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Showing posts from 2015

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....

Another symbolic failure

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I recently wrote an article about the importance of the correct use of symbols for units of measurements, citing examples of cock-ups from other countries, but had no photographic evidence. Recently, I was in Sri Lanka, where everything (that's not a remnant from its colonial past) is metric - including the speed limits. I was therefore surprised that on the signs speeds were specified in kmph rather than km/h.  (See below).