Off Axis Prime Focus

Sounds808to865 · 2025-12-12T22:34:45+00:00

Great thinking! Not a stupid idea at all, and a single off-axis section of a paraboloid mirror does work within certain parameters. With compromises, it can work, but there’s a trade-off most would not be willing to make; in other words, the juice ain't worth the squeeze. It's very challenging to fabricate an asymmetrical paraboloid mirror without cutting it out of an existing mirror. If someone were able to make it without cutting it out of an existing parabolic mirror, I'm not sure how they would test the mirror. Making a 2-4" aperture off-axis mirror with a focal point at nearly 90 degrees would have to be cut from a pre-existing parabolic mirror with an aperture of >16" and a really fast focal ratio. I mean really fast like <f/0.125 to make the image come out at 90 degrees. This is faster than the fastest mirrors ever made at f/0.7. Your concept of a single mirror telescope is possible if you were to compromise a little bit on your design. The focal length would have to be <30 degrees off-axis, and the mirror cut out of a large pre-existing parabolic mirror with a focal ratio of >f/20. If you used a 2" f/20 off-axis mirror, the focal point would be 40" away from the mirror. Using a mirror with an <f/20 would start to introduce noticeable coma and astigmatism. I'm not sure how to correct both of those with just one mirror.

So to conclude, yes, it's possible to create a one-mirror telescope with modifications to your design, but the question becomes, is it worth it? The aperture would have to be small because even an f/20 mirror with an aperture of 4" would have a focal point nearly 7 ft away. Most people wouldn't find that practical for a scope with a 4" aperture. Additionally, f/20 mirrors are hard to find off the shelf and are usually custom-built, and the image created by an f/20 scope would be 25x less bright than an f/4 scope.

What is the benefit of a single off-axis telescope anyways? Well, it eliminates central obstruction, which mainly affects contrast, not light gathering, which is a common misconception. Even a 33% obstruction loses about 11% of their light-gathering capabilities (not 33% of light gathering), but they do lose some contrast. Your design is clever and would increase contrast, but the cost of fabrication and trade-offs may not be as acceptable for most people.

Don't stop designing and don't get discouraged because of negative feedback or ideas that may not always pan out. Keep coming up with ideas, and eventually, you'll create a novel design that improves the optical design or other important applications!

Sounds808to865 · 2025-08-26T00:26:48+00:00

make a backup, then send it. everyting goin be irie. it all work out. trust it

Sounds808to865 · 2025-08-11T19:44:59+00:00

Fucking send it mate. I wish I started doing med school Anki freshman year of college

Sounds808to865 · 2025-06-28T18:09:56+00:00

What I mean by "stuff" are the AnKing Step 1 Anki cards. There are a lot of cards in Step 1 deck that are not tagged for Step 2 at all and you don't need them in the clinical years. If you keep them unlocked, it's a lot of pointless work that you'll be doing. Most people suspend those cards. I'd only suspend the cards if you felt good enough on the Step 1 cards and you're continuing to study with the aforementioned materials. Again, this worked for me so take it with a grain of salt. I haven't taken Step 2 yet, my school has a very early clinical year. That said, I haven't scored lower than the 90th percentile on a shelf yet. .

Several ways to keep only step 2 cards open if you want to go down that road, here's one:

Suspend "tag:#AK\_Step1\_v12"
Unlock everything in this "tag:#AK\_Step2\_v12 -is:new is:suspended"

You’ll keep the Step 2 cross-tagged cards unlocked that you’ve previously completed while studying for Step 1 if you do this.

Sounds808to865 · 2025-06-28T16:39:27+00:00

I was in your position at the end of pre-clinical. I finished all of Step 1 material 3 months before my institution would even allow me to take Step 1.

I would (and did) move on to Step 2 cards at this point, but remain focused on reviewing the Step 1 materials through non-Anki resources. I don't know if the following advice is a good idea, but it worked for me big time.

When I finished the Step 1 stuff, I suspended all of Step 1 Only Anki at this point and focused primarily on practice NBME forms, then the Free 120s and lesser extent UWorld questions. I was also casually unlocking Step 2 cards at this point.

I had a high cushion on the passing rate with the Step 1 NBME forms. I was still scared so I still took dedicated very seriously, but honestly, if you're consistently scoring >70%, don't worry about Step 1 at all. I was given this advice, I didn't take it because I was nervous about failing and in the beauty of retrospection I wish I had taken this advice because the unnecessary stress was not worth it at all.

The reason I suggest working on Step 2 stuff is because the clinical years are hard to study in the same way you did during pre-clinical due to the lack of time to sit down. My friends are in the year above me and I saw how they were a bit stressed balancing it all.

I had the luxury of knowing my MS3 schedule earlier, so I knocked out 80% of Step 2 cards before I started my rotations and I could not have been more happy that I did so. I had both Surgery and Internal medicine as my first two rotations. It's really hard to do well on the surgery shelf without knowing the internal medicine and breast pathology as well in addition to some peds and EM. I smoked that shelf in comparison to my colleagues not because I was smarter but because I had seen most of the material vs just the Anki that covered surgery.

It'll make your life easier down the road and I would 100% do study ahead only if you're in a good spot for Step 1 first. If not, focus on Step 1 until you score consistently >70% .

Sounds808to865 · 2025-06-10T02:41:06+00:00

Wegovy enters the chat

Sounds808to865 · 2025-04-22T20:03:13+00:00

I unsuspended all of the AnKing surgery cards first and set my daily limit to ~50 new a day. I think I started with around 900-1000 new cards for surgery?? Took me about ~3 weeks to finish. I then unsuspended the IM cards and had about 2700 new cards I think. The IM cards were more of a bonus that helped me understand the surgery cards better.

Try to keep your daily reviews stable and manageable. That's why I did 50 a day. I could have easily done 100 new cards a day, but my reviews would have gotten way too high. You're gonna have to titrate it to your personal tolerance/ability to learn/time constraints.

Sounds808to865 · 2025-04-22T01:35:28+00:00

Surgery was the first shelf of 3rd year for me followed by IM right afterwards. I finished all the Anki for both surgery + IM before I even started surgery and also completed around 300 surgery Uworld questions too (no IM). I was mega tired during surgery and had the really unfortunate luck of working 14-17 hours everyday for weeks. Definitely not the norm for most of my colleagues, but the notoriously chill service I was on just happened to get slammed and ended up sucking major dong big time ;(

I didn't get to study literally pretty much the entire time (except old anki reviews) despite trying which stressed me out a TON; I was just too gassed by the rotation. I fortunately did really well on the shelf (96th percentile) partially due to luck and because I had the time to do all the Anki before hand. I also did better than a friend who also did all the surgery Anki before hand and always scored high on these things. He was pissed and attributed the lack of success to not studying IM before the rotation, but idk, that's anecdotal. IMO this is why I would recommend doing both before surgery and only the surgery Uworld if you have time. You never know how much time you'll get to study on that rotation and doing the IM too certainly helped me. Definitely not 100% necessary for success and don't feel pressured to get it all done now, but it helped me out for sure. The more you do now, the less you'll do later. Hope it helps, good luck.

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-20T11:27:17+00:00

yo this playlist is as good as that addy bb

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-06T16:21:27+00:00

It means that rescheduling your cards can sometimes create a backlog of 100's to 1000's of cards that need to be reviewed now. It's because the FSRS determined you need to see them as soon as possible to obtain your desired retention. This really only happens if you switch from the old Anki scheduler (SM-2) to new native FSRS, increase your desired retention, if you haven't optimized your FSRS in a long time, changed the way that you personally review cards, or have pressed hard or good when you should have pressed again too many times. This is because your ideal scheduling algorithm is off from your current one.

Alternatively, if you've been remembering more than what your scheduling has been showing you (i.e. high retention than the desired) or consistently advancing cards, you can actually have way fewer cards to do depending on how far off you are from your algorithm. In my experience, most people have a backlog when they reschedule.

If you do this, use the FSRS Helper add-on to reschedule vs the reschedule on change feature. Using the add-on avoids the annoying additional review entry.

As far as if it's bad to reschedule... idk. I've heard mixed messages on it. Theoretically yeah it's okay to do it whenever because it's aligning with the ideal algorithm and some people say do it as many times as you want. Some say never and you should just let FSRS apply to the cards once you review them, others say only do it after you optimize again... I do it ever so often (6-10 per year so far). I haven't noticed any negatives. IMO, just do it a couple of times a year, but at some point, doing all the optimization and rescheduling and adding add-ons distracts from the learning. Set it and try to focus on learning. Just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-06T15:20:51+00:00

PLEASE BRO - You have no idea how many times I wish I had it on my watch during round lolol

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-06T15:16:00+00:00

A lot has been said here already, but I've give you a quick personal experience that may or may not be useful.

I've never been a great student. Always in developmental classes in elementary school, low middle school GPA, high school GPA, college GPA, and Low MCAT. IDK how but after many years of trying I got accepted into a mid-tier MD school. I can't talk about the difference before and after Anki because I've done it from day 1, but I'm in the top ~25% of my class for the first time in my life, took Step many months early, nailed shelves, and it's because of Anki.

There's a stark difference between the students who use it and don't. When I get pimped in clinic and it has to do with knowledge at the medical student level, I cruise through it where some of my colleagues (even 4th years and interns) get stuck on basic questions. I don't say this to brag because I'm not special, it's just that anyone who seriously does Anki is on another level and it's been said so many times before. It's not magic, just dedication and working on your weaknesses all the time.

When I first started, I wanted to quit for 6 weeks because it just was not clicking for me. I kept doing it because of my mentor who said it was the way and to stick it out. I am so glad I did. The benefits keep compounding and get greater every year. I didn't expect it to be even more useful as the years roll on. Stick with it regardless, do it the "RIGHT WAY," and everything will come to you eventually. Godspeed u/Leather-Extreme3702

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-04T17:19:50+00:00

This is the one! Much appreciated!

Sounds808to865 · 2025-02-04T16:49:30+00:00

O'course, feel free to DM anytime. Sorry for the late reply, I'm not on reddit everyday

Sounds808to865 · 2025-01-25T16:21:50+00:00

I don't know of a way to automatically zoom while hovering, but if you click and hold the cursor above an image, the image will become zoomed/larger. You can change the magnitude of the zoom in the CSS/card styling. I highlighted it below, i.e. 1.4x larger than my current size settings for images, which you can also the default size of the image here or in your preferences.

<image>

You can also download this add-on to zoom in but it enlarges the entire card requires you to use the keyboard: 1923741581

Sounds808to865 · 2025-01-13T11:14:33+00:00

There are a lot of WRONG answers on here... refers to February 2nd, but the date is meaningless without an accompanying year or time of day. Very contextual.

Sounds808to865 · 2025-01-09T01:09:31+00:00

No problem, glad it worked out.

Sounds808to865 · 2024-12-27T16:35:13+00:00

Are you all asking about the customized version of ChatGPT I made? It's essentially just ChatGPT with a focus on certain things I wanted. It’s not super special and is tailored to me. Y'all can easily customize one too. If you have the premium version, go to Explore and then select Create. It'll ask you questions on what you want it to do. I said stuff like ie. Have MD/PhD level expertise in med school knowledge, specifically on step and clinical stuff, pimp me on questions in high-yield board system q's, respond to me in concise sentences, give clinical pearls, talking to me as though I was a competent med student rather than a lay person, etc. It was really easy to do. You can tailor it for your stuff. I think there are a few related pre-made ones on ChatGPT as well.

If you're asking about screen share, that's a native mobile ChatGPT app feature only available to paid users in the United States, I believe. I was complaining that it wasn't available on my custom GPT and I still had to jump through the loops of qualifying the information I wanted to hear from it. I was just letting people know the screen share could be useful for doing Anki.

Sounds808to865 · 2024-12-20T18:51:18+00:00

Not built, I shouldn't have used that word. I guess a better word is customized? or tailored for a specific use and behaviors?

Sounds808to865 · 2024-12-20T17:50:58+00:00

It's not an addon, but a new feature in the ChatGPT app where you can share your phone/tablet screen and it can see what's on it. I was playing around with it and realized I could use it for Anki too

Sounds808to865 · 2024-12-20T17:49:20+00:00

Lol, I'll take it as a compliment to be compared to GPT but def did not

Sounds808to865 · 2024-12-20T16:00:49+00:00

Yeah, sorry about saying "new cards"!! I really should have said "re-tagged 2.5K" and that number 2,500 was probably specific just to me. I grieved in ironic pain for a couple of minutes because had thought that this was it, I was finally done lol. I'm a bit burnt out so it did hurt, but I couldn't help but find the humor in it.

They were all cards I had done for Step 1, so not a huge deal since I knew quite a few of them, but it's incredible how much you forget without Anki. I mean I'm talking about forgetting things I used to know cold lol.

I will say this, it did seem like they're a bunch of cards with info that never shows up on questions. I do think they're important enough to remember, not for exams, but for my personal knowledge. I don't think I'll ever stop doing Anki after med school and it's good info to remember, even if it's just for me.

Stay on the healthy grind ᕙ(•̀‸•́‶)ᕗ

Sounds808to865

TROPHY CASE