title: force php strtotime to use UTC
body: <p>I've seen a few questions about this but not a clear answer... strtotime() will use the default timezone set for PHP when converting the string to a unix timestamp.</p>
  
  <p>However, I want to convert a string to unix timestamp in UTC. Since there is no parameter for doing so, how can this be done?</p>
  
  <p>The string I'm trying to convert is: 2011-10-27T20:23:39, which is already in UTC. I want to represent that as a unix timestamp also in UTC.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>