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Showing posts from 2009

The absurdity of the use of kph

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  First and foremost I apologise (yet again) for such a long gap in between blog posts. The return of freedom over the past year has kept me away from screens. They say it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. Running is a habit I developed over lockdown, but the return to the office (and I intend to never work from home again) and frequenting the pub has reduced frequency of this.  It is, however, not completely bleak for my physical well-being. Cramming a number of social events in after work has led to me doing a lot more walking around central London. I don’t have an Apple Watch, (other brands of smart watch exist), but my iPhone records my steps and a lot of really interesting data on my walking and running. As would be no surprise, I’ve configured everything in metric units. Thankfully, gone are the days where Apple would dictate to you , based on your location, the units of measurement you use. You have a chose whether to specify distances in miles or kilometres. You al
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Why I hate multimap...

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They show no metric scales... They only show miles/yards and that crap.. see below
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The inconsistency of the BBC, but an improvement nontheless!

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A few months ago, the BBC would feature wind speeds in miles per hour only... recently, they have included a tap that allows you to toggle between miles per hour and km/h (as well as degrees C and degrees F [absolute rubbish in my opinion]) What was strikng when they first put the tabs up is the way they mentioned km/h as KPH in the tab, annd weather reports and forcasts. As you know, at the moment it's an icebox in London, so I went on the BBC to check the weather... I discovered that now, in weather reports, wind speed is written km/h, rather than the ghastly KPH thing, however the button that one uses to toggle inbetween ... is still the same (see image below). Thank God for small mercies... hopefully in future, they'll do away with mph and Fahrenheit...does anyone actually USE fahrenheit anyway?
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Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs?

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Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs?
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km/h speed limits in LONDON!

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In my travels around the United Kingdom, I've seen many progressive metric signs, such as metric-only width & height restrictions, metric fingerposts and the like. However, today, whilst walking down "Millionaire's lane" I saw the light... the use of km/h speed limits here in London. One may think of this as being too good to be true if you're a metrichead, and indeed there are some flaws: 1. The km/h speed limit is not a 'regular' number; (24 km/h rather than 25 km/h) 2. The km/h sign is not stand-alone. It is below a sign stating the speed limit in MPH (15 MPH) 3. The km/h speed sign shows uses the horrible kph abbreviation, rather than the the standardised symbol (km/h) With that being said, we have to admit, that this is still good. People are recognising that we can not remain in the dark ages of miles and yards.
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Special Report: Antigua

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At the moment I'm on holiday in Antigua and due to a heavy American influence here, there is a fierce usage of imperial /US customary measurements. Goods in supermarkets are sold by the pound and ounce, the speed limits are in miles per hour -national speed limit being 40 miles per hour( rounded to 65 km/h) - in spite of the majority of cars featuring km/h only speedometers. However, say the word metre and it's like you're speaking a foreign language. Excluding the use of the litre, the metric system is practically unused  here outside of schools, and it is not understood by the vast majority of the residents. What's interesting however, Antigua has officially gone metric within the last 5 years. The only evidence of this, can be seen in the direction signage, which shows distance in kilometres (and fractions thereof - something which is technically incorrect according to the BIPM's guidelines). I believe they were erected with distances marked in kilometr
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Fuel consumption/ fuel effinciency

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Miles per gallon, it's the "standard measure" of fuel consumption in the UK although the kilometre is much more widely used than the gallon. (making a metric measure more sensible!) But I don't care about miles per gallon... So, in civilised terms, fuel consumption is measured in litres per 100 kilometres. (L/100km) is this really practical? Most British car adverts show fuel consumption in L/100km (unfortunately most times in brackets and in small print). but why not kilometres per litre? (km/L) personally, I think km/L is simpler to get to grips with, and more practical because you know that you'll drive y km using x L of petrol at a given fuel consumption. ( y / x km/L). eg. 6 km on 2 litres of petrol at 3km/L! using L/100km is not as practical! so why make life more difficult? sure many people would rather switch to km/L rather than L/100km! why not use km/L ? ...they do in Latin America and Japan!
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Sorry for the lack of posting...

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I had my heart set on going out and getting some shots of signs vandalised by the imperial-loving idiots, but unfortunately, my bike has been stolen. In light of this I bought a new one, and that was also stolen. So that has put a damper on me going around trying to get shots. In the mean time i'll just moan about the notation of km/h again.. I was reading through one of my textbooks today and there was a question stating: "suppose an advertisement for a new model of car states that it does an average of 12 kilometres per litre (kpl)at a speed of 80kph..." You'd think that a university text book author at least would have the intellect to get it right? Kilometres per litre, although not the most widely accepted metric form of measuring fuel consumptution (the more common one is L/100km) is a correct and accepted form, however why kpl? quite clearly km/l (or km/L) clearly! and again this kph rubbish... it's km/h for crying out loud! maybe getting rid of rubbish
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My Report is HERE!

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I've got this report on to PDF, and you can see the report here: Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the United Kingdom not Adopted Metric Road Signs? I'd also like to make a special thanks to Derek Pollard of the UKMA for providing me with information regarding this report!
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"Why, Unlike the Rest of the Civilised World, has the UK Not Adopted Metric Road Signs?"

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Sorry for being away so long, i've been having tonnes of coursework to do and stuff like that. The question above, was one that i chose for one of the pieces of coursework, and i'm going to post it on the blog, hopefully by tomorrow, or even sooner if i can convert it to PDF format as soon as possible. I think many of you may find it interesting!
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the stupidity of the AA

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I've just read the article that the AA published about their little "survey" on whether the British population prefer miles and rubbish versus kilometres and sense, and i noticed the fact that whoever wrote that article is a blithering idiot. First sample from their article: " Distances in kms rather than miles" - all sensible people should know by now that you never write kms. what crap is that? km! full stop... but it gets worse... Sample # 2 "Speed limits in Kph rather than Mph" - Kph? Are you telling me that the Automobile Association are that incompetent that they don't know how to properly write kilometres per hour... km/h ? [nobody cares how miles/h mph Mph M.P.H... or whatever you want to put is written] But this one is the KILLER! "Fuel consumption in Km/100litres"- the minor thing wrong with this is that it's km not Km obviously.. but I'm appauled bu the fact that the AA are saying that metric fuel consumption is
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mileage... metric mileage?

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One thing that i've not been able to get my head round is if our cars were to swith to km/h and therefore odometers in km, what would be the word to replace mileage? or would mileage just be quoted in kilometres? "10 000 km annual mileage allowance"?
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Imperial street signs are liars!

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Looking at the image below, you see that the distance between each "200 yard" sign is actually 200m, so this means that the signs are obviously inaccurate. What's stupid is that the DfT mandates that signs be placed in distances that are specified in metric units (usually m or mm), however the content of the sign is imperial, and therefore innacurate! 200m is 218.72 yards, therefore, why not just write 200m on the signs? If people don't understand the metre, let them learn! We really don't need to 'dumb down' metric units for people, or there'll never be any progress in relation to full metrication! The best way to learn something is by full immersion. (image taken from the UKMA website)
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Stupidity

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This morning, i was surfing the web, and came upon this ad... what Rubbish! Now, BMI is calculated using ones weight (actually mass) in kilograms, and height in metres. This, however asks for height in feet and inches, and weight in stones and pounds, now this is a recipe for disaster... a) Accuracy.. height in feet and inches is not as accurate as height in cm or(metres to two decimal places.) Also, weight in kg is more accurate because you can say,for example 72.3kg, but with stones and pounds, the smallest unit you can use is the pound. b) Conversion.. how are we sure that they're converting to the most accurate degree? .. you can't. The UKMA's blog Metric Views has a rather interesting article about the problem of using imperial weights. http://www.metricviews.org.uk/2008/11/04/dual-unit-weighing-scales-can-be-harmful-to-health-official/
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