If you spent time there you could see how it would happen. There was a running joke in Taiwan that something was Taiwan same not USA same. The locals would say it all the time meaning they knew it wasn’t good but was good enough. I can just picture some engineer 100 years ago trying to explain an inch to them and a foot and the locals shaking there head and saying 1 foot equals deka in metric so 10… the engineer saying 12 inch 1 foot and the local saying 10 like metric… in the end I can see the American or British engineer shaking his head and the Taiwanese guy saying Taiwan same… the language barrier and cultural barriers are really hard to work with there. And the hardest part is you feel like you have failed them because you are in their home area and they have learned some English but your unable to get your ideas across to them. You see these good hard working people trying hard to please you and do what you need but you just can’t find a way to get the message across so at some points you just throw your hands up in the air and say Taiwan same.
I don’t see the problem with the square. The twelfth scale is used for figuring roof framing. Or, if you are using it to scale something up, 1inch to the foot.
Or did I miss something else?
I hear you regarding cultural differences/ barriers, but as I think about your story more, it becomes even more complex.
Taiwan has a good reputation for machine tool manufacture. Their export products are calibrated in mm or thousandths of an inch. My original thought was that your misadventure could have been avoided with a discussion referring to decimal dimensions, thousandths. But from what you describe, I now have visions of Taiwanese inch calibrated machine tools, micrometers and calipers.
My mind is boggled.
I agree regarding scaling. But this is just a mini square, never seen anything like it.
How about threads in the USofA? Are bolts and nuts metric these days?
They are, but the fractions are too hard for Americans: Like our standard 6.35 mm bolt with .7874 threads per mm - we just simplify it and call it a quarter of an “inch” with 20 threads per inch. If only the rest of the world would realize that a 6mm bolt is just not big enough, and that a 7mm bolt would be too big, then this wouldnt even be a problem 
I just heard the news about the fire disaster in Greece, appalling and very troubling. 
Haha, that’s even worse 
I would rather call that a quarter inch too.
I guess you are talking about my wife and me. Summer apples are ripe and we are making applesauce like crazy-- next will be pears. We put the jars upside down in a pan of boiling water and the lids at the same time to heat everything up. Then we put hot applesauce in the jar and seal it tight. Been doing it for years and hasn’t killed me yet. TomC
I agree. I should never have mentioned Greece the other day.
Most water bombers are already up here. They have better hurry down south. The fire seems more explosive down there. I read 60 casualties first day. We have none so far.
The last report I heard said 74 dead near Athens at seaside resorts, gale force winds cut off road access, then forced people into the sea, which still wasn’t safe.
Roof pitch I knew I should know what that was for.
Tom I do the same thing with rhubarb sauce. I do waterbath the apple or rhubarb sauce after I jar it up but mostly to make sure it is hot enough to actually seal.
Nuts and bolts in the USA are still a mess most of the automotive stuff it all metric infact I don’t know when i last saw one that wasn’t. But things made in the USA like industry equptiment is still made with standard hardware. As far as I can tell my entire life we have refused to join the rest of the world and just use metric. It drove me nuts as a design engineer because you buy stuff designed over seas and put it into your machine it will be metric but we would mount it on our machine with as much standard hardware as you could. It made a mess as far as I could tell. I was a controls engineer responsible for electric motors and sensors so I was always running into hardware issues. Every time I took it up with the mechanical engineers I got this argument that we couldn’t buy metric stock for machining all the raw stock is measured in imperial or you pay more. I could never get an answer to why you couldn’t by 1 inch thick aluminum plates then tap them metric for the threads… 
Needless to say I had more then one heated debate on that one.
good to hear someone else come clean about their garden. i got crazy busy in the spring and lost the garden to dryness, weeds, chickens and rabbits… wild, new this year I might just get a crop of rabbit… I’m hopeful for a midsummer planting of cale, broccoli cabbage, lettuce, etc…
Well as I had said, I too have a weeds garden this year mostly due to out forestry weeds abating so’s not to get cited this year.
Funny year here for growing things. Too dry, too hot early-on. Now still too dry with cool-cold nights. I had 38F just two nights ago.
Nobodies corn here is over knee-high and tasseling out already.
But been a great year for blueberries and raspberries so far.
And tree fruits have set so heavy requiring a lot of deselection thinning to prevent branches breaking. The fir trees are cones loaded this year.
“Variety is the key to a good Habitat.” S.U.
“Specialization is for Insects!” R.A. Heinlien
treefarmer Steve unruh
How’s this for short corn?
We aren’t lacking for heat, this variety is extreme dwarf, and 35 days old. Corn meant for where corn shouldn’t be able to grow.
Apart from the heat threatening drought, so far growing conditions have been above average here, berries are up to weeks ahead of normal ripening.
And despite continuing flushes of weeds with the rains, I’m actually in good control over weeds. Never thought I would see such a day.
I am thinking that corn will have bite sized ears… I have never seen something like that before it it tinny.
I wondered where orientals got those little 1 or 2 inch long cobs of sweet corn that they us in some of their foods. TomC
Very nice Garry.
What are the plants in the second picture?