Western Point Beach [    ]

Today's diving site is at Western Point Beach. I have not been here since the open water checkout in May. In the summer season, divers are not allowed to walk into the water from the beach. So we choose the entry site at the other side of the park.

My dive buddis are Don and Sue. As soon as I entered the water, I got lost and just had to follow Don. There are very much sea weed at this site and they are all very high, making it a little bit anoying to go further. The bottom conditions are diverse: sea weed, bolders, mud and sand. But I did not see too much animals here.

Don reminded me that I should keep the body slim. I guess this is because the poor visibility and I have to keep a good position to Don to avoid lost.

Weiwei posted @ 21:11:40 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Making Progress [General]

Eric (as of you who don't know him, he is my phd professor) left this week for a conference in Italy. It seems this would be a good chance to take a breath.

The experiments collabrated with Brook Haven National Lab came back. The result seems okay (not as good as I had thought but good enough). This means I have to spend several weeks to finish this new paper, which is good.

I carefully thought about the website. There are many very good pictures I took during the trips before. I think there is no reason to leave them in a silicon brick. So I will add a new section of the "travel journal", recording the trips I have taken. I am now working on some PHP issues of how to orgnize the pictures for each report. I hope you can see it in couple of weeks.

Weiwei posted @ 20:52:10 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - Hanging Out in Armhest [General]

Hong Rui and Qian Lin are my good friends since high school. Although we are not far apart, I have not met them for a long time since they got married last summer. Interestingly, their roommate, Ou is my college classmate. So it's very nice to visit them.

Ou did not change too much, still looks like pretty much as before. Hong Rui, Qian Lin and I went to White Moutain and Plymouth in the weekend. You can click to see some photos.

Weiwei posted @ 15:18:13 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - Plymouth Harbor [General]

The whale watching trip starts from the Plymouth Harbor to the Cape Cod Bay. Plymouth is famous because it's the beginning of the American history. The fist Pilgrims came to the North America in 1642 and they landed at Plymouth. History is always controversial. The disaster of the indan also started from here.

This small town is also very typical New England style, just like Province town and the Bar Harbor. But there are fewer tourists here so it's not that crowded (also there is not too much things that you can do here).

Weiwei posted @ 15:08:48 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - Whale Watching [Photography]

It's been a long time that I have been trying to shoot some whale pictures. However this is only my second time to go for whale watching. The first time was in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was terrible! The boat was so fast that everyone on board puke. And the worst thing was there was no whale!

This time it is near the Cape Cod Bay. I knew the information from the New Haven Camera Club. I was also told that the whales are not showy recently.

This time the boat is much quiet. I think this is because of the relatively slow speed. It took a long time ( more than 1 hour for one-way trip ) to go to the seeing site. There are several humpback whales. All they did were just swimming so I actually did not see too much. The only thing I got was shot of the tail. Plus the whale was pretty far, those pictures are not very good for prints.

I should have some more chances to go in the late of this summer. Hope I can get more and better then.

Weiwei posted @ 14:59:31 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - Lost River Gorge [Photography]

Eventhough I have been to the White Moutain for several times, this is the first time that I really stop to walk a trail along Rt.102. The Lost River Gorge is located at the west of Rt.102. The gorge is about 170 feet in depth. It is formed because of the river flowing and water corrosion.

The water falls are always good topic for photography, though there are no really "gorgeous and beautiful" water falls in New England area. These several pictures were taken by putting the camera on the bolders so that I can get a relatively long shutter speed. I am thinking it would be more beautiful in the fall because of the foilage then.

Weiwei posted @ 14:47:39 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Pleasure Beach [    ]

Since early this month, every Wednesday looks very good. Today we headed to the Pleasure Beach in Waterford, which is at the exit 75 of I-95, much closer than the Stonington Point.

The water temperature now gets up to 61 F, which is really warm (but you still need the full wetsuit). The entry is easy because the surface is very flat at this site (because they built a ramp of the boat).

Today I got a chance to take several pictures and turned out they are not bad at all. The overall quality of the pictures is not very good. Well this is because the very poor visibility. Taking picture is hard because I have to always keep the eye on my buddy when the visibility is no more than 7 feet.

It's making progress to have these underwater pictures. Besides this, I signed up the advanced course which will start in the late August.

Weiwei posted @ 21:21:57 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

With Professor K. L. Cheng [Research]

In today's meeting, I met Professor K. L. Cheng. Actually I did not know him before this. All happened because we sat at the same table.

Professor Cheng is in aquatic chemistry. After the war between China and Japan in 1945, he joined an exam hold by the Chinese government then. He did very well in the exam and was selected to go to US in 1947. Since then, he has worked in electrochemistry for more than 50 years and this year he is 89 years old. Two years ago, he proposed the idea of "triple layer" in chemistry, which is now challenging some of the basic concepts in aquatic chemistry. And just because of this, his theory has not been widely accepted.

What is amazing is that Professor Cheng is still doing research, funded by his own retirement savings. I might not quite familiar with his contributions to the research field, but I admire his spirit of devoting himself to science.

Weiwei posted @ 19:36:41 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

ACS Meeting - Dinner With Dinosaur [General]

The banquet of this ACS meeting is at Peabody Museum of Yale. I had thought there would be a big reception room for banquet. But it turned out that all the guests would stay with the huge dinosaur for their dinner. This is not bad at all. Plus there was live music, which makes the whole atmosphere pretty cool.

Weiwei posted @ 19:25:34 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

ACS Meeting at Yale - Cont. [Research]

In today's meeting, I met Professor John Fenn, who won the chemistry Nobel Prize last year. He was a professor at Yale before and even worked in the lab where I am working now.

I am always wondering how many people are doing research for fun. I think today's science has reached a point which is super specifically professional, quite different from the idea of "searching the truth for fun". So it's very good to hear somebody saying :"oh, science and engineering are so much fun!"

Weiwei posted @ 14:48:00 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - ACS Meeting at Yale [Research]

This year is the 78th American Chemstry Society meeting of Colloidal & Surface Science, hold at Yale.

I heard that Yale's engineering was very good 50 years ago. However, due to the misleading of Yale's president at that time, it became a very small department. In recent several years, Yale's engineering has made great progress and become larger and larger.

One thing that worth noting is that Gibbs was from Yale. Anyone knowing even a little bit of science should know Gibbs, who made great progress for thermodynamics and even for the modern science. So it's quite surprise for me at the beginning when I knew that Gibbs and I are actually shoolmates...

I gave a talk today. It went pretty good. I am think to build a new section on this website for the academic literature. I will be thinking how I can do that.

Weiwei posted @ 22:06:14 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update - Air Show in Rholde Island [General]

I do not have too much interest in the aircraft/weapon ( even though my father is a fight pilot in the army ). But I have known the air show in Rhold Island for quite a long time and finally decided to go. This is definitely a very good photo opportunity.

It's very hot today. When we got to the airport, we realized that this is an army air base. I grew up in the enviroment of Chinese Army, especially my father is in the air force. So this kind of army style made me think of what I have known before.

The air show is fantastic, especially the Thunder Bird. It's very famous, even I heard of it a lot when I was in China. They did a lot to show. Even though I know this might be pretty routine for them, I was still very excited.

The interesting thing is when the plane is faster then the sound, you can see the plane passing by but there is no sound. After a while, you can hear extremly loud sound, which can be scaring.

Weiwei posted @ 21:57:15 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (3) [    ]

Hehe, it's Stonington again! Yeah...the weather is great today. Well several things are worth of noting:

First, I got everything for the diving now. Today I got the new tank and weight. I believe now I should have almost everything. If I need something for a night dive later, there should be no big stuff that I should buy.

Second, I finally get everything right in diving this time. The 25 lb weight is just great for me. I had a very good control today in the water.

Third, I finally brought a digital camera down into water. Taking pictures in the water is not easy at all, especially in the New England coast because of the poor visibility. But I believe if I practice more, plus sort of luck, there should be some good shots.

I will keep on practicing. Hopefully later this summer, I will take the advanced course. By the way, I will thank Russ for giving me a ride. And today it's Larry who led us in diving. He is very very nice and taught us a lot both before and after diving.

Weiwei posted @ 21:55:24 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

A Little Bit More Progress [Research]

Another paper is submitted today and I am second-authered. Great thanks for Min and his thorough work. I really appreciate that he gave me the chance to work on part of it. Here is the link to the paper.

Weiwei posted @ 21:48:03 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Canon Powershot A80 with Housing [Photography]

Last time I brought a one-time underwater film camera to dive. I did not expect good pictures from the camera bought from Walmart with 7 bucks. Actually it turned out that most of the negatives were not exposed. Even though it cost $5 to develope. So I desperately need a digital camera to shoot underwater.

The situation of the housing for Digital Rebel is the cost of well more than $1000. Not to mention the possibility that the camera itself will be out of time in one or two years.

I decided to buy a point-and-shoot camera with a nice and cheap housing and ended up with Canone A80. The good poit of this camera vs. S410/S500 is that (1) it's not too small to grab and (2) it has some creative mode including Tv/Av. The advantage of the point-and-shoot camera is that you can go from wide-angle to close-up and even to shoot video. At this point, I will practice both diving and taking the picture with the camera/housing.

I will try to post some pictures soon.

Weiwei posted @ 19:29:40 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update [General]

I am trying to get more used to PHP this weekend. Well sitting in front of the computer is not easier than I have thought working on the vaccum chamber. Since last Friday, my neck's been rigid and painful. I am worrying about how can I work tomorrow. Well I eventually wrote an application for my diving log book with PHP all by myself. You can see the link on the right colume. Well the work for the ISIE did not go very smoothly at the beginning. There is still lots of stuff to learn in terms of dynamic webpage.

I went out to take some pictures yesterday afternoon and spotted again some swans. Maybe swan is one of easiest animals to spot in my area. And of course they are beautiful. And always a male and a female stay together, like a family. They were hanging around, searching food and sometime fought for their territory.

I decided to buy a point-and-shoot camera first for my diving. I had thought about Canon Powershot S410/S500. I went to Circuit City and found they are not good because they even do not have AV/TV modes. Basically they are very small and extreamly automated to satisfy the fashion. But I do find A80 is great, even with a much lower price. Well it's in my budget.

Weiwei posted @ 14:33:36 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (2) [    ]

The summer finally came. It shoot 90 degrees today and it's a beautiful day for diving. Well Ed was not coming today but Mark was. This is the first time I saw him since the open water checkout.

Since it's very hot, the air is kind of haze. The stonington point is pretty busy today: cars in and cars out. When Russ came, we suited up quickly and walked into the water.

Almost when we started to descend, I found I was way too light. I just could not get down near the bottom no matter how hard I strode. Mark tried to grab me down to the bottom so I might be stay there since the wetsuite would be squeezed more. But it did not work. Just when I almost gave up, Mark dragged me again and passed me a stone. Thank God! I was then almost neutral.

After that, everything went smoothly. The visibility is really good today. I am glad the brought a camara down into the water. We saw a lot small fish, a horse shoe crab. Mark poited Russ and me a sea slug. I did not see it has too much color but its shape was beautiful. We did not go to deep, only 19 feet and for about 40 min.

I will get the film developed soon and see if there is anything interesting.

Weiwei posted @ 21:53:47 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

HTML, XHTML and CSS [General]

I am pretty busy since the last weekend. The weather really sucked: cloudy and rainy. But it's cool. Besides the lab work, I am trying to build up new webpages for my research section. Today I switched to the new pages. You can link to the "research" to take a look. It is pretty new and I will add more stuff later on.

I think I am lucky to be in a world with CSS. I do not have to bother with the tables and frames. It's super flexible and easy to use. The only disadvantage is that it might not be supported by older browser.

I met two things recently about the internet. The first one is I continuously receive the email from a pharmaceutic company. There is not 'unsubscribe' link. If you clik and view their webpage, you can find nothing about how to contact them. I tried to block the address but I found they change the email address everytime. Well I admire they can invent one sound-resonable name everyday.

The other thing is that one of the computers in my lab was embeded an advertisement message box in 2 minutes after I installed the windows system. How could they do it this fast? The message box will pop out every 15 minutes, remind you to buy Viagra. You can not belive this.

What a funny internet world we are in!

Weiwei posted @ 20:43:20 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Treatment of WO3 Surface [Research]

This illustrates why I decided to add a category for research. Since Wednesday, I have been struggling to treat the WO3 surface so it will be smooth. All I did is to heat it up to very high temperature. But it can not go too high otherwise it will be damaged. Since I do not know what is the right temperature, I have to try from a low start point.

Finally after several days trying, I made it good, showing by the LEED pattern.

p.s. Today (Jun 7th, 2004) it is confirmed by STM that the long time anealing did improve the WO3 surface.

Weiwei posted @ 21:25:08 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

What I Am Doing [Research]

Frankly speaking, when I started to build up this website, my intention is not purposely for presenting my research work. Does research have fun? I have to say YES. But this does not apply to the people who are not doing the same thing as I do. So I did not spend too much time on the pages about my reseach work.

But I realized that this is not right. In order to make the website, which in my concept is the expression of my life, abundant, there is no reason to exclude the work on which I spend most of my lifetime.

But I will make it simple, at least looks simple. At least you know that I am doing research besides taking pictures and playing underwater. Sounds reasonable?

Weiwei posted @ 21:17:37 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

A Good Learning Experience [General]

I started working on the website of the Industry Ecology Institute. Basically they had the website built by some IT company. But what they got is just basically a frame. The content of the site is not well orgnized. So my job is to modify some parts and make it more useful. I am glad to use the knowledge I just learned to earn some extra bucks. Even though for most of the parts I have a brief idea of how to work on it, I still have to check the books and make several tries. So basically this is also a very good learning experience for me.

Weiwei posted @ 19:52:50 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point [    ]

Today, Ed (my diving teacher) started his "Wednesday Afternoon Diving" of this season. I have been waiting for the time for a long time. It would be my first dive after I certified.

However, the weather made me disappointed. Since Sunday it had been forcast that there will be pm t-storm on Wednesday afternoon. And it did not seem getting any better. After a pouring rain, Ed decided to cancel the diving.

At about 4pm, the sun poped out. I called Ed again and he said:" well if don't mind wasting sometime, just come!" I ran to the Essex. The weather did not get any worse then. We headed to Stoningto Point near the border of Connecticut and Rhold Island.

The most stupid thing I did is I did not tell Ed that I do not have tank. I assume he knows that I am new. Any way, he is very very nice. He decided to stay and let me use his tank.

When we in the water, there was a very huge black cloud on our west. Even we could spot some lighting. But it did not seem moving. I have a new buddy named Rus, who is from Yale too. Everything seemed okay. Ed's tank is huge for me. And the mask kept leaking. (I am thinking to change a new mask next time.) Since it's cloudy, the poor visibilty of New England shoreline gets even worse, only 5-7 feet. But the water is not cold at all.

There are not too much animals there. I spot a stripper (the name Rus and Ed told me later), which has black and white stripes. I saw AGAIN two horse shoe crab mating. I was wondering is there any better thing to do in the life? Or just take a break...hehe...there are some small fish going around.

The most beatiful moment is when you reach the surface and see that beatiful sunset through your wet mask. All your hard work at this moment is paid off!

Weiwei posted @ 19:58:41 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)