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Newbie Notes

Take Me Out To The Chat

"Where are you?" and "What time is it there?" haven't completely replaced discussion of the weather. But, in a worldwide classroom trying to figure out time differences breaks a lot of ice. Whether it is at Chat or on the Boards, getting to know each other can be the best part of the online experience.

Unfortunately ‘telephone tag’ is simple compared with trying to fix a meeting time when the people you want to meet with are scattered over the time zones.The writer you can’t wait to share a ‘virtual’ cup of tea with may even be in a different day.

Some people still tell time by glancing at the sky. The position of the sun or the stars is all they need. For those of us who want to talk or chat with people hundreds or even thousands of miles away this won't work.If I look up and the sun is overhead I can safely say that it is noon - in California - but what time is it for my friends in Boston? Not noon - to them the sun is well past noon, time for afternoon break at 3 p.m.

Our mutual chum in Scotland glances up and to the west where the sun has set and judges it to be 8 p.m. The last member of our group is sound asleep. A new day has begun for her at midnight. I’ve thought my way halfway around the world, from where I am in the west eastward and what I’ve figured out works for me, but what about the others? Naturally they all think we should agree to figure from where they are. We need a common standard.

GMT or Greenwich Mean Time gives us a common standard.   We take our noon time from the site of the observatory in England. Why noon when we start the day at midnight? Probably because it is so much easier to figure out when the sun is as close to overhead as it will get than to decide which stars will be overhead halfway through the night. You can get a pretty good idea with a straight stick stuck in the ground on a sunny day.  Just draw a line at the end of the shadow every so often and when the shadow starts to get longer you are past noon.

So we have our standard noontime and logically the exact opposite spot on the world will be midnight.  Run a line through the spot from North Pole to South Pole and we have the International Date Line. In theory this is a straight line, in practice it varies a bit east or west where islands or countries choose to keep on one side or the other of it.

Now divide the rest of the world up into equal zones (more pole to pole lines)- let’s make it 24 zones to correspond with our 24 hour day - and we have a way to find out “what time is it there”.   Most people prefer counting from zero at Greenwich to twelve at the International Dateline. Which way?   Going east we count plus one, two, etc. and west minus one ... five (EST)... eight (PST my home zone) and on.

Map it Out

One very useful tip I recently heard was Finding Time Zones in Windows:

Double-click, on the time shown at the bottom right of your screen. This will bring up the Date/Time screen.

Next, click on the Time Zone tab. You will see a nice little world map and at the top, just under the tabs, it displays what time zone you are in and how many hours, plus or minus, your time zone differs from GMT.   Mine says  GMT -8:00 Pacific Time (US & Canada);Tijuana.   So whatever the GMT time is I can subtract eight to get Pacific Time or if I know my time I can add eight to get GMT.

Then click on the down arrow of the time zone box. You will see a list of the other time zones.  Note: You can even get a rough idea of where a time zone is by selecting one of the other zones and watching the map shift to center the new zone.

If you want a map you can print out, which shows the lines bordering zones, go to http://www.cstv.to.cnr.it/toi/uk/timezone.html (Be sure to set your printer to landscape if you want the whole map.)  The English translation is rather "interesting" so unless you have some extra time you may just want to print it out to get the map. Time zones are set by law and are modified to suit borderlines and groups of countries or even tiny islands. Look at the International Date Line for an example.

Personal Tracker

Even with maps and formulas it is still easy to get confused. A few days after I posted a message explaining how to convert times, I showed up three hours late for a chat meeting because I forgot to convert. I didn’t want to look at maps or log on to the Internet every time I needed to convert so I configured a simple aid:

Take two ordinary sheets of lined paper.

Label one “DIFF”(for difference), and write -12 at the top, and number down the side to +12 at the bottom.

At -8 (PST where I live) I wrote "ME".(Change this to suit where you are)

At -5 (EST) Write WVU since that is where the home base for WVU, Fiction '98, and most of the Chat times are given in EST.

When the people you want to add know their differences from GMT just write their names on the appropriate lines.  If they don’t know, then:

Label the second piece of paper “HOURS” and write times from midnight to midnight down the side with the same spacing as the first sheet.

Line up your time on the second sheet with ME on the first and ask "What time is it there?" Note: Once I realized that some Australian time zones were half hour different I redid my sheets with double spacing!

To find out when to log on for something, such as Wednesday's Writers Night Out Chat, start with the "HOURS" sheet.   Find 8 p.m. and line it up with -5 EST then look for ME. My ME is at -8 PST and matches up with 5 p.m.   No more showing up three hours late when all the fun is over!

Web Resources

Another great place to find out about time zones and consult a map is:

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/faq/docs/world_tzones.html

Check out the FAQ links while you are there. This is a feast for historical writers. You can learn when time zones first came into use, when they were written into law for the United States, information about Easter, the Star of Bethlehem, and lunar months. You can even learn (much more than I wanted to know) about the clocks and methods used to determine Standard time and the formulas used to adjust them.

If you are not using Windows you can still find your difference from GMT (they call it UST) at: http://www.bldrdoc.gov/timefreq/javaclck.htm. If you have Java capability you will see two times - the UST time on top and under it the time by your computer.