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Spring back, fall ahead right? ;-)
Nick
In an ideal world everything would just synchronise to UTC which is a time zone that does not have daylight savings time. It would then be up to each user to select their Standard Time offset from UTC in their profile, and then additionally during their own local Sumer months [ North: Apr-Oct / South: Oct-Apr ] tick a box that adds one more hour on to this time, so that Dates and Times display correct for their locality.
In reality a lot of people seem to run their server on some local time, and tell the software what the offset to UTC is. Unfortunately, some people have moved their server time back one hour at the end of DST, but haven't adjusted the offset value in their software to cater for this. What this has meant is that in quite a few fora anyone who didn't end their DST today, now sees all their times wrong by one hour, as the server has shifted one hour relative to the user (this shouldn't happen). In 2002 I am really very surprised at all this. It seems that Y2K taught almost no-one anything about Date and Time, Time Zones, and DST.
One big mistake that people make is in thinking that UK Clock Time is GMT. This in only true during the UK Winter. In UK Summer, British Clocks show BST which is GMT+1. This is usually referred to as UTC+0000 (GMT) for Winter, and UTC+0100 (BST) for Summer.
This is posted at 18:08 UTC (and WW screen says 6:08 PM seems like Brett is one of the few people on the net that actually understands these issues).
DST changeover details at: [timeanddate.com...]
[edited by: g1smd at 6:16 pm (utc) on Oct. 27, 2002]
There's usually a handful of people that show up to my church an hour early this weekend every year :) I guess that's why we do it on a Sat/Sun - wouldn't want to be an hour early for work heheheh.
Umm, other way about actually.
Yesterday the Sun set here at 17:30 UTC, which was 18:30 BST Local Time (Local=UTC+0100) . Overnight the clocks went back an hour. Local Time is no longer UTC+0100 (BST), it is UTC+0000 (GMT). The Sun goes down at 17:30 UTC again, which is also 17:30 GMT Local Time.
Yesterday the Sun set at 6:30 PM Local Time, today it is at 5:30 PM Local Time. This makes the evenings DARKER, and the mornings lighter. The idea of putting clocks forward in the Summer is to make the long light evenings lighter for even longer.
yes - of course. As you can see the time change has already messed me up. I stand corrected and rather embarassed. I think I need another hour of sleep.
Those in the US know what I'm talking about...
Not all the US folks Brett...
We residents of the Hawaiian Islands are excused from having to upend our schedules twice a year. ;)
"Your plane leaves at 1:30 AM, or you could take a later flight at 1:30 AM.."
What a pleasure waking up this morning and realizing that you got one more hour to sleep in. Love it. Juuust love it :)
We residents of the Hawaiian Islands are excused from having to upend our schedules twice a year. wink
And then there are those of us in Indiana, who don't re-set our own clocks, but have to perform a diferent set of conversions when talking to friends and family in neighboring states depending on the time of year.
Unfortunately, some people have moved their server time back one hour at the end of DST, but haven't adjusted the offset value in their software to cater for this. What this has meant is that in quite a few fora anyone who didn't end their DST today, now sees all their times wrong by one hour, as the server has shifted one hour relative to the user (this shouldn't happen).
Just to add to all this confusion New Zealand changed their clocks several weeks ago (um, three I think?) so I had to update everything then and have to do it again now. Doesn't help that I have one domain hosted on a server set to local time and another set to some US timezone (EST I think?) on top of all the other places I frequent. But then I've found a lot of places have NZ time an hour wrong anyway for some random reason.
It's just all too confusing!
But then I've found a lot of places have NZ time an hour wrong anyway for some random reason.
hehe... Shelleycat, I've found exactly the same thing. Spoke to one chat site webmaster a wee while ago about it... turns out she just didn't get that our seasons were reversed... her response was "wow... you mean you guys have Christmas in SUMMER? Freaky!"
The mysteries of the web: no problem.
The idea that the earth is a ball and turns on an axis producing different seasons as well as time zones: brain meltdown.
Go figure. :)
The mysteries of the web: no problem.The idea that the earth is a ball and turns on an axis producing different seasons as well as time zones: brain meltdown.
*giggle* I shall have to remember that one.
The UK uses GMT in the Winter (UTC+0000) and BST in the Summer (UTC+0100). It is far too tempting for people outside the UK to assume that UK time = GMT time all year round, when in actual fact this is only true from the End of October to the End of April. In Summer the UK clocks do not show GMT (UTC+0000), but a time that is one hour ahead (UTC+0100), known as BST.
One other reason that NZ people have trouble with forum software is that some do not allow a setting of +1300 hours, which some places sometimes have. Even for some places that have +1200 times, if the server has been incorrectly set by one hour, the +1300 setting would be required to make the time 'look right' (even though it is really the server that should be corrected).
