Time Travel

As I'm sure many UK blogs will be recording today, 29 October 2006 saw everyone undertake a little time travel with the switch from 'Daylight Saving Time' at 2am this morning.

Given that this happens every year, you might have thought I'd be used to it by now. It always seems to be a pleasant surprise to find that a lazy Sunday can last a little bit longer, especially given the beautiful weather today.

I'm also a little confused. Having been out to a club for most of last night and part of this morning, it struck me that there's plenty of things that must be messed around by all this hour shifting we do. For instance, a friend sent me a text this morning, at what my phone says was 5am. However, I really can't make up my mind what time it must have arrived: is the time stamp affected by whatever time my phone reckons it is? Does this mean that (since I didn't change the time until I woke up this morning) it was actually sent at 4am? Does this mean that I could set the date and time on my phone to 1984 and receive a text message on my date of birth? (and before mobile phones were popular)

Presumably not, but I haven't tried it. If I could do that it could be used in some clever way to give someone an alibi for a murder, by suggesting that the victim was still alive long after they were dead. Call in Columbo, he'd sort it out though.

I guess what's more likely is that the text message is given a time stamp by the service centre when it's passed on, but still, it's confusing having two times that don't match on your phone. Surely if the text had the correct time attached to it it could have updated my phone time settings when it arrived? Why doesn't this mean that all mobiles are constantly updated to show the accurate time, wherever you are in the world?

Other things that struck me - do shift workers working across the gap get paid extra? They're still finishing at the same time, but have clearly worked longer. Maybe not, so that it balances at the other end of the year when we 'spring forward'.

Do clubs with licenses until 2am get to stay open for another hour in total? (I think so.)

People talk about the summer solstice being the longest day (although that's to do with daylight)- surely today is actually the longest though at 25 hrs. There's a pub quiz question there.

This also reminds me that Windows 95 used to proudly announce that it had updated the date and time - it's used to be nice to know that it had got something right.