DST Confusion

DST, or Daylight Savings Time, has always confused me. I never know instinctively which way the clock goes and if I get to sleep longer or shorter and if I now get more or less daylight. The only thing I do know is that once in a blue moon the DST change in the latter half of the year happens on my birthday and I get to have a birthday of 25 hours. Neat!

This year however there is even more confusion in DST-land. The US Federal government has decreed that the US DST is to be a different date than anybody else! God know why they did this (must be some kind of petrol-saving scheme or something like that) but it confused the hell of out me.

First of all I wondered if all my machines were going to be OK. I've got PCs at work and at home, and of course all kinds of devices with clocks that may or may not adjust themselves. The Sky+ box or one is notorious for losing the plot when DST happens.

I also have a Linux machine offsite where my mail and webpages get served-up. Would that machine be ok too?

Through Slashdot I found a nice article on Linux-Watch which explained how to go about checking if your machine was OK and how to fix it if not...

But wait a minute: my machines are all located in the UK? A nagging suspicion was building at the back of my brain (or was that the flu?). Would the lapdog government of the UK take on the change the US did slavishly or...

Timeanddate.com to the rescue: this page actually lists the dates and times locations around the world do their DST changes.

And yes. The UK luckily keeps its DST transitions to March and October. My 25-hour birthday marathons are saved. Not to mention my computers and sanity.