A handy tool for people who care about getting shit right.

[Gold Metal Flake]

http://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/

"Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!"

Also works on Linux/Unix.

If you have a Mac, I don't give a fuck.

Preemptive lighten up, Francis.

[TheWraith]

1. Google will do this for you.

Type something like &quot number) (units) to (units)" and it'll give you the answer. For instance, 3,304,832 millimeters is 2.053 miles.

[RC]

2. That is an old program

I had that on my Win 3.1 computer.

[Gold Metal Flake]

3. Windows is an old program. Like Windows, Convert is updated frequently.

And it's still useful. Many engineers that I work with use it. But, I do have something for you:

[Gold Metal Flake]

7. Cool! nt

[MineralMan]

5. That's a useful tool, I think.

Thanks.

Interesting note: I taught a few introductory programming classes, and one of the projects I had the students do was to create a conversion tool similar to this, complete with interface, etc. It was really an interface design project, since the programming was easy.

There were some very interesting versions of it that appeared as a result. Some were hilarious, actually.

[Gold Metal Flake]

6. I imagine a clever person could make some interesting conversion factors.

Sounds like a fun project for them. Good on ya!

[hootinholler]

8. Rods per eon

Then there's the classic furlongs per fortnight.

[SidDithers]

10. K&R...

Liberal use of resources like this one would help to cut down on misinformation posted at DU.

Sid

[Gold Metal Flake]

11. Finally, we reach!

[frazzled]

12. I've got a widget on my Mac dashboard ...

that converts Area, Currency, Energy, Temperature, Time, Length, Weight, Speed, Pressure, Power, and Volume.

It's always a mere click away and I never have to leave the document or web page I'm using to consult it. Have been using it for years. So too bad you don't give a you-know-what.

[Gold Metal Flake]

13. Please don't point and laugh at my lack of a "you know what"!

I see Mac as just another tool, one that I have used many times in the past but do not use now because I prefer running AutoCAD and Inventor on a PC. I tweak the Mac vs. PC bias thing for fun. I have enjoyed equally the freeze-ups and outright sudden crashes when working on both platforms.

That widget sounds very handy. Is it an add-on or does it come with?

[frazzled]

14. I wasn't laughing

I just thought you were dismissing Macs in this regard, either as being incapable of handling such calculations (!) or as not being worthy of discussion in general. (There's been a lot of Mac anger here lately).

I don't recall if the widget was a part of the original dashboard or if I added it (I think the former). On my dashboard I keep just the basics I need: a dictionary, a German-English dictionary, a time clock (which I can double-set to other time zones around the world, handy for when I'm working with people in other countries), a weather summary, the conversion widget, a flight tracker, and a calculator. It's sort of my little desktop reference bundle. I should search for other handy tools I might need from time to time. It's been a long time since I've bothered to update it.

The conversion tool is really useful to me in my work, since I have to deal a lot with dimensions of artworks. I need to make the cm to inches conversions frequently (or vice-versa) for bilingual publications. Now, someone needs to give me a widget for converting inches with decimals to inches with fractions, to the closest 1/8 inch, because "32.662" inches is not American standard. I have a written chart that I consult, but it would be much handier to go straight from centimeters with decimals to inches with fractions!

I've been using Macs from my very first computer, back in the early/mid 90s (a Mac Classic)—mainly because in my line of work I had to be compatible with the book designers I worked with. Back then (and pretty much universally still now), print-book designers used Macs only, with QuarkExpress. Today, of course, that's probably not as critical. But old habits die hard. I've kept workhorse Macs for years and years, so I've become loyal.

[Quantess]

15. Looks very useful!

Thanks. Metric to American is often a head-scratcher.