Where am I with these damn Stargate playing cards?

Previous design, see end of this post for latest.

This whole project would be at least a month sooner if MGM simply replied to emails even just the same day. Even next day would have been good. It is very frustrating, in some cases waiting a week, or more, for a reply.

However, I finally got (on 20th): "I have been receiving your emails however I have not been able to spend time on this at present. If you are willing to pay a $5,000 minimum guarantee (or BPS equivalent) and have liability insurance, we can grant you the license for the cards."

So, they can grant a licence. I immediately sent back the completed application and asked how I pay the $5,000. No reply since (that is two of their working days they could have replied). Not even a clue how long it will take. I don't hold out hope for a reply this evening either (they are US time zone, obviously).

$5,000 is a lot. It is about 10,000 packs of cards worth of royalties, and is not something they will refund if I don't sell that many. However, I have got to the point where I want to do this anyway. I have created these cards from the C code to make the pips and layout to the drawing of the court cards and put in a lot of my spare time on this. I'm a bit of a Stargate fan, and so if I just break even I'll be happy, and if not, it will be a bit of a folly, but entertaining and educational anyway. It may be a "sunk cost fallacy" but I'd like to see it through now. At the end of the day it is my money - some people have cars - I have MGM licence (soon) and Stargate playing cards! I rarely get to do anything even vaguely artistic (failed Art O-Level), but I hope people like what I have created.

The only advantage of the delay is I have spent time verifying things like checking gate addresses (not easy), and that the shape of the Stargate dialling glyphs are correct (also not simple), and fine tuning the layout and exact composition of the packs I have designed, etc.

The card designs are all ready. Ivory Graphics are putting together the quote for printing now - and I have decided to "tack on" a couple of other packs to make use of the volume discount. The plan is to make 1,000 Stargate packs initially (500 single packs, and 500 deluxe packs). Maybe not sending all to Amazon at once in case I find other channels by which to sell them.

The two extra "fun" packs I am tacking on are a seriously minimalist pack, and a left handed pack. Left handed just means the index is only on the right. The minimalist pack however is even more minimalist than the minim pack, having just an index character and suit in one corner, all white otherwise, white backs, and white box (apart from barcode on base). Both packs should be interesting to list on Amazon and great fun to play with (especially as I am not actually left handed).

As for the Stargate cards, I have decided the format of the two packs. Firstly, a 64 card deck with this story:-

Found in a corrupted section of the Lantian database was a reference to various common games, including playing cards. Stories of these card games no doubt inspired the early card games on Earth in the 15th Century, but some details we lost in the mists of time. For a start, Alteran playing cards have 64 cards in a deck! 

We know from the time that Jack O'Neill had the Ancient repository of knowledge downloaded in to his brain that the Ancients did, at some point, use base 8. It should be no surprise that the Alteran playing cards have 64 cards as that is "100" in base 8. Any race with a fondness for powers of two would create games using nice round numbers like 4 and 16 and 64. 

We also know from Samantha Carter, when reprogramming a Tobin mine, that any advanced civilisation needs to have invented "zero", so it should be no surprise that the cards start from a zero value. 

Once travel to and from Earth was finally established, the Atlanis Bridge Club were able to get decks of cards made up in the style of those original Alteran playing card decks to play proper Alteran card games. Sadly the database lacked details of the court cards, so we used classic 19th Century designs, but we do know they used Alteran characters and digits in the corners. This was not easy, as personal items are hard to get shipped on the Daedalus, but because of their small size an exception was made. 

Playing bridge is easy, 16 cards each and allow bids up to 16. What can be more challenging is playing other common games using Alteran playing cards.

Learning the Alteran digits and characters should not be hard.

Secondly a deluxe deck which has the same 64 card deck plus a second which has 41 gate symbols, a gate symbol name card, and some gate address cards. Making games for these extra cards is not so simple.

Dr Elizabeth Weir realised that the replicators had given away some more detail about Lantian playing cards after she had a nasty run-in with nanites invading her brain. They showed her that there are playing cards with gate symbols on them. Unfortunately it is not clear how they are used in games, yet.

I have also created Facebook and Twitter for the "Atlantis Bridge Club" so there is somewhere to discuss the cards and the games.

If you want to see the actual card designs, the decks are here. Happy to have comments on the design, whilst I wait for MGM.

So, still, I am ready to roll and get cards printed and on Amazon, just waiting yet again for MGM. So, watch this space!

P.S. After some comments on the back, how about this? (amended again, lorem ipsum text and symmetric, even though gate is not)

Gate glyphs (#stargate)

I was trying to work out the right artwork for the Stargate glyphs. It turns out to not be as simple as you might expect!

There are several gate drawings, e.g. this simple svg, and this more detailed one. They have subtly different artwork.

A simple example from that is Pegasus which shows in different orientations and with or without an extra point/triangle.

 

Whilst the orientation actually on the gate should be fixed and defined, when shown as a gate address or symbol on a playing card, the orientation is more flexible. I have gone for the way it would be at the top of the gate. But that does not explain the subtly different designs.

Another orientation issue is Gemini, which shows in different orientations. In the above examples, they are almost the same, but in the third example, it is aligned with the ring rather than at an angle.



One site, stargate.wikia.com, has a good set of glyph SVGs. But its idea of Pegasus has the extra point/triangle :-

So I tried to work out if there had been different versions of the gates, which meant watching the original film, and episodes from several series of SG-1. All are the same, even series 10 opening credits show clearly no extra point/triangle on Pegasus. There are differences in the CGI in the opening credits though which may be a clue. Interestingly the film has the same constellations but again slightly different artwork, but still basically the same as the series.

Even today, at gatecon in Vancouver, they are doing photos with a green screen and gate in the background. One occasions to see a high res photo of a gate, and it has no extra point/triangle!

I think, however, I have found the source of the "wrong" glyphs, the book Stargate SG-1 The Ultimate Visual Guide (of which I have now obtained a copy). On page 10 they show the gate and glyphs in detail :-

Though even page 12, which has actual pictures of the gate, contradicts the drawing on page 10. You'll also note that symbols like Piscis Austrinus are shown with outline rather than filling in artwork, where as the gate does not have outlines like that.

So, I think my glyphs are actually correct, and the right way around (as would be viewed at the top of the gate).

Of course, if these cards ever get launched there will be fans saying I have it wrong. Par for the course I guess.

P.S. The glyphs on the screens in Stargate command are different to the gate! So this is another source of the different style:-

P.P.S I found some excellent work here... "...I went back to the Gate used on the show, and created my glyphs from that primary reference, making this list more accurate in both shape and orientation of each Glyph..." - these match my glyphs nicely.

Stargate Alteran playing cards

As I mentioned, I recreated a classic scene from an episode of Atlantis involving playing cards, but I have been thinking these could sell. Another good one for the Amazon experiment maybe.

Licensing

Sadly, the first step is confirming if I need any sort of licence from MGM. It is complex as I am not using their media directly, no stills or clips, but I am using creative commons wikimedia glyphs and Alteran characters. If I don't mention "Stargate" on the product it may not even need a licence. I would rather hear that from MGM than take a chance though. Emails to MGM's licensing people are ignored, and I have tried tweeting as well. If anyone has a contact at MGM, let me know.

My main goal here is that I think these would be fun as a Stargate fan. Indeed, if selling at cost (i.e. not profit making) is one aspect of not needing a licence, I would be happy with that to be honest.

The cards I made for my amusement were a simple 52 card deck, plus 8 "jokers" that are the glyphs for dialling Atlantis from Earth. With Alteran characters for the indices.

Now, if I was to make these as a deck to sell I have some ideas, and I thought I would discuss them on my blog and see what people say. How many of my readers are Stargate fans?

Alteran indices

The main thing that is obvious is the indices (corner digits/letters) are in an Alteran font. This is quite easy to read, especially the digits. But does raise one question...

There are single characters for A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, J, Q, and K, but what of 10? Normally the 10 has a single line for the 1 and a narrow 0 making it overall the same width as other characters. That does not work in Alteran.

So what I do is an Alteran "T" character for "Ten". I also tried "10", and a half width digits "10", but neither looked good. One other possible value is "X" from Roman numerals which makes some sense as Alteran is meant to be the basis for Latin. However, see comments on extended decks below.

Extended deck

At some point in their history we know the Alterans used base 8 rather than base 10 for numbering. I am not sure if they went 8 to 10 or 10 to 8 but the current character set has digits 0-9 for base 10.

But it makes some sense that powers of two would prevail, and so I thought a deck with 16 cards per suite, making 64 cards total (or 100 in base 8) would be a nice touch.

So the idea is to add three more cards per suit, a "0", a "1", and an "11". Having a "1" makes "A" definitively the card after the King. The idea is to use the Alteran characters "0", "1", and "E" for eleven. This is perhaps a good reason to use "T" for "Ten" not "X" as we would need "XI" for eleven if we did that.

Of course you can always remove the extra cards and play a "normal" game.

The jokers

The original inspiration was the scene with cards from Atlantis where the cards dealt by Dr Elizabeth Weir are the dialling code for Atlantis from Earth (well, nearly, but that is likely a simple continuity error).

So the 8 jokers that are gate glyphs is quite neat, but why stop there. Why not all 39 glyphs?

So I am thinking a double pack of cards in one box...

Pack1: 52 card standard deck (with Alteran indices)
Pack2: 52 card which are 39 glyphs, plus point of origin for Antarctica, and 12 extra cards ("0", "1", and "11" in each deck).

It would make a nice double pack, a specialist set of playing cards. I do wonder what games you can make from the glyphs - but I am sure that would be possible.

Back

I did have a Stargate on the back but could I do better/different? The Atlantis expedition logo? What?

What do you think?

Should I keep it simple, 52 cards and 8 glyphs, or go for 2x52 card decks with all 39+1 glyphs and extended deck?

It all depends on MGM not needing a licence though. Anyone with a clue how to contact them, let me know.

When licensing is sorted, I could have these on Amazon in a couple of weeks!

P.S. I have found some good glyphs and placed on cards in correct orientation as on gate. Sadly not quite the same orientation as on Dr Weir's cards, so slight dilemma as to whether to turn some around.

P.P.S. I have the test pack now:-

Startgate Origins - Indeed!

Hmmm...

Stargate is one of the TV series I quite liked, and the films, and I have watched them all several times. So when I saw there was something new, Stargate Origins, I was quite looking forward to it.

Initially I thought it was a new film, a prequel to the initial films, set in the 40s or so "Young Catherine Langford embarks on an unexpected adventure to unlock the mystery of what lies beyond the Stargate in order to save the Earth from darkness." - it's MGM so I expected it should be good.

Even so, it grates with the initial film and start of the series where Catherine Langford did not know it could open and access other worlds or that there was ever more than one place it could go. The plot is at odds with it all, and could have been done better. If only the plot did not involve Catherine, it could have worked as an unknown site track in the gate's history, maybe.

But putting that aside, I thought this could be good, and actually the trailer looked good. Release 15th Feb, yay!

Then I realise it is a new series, and actually that is way better than just a film. Cool.

But no, and WTF?

I am used to two main formats, a film which is like 1.5 to 2.5 hours, or a series which is a dozen or more episodes which are distinct stories (sometimes double episodes) of maybe 45 mins to an hour each.

But this is crazy, so far released is three episodes with streaming via an app. The first is 10 minutes, including credits, titles, and a long scene from the original movie. The second is 8 minutes, including credits and titles. The third is 13 minutes including credits and titles. These are not "episodes". You are stretching to call them parts between advert breaks in the UK even! They are little more than "scenes" at best.

Each is in fact just the steps of a longer story, not distinct "episodes". I would not normally give away "spoilers" but seriously, at this stage, there is nothing to "spoil"...

• Stargate unearthed (clips from original film)
• 10 years later, Prof and Catherine Langford made no progress, losing any funding
• Nazis turn up, with old parchment and notes and open the gate using car batteries
• Take a few people inc Prof Langford through, meet female G'ould that kills one of them
• Catherine, left behind escapes and gets British army chap and his mate
• They dial, using car batteries, and go through

That is it! All 31 minutes in total. It may make like the first third of a story/episode, perhaps. If this was SG-1 we'd maybe be at the first advert break by now.

Vaguely redeeming feature, it has Connor Trinneer (who played Michael in Atlantis, and Trip on Enterprise) as Prof Langford. Even then, the make-up is not that good.

I mean, I have no idea, if, when finished (IMdb says 10 episodes) it may actually be possible to stitch together to make like one episode, or even something that could be called a film, but at this point I am less than impressed. I only paid £19.99 for this (with streaming of all existing movies and series), and I think I was ripped off!

Only IMdb review: "NO...JUST NO complete and utter drivel ,If MGM want to destroy a franchise this is the way to do it production values very poor scripts and concept worse, sets just not worth the effort ,totally ignores not only the movie, and series universe but craps all over it. who ever wrote this and decided it was a good idea needs taken out and shot. very very disappointing" - well, I agree!

What is this crap?

Cal Mah

I have never been to a Comicon or similar. I don't do the whole "dressing up like Captain Kirk" thing, honest (that is more my younger brother).

But I have booked to go to Cal Mah in Leicester 17/18th Nov. (tickets here). It seems to be an unofficial Stargate convention in the UK!

Why? Well, I do like sci-fi, and Stargate, and a few other things, and thought it would be fun. I nearly went off to an event in Vancouver just for fun, but chickened out.

My daughter suggested I went as a Klingon! I mean, no, and no, and WTF? and no, and I would be lynched I expect. Star[things] are not all the same, honest.

I am not wearing a "costume" as such, but I'll take a small step. I remembered that one episode has an "Area 51 ID card" in it. I googled for an image and did not find the one, which was odd. But too much clutter I think. I did find a reference to the episode, SG-1 s8e10 "Endgame", and so watched and found the card :-

No doubt it was deliberately minimalist, but the back was odd...

As it appears to have text about parking! I have tried to reproduce that.

Anyway, suffice to say, I have my "costume" ready...  making use of the A&A card printing service.

Area 51 techie

And maybe I have the Stargate dialling address for Earth on the business cards I am taking, on the end of the address, maybe. That would be sad, wouldn't it?

As I say, never been to a thing like this, but it is a good chance to gauge interest in my Stargate playing cards. Still waiting on UK agent for MGM on that. I'll take the sample pack to show people.

If you want to meet me, get a ticket! I'll be the one badly disguised as an Area 51 techie, with a beard.

Now for extra geek/nerd: Cal Mah is Goa'uld for "Sanctuary" but is also where K'tano, a Goa'uld posing as a Jaffa, gathered rebel Jaffa and was ultimately found out and defeated by Teal'c and then the site was destroy by Goa'uld Lord Yu. So is this conference as scam by a Goa'uld I wonder?

Stargate Gods?

I am a bit of a fan of sci-fi, and have, of course, watched Stargate SG-1, Universe, and Atlantis. All great Sci-Fi, even with many flaws (6 points in space, FFS).

I was pondering the Stargate view on "gods". I think it is actually quite interesting, to be honest.

The basic story, back to basics, is that the Goa'uld are a parasitical (snake like) creature that needs a human (or something similar) as a host and pose for the local population as a "god". They have advanced technology, and supposedly posed as a variety of gods (and even the "devil") on Earth over the millennia.

So it makes you wonder on any sort of definition of "god". Purely due to technology, which the Goa'uld keep secret (even from Jaffa), they can create the impression of being gods. But is superior tech all that you need to meet such a definition? Perhaps it is?

What is interesting is that the worshipers in this case have a tangible god, which nobody on Earth has. They can see their god, and the acts he performs (using high tech), so there are no agnostics as they know the power the gods have, and presumably no atheists either (but that depends on definition of "god"). Given that they exist (in the show) the Goa'uld are more tangible and plausible "gods" than anything any Earth religion has to offer.

But as time goes on, the followers are convinced to recognise them as "false gods", and simply technologically advanced aliens that they are. Yay for the rebellion!

So what next? Well the show goes on to discover "ascended" life forms. These are formerly people (ancients) that have ascended to a "higher plane" and now are pure energy. One of the main characters (Daniel Jackson) even manages it, and by a convent plot twist he even comes back. They have control over natural forces and more power than the technology of the Goa'uld but all done without using technology.

Surely these count as actual "gods"? They even have a code of conduct preventing them interfering, except when the script really needs then to do so, and so are like Earthly gods that do fuck all to actually help people. That has to be the hallmark of a "real" god, surely?

We then have the Ori that never got the memo on not interfering and rule a whole galaxy by force, gaining power from worship somehow. Surely they must be actual gods, with the power, and the tangible and evidentiary presence?

Then the show goes even more whacky with Stargate Universe, and the idea that the ancients (that ascended later) found a "message from god", or at least some meaningful structure in the background radiation from the big bang. An intelligence at the start of time. Maybe that signifies a (the) real god?

Interestingly, they encounter (or rather don't) aliens that made a solar system and returned some settlers to them (only to re-live how they died?!). Maybe they are gods too?

What really got me, while watching all of this, was not any of these so called gods, they all meet a definition of a "god" in a context, but the acting of the Americans in many places that assumed there is some "one true god", the "in god we trust" crap they have on the dollar - that type of deity. Of all the acting and fiction, the way they talk about one god of one religion on Earth, one of thousands, is what made me cringe and feel it was the fiction is it. Sadly, I think a lot of Americans actually think like that. Oh well.

P.S. Perhaps what I am trying to say here, in any debate on religion, is you probably need to start by defining what you think a "god" actually is, before you can say whether there is a "god", and whether such a "god" is doing its job and/or worthy of any praise.

Fans (Stargate, etc)

There are fans of all sorts of TV shows and films, obviously, but it struck me there are some very different types of fans out there.

You may have guessed I like Stargate. I have watched it lots of times (SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe). It is very good as "background TV" for when I am doing something else. Yes, there are some serious plot holes like any show, and some massive tech inconsistencies even allowing for it being sci-fi with its own set of science rules. But it is fun, and entertaining.

I did try to make some Stargate playing cards, but sadly the licensing is basically impossible.

But in my case, being a fan is more of "I liked the episode when they went back to 1969", and if I hear the first few seconds of an episode I could tell you exactly what happens because I have watched them so often. No, I cannot name every actor and actress or say every other film or show they have ever been in.

My brother, on the other hand, is very much a different sort of fan of these things, and not just relating to Stargate.

He is far more "They filmed effects in 16:9, but when the released a DVD in Germany (which was made for UK as all in English) they used scaled up 4:3 effects for some reason", and frankly spouts every pointless bit of shit like that! (I am paraphrasing, I was not really listening).

Which sort of fan are you?

NDA

NDA, or Non Disclosure Agreements are useful in business. If you don't know, they are basically an agreement saying to can't leak confidential information that is shared with you for some specific project or purpose. They are usually mutual (two way). Basically, if you leak info then you can be sued for damages.

They are really useful to allow negotiations in private for something before it is published or launched.

Now, our favorite telco have NDAs as you would expect, but then they have a tendency to mark everything as confidential which means we can't tell anyone! This even applies when they tell us stuff specifically so that we can keep our customers informed. So we have a crazy situation that there may be some major planned works early 2010, but we cannot tell our customers about it or any details.

But, on a lighter note, for other stargate fans out there. Don't you just love the way they get civilians to sign an NDA. They make a big thing about it on many occasions. WTF???

What is the point of doing that?

(a) They are the government and so can almost certainly legally do far worse that sue you for breach of an NDA, and probably have specific laws covering military secrets (like we do in the UK) so the NDA is just silly.

(b) They have a stargate, tracking systems and beaming technology, so they can vanish you very effectively if you upset them and no way for any normal criminal investigation to trace it! They don't even have to kill you as such. You can't run and you can't hide. Surely that is a hugely more effective threat than any NDA.

(c) The only way to use an NDA is to sue for breach of the NDA, and I assume much the same in the US. Doing that means you have to confirm that what was disclosed was in fact confidential information, and hence true. You can never use an NDA without validating the disclosure. Yet what would be disclosed is so fantastic that it would be dismissed as crazy take anyway. So what is the point!

By the way, I an not under any NDA regarding any stargate! But I would say that wouldn't I :-)

Happy New Year

I thought PDF solved this crap

This is all about the tools used, and how they maybe don't quite fit together sometimes.

I have been working with the people at Ivory Graphics, as you may know. Having done a few things with them I am now quite good and making the artwork in the right format for them.

Little things like, if I have a pack of cards, making it a single multi-page PDF is better for them than separate files for each card. It also ensures they know the order I want the cards to be in, which can be nice. Another small detail is interleaving the face and back of the cards in the PDF - this is crucial for a marked deck or a deck that has stuff separately on both sides of the cards for example, but they do have macros which will take one "back" and slot it in to a deck as well.

But how do I make the artwork?

Well, I start with SVG. In fact, for the card faces, I have SVG and C code, and the C code has some SVG in it (like shapes of the suits and digits), some it constructs with code, and some it pulls in from files (like the various layers of court card artwork) which I originally edited in inkscape, and it constructs final SVGs.

However, for the box designs I have used inkscape to create and edit. The original PDF from Ivory (they have templates on their web site) is imported in to inkscape, and split in to layers to allow me to make a design. In some cases I have then imported symbols and whole playing cards from my generated SVG. It works well.

I then have scripts which use inkscape command line to export PDFs and then pdfunite to make multiple page PDFs with card backs in the right order. I do the same for the box, making one PDF which has all of the cut and fold outlines for reference and one that does not, ready for printing. I view the PDFs either in Safari or using Preview on my Mac.

Here is the latest deluxe Stargate box design as an example. I exported as PNG from Preview:

I can, of course, view the SVG for this in Safari too, works well, except that the gate symbols at the top do not show! This is because they use SVG "symbols", which seem to not to always work in Safari for no good reason. In other cases they work fine, so really not clear. Also, bizarrely (having just checked this to make sure I was right) Safari has stopped using the fonts in the SVG (that are loaded on this Mac) so it actually looks very wrong indeed! That used to work, so I'll have to figure out why it is not (I did update my MacOS the other day). This is a screenshot from Safari on my Mac:

Anyway, the final product is PDF format, albeit using RGB colour space. Ivory Graphics cope very well with converting to CMYK for print, I have to say, so that has not been an issue.

PDFs "just work" as you probably know. They embed fonts as needed, and they are a consistent format, and I have never had any problem with PDFs, honest. Seriously, it is impressive - so many other formats for things, even (as you see above) SVGs, are not reliable, but PDFs just work. So it is very sensible of Ivory Graphics to prefer PDF as the means to send them artwork.

But, to my surprise, this is not always the case. It seems that the Stargate on the box causes problems, and it is not clear why. The same Stargate on the card backs was no problem! Loading the PDF broke horribly for them with bits missing in all sorts of places. The comment was "And when I attempt to crop it, other sections drop off.". This example is the previous version on a white background, but you can see the cards are broken badly, and bits of the gate are a mess. What on Earth is going wrong?

This was, I believe, loading in to Adobe Illustrator. To fix that she did something involving Photoshop and then Illustrator, and probably something else, and managed to sort it. But this time she failed, and different ways of loading caused error of not recognising a shading or getting colours wrong. She spent time creating new shading even but was not entirely happy with it.

I am really surprised by this to be honest, PDFs really should "just work".

However, there was a fix, which I stumbled upon, and it "worked perfectly" allowing the PDF to just import with no problems. The alternative was to make a raster PNG which would work, but can lose detail.

What did I do? I opened in "Preview" on the Mac, and did Export PDF from it. The result was on the wrong page size, and even rotated, and a different (smaller) file size, but still properly vector graphics, and apparently loaded with no problem in to Illustrator and whatever other tools she is using. The proofs she then produced just looked spot on, and no problems at all.

Unfortunately we live in a world where we are removed from the nuts and bolts of such file formats enough that you have to basically play around at a high level until something seems to work. It is a shame really, and not a situation I like. Whilst I have good understanding of Postscript and SVG (and PNG), I don't when it comes to PDFs. Someone that does could probably explain what inkscape did that was special in some way that it sometimes breaks Illustrator but not breaking Preview.

Just goes to show that some times the simplest solutions work best, and a useful tip for next time. And well done to Zsuzsa from Ivory for her hard work on this. It is nice dealing with a company that really do try to get things right.

SciFi: Time Travel

I am off to visit a fiend this weekend, and even though he is somewhat technical and a bit of a geek, he has never really watched/read any SciFi! So I thought I would write up one of the common SciFi themes for him: time travel.

Credibility

First off, some basics. SciFi is fiction, and to watch it you have to suspend disbelief and imagine, for a short while, that the universe in which the story is set could exist. For science fiction this works by taking the normal universe in which we live, and tweaking it a bit to create something that is a bit different. Obviously, you also have the fact that you need a good story, and characters and a plot, and so on. Indeed, the science itself, and the changes that make this universe different to our own, do not actually have to be key to the plot - they could simply be utilities that make the plot even possible. An example would be the “faster than light” travel in Star Trek - without that the entire 5 year mission would be the crew getting to Jupiter, maybe, and the drama would be the sonic showers breaking down. Some science fiction revolves around the key scientific difference that the depicted universe has from our own. Time travel is rarely simply a utility for the plot but usually a key plot element. Annoyingly I know I saw a film where the time travel was totally incidental to the story but cannot for the life of me remember what film it was!

Some of the most plausible science fiction is set in a universe where the laws of physics are as they are here, but that some current leading edge theories are assumed to have been proven and practical innovations and technology created from them.

Consistency

One of the things that puzzles my friends is that I will watch SciFi and criticise the science some times. They find it odd and point out that it is science fiction. I have to point out that it is science fiction. It is worth explaining what I mean. Basically, the universe in which the story is set must be one where science would work. Science is not the laws of physics of our universe, but is in fact a toolkit of methods by which we have test and understand the universe in which we live. The universe of a SciFi story can be very different to ours, but science in that universe would work to allow the rules of that universe to be understood.

Of course, as an audience, we are unable to perform tests on the fictional universe, so the author has to do those for us - part of the story will have to be some demonstration of the key difference between that universe and ours, and provide some framework by which we can understand the rules by which that universe operates.

What causes annoyance, and makes the fiction break down is when the rules are not consistent. This is especially difficult for time travel as making any consistent set of rules for time travel is actually quite tricky - there are many ways it could work.

Ideally the author makes a proper set of consistent rules in their own mind, even if they are not always revealed in the story or done so over time. This avoids inconsistencies. Sadly this is often not the case and you realise that the social structure would not exist if that technology existed. An example if Star Trek transporters. They conveniently gloss over the details as much as possible but it is not clear if the device somehow moves you from A to B (via some energy conversion or something) or, as suggested and even necessary in some story lines, it somehow digitises you, converting you in to information and sending that to create a new instance of you at the destination. The latter is extremely problematic as it has huge moral/ethical issues, killing one instance to make another. It would also mean nobody could die as information can be backed up so you could've a backup made every day. It would also allow an army of soldiers to be created all the same from your best individual examples. Society would not be the same if that is how it worked.

Even so, many science fiction stories are set in a world that is meant to be based on ours. A common theme is to set the story in our future. The key scientific differences being the result of discoveries and subsequent technology developed in the future. Star Trek is another good example of this. Another common idea is to set the story in the here and now, but where only a select set of people are aware of these scientific revolutions - Stargate is a good example of that. A lot of alien based science fiction assumes the here and now, but with the availability of alien technology and understanding that we do not yet have. In either case the “normal” laws of physics have to still apply except where modified by these specific key innovations - and this is where you can end up shouting at the screen - when something stupid and wrong is included in the story for no good reason. One simple example is the idea that cold air (still is gaseous form) can flash freeze someone solid in seconds if it is cold enough, simply as an example of extreme bad weather. That is not how it works - gaseous air does not have enough thermal mass and conductivity for that. For science fiction to work, the science has to work even if the laws of physics are different.

Forward in time

The concept of going forward in time is not difficult. We are all doing all the time, it is simply a matter of going faster. Indeed, even going far ahead in time is not difficult to conceive as it is functionally the same as simply being in some sort of suspended animation for some long period.

Time travel stories rarely have just forward travel though :-) And even when they do, there is the transporter problem (see below).

Backwards in time

This is where it really becomes a problem. Basically you have to resolve the paradox caused by backwards time travel. The classic being the grandfather paradox where you go back and kill your grandfather before your parents are even born. But any travel back in time, or even simply being able to send some information back in time creates a paradox. There are a number of ways this can be addressed (or ignored) in fiction…

Circular plot

A classic method of addressing the paradox is to basically make the story such that the time traveller did not actually change history at all. Everything he does is something that already happen. In such a story he could not in fact kill his grandfather - not due to a law of physics, but because the author does not make that happen. Typically the exact nature of what the time traveller does is not obvious until the end, when it becomes clear that he has done what happened anyway. Indeed, some stories work on the time traveller trying to make changes, and ending up being the cause of the things he meant to change in the first place due to misfortune. Some stories have the characters deliberately try to reproduce what they recall from history for fear of some catastrophic effect due to a paradox. Of course, such stories can work well, but they do not actually address the issues, and you are left wondering why the character did not at least make some small attempt to create a paradox of some sort. 12 Monkeys worked like this.

First law of time

There are some stories where there are “laws” of time travel which the characters have to obey. These usually involve avoiding a paradox very carefully, and again the issues are not really resolved. In some cases these are rules and regulations of some time travel agency our authority from the future. Being rules, the characters can be compelled to stop people breaking them and hence avoid the author having to address the issues.

It all turns out right in the end

Another common theme is that the changes to the past end up changing the future as a consequence. This can leave the characters never needing to back in time even, and is usually the last scene of a story where everything turns out all right. Off course, this is a paradox anyway, as who actually fixed the past if not those that are no longer going back to fix it. Stargate had a fun one like this with a tiny twist that there are fish in the pond this time around! This sort of story can be a bit unsatisfying as you end up with the whole story you just watched being erased from history and not having happened.

Ripples in time

Another idea is that the consequences of the change happen, but take time (!) to happen. Somehow the traveller is protected from them - finding himself back in a new future with his old memories - or in some cases with both sets of memory (confusing). These sorts of stories can involve multiple attempts to go back and fix things. Again, at the end of it all, the story you watched is erased from history to give a reasonably happy ending.

Changes in the past having “real-time” impact

This is where things get very strange, and Back to the Future sort of did this. The idea that as you change the past, and as the chance of you fixing that change diminish, you impact yourself in some way. Marty sees his siblings vanish slowly from a picture, and even starts to fade out himself until he eventually manages to fix his mistake. I have to say that this sort of thing is really messy. The whole thing is very inconsistent and hard to derive any sort of laws of physics from it.

You also get this where someone manages to meet themselves, and perhaps injure themselves and in doing so magically they get a scar from that injury. Again, very inconsistent logic.

Bogeymen

One of my favourites comes from a Dr Who episode. Dr Who stories try very hard not to create a nasty paradox, but they do happen, and the TARDIS has technology to handle a paradox even. But interfering in your own timeline is seen as something you must not do. But rather than this being some law of people (or time lords) or a law of physics, it is done as a law of nature, sort of. The idea is that by creating the paradox, such as saving the life of your father, you create cracks in time that allow some nasty creatures in to reality. So the law is there to protect you, not something that there are police to enforce. Fix the paradox and seal the cracks!

Multiverse

One way that you can create a consistent set of rules for time travel is to use the concept of the multiverse. The concept is that at each point in time, a branching set of subtly different parallel universes are created.

In this situation, going backwards in time is easier than going forwards! Going forwards is steering a branch through that multiverse - the decisions and random events of our daily life steering as we go. Gong backwards is simply going back up the tree - only one path to take. However, when you arrive at a point in history, your arrival creates a new branch of history with you in it.

This has the advantage of removing any paradox. You can change what you like in your new branch of history and not impact the branch from which you came.

Even this gets abused, as in Back to the Future, where they are again inconsistent in the rules of time travel. It also has several issues with time travel duplicates and getting crowded.

Time travel duplicates

A consequence of multiverse logic is that you are immediately a duplicate of yourself when you go back in time. Go back 10 seconds and tell yourself not to go back, and bingo, there are now two of you. One branch of the multiverse has lost you and another has gained you. That breaks ordinary laws of physics in some ways, as it means matter/energy within a single universe being created or lost, but that could be seen as that law of physics being too narrowly scoped and not catering for the multiverse!

Futurama has a special twist on this, using basketball mathematics, they deduce that a time travel duplicate is always doomed - having a high probability of demise to leave only one of you in any time line… But that is sort of science comedy!

Sideways in time

A consequence of multiverse logic is also the concept of travelling sideways in time. The idea that you can go to the same time in an alternative parallel universe in the multiverse. This was the main theme in Sliders and is explored in many science fiction stories, including Stargate and even Star Trek.

In Stargate they created an extra twist on this, that somehow you could not exist in the wrong universe for very long and would eventually collapse at a sub atomic level in some horrid way, so you have to return. They also explored the issue of addressing (numbering) the multiple universes - a key plot issue in Sliders.

Transporter problems

One of the problems that is rarely addressed in any of these stories is the fact that you end up with matter appearing or disappearing. This is the same issue with a Star Trek transporter. When you have someone pop in to or out of existence, how do you ensure that the borders are correct and that they do not take half the pavement with them. And how do you target things to avoid appearing in a wall. For that matter what happens to the air that was where they are when you appear. Even forward time travel has this issue. Terminator tried to address this by putting the traveler in a sphere and that would actually cut a hole in the ground when the traveller appears - it solves the question of how do you get a skin tight enclosure for the traveller to be cut out of one space and put in another.

Getting crowded

You also have the issue in a multiverse scenario - whilst there may be many futures all the same in most aspects there is only one past - surely if one person goes back in time to a specific point, a million others have done the same and are trying to occupy the same space at the same time in the same universe at that point in the past? Well that could be solved by saying that the new branch of the multiverse they create by their arrival is the one that has them in it, and all of the others are in another one. That does not really handle things very well, or cater for the versions of themselves that decided to arrive from that new future and arrive a second later in to their timeline. It gets very messy and should get very crowded the second someone invents time travel!

Winning the lottery

One common concept of time travel, of even just sending yourself information in to the past, is that you send winning lottery tickets. This is where I have an opinion which I have not seen in any film. The issue here is how that time line goes forward. It is fair to say that you would follow the same path forward with all of the quantum level decisions being the same. Maybe lottery balls are actually random enough not to come out the same? Perhaps a better idea is to bet on sporting events where the outcome may be much more Newtonian and following the skills of the players rather than quantum level random luck?

Mind travel

Another twist is the idea that you do not physically travel in time, but your mind travels. In the case of About Time the traveller is travelling to an earlier version of himself. This does not quite eliminate any paradox but does avoid many questions. He returns back to a later version of himself but having followed a new future because of his actions in the past. The issue is that random things have changed making it somewhat pot luck, and meaning that he realises he could never go back to before his child was born for fear of changing that event. In some ways Ground Hog Day is like this but the travel back to his own body at the start of the day is involuntary and even works if he dies.

More on SciFi: Stargate communications stones

I am watching Stargate universe (SGU) again, why not, and they make extensive use of the "communication stones".

These allow two people to swap bodies over any distance. There is a device that handles the stones, and they can be disconnected. Interestingly the link is disrupted when one end going in to, our out of, FTL (Faster Than Light) travel. The connection breaks totally if one side goes through an intergalactic gate...

One of the odd things on this plot device is the issue of what happens if someone dies?

The plot is that normally there is no physical effect on one side yay effects the other, so lack of sleep, caffeine, food, etc, does not impact the other person, but death and near death does! If one end dies, both die.

I was thinking, why would this be? The mind swap seems pretty absolute, so one end dying should leave the other end stuck in a transferred state, surely?

Well, I forgot the Terry Pratchett narrative imperative...

If the communications stones allowed any way for the swap to be permanent, even with one party dying to make it so, it would create a massive plot device. Any person can extend their life by simply swapping with a younger person and then getting killed. It would break the normal flow of most fiction - you cannot easily have immortals in a story line (Dr Who excepted).

So that is why both ends have to die, no matter how illogical that may seem.

Shame.

Compartments

I hope that I am like most people (!) and have different compartments for some of my mind.

I have one big one for "reality". It covers everything from laws of physics to the way the legal system works and what is right and fair, and so on. It is what I use day-to-day to live my life and understand and predict the world around me.

In fact, when that compartment has its foundations attacked it causes a lot of stress for me - an ADR case for the company some time back broke my view of right and justice and the way things work and caused me a lot of stress as a result.

But I have many other compartments, and they are generally built on top of that core "reality" view of the world, but with variations.

I have one called "Stargate" for example - I can watch an episode of Stargate and for that time I am in a world where the laws of physicals and the morals and rules of the universe are based on "reality" but with the slight tweak that there are stargates creating worm holes to other realities and a group of people that travel to other worlds. I can even assimilate new knowledge and update the compartment with that new knowledge whilst watching the TV show.

I have another called "Star trek" (there may be a theme here), and so on. In each of these I can assess and predict outcomes and add to the base knowledge of "how things work" quite independently to other compartments.

None of these encroach on "reality". I wonder if there are people for which that is not so easy?

In dreams, I can put myself in one of these and sort of live a dream life within a variation of reality. I can also have dreams that are very much locked to my "reality" compartment and have had dreams where I solve issues on software design that I can work on when awake later!

I wondered why we have these. Why do we have this ability to create compartments in our mind?

If we did not have a way to separate such things from reality; if we had only one compartment, pretty much all literature and film and fantasy would be impossible. It would not make any sense to us.

I pondered one theory of my own - a key thing that we as people have is the ability to model another minds. That is - to imagine what someone else is seeing, and that be separate to what we know and see. This is key to the idea of deception, and a massive evolutionary advantage for us to do. Unlike very young children we do not assume all other people know the same things we do - we create a mental model of what they know. This allows us to predict what they will do, and so we have an advantage. It is probably a key reason we have such big brains!

This means we have to have a concept of compartmentalised models of other people in our heads - the more the better. It is hierarchical in that we assume they all have a view based on "reality", but we can model each person and what they know and what they have seen independently.

I suppose that people with multiple personalities perhaps have this mechanism slightly broken - forgetting or changing which is the "base" model.

This system allows fantasy as it allows us to model non real people and what they know and see and how they would act. I think fantasy is a side effect of basic deception and modelling of other's thoughts.

In some ways that is an evolutionary back-fire. We have no real "need" for fantasy and it is using valuable mental resources that we should have used to model what a lion has seen in the jungle...

The good news is that modelling others is perhaps one of the main ways we "live on", in the minds of others, when we are gone. People with which we interact make their models of us all of the time and those models live on for a while, predicting what we would say and do.

So this process creates both fantasy and ghosts...

Outward opening front door

One of the decisions I made in my garage conversion was to have an outward opening external door.

This is, as I understand it (at least in the UK), unusual. It was mainly an attempt to maintain as much internal space as possible.

There are issues, the hinges are outside and so subject to attack, which is why I have "hinge bolts" in the door frame. Also, when someone calls, you end up opening the door in to them (rare as I have a window).

But I noticed whilst watching Stargate SG1 Revisions that all of the town had doors that opened outwards like mine - possibly because the rooms are all small.

They are filmed in a place called Fantasy Gardens which is used in other Stargate episodes, and actually, a lot of films!

Fascinating place it seems, albeit torn down now!

Licensing intellectual property - a tale of two journeys

I thought I would do a comparison of two "journeys" in trying to get licensing of intellectual property.

1. The bar codes used by duplimate bridge card dealing machines so I could make promotional cards for a bridge club.

• I searched for their web site, and emailed the published tech support contact asking about licensing
• Within minutes I got a reply, advising €0.10 per pack and giving me the email address to contact
• I emailed that email address asking how it works, and actually got a one page licence agreement back, which tells me what wording to put on the Ace of Spades, to send 4 sample packs, and a licence number to use, and where to send the money.

For extra bonus points, this is a Swedish company and they conversed in English (apart from spelling licence wrongly for English English), and this all happened on a Sunday afternoon! Also, no set-up fee, and no minimum number of decks. So simple.

2. The Stargate glyphs and Alteran characters to make my Stargate themed cards...

• I searched and found the MGM media licensing web site, which has an email address to ask questions about licensing. I checked it was really MGM. I emailed.
• I emailed again 5 days later
• I emailed again 2 days later (got an out of office reply for that day)
• I emailed again a day later
• A day later I emailed the web master asking if the email address was right
• I waited a week, nothing still
• I went to the site and filled in the registration page
• I waited a couple more days, and eventually got a confirmation of registration
• I submitted a request on line - it is mainly for using stills/clips, but what I want to use is gate glyphs and Alteran characters which come from stills from the show, so maybe this is sensible, not sure. I filled in all the details carefully explaining the use I wanted.
• I waited 3 more days, and emailed asking how long this takes normally
• Another day later and I got an email saying I need to talk to consumer products and giving me their email.
• I emailed Tricia in consumer products.
• After 3 days of no reply, I emailed again.
• After 3 more days, I emailed again
• Finally I managed to exchange a few emails on the same day (evening as US time) and they confirmed $5,000 advance royalties. They asked me for sample images, yay!
• I emailed images
• I emailed again a day later
• I emailed again three days later
• I finally got a reply saying they could give me a licence and they sent an application which I returned
• I emailed again three days later
• I emailed again another six days later
• I even left a voicemail
• I finally get an email saying this is not how they normally work and I should contact a UK agent, which I emailed yesterday...

I think I have all the delays right in that list, but we are now 7 weeks to the day since I first emailed MGM. They routinely ignore emails for days or weeks. They could have said - go to this UK agent on day 1. They almost seem to be trying to put me off. At the end of the day if you make it hard to licence your IP then people will just sell unlicensed stuff and you have to faff with cease and desist and enforcement and suing and crap - why mess people around?

Now I start with a UK agent, I'll let you know how it goes. Hope people find this stuff interesting :-)

P.S. I hate using "journey" like this, as we are not going anywhere (literally, and in the case of MGM, metaphorically, so far) but I could not think of anything better. Maybe "story" would have been better?

P.P.S. Two emails and a tweet to the UK company, and no replies at all. I may have to try a call!

They must have noticed, surely?

OK, I admit it, I was re-watching Stargate Atlantis season 3 back to back, as you do, thanks to Sky On-Demand boxed-sets.

But the same applies to many TV series, especially Sci-Fi.

Almost every episode there is some peril that is un-surmountable, yes they always somehow find a solution or get unexpected help at the last moment. No matter how dire the situation.

Indeed, Stargate has been going long enough that the script writers take the piss slightly and comment on this some times.

But surely the characters in the plot should have noticed how implausible their life is by now? Why don't they notice?

...

I was pondering... life on Earth has resulted from such unlikely sequences of events and continues in the face of huge risks from meteors, volcanoes, some of our own stupidity, and all sorts. We are so implausibly lucky...

Aw! crap!

[No, I don't believe in a "script writer" either, honest, it is just that the lucky ones are the only ones that get to reflect on how lucky they have been, that is all]

Playing with a serious number of WS2812B RGB LEDs

I have done some fun stuff with LEDs, but now I have found some very small 1mmx1mm WS2812B LEDs, I decided to make a Stargate.

Well, the doctor said to rest, so this is my resting! I have spent a week on this - much of that waiting for slightly wrong 3D prints to print. 3D printing is always a massive time hog.

My first ideas was 210 LED, but then I went for a better design with 372 LEDs.

I have since revised the design to 507 LEDs!

The image shown here is the 372 LED design.

Needless to say, some C code was used to place the LEDs and caps and vias and tracks for this.

To my surprise the power usage is not that bad, all 372 LEDs on full white is 3.6A, including the ESP32. So can run off a suitable USB charger.

In practice, the Stargate dialling sequence does not go over 0.8A, so no problem.

As usual, all open source on my GitHub.

However, I did find that JLCPCB cannot cope with more than 400 designators on one line in a BOM file :-)

As for spinning, I could make a spinning effect using 117 LED rings, but I could not spin the actual glyphs - so as a compromise I illuminate the glyphs that are dialled in situ. I think it works quite well.

Of course, the challenge then was a 3D case for it. This was tricky - there are a lot of 3D models of stargates, some more easily printed than others, but I wanted one I could nicely slice in two and allow the PCB to be inserted. That proved more complex, so I designed one from scratch in OpenSCAD. It is simplified to be easy to 3D print, even though the whole thing is nearly 7 hours print time.

I also needed a reasonably neutral colour to allow the LEDs to show. I ended up using the ColorFabb Glowfill, which has the side effect that it glows in the dark.

Here is it dialling...

This is the latest 507 LED PCB design, the main change is an extra kawoosh ring that will be inside the 100mm gate ring. The idea is that this could then work with a mirror and half mirror perhaps to make a gate tunnel effect. I'll see when I make some more. It works out around £30 per board, shipped.

The extra tabs are not a space gate effect, honest, they are tooling holes and fiducials for production, and get snapped off.

That's a lot of LEDs

Perfectly normal hobby (#Stargate)

I'll keep saying it - perfectly normal hobby...

The [legitimate] excuse was testing LED placement and reliability - how close we can place them, can we put vias under them reliably, what size vias, how much power do a lot of LEDs really use. Also testing the code to place LEDs in rings and other formats automatically. These are all sensible questions, and answered best by getting a few test boards made - ones with lots of tightly packed LEDs. Another test is using PCB files to automatically make OpenSCAD data to allow designs to work directly from PCB to make 3D models. A complicated little project, and once again, best tested by actually having resin cases made and confirming how well they fit - so you need a few resin cases.

So it is legit R&D, honest - trial and error, pushing boundaries, etc. The fact I have a couple of design tweaks in both the LED PCB and the 3D model design is why I have a few now. I mean everyone should own at least five Stargate models, right?

Now, I do have some of the LED panels for sale on Tindie. But I can't really sell these R&D prototypes. The base 3D design is also non-commercial licence, so I can't really sell that (well, maybe at cost). So now trying to work out a good home for a handful of gates. I don't seem to know quite enough geeks... Toot for more info.

I have made a video on how it all goes together... No toaster required. Enjoy...

Game Over for Stargate playing cards

I am really sorry to have to admit defeat.

After a lot of work on this, and a lot of obstacles, I believe it is impossible to get a licence from MGM. Whilst their contract has a number of issues, by far the most problematic is that in order to purchase a licence from them, they require me to assign all copyright in my product to them. No, they don't pay me for that! If this seems backwards to you, you are not alone.

I made it clear from the start that the designs included some creative commons work - so they knew it would never work all along. Even if that could be solved by a lot of re-design, it would mean rights in my playing cards designs assigned to them - which means all the other playing cards I have made being theirs - so I'd need to buy a licence to use those (even though I designed them!). This is not, in my view, how copyright is meant to work!

Anyway, this is the video I made earlier. I have not had any further reply from the licensing people, which I can only take as confirmation of my understanding. A bit rude to just ignore me, but seems to be typical of all of the interactions I have had on this. Shame.

I went to Cal Mah, and sadly there was not much merchandise using MGM copyright material (apart from "Stargate Command" stuff which I believe is MGM) - now I know why.

Sorry for getting anyone's hopes up. I'll be removing the Alteran Bridge Club pages, etc.

Alteran digits

I am making progress on the new Alteran deck(s) design as per previous blog post. I am making some progress that someone on twitter says they may have a contact at MGM. We can only hope.

So first off, I have a pretty good set of glyphs. They are from wikimedia, and to be credited on the box.

They are the orientation that matches the placement on the gate, which is not quite the same as the cards Dr Weir deals, which is a shame. I plan to do a bit more research (watching SG-1 episodes) to check these...

Now, the other sticking point is Alteran characters. There are a lot of fonts out there for this, really, I am amazed.

It is 100% clear that normal Alteran letters are a simple 3x4 block structure. No problem. Takes me back to the block graphics on a TRS-80 and even teletext graphics (both 2x3). Those were the days.

However the digits are another matter. They have a bit that sticks down in the middle. One font, and a web site, claims that the bottom row of blocks has half height left and right, like this.

This creates an odd shape for the "0" as the bottom does not match the top as a box. However, it fits the overall size nicely.

However, this does not fit the control stations in Atlantis. They are clearly 3x4 with a bit below.

These are odd, the second panel (as I noticed when first watching this) is back to front. However, this is clearly a 3x4 with an extra half pixel below the bottom middle. The "0" looks way neater. I assume the back to front digits was a production error.

Stargate Universe makes this even easier to see, with a countdown clock.

Here we see the 3x4 grid and what looks like a whole pixel below rather than half of one (making 3x5 grid) but not 100% clear to be honest from that picture, sorry. They have colon and dot which is nice and confirms the "baseline" for the font so the pip on the bottom of the digits is definitely below the baseline.

So I have decided to make my Alteran characters for playing cards use a 3x4.5 grid with the extra half pixel below much like an accent, a Cedilla if you will, only half a pixel high.

As I said before, a 16 card per suit deck, 64 total (100 in octal) makes sense, and I have it all designed now.

I have even designed the box, and we are ready to go once MGM confirm licensing.

So, watch this space! Or give me a contact at MGM...

BTW, the back is just the Stargate unless I have better ideas. Suggestions welcome.

Stargate addresses

OK, I know that film / TV show producers don't really care for this level of detail, clearly, but some times it gets a tad annoying!

I was trying to compile a list of known gate addresses to put on the cards I am making. Seemed like a nice touch to include them. There are wikis and blogs which are a good start, but I was being diligent and checking them (like I need an excuse to watch SG-1 again!). Whilst there are minor typos on various lists which I picked up, in some cases the producer of the show seems to be just taking the piss.

SG-1 s2e14 Touchstone, literally a few seconds apart in the show.

I may as well give up and just make up addresses randomly. I have no idea which is "right" for P5F-5T2 and P7J-1P3. One wiki listing gate addresses had :-

That is almost, but not quite, the top one! Looks like they type 39 instead of 36 for first symbol.

I can do my best. The cards are coming along nicely, just working on discussions with MGM over royalties.

P.S. Thinking about it, that scene involved flashing up the same scrolling list when searching three times in a row. To make the addresses different would have actually meant some deliberate action. Why? Just why?

P.P.S. This address (same dialling shot I assume) is used a *lot* which makes it difficult. This is from SG-1 s3e15 A Matter of Time but is the address of Chulak!

P.S. I found some more references not on the wikia page (s3e20 Maternal Instinct) - yay!