Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Metric

Where can I buy a low gpm metric aerator for a Grohe faucet?

jenmakes — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:53 -0800

A public restroom at work has a Grohe Eurosmart Faucet (part #32709) with a 2.2 gpm aerator. According to the plumbing supply place where we bought it, the aerator is metric & therefore difficult to find a lower gpm version. Grohe customer service has not responded to my question, and my googling hasn't yielded many useful leads... So where can I get a .5 or 1 gpm metric aerator or aerator insert to fit that faucet? The faucet was bought to replace an old one, and the new gpm overwhelms the little sink. Also, it is a public sink, so no one will just learn to turn the faucet on at a lower rate.

Thanks for your help!

little orange fruits weigh what?

libraryhead — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:33:19 -0800

How much does a pint of kumquats weight? That's about 500 mL by volume, but I understand non-USians prefer to weigh ingredients. Precision is of some importance here. (Yes, I have Googled to no avail. Short of actually going out and trying to *find* a pint of kumquats out of season, you're my only hope.)

Or did my elementary school teachers lie to me?

JDHarper — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:49:37 -0800

Which one is right, Google or Excel? I've discovered that Google's calculator and Excel give slightly different results when converting metric and English weights. For example, when I convert 1 gram to ounces in Excel, I get: 0.035273972 whereas Google gives me 0.035273962.

I just tried converting pounds to ounces in Excel. It's telling me that 1 pound contains 16.000002342941 ounces. Is that an error of some kind in Excel, or am I missing something?

Metric conversion cards in DC?

thrako — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:05:34 -0800

Where could I find metric to English conversion cards like these in the Washington DC area? Anything roughly wallet sized with distance and/or temperature conversions (the more unit conversions the better) would be good.

What kind of high pressure metric fuel fitting is this?

KevCed — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:23:14 -0800

What kind of high pressure metric plumbing fitting is this? [pdf link (85kb) | jpeg link (60kb)] I am working on a prototype gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine. This fitting connects a high pressure fuel supply line from the fuel pump to the fuel rail that supplies the injectors.

The thread is metric (M14x1.5) and the tube is 8mm OD. It is pretty thick wall stainless steel. I expected it to be metric since the engine is of European origin. I'm pretty sure the other components in this system are Bosch, but I have not had much luck getting technical information from them for other stuff so I am trying AskMe first.

This fitting sort of looks like DIN 3852, maybe some kind of JIS 30° flare fitting variant that I haven't seen before.

I am hoping some tech-savvy mefite can save me some time and tell me the name of this kind of fitting, what SAE or DIN standard to which it conforms that would be great. Since I want to build a fuel system, what I'm really after is a supplier of other fittings. I don't want to build my own or just throw something together because the fuel pressure in the fuel rail is around 120 bar (1740 psi).

The pdf has a bit more technical information, the jpg is one of the pictures in the pdf for mefites who don't like pdfs.

The Metric European Kitchen

melissam — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:43:47 -0800

Yet another baking question...this time I'm looking to figure out some good recipes to bake in Northern Europe Obviously lots of people bake here in Scandinavia, but there seem to be some differences. For example, baking soda isn't really used here in baking and it took me some effort to find that. Besides that, all my recipes are in American measures and it's annoying to convert them. So what I'm looking for are English websites analogous to Epicurious/Allrecipes, but that use the metric system and it would be awesome if they used ingredients that are common here.

I'm also interested in what sort of measuring cups/spoons people you use in Europe. My roommates don't cook much...so I'm sort of confused and maybe this is a stupid question. I found some American-style teaspoon ones at the local Ikea, but what sort of thing should I use when a recipe calls for X grams of honey? (don't ask what Fjällbrynt is...it's very strange and I'm trying to figure out what to go without).

Help introduce me to new indie music.

phyrewerx — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:00:09 -0800

Help introduce me to new indie music and any blogs that cover them. I really enjoy Canadian rock - works by The Weakerthan, Stars, Metric, the Most Serene Republic are constantly on my playlist. CBC Radio 3 is my online radio of choice. Could any one introduce me to blogs/sites that talk about this type of music elsewhere in the US or Europe? Pitchfork is a decent site, but it doesn't seem too accessible for quick browsing.

Additionally - my only source of learning about American indie/college rock was from the OC. Now that show is over, are there any good sources to expose oneself to bands like those or similar soundtracks? Last.fm's referral seems too vauge.

*This isn't a discussion about the quality of Schwartz's work, he picked upbeat and decent music that I could study to.

No time like the present

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:24:33 -0800

I'm interested in aspects of benchmarking with the help of UNIX's time, specifically, what user, system and elapsed times correspond to, within the functional context of the system and the tested application. I have a very rough idea what the results of time point to in terms of CPU contention, with respect to the result of elapsed time, if elapsed is greater than the sum of user and system times.

• What does it mean that user makes non-system calls (what are those calls?)

• Likewise, what does it mean specifically that system makes system calls (what are those calls?)

Would I use user and system mean times to establish how to guide function profiling, within an application?

• What benchmarking results should I use as criteria for comparing one test result with another, all else the same?

For example, let's say I run sed -e 's/+/-/' inputdata on the same system, where different builds of sed have been compiled with different optimization flags and compilers.

• In this case, why would I choose the mean user time over mean system time as the criterium for comparing against like measurements of a "baseline" stock build of sed?

• Likewise, what are the caveats with choosing one measurement class over the other? (What are the downsides of using user time? system time? I suspect the answer to this will depend upon the calls made.)

If you have pointers to literature (other than the thousands of man pages on Google) I'd be appreciative of that advice, as well. Thanks in advance.

How can I fend off the boss with data while I do my job of building a great website?

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:48:33 -0800

What kind of web stats can I provide my bosses, to satisfy their hunger for "measurable stats" but avoid going down a rathole and losing focus? I joined a very old line company mid-way through last year as the manager of the web team. The company is a few hundred years old, and is roughly in the retail business. The company's clients are generally older, well-heeled, and relatively technophobic. The website itself is mainly brochure ware for the company, but has extensive and detailed on-line product catalogues. There is no e-commerce component. My hiring was coincident with the re-launch of its website. There's little interactive "2.0" functionality to it, but some pretty cool stuff with regard to displaying items for sale.

When I was hired, I knew all of this, and basically took the challenge on to, over time, redo the website and bring it into the 21st century (employer user-centered design techniques, rich interfaces, etc... make the whole experience a lot more engaging). I have built out a product roadmap with a lot of this functionality, but my boss and the CEO (his boss) don't want to hear any of it, until we can establish some benchmarks for success and some reasonable goals. The first thing they are looking to show is the adoption rate, i.e.: how have the traditional customers taken to the new platform? Has this led to additional sales activity, has it lessened costs (i.e.: do we need to do shorter runs of print catalogues because more customers are now exclusively doing product research with us on-line?), and so on.

Those are worthy pursuits, but the problem is that we have not even been through a full business cycle, and the site's functionality is so basic, I cannot think of anything past basic stats like pageviews/customer or unique visits by each customer trended over time (however, until we get through a business cycle or two, these data will be skewed). Just the most basis stuff.

Problem here is that the CEO has a monomaniacal focus on everything being data-driven and my boss seems unable to push back on him, if he even wants to. My viewpoint, based on all of the above is that if we build a state of the art site and make elegant, engaging and highly useful, we will attract a new generation of customer. Any attempts now to justify what's been done, or what we're going to do (other than focus groups), I think might be premature or misleading.

Can anyone offer any help?

How many kilos in a peck of apples? Or pecks of apples in a kilo?

mdonley — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 10:02:59 -0800

What is the mass, in kilos, of 1/4 peck of apples? I'm making the apple crisp/crumble recipe on this page soon (not today, though). I can convert all the other measurements over to metric pretty easily, but one is tricky: the recipe calls for "1/4 peck of your favorite apples to bake with, or whatever the lady is selling that day."

I live in Latvia, where everything is measured using the metric system, and while I've got a superfluity of ladies selling apples, I don't know how much to ask for.

The internet isn't helping much, as pecks measure volume and grams measure mass; also, as this is Latvia, our domestic/neighborhood (Lithuania and Poland, basically) apples are rather small, between the size of a tennis ball or a fist, so a definition of "about 20 apples" might not really be helpful. (Apples from Germany, even, are often almost twice the size of what we've got here.)

Also, I'm from Los Angeles originally, which in my case unfortunately means that I've never seen apples anywhere other than in a big pile at a supermarket or farmer's market, so I can't just "eyeball it."

Finally: any tips on what sorts of apple to choose (again, I'm in Europe, so keep that in mind), would be much appreciated!

Thanks! (And extra helpings of crisp/crumble for extra helpful answers!)

the police and the wtf?

luriete — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 22:32:43 -0800

What are the lyrics of the Metric song Police and the Private about? Drug addiction? Prostitution? Post-9/11 security? I have listened to it 50 times and it's driving me completely nuts; I can't figure it out. The last lines seems to undo the above meanings.

How can I learn to use metric in my everyday life?

jazon — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 16:20:26 -0800

I want to Think Metric! I'm an American who wants to get on par with the rest of the world. What are ways I can start to mentally convert from inches, pounds, and Fahrenheit to centimeters, kilograms, and Celsius. I've checked out some sites like Think Metric that give every day examples (a one story building is about three meters) , but find it hard to switch around the English equlivants (a builiding that size is about 10 feet, so three meters is ten feet, or ten feet is about three meters). What are some better ways I can mentally convert and use metric in my every day life?

Children's Metric Cookbook

Soliloquy — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 22:04:41 -0800

I'm looking to buy a children's cookbook for a young friend in Canada, but the only one I could find on Amazon.com or Google that explicitly stated it had metric measurements (Children's Quick And Easy Cookbook by Angela Wilkes) looked a little too advanced for the kid's tastes. Can anyone recommend a good one with metric measurements, basic cooking terminology, and kitchen safety tips?

Oh, and heavy on the cookie recipes...