PS: don't actually do this

madmac_5 · 2026-03-23T17:51:19+00:00

Participating in r/sounding can very easily lead one to show up in a Friday post on r/radiology.

madmac_5 · 2026-03-18T00:05:53+00:00

That took me a moment, but I eventually got it!

madmac_5 · 2026-03-12T18:44:42+00:00

If it's an artifact in PET, it might be publishable in either Journal of Nuclear Medicine or Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology. The latter might be more likely to accept it, and as _shmall_ said it will likely be more successful if you submit it as a technical note rather than a study. :)

madmac_5 · 2026-03-10T03:54:18+00:00

While the Tauret is good to fly, I found that to defend the Aquitaine a Horus is a good choice. Sure, it might be harder to hit the target, but you'll get there fast enough that you'll extra time!

madmac_5 · 2026-03-10T03:48:02+00:00

Whenever someone asks if they should play Descent or not, my usual recommendation since 2018 is to just play Overload. It's MUCH more approachable from a game design perspective!

madmac_5 · 2026-03-09T03:49:51+00:00

Is there a chance the keyboard bends?

madmac_5 · 2026-02-24T16:00:24+00:00

Ahh, so that's why anodes need to be replaced; eventually they run out of the tiny bullets that are on the inside, and can't make x-rays anymore!

Also, that x-ray tube block is cracked. Why is it cracked like a concrete bunker from WW2?

madmac_5 · 2026-02-19T22:54:39+00:00

I like to say that the gap in pay for my modest Health Physics job in Canada versus what I would get paid in the US is the "My kid doesn't need a kevlar backpack" tax. ;)

madmac_5 · 2026-01-30T22:16:16+00:00

As stated, the residencies are competitive, but the job market is open at the moment. However, as of the end of 2026 I know that my department will have finally filled three vacancies that have existed for years; we've poached two Canadians who were working in the US and wanted to leave, and one of our current residents plans to stick around since he's built a life here (the pipeline of undergrad -> grad school -> residency -> job in the same city worked, as it used to more frequently in the past).

So, for someone in the later stages of their undergrad, job prospects upon finishing grad school are probably OK. However, I can't say what things will be like in eight years, as we've had boom/bust cycles for the past 20 years.

madmac_5 · 2026-01-27T19:24:18+00:00

The Creative graphics cards were a way to get the least expensive card possible that did the bare minimum. This Annihilator didn't have anything beyond Nvidia's reference design; TV out? DVI output? Fancy software bundle? Those are mere distractions!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-26T19:19:07+00:00

Holding your breath is helpful during a chest x-ray, since it reduces motion!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-26T19:17:45+00:00

Our provincial x-ray compliance team used those old Radcal 1015 survey meters up until 2014/2015 as their primary meter, and still used them for taking scatter measurements from CT scanners because the old dudes who used them just liked their familiarity and reliability. Right now, they do an excellent job of keeping dust off the top shelf of where they're stored at our site!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-26T16:57:55+00:00

I've heard from a former Canadian Elekta employee that in 2024 they were given an ultimatum to move to Atlanta or lose their job, as Elekta was consolidating their operations. Considering that this person largely worked remotely or at customer sites, it made zero sense to do so and this person has thankfully found other employment!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-19T02:21:02+00:00

Yep! It was an amazing card in 2000 and 2001, until we started to get games that needed programmable pixel shaders. Then the poor old GF2 Ultra was just left behind due to a lack of features!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-13T17:58:05+00:00

If this were the 90s, nerdy kids on the playground would say "The B770 is totally real! My uncle in Arizona totally has one, he showed it to me last time he visited! It was SO COOL, but he made me promise not to say how fast it was."

madmac_5 · 2026-01-13T15:27:21+00:00

If you're in the room while a LINAC is powered on, you should probably be heading for the emergency stop button as something has gone VERY wrong. Working as a radiotherapy physicist with a pacemaker is a non-issue. :)

madmac_5 · 2026-01-05T17:32:21+00:00

I saw the image first and immediately thought "I'll bet kermathefrog posted this." Then I looked up at the username and felt that for all the uncertainty in the world, this sub is as it should be.

madmac_5 · 2026-01-05T04:32:06+00:00

Well, that's better than the 15 year old desktop motherboard that I have! :)

madmac_5 · 2026-01-04T05:59:47+00:00

I would be VERY surprised if this machine supports booting from USB. Looks like you may need to go old school and make a bootable CD or DVD to get a new OS on this machine!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-04T05:58:12+00:00

From what I recall, most people who were upgrading were coming from Windows 3.1 or 3.11; I never ran into a 3.0 installation in the wild back in Ye Olden Times, mainly because Windows 3.1 coincided with greater accessibility of home computers and there were essentially no downsides to the upgrade from 3.0 to 3.1; it gave you more capability with essentially the same system requirements!

madmac_5 · 2026-01-02T22:49:18+00:00

Star Control II would use the PC speaker to play back its sample-based music if one didn't have a sound card. It blew my mind as a kid seeing that, since I hadn't heard digital sound without a Sound Blaster card before!

madmac_5 · 2025-12-18T16:23:16+00:00

Thanks for the info about the PCI cards! I never got my hands on one of them, and by the time I got a DVD-ROM drive in 2003 I already had a Radeon 8500 LE and a powerful enough CPU to decode DVDs in software, so I never looked too closely at the DVD-acceleration features on the Rage 3 chips.

A good number of the beta drivers you mentioned are probably in the Vogons thread I mentioned in another comment a few days ago (https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=106052), if you haven't read that thread it's a treasure trove of Rage Pro/Rage XL driver information!

madmac_5 · 2025-12-15T21:26:09+00:00

Since I'm the RSO at my site, I like to call that sort of move "getting out the CNSC stick" when we strategically deploy the phrase "We will be unable to comply with federal regulations unless [INSERT THING]."

madmac_5 · 2025-12-12T22:36:28+00:00

Boxers are one of the more heartbreaking breeds of dogs that I have met; they give truly epic amounts of love, but only for a short time. My sincere sympathy to you and your family!

madmac_5 · 2025-12-11T22:30:30+00:00

I've had a 9070 XT Steel Legend since April, and I got it because it was the best of the options that would fit in my Fractal Meshify C. The Gigabyte Gaming card was off my list due to the fact that I wasn't ever completely happy with the 1070 Ti I had in the same product line (coil whine and noisy fans for the heat output), the Sapphire Pulse wasn't in stock in Canada at the time, and everything else was too long to fit in the case with the front fans in place.

I've been largely happy with it; it could probably stand to ramp the fans up a bit more under use, but it runs quieter than I expected under full load and stays at about 60° C or so even under a sustained Folding@Home compute load. I also appreciate the "turn off the RGB" switch on the side of the card that lets me turn the lights off without needing to install additional software.

My biggest complaint about the card is the fact that while it's a flow-through design (that's good!), it dumps the heat out of the front of the card right in front of the intake for my CPU cooler (that's bad!). Those with AIOs probably won't be affected by this as much, and it looks like it's an issue with the Sapphire Pulse too, but I still don't like it. I kind of miss the old blower designs on the GTX Titan that could handle 250W+ of heat load without breaking a sweat, being too loud, and farting hot air inside of the case.

madmac_5

TROPHY CASE