Time Zoning
2007-03-20 08:58:03.966046+00 by meuon 1 comments
All of a sudden, I've been having to deal with time syncing multiple users in multiple time zones on multiple continents in a pseudo-calendaring addition to an already complicated application. And I've gotten quite an education on time zones, or rather, what we wish were time zones. Did you know that time is extremely relative? Even in the USA: Indiana alone has 6, yes 6 slightly different time zone regions. Alaska has 4, Kentucky 2, and the Navajo Indians have their own version of Mountain Time. Other countries include time zones that are not always hours apart, per approx 15 degrees of longitude, but break things up into smaller chunks, 30 minute (Newfoundland Canada, Iran, Afghanistan, Mumbai India, Cocos Islands, Central Australia...), and reportedly even less (15 minute increment, reportedly parts of Pakistan, Nepal, Western Australia). Fun things happen when you realize that New Zealand, normally UTC+12, has daylight savings time for a UTC+13 correction after I had referenced an authoritive looking website that said it was only -12 to +12 which had made sense.
What is really fun, is the Linux Server, PHP and MySQL are not always in agreement on what to do with some of the odder time issues. I'm opting to use and manipulate all date/time info in MySQL, it's not more right, but it's easier to apply consistently.