Continue reading »]]> Seems some people wanted some attention, seeing that The Queen and President Barack Obama are coming for a visit.

Apparently this device, whatever it was, drew some attention and the Army was sent there to disarm it.

Luckily for me, by the time I was off, the bomb alert was no longer active and the trains ran as normal – but this is concerning.

Continue reading »]]> So today I finished my over-a-year-long-run to watch everything, back to back, of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. During that time I have become a huge fan of the whole Stargate franchise… even learned the “science” behind the fictional ring of the ancestors. Still, to me, SG-1 remains the better show of the two.

Here’s a fan-video with clips from the second last episode, “Vegas”, which centered on John Sheppard being a detective in an alternate reality. However, his obsession for Johnny Cash was the same… a truly fantastic episode - in so many ways.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBGWk_qm-z4

Ah yes, in other news:
Stargate Universe is canceled.

Continue reading »]]> Okay so once again I have to move houses. Maybe you have read about my last ordeal with former friends and housemates (which, incidentally, ended almost exactly a year ago). And what do ya know… a similar thing happened again. Not the same, but it would fit into the general category. In over 10 years, I really had some bad luck with sharing houses.

So after the story I linked happened, I moved away into a place where things calmed down for a while. To make a long story short, I had to move away as well, but all of us needed to go. No details here. Let’s just say nothing bad at all happened.

At that point I was still unemployed. So to keep things easy for me, I could only move houses within the same postal area. And so I did. I was kinda rushed into it, I was running out of time. I found a place that seemed nice at first. But oh boy was I wrong.

So let’s keep it simple here. Turns out he is a bit older than me (not by much – but he keeps referring to me as young). Single and self-employed. That’s all good and well. However, there is a little issue. Quite the issue. You see he likes to go out. That’s alright. But… I think there’s an issue with noticing other people.

You see in his living room there is his TV and cinema system, which consists of surround speakers and a pretty huge subwoofer (beats mine in any competition). At first he only used it occasionally after I moved in. However, in time, usage of that thing got more and more. Therefore, louder and louder.

The speakers are attached to his ceiling, which is my floor – and on top of that, the speakers are exactly where my bed is. So you can imagine the noise level.

When I was unemployed I didn’t care so much, but now that I have a job, I think I do care. Especially since the weekend is the only time I can rest. But more and more, he took that resting time away from me. The music got louder. The people who stayed in the house were more.

I got no rest on weekends. In over 30 times I asked respectfully to turn it down, it was not – instead:

- It was left on equal volume or turned up
- At times when I went into the living room to politely ask to turn it down, I saw random strangers, once even using my gaming consoles
- Doors were slammed, making sleep impossible

I’d also like to add, that, during the Great Freeze in December, snowballs were thrown at my window for fun, of course deep in the night. Only after they threw the snowballs, which woke me of my deep sleep, they realized that I might be asleep.

In the last few weeks I stayed at friends mostly, even hotels, to evade the noise and to get a tiny amount of long needed, uninterrupted sleep.

One weekend, he was gone to the pub on a Saturday night. He came back around 4 AM on a Sunday morning. Shortly after, he started to play his electronic drum set, right above my room, then his guitar. Mad as hell, I sent him a text.

See for yourself.

So, suffice to say that I pretty much had it in this house. So I simply started to move out without any notice… I think that is fair enough. I’m not played around with.

On a side note: I got my ex-girlfriend into bed without playing drums or guitar at 4.30 AM in the morning. Just saying.

Also, because I’m a good person I won’t do anything else then getting my remaining stuff out of my room, and that is the end of the matter. Just know that I could have rendered the wireless router in the house useless, from anywhere in the world.

I’ll be moving into an apartment on my own soon. No more sharing. I had my share, I did my time. It’s a steep price to pay… but SILENCE IS GOLDEN – AND WORTH IT. First thing I’ll do is get some long needed sleep. You better believe that.

Continue reading »]]> Okay so I have to admit to have become a pretty huge Stargate fan in the last year. I have gotten my hands on all seasons of Stargate SG-1, and Stargate: Atlantis. While in Atlantis, it seems, the plot-device is the ancient city rather than the gate itself, it still is a pretty fantastic show.

However what I really want to know is: How exactly does the Stargate work? I mean, really? Or what seems plausible enough as a theory with current understanding of space and time? Good question eh? Okay so – I’ll start with how the show depicts it, and what I think.

Dial it up

The theory behind the traveling mechanics are important to understand. The makers of the show came up with a clever way and ingenious way to determine where you want to go via a Stargate. So basically you need six points in space, plus the point of origin – to create straight line from A to B. This is where the symbols on the constellation ring come in. Kinda like this:

If you connect the dots of the first six symbols in sequence, you will get three lines. At the point, where all lines intersect, resides your destination’s Stargate. The point of origin then draws a “line” to your destination – and this is how to determine where you want to go.

This is fairly simple to understand. It is also important to get your head around the fact, that seemingly, Stargates have a limited range of operation, so Gates cannot be of unbelievable distance of each other, say maybe 500 million light years. It seems the maximum distance is somewhere between 250,000-1,000,000 light years (determined with Atlantis‘ “Midway Station” for the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxy). In contrast, the Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter.

The mentioned Gate Bridge contains 34 Stargates in a row, carefully placed in the big void between both galaxies. But that’s just a side-note. So using that station and placement of the Gates, it seems likely that a maximum distance of 1 million light years sounds about right – unless you have a enormous infinite power supply (such as a black hole), which could probably maintain connections to even greater distances (as seen with the Super-Gate of the Ori).

Okay so that’s a short primer on Stargate physics.

But – the real question remains… how exactly do they work?

Well first of all, you apparently need some pretty serious amounts of power to even get that thing to work once. Trust me, you can’t pay that bill with your salary. But that should be fairly obvious… at a later stage in the show, either Naquadah Generators are used (to power the Gate in SG-1) or so-called ZPMs (Zero Point Modules – capsules that have a super-tiny universe inside them, out of which it draws energy) for the Atlantis Gate.

So. You now have the power and you dial a valid destination. With nearly 2 billion possible combinations on Milky Way gates, you better know a good one. So the Gate does its whoosh – and you can step through. Easy enough.

The show says you disintegrate – and you’re being re-assembled at the destination. This part is not the one I have an issue with. A Stargate can store information about all matter travelling through in its buffer, and then is sent to the destination for re-assembly.

I just think the wormhole part is a bit off.

Anyways, this is how the show basically thinks it works:

Well, you see, I think that can’t be right. I mean – wormholes themselves may exist. But this would still require travel time – much more so than what they say in the show – or at least I think so.

I think the solution to this dilemma is to be found in other extra dimensions which are believed to exist.

Most shows call that Sub-Space – but that is a concept that doesn’t exist in any shape or form in science. So I’d rather postulate other layers of our reality that we are yet to discover.

As shown above, I think that makes more sense to me. It seems they step through and they are there like boom! Otherwise I also find it hard to explain how a Gate “knows” it has been “dialed”. The distances are immense, and somehow a Gate has to know if it is the one, another Gate wishes to make a connection with.

It could also be some sort of network topology, where packets are sent to another Gate. I don’t know… but this packet would have to be there almost instantly. So… you need another layer or dimension where no time passes, to do this. Note: this still is a purely mathematical model at this point.

The floor is open to discussion or suggestions. But that’s my take on it. I felt like making a note of that.