After a month of poor health, I'm getting back to my writing or at least trying to. Is there a BC author or commenter from Australia who can help me? I'm trying to determine the time in Alice Springs compared to other parts of world, and the websites I'm finding are telling me time in that part of Australia is currently 12:21 a.m. when it is 10:51 a.m. where I'm writing. Note the 21 and 51. Is CST Time Australia, a half hour different from other places?* I always thought time zone changes were hourly. IF its say 9:51 in Bombay, its something 51 in all other parts of the world.
If someone can straighten me out either in a private message or at this blog post, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.
BTW my wife didn't get excused from Jury Duty. She ended up serving two days. The jury panel she was a part of, was being used to find 12 jurors and 6 alternates for a suit against tobacco companies brought here in Florida by the wife of a man who died of lung cancer.
Dear Wife, along with about 75 others she estimated, were dismissed yesterday after people were asked to raise their hand if they believed the tobacco companies couldn't be held liable in spite of the evidence that be presented in this particular. DW raised her hand, she believes in free will and that the smoker knows what they are doing every time they light up a cigarette.
*- This author is well traveled. I've been to all 50 United States, Canada, Mexico, The Bahamas, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau,(Before and after those cities were ceded back to China), Singapore, The Philippines, England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, and Poland.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”- Albert Einstein
Comments
Time zones
There are a couple areas of the planet that do funny time zones. Of course, I can't remember any off my head*... They tend to be odd places like Burma (Myanmar) and such like who don't want to follow the international rules.
I also seem to remember that some places do a half-hour (or one-and-a half hour) shift between winter and summer time. That is, the half-hour offset may not be there all year round.
Ain't international standards wonderful?
Penny
*there are those who say I've always been off my head...
Day and Time
The earth rotates in such a way that the sun rises in the east marking the start of a day, and sets in the west. In the US, remember that the line advancing the hour between Eastern and Central time zones runs through Chicago to the south. Then there is a local Mountain time zone that Denver and most of New Mexico use (except that some states refuse to jump the time forward for Daylight Savings time), and then a Pacific Zone that California uses (three hours earlier than Eastern time. Anchorage Alaska and I think Hawaii is another hour earlier, so four hours earlier than Eastern time. (1020 am in the central zone where I live is 7:20 am in Alaska. As one travels west from the USA, you cross an international date line between Hawaii and Japan. I believe if you are going west you repeat a day, while if you cross it going east, you lose a day or vice versa, but it has been a long time since I have thought about that or had to deal with it. So not only the hours change going west, but the day would change as well. When I was in Japan, it would be a day later and 15 hours difference from the central time zone in the USA, so made talking to my parents in Okie-land difficult as they were typically in bed when I was free to call them, or I would be getting ready for bed when they were finishing breaky, and on different days. That is why history books in Japan refer to Pearl Harbor attack as being on the 6th of December, while it was Dec. 7 in Washington D.C.
Australia would present a similar problem, but depending on where you are in Oz, it might be an hour or so earlier or later, and a day difference between the Atlantic time. East coast time (Pacific Ocean) would be earlier than west coast (Indian Ocean) time. I can't recall the number of time zone shifts across Oz, but kinda think there is only one. Just not sure where it would run viz-a-viz Alice Springs and Japan. Generally, I would trust the calculator on the web, but keep in mind it would be a different day as well as 12 to 15 hours time difference from like the middle of the USA.
You might investigate using Zulu time like the military, which counts the number of hours from an arbitrary point on the surface of the earth and adjusts for number of time zones east of that point. IIRC, that point is somewhere on the west coast of England.
CaroL
CaroL
Time in Alice
Hi
Try this URL:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=929
I hope this helps
Karen
That's the one I found
And had me scratching my head. Was my computer and wall clock running an half an hour slow?
Chapter 25 takes place mostly in Australia but I also have goings on in Japan and characters in Oregon. My next story will be set in one time zone so I don't get a headache. :)
"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries." ~Aldous Huxley
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Yes
I've not been to Australia but famously the Aussies allowed local setting of timezones back in the fifties and had some very odd divisions, including one that was 15 minutes off from a neighboring zone. :) There were some a half hour off and two still are. Currently, it appears that Australia has three timezones, four during daylight savings time. And yes, Alice Springs is in one of the half-hour timezones.
Australian Time Zones
Newfoundland in Canada is similar, being half an hour east of the Atlantic timezone of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Different maps will give you different timezones for Labrador and Eastern Quebec so its best to go there and ask a native, if you can find one. :)
In the US, Arizona, and Alaska have odd timezone maps. Most of Alaska appears to use Yukon time (which Yukon doesn't). Western Alaska is shown using Hawaiian time on some maps and according to one map, none of Alaska uses Alaska time. :) In Arizona, the Indian Reservations set their own timezones and it isn't unusual to see three different clocks in some businesses and offices. If you drive from Tombstone to the Utah border, it's possible to change timezones five times on the way while going mostly north and technically staying in the Mountain US Time Zone area. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I noticed that you stopped at the Utah border...
Lucky thing, as it's otherwise necessary to explain that you have to set your clocks back by half a century.
I did a project some years ago for Sprint (the telecommunications company) for a message store and forward service, by means of which one could, let's say, record a birthday greeting for one's sainted aunt, now retired and living in Bora Bora, to be delivered at noon, local time, since that's when she comes in from surfing. As part of the project, it was necessary to make a database of time offsets from GMT, which is -- as you point out in only one situation -- astonishingly difficult to do, since the local times are often wildly at variance to what they "should be," for reasons of local convenience.
Amongst the many crimes of US President Richard Nixon is that he signed the national Daylight Savings Time law, thereby setting most of the USA into a giddy death spiral of fiddling with the clock to prove one political point or another, although it's proven that Daylight Saving Time is a very expensive method of accomplishing less than nothing, since the minor savings from lighting costs are more than swamped by larger air conditioning and heating bills, excess consumerism encouraged by attendance at amusement parks, golf courses, and shopping malls, not to mention the waste of national effort entailed in searching high and low through the house to find every clock that needs resetting.
The stupid idea was thought up in the days when ordinary families owned one clock, if they were lucky, but now half my kitchen appliances have clocks, every bit of electronic hardware (other than my computers, which manage to reset themselves), and my vehicles, which all have clocks in them. I think they should declare the Spring Forward and Fall Back days National Holidays (with Monday Observance) to allow ordinary citizens sufficient time to recuperate from their exhausting days of labour.
See how business interests (the primary lobbyists for clock fiddling) like them apples.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
It's about time!
Hi Danielle
Not many people seem to know this, but Google (Web) has a built in time function that works like so:
So, when you're writing and want to determine relative differences, just try Googling the times in the places you're interested in. At present, my country is on New Zealand Standard Time, hence the first query above. The second should answer your question. Not all timezones work neatly compared with here, as the last two examples will show. The Chatham Islands are part of New Zealand, but are some 800km (500 miles) off our east coast, and they have their own time zone which is 45 minutes ahead of the mainland. Sri Lanka is another country that I've discovered where their time zone is some hours and thirty minutes different to here.
I hope this helps.
Pendulum Swinger
Bike Archive
Bike Resources
I think Nepal ...
... has an odd time zone jump. In 1989 we flew into Kathmandu from Dacca in Bangladesh and apparently the local time wasn't an exact hour different. Don't know why but in any case none of us bothered changing our watches because it didn't seem to matter much - we just rode our bikes.
I've been called for jury service 3 times here in the UK. I found it a very interesting experience. Won't happen again; I think the over 70s are exempt.
You may be right about adult smoker knowing the risks (though even the tobacco companies denied the link between lung cancer and smoking for years) but tobacco advertising targeting the young is indefensible but they need to replace the customers their product is killing off early somehow. It's an appalling product.
Robi
Re: How can time be so confusing?
Here's a link to a World Map showing all Time Zones with the current time (refresh your browser to update the time) shown for principal cities in each zone:
http://www.worldtimezone.com/
Regards,
Dave.
Bombay/Mumbai
One of the funniest parts of this post is that Mumbai ("Bombay," old-style) is in one of the offset-by-half-hour timezones.
Amy!
(who knows this because her company has an office in Pune, which is in the same timezone)
And then there's New Jersey
No matter where you reside or work in New Jersey, every hour seems like an eternity.
She was born for all the wrong reasons but grew up for all the right ones.
Con grande amore e di affetto, Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
Australia has Three Time Zones
Australian Time Zones
The Northern Territory and South Australia are offset by plus nine and a half hours on the Prime Meridian, since they're on the other side of the International Date Line.
Western Australia is plus eight hours.
The eastern third of the country, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, are all plus ten hours.
Most countries use whole-hour offsets, but there are a few who add or subtract half an hour, often because their important trading partners are in different time zones, so they split the difference, or because they choose a time closest to the "real" local time in their most important city. A few countries use something even closer to true local time in an important city as their standard time.
Chatham Islands, New Zealand, for instance, is plus twelve hours and forty-five minutes. Kathmandu, Nepal, is plus five hours and forty-five minutes. Go figure. It's handy to be able to look up at the sky and say, "It's around noon."
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Be careful.
Australia is not on the "other side" of the International Date Line from the Prime Meridian (which passes through Greenwich Observatory in London). No part of Australia (or even New Zealand) is east of 180° longitude.
Best wishes, Andrea.
Other side...
Of course, these things are always relative, as Buckaroo Banzai famously observed, "No matter where you go, there you are."
By "other side," I mean of course from me, and most everywhere else in the hemisphere that measures minus GMT. Going the short way around the world, getting to anywhere in Australia would take me across the Date Line since, from my viewpoint, the pond you're across is the Pacific Ocean we share bits of. I dare say, however, that you'd probably describe me as being across the Date Line from you, since the same logistics would apply. As I write, it's still Saturday here, and I have it on best authority that it's Sunday in Australia.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.
"As I write, it's still Saturday here, and I have it on best authority that it's Sunday in Australia."
Yes, it's true. You're living in the past! :)
Best wishes, Andrea.
Time?
Your message Andi timed t 7.03 pm on my settings, it's now 7.24pm Sunday evening. A bit wet and ho hum in Sydney, but hey such things happen. It's sorta nice being half a day ahead of the rest sometimes. It's all relative though. Or something.
Kristina
I prefer to think of the Australians as seriously avant garde...
The Kiwis, by way of contrast, are in their experimental phase.
Cheers,
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Mind you...
...anyone who visits the city of Napier in the Hawkes Bay region will think we're still in our Art Deco phase.
Particular Styles
Bike Archive
Bike Resources
What goes around...
...always comes around again, and everyone thinks it's brand spanking new by then.
Kohelet (Ecc) 1:9
Cheers,
Puddin'
Trés moderne!
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Time zones etc. in Australia.
I am an Australian, living in Sydney, and can confirm that Alice Springs, along with the rest of the Northern Territory, South Australia, and Yancowinna County in far western New South Wales, works on ACST (Australian Central Standard Time) or UTC+9.5 hours. Why is it 9.5 hours? Probably because the only major city (by Australian standards, its population is only 1.3 million or so) in the time-zone is Adelaide, which is in the far EAST of the zone, close to the Victorian border.
Another trap for new-chums* is that while South Australia adopts Daylight Saving Time, the Northern Territory (which is largely tropical) does not. So during the southern winter, both Alice Springs and Adelaide would be UTC+9.5, but during our summer Alice Springs would still be UTC+9.5, but Adelaide, Port Augusta and other places in South Australia would be UTC+10.5. By the way, I hope I don't have to point out that our seasons are reversed from those in the Northern Hemisphere, so it is winter right now?
If you want the full SP* on Australian time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Australia
*Australianism. Left as an exercise for the student.
Best wishes, Andrea.
it gets even more complicated
during daylight saving (last sunday in october to last sunday in march last time i had to look) south australia is half an hour ahead of queensland who doesn't do daylight saving, and half an hour behind victoria and new south wales who do.
Watch your watch in the Wide Brown Land.
Yup, each of our States and Territories decides on their own rules about Daylight Saving. As a rough rule of thumb, the tropical ones (Queensland and Northern Territory) don't put their clocks forward in summer, while the southern ones (New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia, and Tasmania) do. Western Australia, the largest state, which spans everything from temperate to tropical, does not adopt Daylight Saving despite the main population areas being in the south. But then WA is kind of the Texas of Australia (except much bigger*), they do things differently over there.
*Two of our eight states and territories are larger than Alaska, and another three are bigger than Texas. Our population, by contrast, at around 22 million is only a little larger than the New York Metropolitan Area, or roughly the same as Beijing.
Best wishes, Andrea.