How to give Time for an event.

[Sayvara]

Telling time in an international environment a wonderfully tricky thing. I once had to tell the engineers of a major mobile phone manufacturer that their operating system needed a fix because they had messed up how the time worked in it, less than two months before release. (Two months is a very short time in these cases).

Anyhow, to cut to the chase: Europe is divided into three time zones (that we bother about... it's 5 actually). Western, Central, Eastern. When giving time for an event, it should be in this format:

The event starts 1900 West/2000 Central/2100 East

...or...

The event starts 1900 UK/2000 CET/2100 EET


"West" can be replaced with "UK" (we don't have any portugese players as far as I know) or WET.
"Central" can be replaced with CET.
"East" can be replaced with EET.

Let's not bother with the summer time versions - WEST, CEST, EEST or BST (brittish summer time) - because all European time zones switch between Daylight Saving Time/Summer Time and Standard Time at precisely the same moment: last Sunday of March and October at 0100 UTC (see below for explaination about UTC).



A note on GMT: it doesn't exist any more. Don't use it. Especially since some people confuse GMT to mean "The time in the UK"... which is wrong because the Brittish Summer Time is not GMT but rather GMT+1.

For extra nerdiness: The time reference is UTC (Universal Time Coordinated). The Universal Time does not change with time zones, nor does it change with Daylight Saving Time (this is where the cellphone maker went wrong and with that completely messed up our application). The other time zones have their time in relation to the UTC as follows.

• Western European Time: UTC+0
• Central European Time: UTC+1
• Eastern European Time: UTC+2
  
• Western European Summer Time: UTC+1
• Central European Summer Time: UTC+2
• Eastern European Summer Time: UTC+3

/S

[Adjanah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, point taken. ^^

[Sayvara]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, point taken. ^^

What? Oh you have no reason whatsoever to feel that you are the target of this post sister dearest. No reason at all.

Oh, and I edited your post to make sure the time was unambigous.

/S

[Lildarwen]

*giggles and hits Janah over and over with a fluffy stick*

[Adjanah]

*growls and prepares a 10-page scientific explanation to tell Sayv off next time she makes a typo...*
You COULD just have said "lol is CET not GMT" instead of writing a damn essay...

[Sayvara]

*growls and prepares a 10-page scientific explanation to tell Sayv off next time she makes a typo...*
You COULD just have said "lol is CET not GMT" instead of writing a damn essay...

Pet peeve of mine after that episode of having to lecture those engineers on how the freck time zones and DST works... because they had no bloody clue. I so much wish I could tell you who they were so I could warn you of ever buying their phones... but work ethics - and more importantly: the bleedin' employment contract I signed - forbids me. So instead I educate the world on how time zones work.

/S

[Candil]

i wonder if having a hangman style game to guess the name of the company goes against that contract... anyway! if i stop using gmt wrongly i'll have to admit to being geeky, so *lets the whole explanation go over her head with a whoosh!*

[kellidir]

I think now i'm even more confused

[Lildarwen]

And how can you explain that the 0 meridian goest to Greenwich AND Paris - and both are in different timezones?

Is it just because the French don't like the Brits after Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt very much?

Or is it just because Napoleon decided to be one hour ahead of the damn island monkeys? *giggles*

Miracles over miracles...