Best wishes

[Aggie]

Some seemingly organized jokesters did a 'keep 'em awake' for (what it seems) most of the night. First a bang, then a howler immediately after. Wait a few minutes then repeat. Does not need much or expensive ammo but is highly effective. What made me think that it was organized is that each cyle near us got followed within seconds by another in the distance with the same pattern.

Eh Swato.... must have been the devious group known as ECHO.

Worked 14 of the most hard-paced kitchen hours I've ever done to count out 2012. Worked from 10 am until we got the last orders out at 11:56 pm. Changed quickly and had a bottle in hand by midnight.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I was awake, beating on my PC, trying to fix what wasn't working.

I got it fixed... but totally missed the clock as the year closed-- my neighbors had shot some firecrackers/guns around 11pm or so, but it was short-lived. 

[Sibling DavidH]

We are almost 11 minutes earlier than Greenwich, being 2° 43' West.  I wonder if I should count that in on such occasions.  At the Minellium we played safe and let off two lots of rockets, one for each time standard.

BTW it confuses my poor little brain: it means the second firework, the local time one, must be let off after the GMT one because a local clock would be running earlier.

[Swatopluk]

Eh Swato.... must have been the devious group known as ECHO.

wrong accoustic conditions for that. It can sometimes be tricky to locate the actual origin of sounds due to reflection here but no echo could be produced that is more than a fraction of a second behind the orignal.

[Griffin NoName]

We are almost 11 minutes earlier than Greenwich, being 2° 43' West.  I wonder if I should count that in on such occasions.  At the Minellium we played safe and let off two lots of rockets, one for each time standard.

BTW it confuses my poor little brain: it means the second firework, the local time one, must be let off after the GMT one because a local clock would be running earlier.

Ive never heard of a time difference in the UK.

[pieces o nine]

Happy 2013, siblings!   

[Bluenose]

We are almost 11 minutes earlier than Greenwich, being 2° 43' West.  I wonder if I should count that in on such occasions.  At the Minellium we played safe and let off two lots of rockets, one for each time standard.

BTW it confuses my poor little brain: it means the second firework, the local time one, must be let off after the GMT one because a local clock would be running earlier.

Ive never heard of a time difference in the UK.

I think David is talking about local mean time.  This is different to standard time which is what we all usually use - the world is divided up into time zone of 15 degrees of longitude (plus or minus in various spots for convenience) for standard time. That way everyone in a given geographical area can have the same time on their clocks.  However, local mean time is important for navigators.  All those movies where you see mariners taking the noon sighting with their sextants are doing this.  It is also known as "mer pass" short for meridian pass and is how local mean time is determined.  When the sun is directly over your meridian (ie, it is highest in the sky) it is noon, local mean time.  By keeping an accurate clock on Greenwich mean time and noting the time of mer pass, you can calculate your longitude by using simple maths, 15 degrees of longitude for every hour before or after GMT noon.

[Sibling DavidH]

Blue's right, I mean local time, averaged over the year.  Local sun time is another wossname altogether, but on average it's ahead of GMT by nearly 11 mins here.
Before the coming of the railways, every town used its local time and travel was so slow that it didn't matter.

[Bluenose]

Therefore, I conclude David that, given your approximate latitude, you must live on a north south line that passes about 35 miles east of Greenwich or thereabouts

[Sibling DavidH]

No, that would be in the sea or thereabouts!  I'm 2° 43' West of Greenwich, which at this latitude is prolly about 100 miles (can't be bothered to do it accurately).

I told you it's confusing.  Here the sun gets to a given point later than at Greenwich, which means our clock must be behind GMT because we have to wait for the sun to catch up.  So local clocks read earlier than GMT.

It took me a long time to get my head round that.  

Very rough double-check - at 52° latitude the sun is 'moving' over us at about 600mph, so to go roughly about 100 miles takes 1/6 hour = 10 minutes. Not far off the real figure.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I figure I'm very late but still Happy New Year to all!

We went to a park in Orlando for the given hour and watched the fireworks, no alcohol as I had to drive them out of there afterwards (Besides the champagne was 200 miles/300km south). I wouldn't repeat the experience but my wife seemed to like it quite a bit.