Education Today I learned (TIL)........

TiL that despite being noisy (think 2 million volt Tesla coil) MRI machines are rather easy to fall asleep in, weirdly soothing.

 

Well, at least if you're asleep you're not moving...

 

Ironic that they're so noisy with no moving parts compared to a CT Scanner.

We had a baby MRI in the basement at Uni that was used for research work, it was in a separate partition from everything else. You had to put your wallet and watch in a tub by the door and all the ferrous tools on the work trolley nearby were all on retaining cords!

This was that long ago that the image processing was done by a 286 PC* with a Fast Fourier Transform Card...It'd be all on a GPU or dedicated hardware now I guess.

* I see that was out of date by the time I was there in '88

Putting the computing in perspective, we had a Commodore PET, (bolted to the bench), in the 1st year lab for least squares fit analysis. There were BBC B micros around too, but not many. You could book time on the mainframe, but I never got involved there.

 

TIL that I still have credit in my Sipgate account and that it's still active after more than 2 years...

 

TIL that Bungie released the final Halo PC patch in 2014 (2014!!!).

It contained a number of fixes that makes the original Halo PC work seamlessly on Win 7/8/10 and at 1080p, it also contained an entirely new server browser and authentication system since Gamespy was shut down.

I also discovered that in 2020 there is still a busy population of Halo PC multiplayer servers going, despite the presence of SPV3 and MCC. Brilliant!

 

TiL that McDonald's breakfasts are as delicious as I remember, not been there for anything since the beginning of March.

 

Not been to McDonalds for about 30 years.

 

I lost a bet to my wife that there isn't such thing as savory muffins.

She bought McMuffin's and won the bet. Now brings it up whenever we go pass McD.

 

That tops me at just over 19 years (late August 2001, I know because that is when I quite my summer job which was next to a McDonalds).

 

TIL, on another forum, that in The Netherlands, Celine Dion is known as The Canadian Foghorn.

 

Regarded as fondly as that?

 

TIL my missus has never seen or heard a kazoo before.

#culturaldifferences

 

There are some Canadian's too

 

We would all like to have never heard a kazoo.

 

But then I would have never heard the Deus Ex theme on a Kazoo, it's glorious!

 

Well a kazoo is just a posh version of a comb and paper.

 

That is fantastic. And nowI just want to fire up Deus Ex agian. Good times.

 

TIL, this just in from Susie Dent:

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

TIL - The son of Smallfilms founder Oliver Postgate is working on a live-action "Ivor the Engine" movie.

 

Genuinely feel like I've seen a trailer for this but that would have been almost exactly a year ago at Star Wars which seems early and I can't find anything online. TIL I'm losing it.