← Back to context

Comment by dhosek

5 days ago

In earlier versions of OS X, setting your date format to have the day before the month was sufficient to also alter the default paper size to A4, which was really inconvenient for me since I prefer the day-month ordering (and as a consequence of buying a digital watch in the Netherlands which only had instructions in Dutch which I didn’t understand, I developed the habit of using 24 hour time), but I live in the US and only rarely encounter paper which isn’t 8.5x11.

Don't you mean paper which isn't 215.9 by 279.4 mm?

Go on, switch your thermostat in the US to degrees C. Join us.

  • I’m likely moving to Mexico next year, so I’ve switched the temperature reading on my watch to Celsius in preparation. The problem is that bands of ten degrees in Fahrenheit translate nicely to comfort levels,¹ which is not really true for Celsius, or at least I’m still adapting to get a sense of what those numbers mean in practice.

    1. For the record:

    below 0: Stay inside, drink warm cocoa

    0–10: Only go out if you have to

    10–20: Cold, but doable

    20–30: Nice winter-sports temperature

    30–40: Cold, but you could run out to the garage without a coat if you had to

    40–50: Cold, but you don’t need a scarf or gloves

    50–60: Cool. wear a jacket

    60–70: Cool, wear a light jacket

    70–80: Perfect

    80–90: Warm, but not too bad. Go to the pool.

    90–100: Ugh, hot. Tell your parents that you’ll pay their electric bill if necessary but they need to turn on the air conditioning.

    100+: Stay inside, eat ice cream.

    • It's pretty much universally agreed that: a) Fahrenheit is more ergonomic for human perception of temperatures, and b) the 7+ billion who use degrees C every single day don't find this to be a problem.