conversions from liter to US gallons

[Icthician]

Would it be possible to have a conversion calculator added to this site? As I have not memorized the formulas, and probably never will, it is disconcerting to have to go somewhere else to convert tank sizes while reading the articles and posts. It is also an imposition to ask a poster to convert if it isn't natural for them to do so.

I realize that this site is based abroad, and the use of liters and centimeters is the norm, however, I think it would be a benefit to this site to have an 'easy to use' converter for liters and centimeters, and the measurments that would be useful for dosing.

I still think an advanced search in the Cat-elog that could pull up a listing of all species from which continent they are from would be a useful tool. One shouldn't have to go through the entire cat-elog to try to match a fish that has similar markings if one knew it's origin why bother looking through the rest?

You can choke me at the 2006 Catfish Convention when you see me if you think my query is bizarre. But you may have to stand in line...

[MatsP]

I think a set of calculation/conversion tools, and perhaps a list of "Common tank-sizes in different countries" would be a good idea.

As to the "Search by region" in the Cat-eLog, this has been looked at before, and it's very hard to make it work well without causing other problems instead.

It's probably a better idea to figure out which Family and/or Genera the fish is [yes, I know, if you haven't got a clue, it's almost as hard to find the genus as it is to find which specie]. But if you haven't got a clue about what it is, how do you know what country/continent it comes from? Further, since about 75% of all species of catfish come from South America, it would only be really helpfull if you know the fish is from Europe [easy enough, only two native species], Africa, Australia, Asia or North america.

North american species, btw, are all in one family [Ictularidae], so they are pretty easy to discover by the Genus by Family.

Certainly, the most difficult area [where this would be most helpfull] would be south america, which is also the most rich of species [and families and genera], which means that it wouldn't be much elimination [yes, of course, eliminating some 25% or so would help, but not a WHOLE LOT].

Another idea is to search for instance http://www.fishbase.org, where there is a search by Country, so if you know which country the fish is from, you can search for the species that come from this country, and then figure out which of these would be likely candidates from there, and then go onto the Cat-eLog for more details.

[Edit] Technically, if I understood Jools comments in a previous post correctly, this web-site is actually hosted on a (set of) machine(s) in California in the US. But the OWNER of the site is based in Scotland, which, along with the rest of the United Kingdom is using a legal standard of Metric, but most of the people living there are using a mixture of metric and imperial measures [which to complicate matters further, in case of volumes above ounces are different from the US measures - the US tried to sort of metricise the imperial volumes by making a pint the same number of ounces as a pound, thus making it somewhat more consistant].


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Mats

[mummymonkey]

You can type a query directly into google and it will return the answer.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... in+gallons

[Jools]

I am working on this now as you will see from the temp converter I've started with at the top right.

Jools

[MatsP]

The temperature appears to be working - I just tested it with 18 and 32'C to 'F, and that at least seemed correct. There is a "round" tickbox that didn't seem to work, but perhaps I got the "wrong" results for it to make a difference.

Good work, Jools.

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Mats

[Jools]

Yes, well the styles are off in the forum and the width is wrong too, but apart from that it's working. Round works to one decimal place, so if it's that already you won't notice a difference.

Off to work on the styling now.

Jools

[Jools]

Got the styling fixed (which is always a fiddly job) and so now I will add a few more converters and then fix the quick find which has been broken for weeks...

Jools

[MatsP]

Is the formatting of the actual forum content meant to leave a white border on the left/right of the grey area?

Edit: The round tick-box still doesn't seem to work correctly. I personally don't see the point of it. A tenth of a degree doesn't make ANY difference to anything, so having more than one decimal point makes no sense, in my idea.

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Mats

[Jools]

Is the formatting of the actual forum content meant to leave a white border on the left/right of the grey area?

Yes, for the first time this is now consistent across the whole site. 5% of screen real estate is given to white space either side of the content.

Edit: The round tick-box still doesn't seem to work correctly. I personally don't see the point of it. A tenth of a degree doesn't make ANY difference to anything, so having more than one decimal point makes no sense, in my idea.

I tend to agree. It might not make the final cut but want to add a few more convertors (volume and length) before deciding.

Jools

[MatsP]

First, on decimals:
1. The number of decimals needed is technically dependant on the size of the number - but I'd say that for metric sizes if we use millimeters, then zero decimals is fine for almost any relevant measure. It may not be if we start using it for converting 4mm (the internal diameter of a 6mm air-hose, for example) into inches - but is that what it is there for, or for "length of fish and tanks". One decimal point is certainly enough for every size of fish. I'm not sure if it matters if a fish is 0.60, 0.61 or 0.69 inches long - that would be between 15 and 17.5 mm - most fish are much longer than that anyways. [Of course, ideally, we should present inches as 3/4" or 5/8", 9/16", etc, etc - if you want, I can probably hack up something that takes a floating point value and converts it into whole inches and the nearest 1/16, normalized (meaning, you don't get 4/16", but 1/4")].

Equally, as long as we don't want to measure medication or some such in the volume, translating liters to gallons with zero or one decimal will be fine for everything but tanks one size above drinking cups. Certainly one decimal point is absolutely enough here - thats about half a liter or so.


2. The placement of the "quick find" is a little bit close to the "three cats" on the top left of the page. On the current page, I see "speci.. ....k find:" (and part of the box to type into is obscured by the bristles of the S. barbatus image).

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Mats

[Jools]

Think we can call this one resolved!

Jools

[MatsP]

Since the Cat-eLog is in millimeter, and that is sort of the standard for SI units (centimeters, decimeters, etc).

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Mats

[Jools]

Since the Cat-eLog is in millimeter, and that is sort of the standard for SI units (centimeters, decimeters, etc).

You are a hard man to please Mr. Petersson. Millimeters now there. Can I go do something else now?

Jools

[MatsP]

You are a hard man to please Mr. Petersson. Millimeters now there. Can I go do something else now?

Of course.

Did you see the e-mail about mixup of names in the Cat-eLog images...

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Mats