Time sensitive
There’s a new feature on my blog-updating site where I can set a time for a blog to expire: in effect, a self-destruct button. I was going to experiment with this and create a blog which only certain people would read before it disappeared. People who’d got there in time would hark back to it and talk in disproportionately glowing terms about how great it was, and it would become like a ‘lost work’, with those who missed out pining endlessly for the missed opportunity. I quickly realised though that in fact, it would just look like I’d failed to blog, and tens of people would be upset, and the people claiming they HAD definitely read a blog which ‘seemed to have vanished’ would look like deluded addicts who couldn’t face the truth of my failure.
So I won’t do that.
Time is a pretty fluid concept for me (and, indeed, for the universe) because I’m awaiting my flight from Sydney back to London. I’ve already made the mental adjustment back to UK time, so although it’s quite clearly afternoon outside, I’m pretending it’s 4am. When I get back home this should ensure that I’m not fazed by the different zones. Halfway home of course there’ll be Singapore to contend with and it could be any bloody time there, but I normally solve that by not even looking out of the window or acknowledging Singapore is there at all.
After enough world travel you start to get the odd sense that there is no such thing as ‘the real time’ because all the different zones mess with your brain a bit. In a sense of course this is accurate – time’s relative depending on where you are. But it does do your head in slightly. By the time I’ve come home and gone back down under again, I should more or less be completely mad. Luckily, that’s meant to be good for creativity. And the blog’s not been interrupted…
Posted by Clembear on March 22, 2011
I like to think that we’re all travelling through time but quite slowly and only in one direction. Its difficult to define what time is without fun discussions of entropy and disorder.
Anyway, there’s another universe where there aren’t timezones and solipsism dominates.
Posted by Andrew on March 21, 2011
Basically I’ve simplified it so my 3 year old son understands, but have adopted it as my own way of getting my head round it as the simplicity of it works for me too.
I tell him that when the sun goes down it goes to England so it’s daytime where Grandma lives and the moon comes here and it’s nightime in Australia. Then the moon goes to England and the sun comes here and it’s nightime where Grandma is and daytime here.
Waiting for him to notice those times when the moon’s in the sky and it’s clearly still daytime. Hasn’t happened yet and I don’t know what I’ll tell him but hey, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it…
Posted by Helen on March 21, 2011
Yes time is a funny old thing. A funny old thing indeed.
Posted by Ally on March 20, 2011
That would have been kind of cool though. The Lost Blog.
And timezones confuse me. Though I’m starting to get the hang of it… I think.
Posted by Tibbs on March 20, 2011
And then you start to think about what time it is at the north or south poles, or how the satellites that are used for gps systems have to be reconfigured every few minutes because time flows differently in orbit than it does on Earth (which has something to do with relativity and being farther away from the Earth’s gravitational pull) and your brain will be well and truly melted. So… maybe don’t think about that stuff.
Posted by Rachael on March 20, 2011
Doesn’t Dave want to change the time or something? Whats all that about? Surely he should be concentrating on trying not to go starting any more wars…
Posted by Miz on March 20, 2011
A self-destructing blog would be fun, but I bet there’d be screengrabs and copies posted around the web
I’m crap at keeping time. I just wake up when I’m hungry…
Posted by Georgie on March 20, 2011
I agree with Misha. NST it is.
Posted by Misha on March 20, 2011
I’m not sure what it says that i’m up and reading this…
Anyway, we all know there’s a real time, New Scottish Time.