 1997 that still gets an airing today, Glaswegians go mental for it 

 

 

When you say “Bits and Pieces” to a Scot of my vintage, this is what comes to mind:

 

https://youtu.be/XoRLIJJSG4o?feature=shared

 

[pH]

5 hours ago, Reorte said:

Worked perfectly well for hundreds of years. Changed before I was born but always felt like change for the sake of change to me.

Yes, but …

 

Think of the people in occupations who had to do serious mental arithmetic without the aid of mechanical or electronic devices - shop assistants, bus conductors, railway booking clerks etc. How much easier it became when everything changed to base 10.

 

Try this - “Two to the town and two to Wallace Square.” First, remember the individual fares for each journey (8d and 1/2, then multiply them up as required and total it, then calculate the change due from a ten shilling note, then count it out in coin (1d, 3d, 6d, 1/-, 2/-, 2/6).

 

To be done in quick succession, multiple times on a full bus (78 capacity).

 

And the passengers could, and did, do the same sums to check!

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I have been thinking in terms of decimal currency, without having to mentally convert to LSD, since about five years after it’s introduction, but have never progressed as far with any of the other decimal system.  I can just about manage length ( just as well as I model in 4mm/foot scale), but flounder a bit with weight and volume.  I am of the view that decimal systems are easier to deal with mathematically and hence more sensible in principle, but visualising, say, 150 grams or 80 litres is beyond me.  
 

That said, I find similar difficulty with the American refusal to use stones when describing peoples’ weight and using lbs; I have to divide by 14 to make sense of it.  A measuring system should be intuitive in use, and many of them are not or at least have features that are not intuitive to The Johnster…

I think the highlighted text is the important bit.

I agree that, having ‘learned’ with one system, that’s where your concepts of what the numbers represent come from. Even after more than 40 years in a basically metric system, I still don’t visualize well some things e.g. what small weights represent.

 

Having said that, I find weights of people in pounds are much more meaningful and comparable than in stones and pounds. I think using a single unit does that. In fact, I think ‘stones and pounds’ gets converted mentally to a single unit - ‘stones and fractions of stones’ (fractions not being precise, but “conceptual” e.g. ‘7 pounds’ being ‘half a stone’, ‘4 pounds’ being ‘about a quarter of a stone’ etc. And, looking back, I realize I often mentally converted ‘stones and pounds’ to ‘pounds’, especially when calculating weight gain or loss. (The fact that, at the time I’m thinking about, I weighed about 10 stone, plus or minus, made the conversion pretty easy. Those were the days!)

[Sidecar Racer]

 

 

[PhilJ W]

Cheese can keep for ages.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/oldest-cheese-ever-egypt-tomb.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

[Steamport Southport]

52 minutes ago, pH said:

Yes, but …

 

Think of the people in occupations who had to do serious mental arithmetic without the aid of mechanical or electronic devices - shop assistants, bus conductors, railway booking clerks etc. How much easier it became when everything changed to base 10.

 

Try this - “Two to the town and two to Wallace Square.” First, remember the individual fares for each journey (8d and 1/2, then multiply them up as required and total it, then calculate the change due from a ten shilling note, then count it out in coin (1d, 3d, 6d, 1/-, 2/-, 2/6).

 

To be done in quick succession, multiple times on a full bus (78 capacity).

 

And the passengers could, and did, do the same sums to check!

 

I think the highlighted text is the important bit.

I agree that, having ‘learned’ with one system, that’s where your concepts of what the numbers represent come from. Even after more than 40 years in a basically metric system, I still don’t visualize well some things e.g. what small weights represent.

 

Having said that, I find weights of people in pounds are much more meaningful and comparable than in stones and pounds. I think using a single unit does that. In fact, I think ‘stones and pounds’ gets converted mentally to a single unit - ‘stones and fractions of stones’ (fractions not being precise, but “conceptual” e.g. ‘7 pounds’ being ‘half a stone’, ‘4 pounds’ being ‘about a quarter of a stone’ etc. And, looking back, I realize I often mentally converted ‘stones and pounds’ to ‘pounds’, especially when calculating weight gain or loss. (The fact that, at the time I’m thinking about, I weighed about 10 stone, plus or minus, made the conversion pretty easy. Those were the days!)

 

Is that why they had to have TV programmes to teach people how to use the new decimal system?

 

 

 

And cartoons for kids.

 

 

I'm afraid it's a load of nonsense that decimal was easier and was nothing but a massive con. A lot of people became very rich from it and it still causes massive inflation. Same thing happened with the Euro. Thankfully we missed that one.....

Edited March 18 by Steamport Southport

[pH]

23 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I'm afraid it's a load of nonsense that decimal was easier and was nothing but a massive con. A lot of people became very rich from it and it still causes massive inflation. Same thing happened with the Euro. Thankfully we missed that one.....

I wouldn’t argue against the suggestion that a lot of people and organizations got rich from decimalisation. Any major disruption in  economics/finance creates winners and losers.

 

I would still say that mental calculation in systems with base 10 is easier than in those with base e.g. 60. And it’s definitely easier than in a system with multiple bases e.g. 12, 20, 21 etc.

 

If you don’t think commercials, cartoons etc. weren’t at least of help to people in making the transition, what is your opinion of formal school education, in which pupils are continually being introduced to, and helped in understanding, new concepts?

Edited March 18 by pH

[The Pilotman]

It was half a century ago. Get over it 🙄

[John Besley]

I also to anoy the office sometimes write up reports useing Roman numerals...

 

I must be odd...

 

 

Edited March 18 by John Besley

[Ramblin Rich]

I really want to get away from muddled units like mph. The 'm' could be miles, minutes, metres...

Change everything to S.I. units. All road speed signs to be changed to metres per second.

I'm expecting very red faced splutterings from certain circles but it's mainly to wind up Jacob Rees-Mogg. 🤪

[The Johnster]

 

4 hours ago, pH said:

 

Try this - “Two to the town and two to Wallace Square.” First, remember the individual fares for each journey (8d and 1/2, then multiply them up as required and total it, then calculate the change due from a ten shilling note, then count it out in coin (1d, 3d, 6d, 1/-, 2/-, 2/6).

 

To be done in quick succession, multiple times on a full bus (78 capacity).

 

And the passengers could, and did, do the same sums to check!

 

The bus conductor, and indeed the Johnster during his railway career (admittedly post-decimalisation) had the welcome assistance of one of the most ingenious, superbly ergonomic, and intuitive machines ever devised by human beings, an utterly reliable and perfect design that was nothing less than a work of genius, immensely satisfying to operate (you could almost play tunes on it) and it even sounded right!  I refer to the Setrite ticket machine, a reassuringly solid metal piece of pure joy as anyone who's ever handled one will testify.  And never mind 78 capacity, or even the 96 of a Cardiff trolleybus, I had to cope with 2 116s full and standing, about 600 passengers, on the 07.30 Treherbert-Cardiff!  And give right away from each station!

 

This was on the Cardiff Valleys services, the main line turns used the Omniprinter, another very effective piece of kit and more suited to main line work, but not as fast as the Setrite.  Morning rush hour Valleys jobs were pretty intense and needed speed and accuracy.

Edited March 18 by The Johnster

[The Johnster]

58 minutes ago, John Besley said:

I also to anoy the office sometimes write up reports useing Roman numerals...

 

I must be odd...

 

 

 

I am fully in favour of people being odd.  More of this sort of thing I say!

[PhilJ W]

21 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

The bus conductor, and indeed the Johnster during his railway career (admittedly post-decimalisation) had the welcome assistance of one of the most ingenious, superbly ergonomic, and intuitive machines ever devised by human beings, an utterly reliable and perfect design that was nothing less than a work of genius, immensely satisfying to operate (you could almost play tunes on it) and it even sounded right!  I refer to the Setrite ticket machine, a reassuringly solid metal piece of pure joy as anyone who's ever handled one will testify.  And never mind 78 capacity, or even the 96 of a Cardiff trolleybus, I had to cope with 2 116s full and standing, about 600 passengers, on the 07.30 Treherbert-Cardiff!  And give right away from each station!

 

This was on the Cardiff Valleys services, the main line turns used the Omniprinter, another very effective piece of kit and more suited to main line work, but not as fast as the Setrite.  Morning rush hour Valleys jobs were pretty intense and needed speed and accuracy.

And they became a handy defence weapon for conductors on a late Saturday night bus. 

[big jim]

Buono estente!

 

Just been to see ‘an evening with the fast show’ in Stoke, brilliant, couldn’t stop smiling start to end!

Managed to get 2nd row centre seats the day before general release thanks to my theatre membership so had a fantastic view, didn’t get any cheesy peas ice cream though!

 

nice tribute to Caroline Aherne in the 2nd half’, so thrilled to see Paul whitehouse, Charlie Higson, mark williams, arabella weir and Simon day but John Thompson just blew me away, absolutely brilliant and so funny! 
 

Scorccio!