Metric system

[Darren Ramey]

So I’m working on a floor covering ios app, mostly to keep my brain from going completely soft but also because I can’t hump floors in forever. This is mostly a learning app, I’m not sure if I will sell it or give it away, if it ever gets finished at all. It keeps track of customers, jobs, money spent on materials, etc. It’s sort of a general purpose installers app. It just sort of dawned on me that Ive got everything formatted in feet and inches and if I was to eventually want to do something with it, I would probably want to support communist, er I mean metric measurements. The problem is I have no idea how that stuff is written down.

I know that everything is based off the meter. Is there a symbol for that? In ‘Merican I would write 12 feet 4 inches like 12’4”, how would you write down a room size in meters? I guess you would also use centimeters? Would you get in to millimeters? How would you shorthanded it if you were scratching it out on a piece of paper or better yet on the phone?

 

[Mark Brown]

everything is in mm my man

3246mm we don't separate like you 'mericans.
32,442 mm
It is such a better system.... no silly fractions and the like

 

[Darren Ramey]

Interesting. I didn’t see that coming at all. I’m not sure how many of those numbers I could keep in my head at once though.

It really is a better system. We should’ve bit the bullet years ago. They were talking about it when I was a kid. I was vehemently against having to learn something new at the time but it would’ve been a good thing in the long run. Unless it somehow lead to buying milk in bags, because that is the work of the devil.

 

[Mark Brown]

I have been slowly moving to metric over the past few years, mostly as Chinese products came on board and a 7" plank was really 175 mm or whatever it might be but they aren't true inch. For finess work I look at it like this, there are 25.4 mm in an inch so everything I measure is to the 25th of an inch as it is and split that and everything is in 50th's without having to do a crap load of remembering and mental math.

One thing I should note, for blueprints and the like it is typically in strictly mm, however lengths are sometimes (very rarely) given in Meters which is simply a decimal 3.267 M or 3267mm. The only part of the system that kinda sucks is doing mental calculations for area, I can plop off a 11x27 room in my head for feet but a 3.47x8.23 M room gets confusing. That's why the good lord made calculators.

What is really stupid is most commercial sheet is all designed in meters but then we all order it in yards... uugh

 

[highup]

When it comes to wrenches or sockets I just look at the nut then grab the right one. I don't like to label my tools. It's just not right.

 

[highup]

.... I'm serious. Sometimes my large crescent wrench self identifies as a hammer. If that's what it wants to be then that's what it is.

 

[Mark Brown]

Wanna see something sexy?

I definitely like to label my tools

 

[highup]

I could never find anything in a mess like that.