Hey TD ..! Another is this doable post!

[MicroWave]

Originally Posted by horseback

You may not appreciate how hard it is to make the conversion to metric measures for the Brits and us Americans (who have the double penalty of our crappy basic educational system). I'm sure it was just as hard for your ancestors converting to metric a century or two ago, but it's hard to grow up in one system of weights, volume and measures and then convert to a new one, no matter how logical it is.

Y'know, I've been doing the math in my head ever since the late 1960s when I was swimming competitively in pools measured by yards for my high school team and then swimming in pools measured in meters for my AAU team during the summers, but metric isn't really 'real' to me. I just never got the same feeling of accomplishment from doing a 500m Freestyle in under 5:30 that I got from doing a quarter mile Free in under 4:15...

I can look at a piece of lumber and know instantly that it's an inch thick and about 6 feet long by about 15 inches wide, but I have to do the math in my head to get the metric equivalents--and even then, if I don't write them down, I'll have to do it all over again later. When I'm trying to do an acceleration comparison and noting the altitude variations between 10kph intervals, a climb or a drop of 30 m doesn't sound like much until I realize that hey, that's as high as a building at least eight stories high (no wonder I lost a second or two compared to the more level intervals in other runs)!

Have a little compassion for us ignoramuses.

cheers

horseback

Don't worry about it. At least we have units of time in common.
Well, until someone decides that 24 hours per day makes no sense and we should introduce new hour unit which will be 10 new hours per day, 100 new minutes per new hour and 100 new seconds per new minute.

Of course, working hours will still be 8 new hours per day. So people can more easily adjust to new time measuring units.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by MicroWave

Well, until someone decides that 24 hours per day makes no sense and we should introduce new hour unit which will be 10 new hours per day, 100 new minutes per new hour and 100 new seconds per new minute.

Decimal hours and months were part of the original metric system as proposed in 1799, but they were too radical to catch on, even for the French revolutionaries.

As to IL2, I'm another dumb American who's only semi-literate in metric measurements, but IL2 has helped me a lot!

I find it helpful to think of the range icons as units of approximately 100 yards.

Attested by my hand, Year 220, Decade 27, Prairal 25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar

[RPS69]

To horseback, I'am used to change imperials vs metric all the time.
I have to, I work with machinery that when being made on the states, they have all screws in imperials, and when they are european or asian, they use metric instead. I hate that, because it forces me to have tools for both standards.

Still I happen to calculate the conversions authomatically. Without thinking to much about it.

I agree that the relations in between inches, feets and yards, could become very practical on a hex map deploy, because of their base 3 nature. But miles, knots, galons, and all else, are just pure caos.

BTW to change the hours like someone else said, you must change the number of degrees defined for a circle, that is also base three... Somehow, putting a triangle into a circle is something very practical, and having a 10th base on degrees will become a problem for everybody.

And in general I appreciates bearcats posts, unless he asks for correcting .50s dispersion...

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by RPS69

BTW to change the hours like someone else said, you must change the number of degrees defined for a circle, that is also base three... Somehow, putting a triangle into a circle is something very practical, and having a 10th base on degrees will become a problem for everybody.

Been there, tried it, din't (kinda) work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian

Though for naviagtion it would have its benefits, and I'd think one could live with an equilateral triangle having 66and2/3° angles.

[Treetop64]

Originally Posted by MicroWave

Don't worry about it. At least we have units of time in common.
Well, until someone decides that 24 hours per day makes no sense and we should introduce new hour unit which will be 10 new hours per day, 100 new minutes per new hour and 100 new seconds per new minute.

Of course, working hours will still be 8 new hours per day. So people can more easily adjust to new time measuring units.

Lol, be careful what you wish for! If you do all of that to change how clock time is scaled, then you'll have to change how maps and charts are scaled, too. The tick marks on the face of a watch and the tick marks on the grid of a chart go hand-in-hand, and fundamentally represent the same thing.

Then you'd have to completely reprogram GPS so that ships bringing iPhones from China don't get lost, so that teenagers don't become (more) psychotic. Argh!