Roberto Silva: Light (mainly blue light ) stops melatonin production which is part of the system for regulating our sleep cycle.

El Cid: Yes, there was a change in Mainland Portugal (not so in the islands) from GMT to CET around the time the Schengen Area was implemented, so as to keep the same time zone as most Schengen Area countries, resulting in the Mainland being 1 hour ahead of Madeira and 2 hours ahead of Azores. Though we didn't actually stop DST, we just didn't reverse DST in winter that year, making it the new standard time - the following years adopted DST normally, just one hour ahead.

They quickly moved it back as, since people were going to work in the dark, they were more tired in early morning and employers reported a decrease in productivity as a result. All the regulations in the world won't reform biology: human beings have an innate tendency to feel more sleepy when it's dark and to have trouble sleeping when there's too much light.

Nowadays, most compies run their servers on zulu or universal time (formerly called Greenwich Mean Time), without any DST. Thats makes administrating it easier.
That has nothing to do with the issue here - different people have weeked at different times. Nothing can be done about that, because the earth is round, not flat.
the server could consider everone's time zone, but that has ugly side effects: I have still weekend while you haven't, so you lose games against me on time while I don't have to even move at all. Friday night it's reversed of course. Also people could cheat another 'weekend day' out by setting their time zone to the earlest one (australia?) on Friday, so their weekend starts early, and on Sun change it to the latest zone (Hawaii or whatever).
All ugly, so not good.

DST is *not* about saving energy, that idea was abandoned in the sixties (just an urban legend now).
It is about saving lives, and improving quality of life!
A) saving lives: after the DST switch, some people now have to drive in the dark, which results in more accidents, which results in more dead. In the evening, the result is the reverse. More people drive in the evening than in the morning, so the net effect is some lives saved per day.
B) Quality of life: even though everybody complains when DST starts (and again when it ends), generally people enjoy an hour more of sunlight in the evening.
Read wikipedia for more.

I am in New Zealand and have this problem as well.  We just changed back from DST on the weekend(coming into winter here), and I've had to change my time zone to show the correct time.  I usually have to adjust it several times a year depending on whether it is us in NZ changing, or the server chaning to/from DST.  At one stage I have to just have the wrong time cos there is no option to show the right time - hard to explain but NZ shows as GMT +12 hours, and with the inconsistencies with DST changing we are sometimes at GMT +13hrs, but there is no option to change to that.  I have gotten used to it in the 7 odd years I have been using this site, and just make sure I keep up with games.

El Cid: It is worth pointing out that in the study I referred to, that before Indiana changed the rules, a few counties in Indiana didn't have DST while others did. Therefore when they changed the rules they could measure the changed energy output in the affected counties while also having a control group.

It is the control group which is the key that makes it convincing.

happyjuggler0: Actually, in 1990s there was a year in Portugal when we didn't change the hour in one of the clock changes, to have the same hour as the rest of the Europe if I0m not mistaken (maybe Roberto remembers it better than me), I think it caused several problems like everyone going to work still with dark night.and in the Summer we had daylight until almost 10pm (when the "normal" is a sunset at 9pm or 9.15pm. Whatever was the case, it was a single year, so... we had that "study" and it didn't work...

If it's not the programmers fault that time on this site is displayed improperly, then whose fault is it? ;-)

Thad: After reading your question I tried to think of who else might somehow be responsible. Living in the US, depending on who you talk to, it seems like *everything* is either Obama's fault or Bush's fault.

happyjuggler0: Obama's fault. Funny! ;-)

In my case, though, I still think it's Fencer's fault because although he actually implements DST for the US pretty well, I live in Hawaii, which is one of the two states that doesn't observe DST and Fencer hasn't taken that into account in his programming.

Roberto Silva: Not if everyone followed Obama's leadership!

Seriously though, if the US eliminated DST because of a careful academic study, then everyone else would surely either eliminate it too, or at least conduct a similar experiment in their own country.

Anyway, all it would take is for the Czechs to also eliminate DST, and then thisbeme would need another scapegoat for why he times out.

Note to whom it may concern, if you find yourself timing out a lot, it is your own fault, not BK's. The occasional timeout may *perhaps* not be your fault, but habitual timeouts certainly are your own fault.

happyjuggler0: Wouldn't Americans then be one our off on this site for 6 months per year rather than 2 weeks?

happyjuggler0: Interesting, you'd think it'd be a wash.

Thad said: If it's not the programmers fault that time on this site is displayed improperly, then whose fault is it? ;-)>

It is Obama's fault.

Seriously.

A 3-year study showed that a 2006 time zone change in Indiana (US) saved energy (resulting in saved money and a cleaner environment than otherwise) by eliminating Daylight Savings Time:

http://www.physorg.com/news187946326.html?xid=rss-fullcontent


If Obama had followed the advice of the study, he would have eliminated Daylight Savings Time in the US, and the rest of the world would likely have followed suit.

[edit: and as a result, BK would not have to figure out which locality changes its clocks, and which ones never change their clocks]

Everything is Obama's fault, unless it is Bush's fault. or both of them.

People, please don't turn this into a political thread. I only point it out in the hopes that *someone important* somewhere might read this and help to eliminate Daylight Savings Time, which is bad for the environment.

Thad: Those who programmed the clock he's using?

Roberto Silva: If it's not the programmers fault that time on this site is displayed improperly, then whose fault is it? ;-)

ketchuplover: Well April just started, and most people don't log in every day (specially on a Sunday), so it's not really an estimation of site activity.

Thad: I don't think that's really Fencer's fault, the system clock just acts that way: since czech time is the default, it'll use the European DST settings and calculate every other time zone from there. So those living in regions with different DST settings will see a one hour lag for a while unless they "cheat" by selecting a different time zone.

This problem is common in most websites I know, and usually works in reverse: since most websites are American, they run on American DST settings and those of us in Europe will see a one hour difference in the clock.

Might not be a solution for people - but for myself, I've just set the time as the same as the server time (GMT +01:00...) .... just seemed to make things easier for me.

Aganju: I know this now, but the clock in the corner and timestamp of the message saying I ran out of time showed local time and date!!
Other than timing out how am I to know i will time out when the time says it is still weekend? It isn't like there was a clear advanced warning or the situation wouldn't have happened.
Why have a feature that is apparently implemented in such a way as to cause people to timeout while online and not be able to load the page intermittently.

It is fundamentally unfair to timeout down to an error with how the site if implemented.
Until other comments I thought the problem was at my end, but if the site is inaccessible because I chose a timing option offered by this site, then it is an issue with brainking.

thisbeme: the 'weekend' logic is applied according to server time, and does not care at all what your time zone or time zone setting is.
When Monday starts in Czech republik, weekend is over.
You just have to be more careful with walking on the edge. But I remember that this part of it was discussed before with you...

Roberto Silva:

Yes I mean April :)

Thad: Obviously it resolve with me in time to lose a chunk of games by timeout and losing the best part of an hour trying to get the page to load. Is this really down to having my local time selected?
If you are going to timeout at 11pm on your weekend and have intermittent periods where the site won't load because you select your own time then that function should go until it is fixed!

Thad: oh well.....perhaps when version 10 comes out we will see some improvements :)

ScarletRose: i use paypal as a guest, i just have to enter my creditcard number, and some personal information ... i dont have to log into my paypal account

Bernice: I have the same problem in Hawaii. Fencer doesn't seem to understand that Daylight Saving Time isn't implemented worldwide. Years ago he told me to just change the settings on my account and pretend that I live one time zone over. Of course, I'd have to change that twice/year. Not a big deal, but, come on, a site shouldn't work that way.

how come my REAL time is 17.10pm and the site is telling me that it is 18.10pm.....Brisbane does NOT have daylight saving......Ive tried changing it to no avail...

ScarletRose: What's the problem? The worst thing that could happen is that a year membership would be just stored on your profile page but you can never lose your lifetime subscription. The easiest way to purchase a membership for another player is to go to their profile page and click "purchase membership for this user" link at the page top.

thisbeme: I had trouble reaching brainking.com (and brainking.it) earlier today. It seems fine now.

thisbeme: if its working in prague...management doesnt care.

Fencer:  Am I still able to purchase a one year rook to credit to my husbands account? I hesitate just purchasing it since I don't want my lifetime membie downsized.. We have been struggling with ways to pay for the membership.. Dan has tried but, gets frustrated since his card won't allow paypal..  I haven't had to buy one in a long time so I am not familiar anymore with how to do so.. Thanks..

I had 30-60minute of brainking not being accessible. I tried both chrome and firefox. This website was the only site that was refusing to load.
I don't know what the issue is since this site apparently wasn't down and my internet was working!

ketchuplover: By "this month", do you mean April?

who logged on between 1-1-12 and 31-3-12 81 have been active this month.

happyjuggler0: Yes, it is possible. I coded it many years ago so I am not quite sure.

Fencer: Thanks for fixing it.

By the way, does someone have to be a Brain Rook in order to post a video to his profile?

Rod and I tried for a long time yesterday to post a video to my profile, but it didn't work. He could post it to *his* profile though, so the problem wasn't the video itself.

happyjuggler0: BrainKing is a very complex application and such things happen, occasionally. A simple restart usually helps.

happyjuggler0: Ok, the tournament just started that I was talking about.

BK went down for a minute or so for maintenance earlier today. Since then I have noticed a couple of anomalies.

First, I signed up for a tournament that was supposed to start "immediately" once the maximum number of players was reached. That was a while ago.

Second, games that a player has passed the deadline for moving are showing times like -2 hours 32 minutes.

This may be a new feature, I don't know, namely when a player is on a weekend day his time continues in the negative until his weekend is over. I actually like it, but I don't know if it is intentional or not, especially since that tournament hasn't started yet.

Vikings: I tried. Rod and I tried a lot of different things, we had a lot of PM conversations and tried a lot of things. He even emailed me the embed code he got when visiting the youtube video.

All no luck.

P.S. I even used 3 different browsers, changed cookie settings, and a couple of other things I don't recall at the moment.

happyjuggler0: just for giggles, try embedding it using rich text editor

happyjuggler0: You're quite welcome. Sorry it wasn't more productive help.

rod03801: rod03801: Thanks for the help trying. That goes over and above the call of duty.

Also thank you for the BrainBishop!

Still no luck, I see. Maybe it's only Rooks. I forget the benefits of each level. Or does someone know that knights/bishops can have videos in profiles?

happyjuggler0: You're a brain bishop now. Let's see.

happyjuggler0: I'm not positive. I tried your new code myself, and it still doesn't work. I wish I knew how to send you a message with some code that I KNOW works.. However, it "disappears" because the message tries to "use" the code, if that makes sense. I'm not html expert lol

rod03801: Perhaps you were right the first time, pawns aren't allowed to post videos....

happyjuggler0: I'm sending you a PM with the code that worked for me.

rod03801: I guess I give up then. Sigh.

Here is the "usual" youtube link for anyone who wants to watch after all the hype lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fqymcJRSbxI#!

happyjuggler0: Hmm.. I tried your code.. it left me with "/embed". So I thought you had an extra "/embed" in there. So, I took it out. Then I get a big empty space.

rod03801: Thanks for the help folks. I just tried the old embed code like you two suggested. Once my submission gets cleared, we'll see if it works.