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8.5”x11” is a standard size for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. Which leads to the eternal problems for any NGOs or contractors working fo
by rhplus 4y ago
8.5”x11” is a standard size for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. Which leads to the eternal problems for any NGOs or contractors working for the US government overseas who have to source Letter size for US gov partners and A4 for local partners!
- ceejayoz 4y agoYep. Every time I have to renew my Australian passport I have to buy a ream of A4 paper. Every time I forget where last time's ream was stored. I suspect someday I'll find thousands of sheets somewhere lost in my basement.
- ethbr0 4y agoDeep within your subconscious memories is a series of you unloading A4 from your printer, thinking about where to best store it, finding 20 reams already there, stacking this one on top, and then promptly forgetting the location.
- vorpalhex 4y ago"I don't put things where I think they should go, I put them where I am likely to look for them" - Adam Savage
- PcChip 4y agoI've been following this since I heard him say it a few years ago, and I try to impress this upon my family as well
- ckwalsh 4y agoI really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it. Closest I can find is his concept of "First Order Retrievability" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCrHLYiGNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCrHLYiGNo
- Sebb767 4y ago> I really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it. Maybe, instead of attributing the quote to someone who said it, they attributed the quote to someone who they'd think would've said it.
- kayfox 4y agoNo, Adam Savage has said something to this effect every time he talks about how his shop is organized and why it shifts around over time. The gist of it is that while most of his tools and common materials are first order retrievable, but theres a whole world of stuff in the shop that can't, so he thinks about where it should be stored and puts it there or there are times when a particular tool or set of tools is always used with some other thing in the shop, so it lives next to that other thing rather than on some rack of the same tools. What is most likely happening is that its all been in videos of which no readily searchable transcript exists, and he is not always very concise about explaining his core practices, so finding the exact quote is non-trivial.
- paulv 4y agoI recently watched the video where he said it, but I can't remember which one it was. It was one of the ones on the Tested channel, either an ask Adam or one of the questions from a live stream they made in to a video.
- vorpalhex 4y agoOne of his "Ask Adam" videos, I believe the same one he discussed Pica pens.
- EdwardCoffin 4y agoHere's a Q&A where he says something like this: https://youtu.be/og0yYQAN1JE?t=233 https://youtu.be/og0yYQAN1JE?t=233
- pleb_nz 4y agoI'd be better off putting them where I wouldn't look, that's probably where I'd look.
- ghaff 4y agoPeriodically I buy things like Post-its because I can't find any--and then the next rare time when I really deep clean my office or attic, I find enough office supplies to open a stationary store.
- kmeisthax 4y agoA4 is an antimemetic paper size
- prottog 4y agoJust buy a printer with two paper trays and reserve one for A4 paper. Problem solved!
- mat_epice 4y agoSeems pretty heavy handed for something that happens at the cadence of Australian passport renewal (10 years in most cases). I believe I replace my printer at least that often.
- Scalene2 4y agoThe trick is, next time you need it, make note of where you first look for it, and when your acquire more, put the newly acquired paper on the first spot you looked for the old stuff.
- oulu2006 4y agoWhy doesn't renewing it online work? is there still a paper based component to it? I don't think I had that problem last time I renewed mine online.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoSounds like a PC LOAD LETTER issue.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y agoPC LOAD A4, you mean.
- elliottkember 4y agoI went the other way with it. Bought a ream of A4 and I use it for everything. I hope it causes chaos.
- klondike_ 4y agoDoes it really matter? Letter size is close enough to A4 that I doubt anyone but paper nerds would notice
- ggm 4y agoFiling systems, automatic paper handling systems built for A4 won't process US legal. Passport forms include machine read sections such as signature, as do tax returns. It won't fit in binders, envelope, storage boxes or tab folders. It's asking for trouble, rejection is likely.
- gus_massa 4y agoFor sending official paperwork to a judge or a visa or something like that, there are a lot of rules. Sending A4 instead of Letter will make them reject your paperwork on the spot. Someone told me a horror story about a PhD thesis rejected because it has wrong margins (probably something about the margins of the document and additional margins added by the driver). He has to reprint all the copies. Most universities are not so stupid, but if your university is stupid enough, remember to triple check the margins.
- dhosek 4y agoIn the 80s at UIC, there was famously a woman in the graduate school who checked measurements of all margins and other spacing with a ruler and rejected dissertations which didn’t meet the strict requirements.
- mbreese 4y agoIn the early 2000s there was a person at Indiana U who also did this. You had to get any dissertation approved by her before printing. And there was a ruler. Are PDFs accepted for dissertations yet?
- MengerSponge 4y agoDissertations go through the library's Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) service these days. Margins still matter, as do tons and tons of fiddly bullshit. My personal ETD "hilarity": there is/was a bug in Adobe Acrobat that caused the font I set my dissertation in to glitch/look jagged at exactly 100% zoom. If you shifted to 99.7% or 100.1%? It re-rendered and looked perfect. Only on Acrobat. Not in Chrome or Firefox or Preview or Foxit or anything else. I had to change the font for ETD to accept my document. Changing the font doesn't sound like a big deal, and in principle it's easy to do, but it means none of the figures match the main text. The line breaks are now totally different, so those typeset line-endings and paragraphs that were rephrased to avoid awkward hyphenations? All gone. For that and a few other more important reasons, I have two versions of my dissertation. There's the one hosted by ETD, and the one that I actually share and use professionally.
- acchow 4y agoWhy would anyone care if they received the other paper size? The differences are tiny.
- lazide 4y agoNever underestimate the pettiness of a bureaucracy
- johannes1234321 4y agoAsetter us a bit wider it might not fit in a folder properly and when stacked with other A4 forms it won't match, which can be a flying also it probably is processed by a machine where it might not fit. (Say a scan er which extracts the signature to print onto the passport)
- patrakov 4y agoIn the Philippines, it is even worse. At least four standards (A4, Letter, Legal, and Long Bond), and all of them are necessary for communication with various government agencies such as BIR.
- realusername 4y agoI did not even know anything else than A4 existed, I just learned that now
- mellavora 4y agoOh, come on. Everyone knows about A3 and A5.
- zinekeller 4y agoFor Americans et al. who don't know: - A3 is (within physical tolerances, anyway) twice the size of A4 - A5 is half the size of A4 - A0 is the biggest size and and has an area of 1 square meter, although it is not a square but instead it has an aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2) (technically all A-series papers have this aspect ratio because math says it is the aspect ratio that retains itself when halved) - In practical sense, A5 is the smallest pre-packaged A-series paper that I have personally encountered, although I guess someone would chime that they handled A6 (half of A5) or smaller.
- japaneseminisub 4y ago> technically all A-series papers have this aspect ratio because math says it is the aspect ratio that retains itself when halved I never knew this, but that's awesome. Thanks for the info!
- elygre 4y agoNever saw A6 printer paper, but it’s quite common for note cards / index cards.
- realusername 4y agoSure, I meant the imperial sizes in inches, never heard about that before. I assumed A4 was the global standard.