Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with timezones

NY or LA which is earlier?

xetere — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:14:20 -0800

Am I alone in regarding NY as being 3 hours *earlier* than LA? Of course I know that when it is 11:00 PM in New York, it is 8:00 PM in LA, and 8:00 is 3 hours earlier than 11:00.
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but
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Since it becomes 11:00 in NY 3 hours before it becomes 11:00 in LA, conceptually, I feel that NY is 3 hours earlier than LA. I know lots of people say NY is 3 hours ahead of LA, but I believe that I am the only one who looks at a specific mark of time as an event, and since that event (say 11:00 PM) occurs 3 hours before the same event in LA, to me New York is 3 hours earlier.

In other words, most people are looking at a moment, say now, and marking the measurements in NY & LA, where it seems logical to me to look at the time as an event (say 11:00) and look at which city gets to that event earlier. After all when it is 1:00 in the morning in New York, we're not all of a sudden 21 hours earlier than LA.

Inspired by rwhe's post, I am now wondering if *anyone* thinks like me on this urgent issue of national import.

how can you live in one time zone and work in another?

543DoublePlay — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:21:53 -0800

While driving from Kentucky to Virginia over the weekend we crossed from the Central to the Eastern time zones and it started my family wondering what it's like to live in one time zone and work a few miles away in another. So this is really just a curiosity question to find out if anyone is in that situation and how difficult it is to cope. Do you wear two watches? Do you have to constantly think about what you are doing and when? Is it a good excuse for being late to work or does that wear out real quick? How about more practical things like cell phones - when do your evening minutes kick in?

I really didn't have an answer for any of these as I've never even thought about it before, so maybe you can collectively answer my kids questions.

When is my birthday?

woodblock100 — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 04:09:41 -0800

They tell us that future travelers in high-speed spaceships will have their perception of the passage of time distorted by relativity effects, but what about the more mundane problem of earth-bound time zones? I can't figure out when my birthday is... I was born in England, at (so they tell me) around six in the morning. When I was five, our family emigrated to Canada, a number of timezones westward. No big problem. But I now live in Japan - and crossed the International Date Line to get here. So I should perhaps add one day to my birthday, and celebrate it one day 'later', to try and keep it lined up with reality.

But here's the problem - a few years ago I made a round-the-world trip (multiple stops) with my family, flying west all the time, and thus crossed the Dateline yet again in the same direction as we returned to Japan. So am I now two days ahead? When is my birthday?

Am I going to be stuck in the past FOREVER?

borkingchikapa — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:56:37 -0800

Okay, so I'm flying from New York at 6:55pm (EST) on December 30th, and arriving in Seoul at 5:45am (Korea Time) on January 1st. Presumably westward. I've been trying to wrap my head around when exactly I'll see the New Year, but I can't do it. I know there used to be a tool that would plot the trajectory of any given flight, but I can't find it anymore. I also don't know exactly how long it would take to go from timezone to timezone, etc etc. I doubt this is something that can be figured out exactly, but any insights? I'd love to be able to say I saw the beginning of 2007 twice, or never actually left 2006.

Who is the radio call-in show host in "Time Zones?"

gubo — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:31:32 -0800

What is the name of the American radio host sampled in "Time Zones" by Negativland? The one who repeatedly says "eleven."

Calculating the Timezone

Nothing — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:56:35 -0800

I have GPS data associated with various measurements from around the world. This data also includes a UTC timestamp. I would like to display this timestamp converted to the local time where the measurement was taken, based on the GPS-reported latitude and longitude. The simple 15 degree trick is not sufficient, I need the real, political time zone, not the ideal time zone, and the measurements move, so I can't just create a conversion table. It seems to me that I should be able to use something like mapserver along with a shapefile of time zone boundaries to solve this, but I have no experience with these tools. Surely I am not the first person to require this ability. Any ideas?