Obligatory first post of 2011

[froggie]

Eastern Standard Time, at least.

Just cause.

[Ian]

Happy New Years everyone! Hope it's all filled with road trips and old sign finds! 

[rickmastfan67]

Happy New Years everybody!  Party on down.

[Dr Frankenstein]

HAPPY 2011 EVERYONE!

[74/171FAN]

Happy New Years to everyone,  I'm just disappointed to not think of trying to do this at 12:00:01

[BigMattFromTexas]

20 more minutes here.. (CST)..

[NE2]

meet the new year, same as the old year

[Bryant5493]

Happy New Year from Metro Atlanta, good people!


Be well,

Bryant

[Alps]

Those of you who follow me on the Facebooks can see my photos and a video direct from Times Square.  If not, at least the video is available on my Youtube channel (/zoningpermit).

[Michael in Philly]

Those of you who follow me on the Facebooks can see my photos and a video direct from Times Square.  If not, at least the video is available on my Youtube channel (/zoningpermit).

I don't like New Years - reminder of passage of time with my life in a rut, albeit not too bad a rut.  Birthdays too, but obviously the rest of the public isn't blatantly celebrating (or if they are, you so have nothing to complain about).  And have a low tolerance for New York crowds on a normal occasion.  Been wallowing in a Marx Brothers marathon on TCM.

But happy new year to all, anyway.

[aswnl]

Eastern Standard Time, at least.

Just cause.

Not for everyone. The first post in CET (Central European Time):


Happy new year to you all   

[english si]

And on Universal time it was (I think) this one and given Universal time is universal everyone should use it*

You could argue that the first post that was after 10.00 am GMT/UT on New Years Eve would be the first post of the new year, despite us not having any members in London, Paris or Poland to see the post as being made in 2011, rather than 2010.

*Well, at least France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg where it's closer to solar time - only being 20 minutes off Amsterdam time, rather than the 40 minutes Berlin time is, and that's the furthest east - don't talk to me about how Spain's being on Central European time, when it's further west than the UK (which is on Western European Time, though not normally called that), by choice and not by war screws with my mind...

[Michael in Philly]

And on Universal time it was (I think) this one and given Universal time is universal everyone should use it*

You could argue that the first post that was after 10.00 am GMT/UT on New Years Eve would be the first post of the new year, despite us not having any members in London, Paris or Poland to see the post as being made in 2011, rather than 2010.

*Well, at least France, Spain, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg where it's closer to solar time - only being 20 minutes off Amsterdam time, rather than the 40 minutes Berlin time is, and that's the furthest east - don't talk to me about how Spain's being on Central European time, when it's further west than the UK (which is on Western European Time, though not normally called that), by choice and not by war screws with my mind...

Feh.  On an American forum, good old Eastern Standard has a better claim to be the default time (if we need one, which I don't think we do) than GMT.

Yes, Europe is weird.  I spent a summer in Normandy (Caen) studying, and thanks to the latitude and the fact that we were about on the longitude of London but the clocks were an hour ahead, it was still a bit light at 11 p.m.  I loved that!  I'm surprised the European Union, with its useless-uniformity fetish, hasn't gotten you all to switch to Paris/Berlin/Brussels time.  Resist!  Resist!

[Scott5114]

Feh.  On an American forum, good old Eastern Standard has a better claim to be the default time (if we need one, which I don't think we do) than GMT.

Nah, Central time. It is centralized.

[Chris]

The Galicia region of Spain is about as far west as western Ireland and is still in Central European Time Zone. But hey, you can't beat China where the whole country is in one time zone when it actually needs 4 or 5 time zones.

[english si]

Yes, Europe is weird.  I spent a summer in Normandy (Caen) studying, and thanks to the latitude and the fact that we were about on the longitude of London but the clocks were an hour ahead, it was still a bit light at 11 p.m.

Thanks to the latitude you get that in summer on the south coast of England, despite only being one hour, not two, ahead of solar time. In fact, on midsummer night and around it, even as far south as 51 degrees (not tried it further south - which isn't a lot of places) it doesn't get dark, just twilighty for about 3 hours.

I'm surprised the European Union, with its useless-uniformity fetish, hasn't gotten you all to switch to Paris/Berlin/Brussels time.  Resist!  Resist!

We've recently had this idea debated in the UK parliament (or at least year-round summer time), but surprisingly not the EU. We did try CET with no DST for a couple of years back in the 70s, but the dark winter mornings (London would have a month of post-9am, and 8 weeks of post 8.45, dawns, and it gets dawns a good bit earlier than more northern/western places) made everyone feel much worse than the 4pm sunsets (it's pitch black out as I type this sentence, and has been for a while, and it's not even 5pm). The Government isn't supporting the bill (thankfully), though if it's a free vote, thanks to the BBC bias for the change and it's use of misleading wordings (like the idea that changing will lengthen daylight hours, which is rubbish! And we use the few daylight hours we get in the winter without needing to move them later in the day).

The Galicia region of Spain is about as far west as western Ireland and is still in Central European Time Zone. But hey, you can't beat China where the whole country is in one time zone when it actually needs 4 or 5 time zones.

Galacia is in theoretical -1 territory (as is most of Portugal) - its bizarre that Spain is on CET. Likewise Gibraltar, when the land border with Spain was closed (until 1982) was on CET - no idea why!

China is pretty awful - part of it borders Afghanistan, which is on +4.30. Luckily, there's not a huge amount of population (compared to the rest of the country) in the western half - like the US in the past, the "West" begins about 1/4 of the way across. That said, it must be pretty weird for the sun to set in the middle of the afternoon and rise in the small hours - I guess the people there just work strange hours to fit the sun better.