resonator

I use F4 and have a dedicated button for it nestled amongst my other modifier buttons.

> What is your evidence for shorter lives promoting long-term thinking?

I'm looking at it in the other direction; that long-term thinking might result in shorter lives.

I'm very uneasy about us collectively seeking longer lifespans. Earth is already supporting more people than is sustainable. Living longer robs someone else of an opportunity to live, or a shorter life. Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate, but I worry about happens in the meantime.

Actually, I take it back. As I said earlier, I mostly use vintage imperical hand tools. I've just been looking into modern metric tools and I'm finding that they're actually imperial, as in they come in sizes like 0.25"/3.2mm. So long as they're not rounding them to whole millimeters, they'll have the same ratio as the imperical tools.

I guess you can use whatever number system you care for.

Thank you for making me think about this.

Sorry, I didn't express that well. I guess in that specific case I would use a ruler.

Normally I would take measurements from my pre-existing pieces instead of the ruler. It's more accurate because it accommodates for any slight inaccuracies.

> What's wrong with 9.5 mm?

As a number, well nothing. I'm not saying there are anything wrong with the numbers, I'm saying that with a standard set of imperial or metric tools, you're more likely to find your imperial tools working with with you.

> And what's going to happen when you divide by three, not two?

Well dividing by three will be 1/4". That's another common imperial size. But to answer the point I think you were trying to make, there are sometimes cases where it isn't natural — like dividing 3/4 by 5. In those cases you need to measure or pull out of divider. Your problems don't all disappear when using imperial but I find that more often the perfect dimension happens to be that of a commonly size tool.

> Don't see anything natural in one compared to the other.

I think you're arguing from the perspective of pure numbers verses the practicality of making something with tools that I own. If I was using CAD, it metric or imperial would make zero difference.

Dividing it by two gives you 3/8 rather than 9.5mm. Dividing it by 4 gives you 3/16 rather than 4.75mm. Both 3/8 and 3/16 are common sizes. You can drill holes cut grooves this size. You can use your 3/8 chisel to quickly find the centerline.

It's not like you can't do any of this with the metric system, but you'll either need to measure things more, or round things. Often rounding is fine, but to me it feels like a compromise that is born out of the measuring system; a compromise that isn't needed when using the imperial system.

You can skew the ruler so that it measures 102cm and mark off 34cm and 68cm. :)

I think that both metric and imperial systems are good for woodworking but I think you need to adapt the way you think of measurements depending on which you choose.

I like that using imperial you have a hierarchy of measures: wholes, halves, quarters, eights, sixteenths. It's clear and precise. You know that if you needing to measure 16ths or 32ths things are getting weird.

With metric you have similar measures but the hierarchy isn't strongly defined: 100s of mm, 10s of mm, then maybe 5s of mm, and 2s of mms.

As far as dividing a meter into equal thirds, you wouldn't use a ruler to do that, or at least I wouldn't.

I like that you can fairly easily use the metric system to measure something that was that was made with imperial measures. You can't really say the same for the opposite without a bunch of estimates and holding unmemorable numbers.

What I do wonder is whether there is beauty in the ratios you naturally get from using imperial measures when furniture making or designing building façades.

I've been slowing learning the imperial measurement system and I would say that it's now natural to me in a very limited sense.

I grew up in Australia using the metric system. As a child, it was (and probably still is) common to throw around estimates in inches or yards, but anything precise was expressed in in mm or meters. So I've always had a sense of how big and inch or two is but like the presenter, for anything bigger I'd need to perform a quick conversions back to my natural metric measurements to understand what was meant.

I'm also a woodworker and use many vintage tools, produced before the world adopted metric. I decided long ago that I would these tools as they were designed to be used and not try to mess with metric, too.

At the time, I had no intuition at all about fractions of an inch. I didn't even know that 8ths and 16ths where how they were divided. I literally had no idea. I needed to pull out my maths brain to tell you whether 7/8 or 5/16 was bigger.

I used imperial measurements almost exclusively while woodworking in my shed. This was possible because I don't need to communicate measures to anyone other than myself. I also don't often need to take measurements of odd things that don't fall nicely onto an imperial ruler.

I'm now comfortable using inches for measuring things up to maybe 100" — I wonder if 100 is only an obvious stopping point because of my metric upbringing — I still have no concept of a mile or yard before converting to metric.

But I do still do use metric when I need a precise measure of something that can't be expressed easily in inches. So I'd use 12" rather than 304mm, but I'd use 300mm rather than 11 and whatever inches.

Also, it's made easier due to a lot of hangover in stock wood dimensions. It still comes in thicknesses that are more naturally expressed in inches, for example 19mm (3/4"), 25mm (1").

I've been working this way for about 10 years and can now think in inches without any conversion. I doubt I could flip all units of measure to imperial without changing the world I live in and the people I work with.

I wonder if this could be used to launder money for a cost of $1 per month. :)

> I'm bored with the tech stuff but nobody has ever offered me any other kind of work.

I recommend doing the work that you want (alongside your regular responsibilities) and if you're good at it the offers will follow. If you're not, you'll develop experience.