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Congrats on a good execution of a fun idea. The mobile UX feels very good. Also sorry to be that guy but: > when people specify a temperature in "degrees" whe

Congrats on a good execution of a fun idea. The mobile UX feels very good. Also sorry to be that guy but: > when people specify a temperature in "degrees" when it’s not clear from the context which scale is being used. It should be degrees Celsius. Anything else is just insane ;)

Vecr 3y ago
"Degrees Kelvin". Yeah, I've actually heard that.
- laingc 3y ago
  To be fair, that is actually common in physics. Elsewhere obviously not so much.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Celsius = Kelvin + offset in any case, they're not so different .. not like that other scale used in very few countries.
  - mdturnerphys 3y ago
    I think the point was that it's just "Kelvin" not "degrees Kelvin"
    - laingc 3y ago
      I didn’t pick that up, but I suppose that’s fair. I’ve heard both, as I have with Celsius.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
  It's an obsolete name, but was official at one point.
  - mbork_pl 3y ago
    "It's an old code, but it checks out." :-P
  - jgilias 3y ago
    What do you mean? It’s a different scale that has the same ‘unit length’ as Celsius, but it’s not the same. Also, it’s very much ‘current’ in the physics context.
    - dghf 3y ago
      I'm assuming they mean the "degrees" part. These days, the standard is to say (for example) 200 kelvin, not 200 degrees Kelvin.
    - arrowsmith 3y ago
      They meant that the name "degree Kelvin" is obsolete (since 1967 according to Wikipedia), not that the unit of measurement itself is obsolete.
perilunar 3y ago
Thanks! No argument from me about Celsius, but even on this site there are people who think otherwise.
nirse 3y ago
I agree, but some of my favourite cookbooks are American. What can you do?
- lvncelot 3y ago
  Convert to F and also buy measuring cups/spoons and glare angrily from the recipe to my trusty scale, which stands unused in the corner, I guess. Measuring by weight is the one cooking-related hill that I will die on. (Recently, I had a recipe ask for four cups of lettuce, which could've been anything from 0.5x to 4x of what I finally went with, depending on how much I packed the cups. It's lunacy)
  - b112 3y ago
    I've been waiting for canned lettuce, because I never have fresh when I need it, and plus they can eat it on the moon.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    If there's anything specific I learned about cooking, it's that there is no specificity. Give up that fight and find another hill to die on, for your sake.
silisili 3y ago
Most of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either. I'm not saying it makes a ton of sense, but my only real defense of it. That said, I find negative units rather silly in most measurements, so we should really be using K I think.
- seszett 3y ago
  > * Most of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either.* That's your choice though. Outside temperature cannot be measured precisely enough to warrant decimals (it's supposed to be 17.4°C outside but who can tell the difference with 17°C or 18°C...) but my car's A/C is set to 21.5°C and my home's heating is set to 19.5°C.
  - silisili 3y ago
    I figure C is like F for cooking, correct me if I'm wrong. Everything is a multiple of 5, you'll never see bake at 372F or something odd. If C is the same way, that's probably pretty restricting.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      Every recipe I've seen has the oven temperature as a multiple of 20°C. Ovens aren't accurate enough for measuring 5°C, let alone 2.5°C. (Ignoring badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes.) For air temperature, my behaviour wouldn't change at all if someone told me it is 18±0.25°C rather than the normal 18±0.5°C. We could round to the nearest 2° and it would be fine.
      - pjc50 3y ago
        Get a cheap IR thermometer. For both ovens and rooms, you can use it to see that the temperature varies by up to a few degrees C from top to bottom. > badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes This drives me up the wall .. but a lot of UK goods are sold in "metric-numbered imperial sizes". At the weekend I bought 450g (half lb) of meat and a 6.3mm (1/4") router bit.
arrowsmith 3y ago
I'm British and always used to think that Fahrenheit was stupid but I've warmed up to it (pardon the pun) after spending some time in the U.S. Celsius is obviously more useful in a scientific context, but 99% of the time when I'm talking about the temperature, I'm not doing a scientific experiment, I'm asking "how hot/cold is it outside?" In that context I actually find Fahrenheit to be a more intuitively useful scale once you get used to it. Celsius crams the entire range of likely outdoor temperatures into a narrow range with awkwardly-sized units that don't provide enough information. If someone tells me it's 15C outside, how many layers do I need to wear? I still don't have a good feel for it from the number alone, even after spending most of my life in countries where Celsius is the norm. But in Fahrenheit, things make more obvious sense. 0 F means "insufferably cold", 100 F means "insufferably hot", and to get a meaningful idea of what the weather feels like on my skin, I just need the range: it's "in in fifties" or "in the seventies" etc.. It takes some getting used to, but I actually quite like it. Thanks, America! (I'd also make a similar argument that feet and inches are a much more intuitively meaningful scale than centimetres for measuring human height. But that might be my British bias.)
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Like you, I also find celsius more useful for knowing how hot some thing is while fahrenheit is more useful for knowing how hot some where is. I also find inches, feet, miles etc. more intuitive than meters for basically everything. "so-and-so meters" or "such-and-such kilometers" doesn't describe anything to me, give it to me in inches/feet/miles so I can visualize the damn thing. Moral I suppose is that metric is great for describing the universe, but the problem is we're dumb apes.
  - Epa095 3y ago
    I suppose the moral is that we relate to whatever measurement we grew up to and are used to. I have no problem visualising meters and kilometers, and I am as dumb an ape as you.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  > Thanks, America! Erm, they didn't invent it. Most (all?) American units were inherited from British. Farenheit was invented in Europe. I have also warmed to Imperial/American units for certain things. A lot of simple recipes are easier to remember in ounces than in grams. For example, 5 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of butter gives you enough shortcrust pastry for a 9 inch tin. Inches seem about the right size, but centimeters are too small. People's heights tend to fall around 5-6 feet which is nice, or 150-180/1.5-1.8 which is kind of awkward. Basically, imperial measurements seem much more "human" while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light which have absolutely no bearing on our lives. None of this means that "cups" are a sane way to measure ingredients for cooking, though. There's just so many reasons why it's bad but even just from a laziness point of view it's an extra thing to wash up.

Vecr 3y ago

"Degrees Kelvin". Yeah, I've actually heard that.

laingc 3y ago
To be fair, that is actually common in physics. Elsewhere obviously not so much.
- defrost 3y ago
  Celsius = Kelvin + offset in any case, they're not so different .. not like that other scale used in very few countries.
- mdturnerphys 3y ago
  I think the point was that it's just "Kelvin" not "degrees Kelvin"
  - laingc 3y ago
    I didn’t pick that up, but I suppose that’s fair. I’ve heard both, as I have with Celsius.
pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
It's an obsolete name, but was official at one point.
- mbork_pl 3y ago
  "It's an old code, but it checks out." :-P
- jgilias 3y ago
  What do you mean? It’s a different scale that has the same ‘unit length’ as Celsius, but it’s not the same. Also, it’s very much ‘current’ in the physics context.
  - dghf 3y ago
    I'm assuming they mean the "degrees" part. These days, the standard is to say (for example) 200 kelvin, not 200 degrees Kelvin.
  - arrowsmith 3y ago
    They meant that the name "degree Kelvin" is obsolete (since 1967 according to Wikipedia), not that the unit of measurement itself is obsolete.

perilunar 3y ago

Thanks! No argument from me about Celsius, but even on this site there are people who think otherwise.

nirse 3y ago

I agree, but some of my favourite cookbooks are American. What can you do?

lvncelot 3y ago
Convert to F and also buy measuring cups/spoons and glare angrily from the recipe to my trusty scale, which stands unused in the corner, I guess. Measuring by weight is the one cooking-related hill that I will die on. (Recently, I had a recipe ask for four cups of lettuce, which could've been anything from 0.5x to 4x of what I finally went with, depending on how much I packed the cups. It's lunacy)
- b112 3y ago
  I've been waiting for canned lettuce, because I never have fresh when I need it, and plus they can eat it on the moon.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  If there's anything specific I learned about cooking, it's that there is no specificity. Give up that fight and find another hill to die on, for your sake.

silisili 3y ago

Most of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either. I'm not saying it makes a ton of sense, but my only real defense of it. That said, I find negative units rather silly in most measurements, so we should really be using K I think.

seszett 3y ago
> * Most of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either.* That's your choice though. Outside temperature cannot be measured precisely enough to warrant decimals (it's supposed to be 17.4°C outside but who can tell the difference with 17°C or 18°C...) but my car's A/C is set to 21.5°C and my home's heating is set to 19.5°C.
- silisili 3y ago
  I figure C is like F for cooking, correct me if I'm wrong. Everything is a multiple of 5, you'll never see bake at 372F or something odd. If C is the same way, that's probably pretty restricting.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    Every recipe I've seen has the oven temperature as a multiple of 20°C. Ovens aren't accurate enough for measuring 5°C, let alone 2.5°C. (Ignoring badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes.) For air temperature, my behaviour wouldn't change at all if someone told me it is 18±0.25°C rather than the normal 18±0.5°C. We could round to the nearest 2° and it would be fine.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      Get a cheap IR thermometer. For both ovens and rooms, you can use it to see that the temperature varies by up to a few degrees C from top to bottom. > badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes This drives me up the wall .. but a lot of UK goods are sold in "metric-numbered imperial sizes". At the weekend I bought 450g (half lb) of meat and a 6.3mm (1/4") router bit.

arrowsmith 3y ago

I'm British and always used to think that Fahrenheit was stupid but I've warmed up to it (pardon the pun) after spending some time in the U.S. Celsius is obviously more useful in a scientific context, but 99% of the time when I'm talking about the temperature, I'm not doing a scientific experiment, I'm asking "how hot/cold is it outside?" In that context I actually find Fahrenheit to be a more intuitively useful scale once you get used to it. Celsius crams the entire range of likely outdoor temperatures into a narrow range with awkwardly-sized units that don't provide enough information. If someone tells me it's 15C outside, how many layers do I need to wear? I still don't have a good feel for it from the number alone, even after spending most of my life in countries where Celsius is the norm. But in Fahrenheit, things make more obvious sense. 0 F means "insufferably cold", 100 F means "insufferably hot", and to get a meaningful idea of what the weather feels like on my skin, I just need the range: it's "in in fifties" or "in the seventies" etc.. It takes some getting used to, but I actually quite like it. Thanks, America! (I'd also make a similar argument that feet and inches are a much more intuitively meaningful scale than centimetres for measuring human height. But that might be my British bias.)

Dalewyn 3y ago
Like you, I also find celsius more useful for knowing how hot some thing is while fahrenheit is more useful for knowing how hot some where is. I also find inches, feet, miles etc. more intuitive than meters for basically everything. "so-and-so meters" or "such-and-such kilometers" doesn't describe anything to me, give it to me in inches/feet/miles so I can visualize the damn thing. Moral I suppose is that metric is great for describing the universe, but the problem is we're dumb apes.
- Epa095 3y ago
  I suppose the moral is that we relate to whatever measurement we grew up to and are used to. I have no problem visualising meters and kilometers, and I am as dumb an ape as you.
globular-toast 3y ago
> Thanks, America! Erm, they didn't invent it. Most (all?) American units were inherited from British. Farenheit was invented in Europe. I have also warmed to Imperial/American units for certain things. A lot of simple recipes are easier to remember in ounces than in grams. For example, 5 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of butter gives you enough shortcrust pastry for a 9 inch tin. Inches seem about the right size, but centimeters are too small. People's heights tend to fall around 5-6 feet which is nice, or 150-180/1.5-1.8 which is kind of awkward. Basically, imperial measurements seem much more "human" while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light which have absolutely no bearing on our lives. None of this means that "cups" are a sane way to measure ingredients for cooking, though. There's just so many reasons why it's bad but even just from a laziness point of view it's an extra thing to wash up.