Weekend Thought [General]

I have been 'going nowhere' for several weeks. Although trying to keep myself busy, I still find everything is sort of low efficiency. I am thinking I should keep on going to find something new and keep my mind refreshed. Anyway, August is coming. I have many plans in August.

I was helping Liu Shan and Gao Ning moving to the new apartment today. It seemed to be a great workout in such a hot and humid summer day. Gao Ning and I talked a lot about photography. I again persuaded another buddy switching from film to digital. I believe this is the right way to go.

Today I registered two domains: www.iamdiving.com and www.iamdiving.net. Currently if you use this two addresses, you will be forwarded to www.atweiwei.net. I will set up something new with the two addresses some time later.

Weiwei posted @ 22:01:08 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

MSN With My Parents [Thoughtful]

My Mom set up an MSN messenger at home today. This has been the first time in three years I see the face of my parents, which is kind of depressing. This made me thinking of what I am doing everyday. It seems that I gain a lot from what I am learning, what I am doing and what I am expriencing. But I also clearly realize what I am sacrificing. I am always thinking one should not live without challengen. But one thing is really hard for everyone: to see our parents become older and older everyday.

Weiwei posted @ 20:55:37 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (7) [    ]

It's supposed to be "heavy T-storm" today. But till we walked into the sea, it's almost pouring. We would get wet anyway. So it seemed that nobody cared about the shower.

It's been very much rainy since Monday, which made the visibility very poor. Also because it's raining topside, it's very very dark in the sea. We almost could not see anything without the flashlight.

I buddied up with Brian today. We spotted several lobsters. I am now pretty experienced to find where the lobster is. The amazing thing is that I tried to use the in-built flash light of my camera. I found if I was trying to take close-up (which is the only thing I can do most of the time), the back scattering is not as bad as I had thought. If I shoot quickly before I stirred up any sand, the shots actually are pretty good. But anyway, the whole thing takes time. I should try both with or without flash.

Weiwei posted @ 22:03:22 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Edgerton Park [General]

Perhaps few people know where is the Edgerton Park. It's on north side of Whitney Ave near Hamden. I remember last winter it was really cold. Iris (Gao Ying) and I were desperately looking for some places to take pictures and we finally found some flowers in the park. Actually there is a huge green house in the park, which makes it a year-around photography 'resort'.

The park in the spring and summer is really beautiful. I especially like summer because there are lots of small animals around. Lots of birds, bees and butterflies. People rent a small area of the land and plant the flowers they like. They love gardening very much. And therefore the flowers blosom very well.

You can go to my photo album to take a look at pictures taken in the park. If you have chance, just drop by and enjoy the flower and peaceful garden.

Weiwei posted @ 19:39:46 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Productive Saturday [General]

It seems pretty productive today. First I finished the modification of the 'photography' section. Now the pages contain more information and look much better. Most important, it can be updated easily.

The weather today is most cloudy, which is very good for taking pictures. I got several good shots in the Edgerton park and listed in my photo album.

Finally I had a dinner with several friends in Sichuan/Tokyo, a Chinese restarant in Hartford. It is actually very good. I do not know if it's really good or because we have not been there very often.

Weiwei posted @ 22:31:39 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Congratulations to Shuang [General]

Shuang graduated this summer. After that she found a pretty good job at Pfizer. After she worked there for about half a year, she got offer from Columbia University as an asistant professor.

Shuang, her parents and Song prepared a big and delicious dinner this afternoon. We got a chance to see Shuang's new apartment. But most important, we gave our best wishes to her future life.

To be an asistant professor in a top university must be tough, especially for the transistion period from a student to a professor. We often complain how harsh a professor sometime could be to the student. But when we really stand at a professor's view point, we know it is not easy for a professor either.

Weiwei posted @ 23:50:34 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (6) [    ]

The diving along the Connecticut shoreline is getting tougher. One of the reason is that more people are getting around the beaches in the summer. Divers are restricted not to disturb the people on the beaches. Another reason is that more boat lines are set. Basically the SCUBA diving are not allowed near these lines. So for today's diving, it seems that the Stonington Point is the only choice.

Russ and I are buddied up again. Like usual, we did not go very deep. But we stayed pretty long in the water. The visibility is not bad (it's been satisfactory recently). We actually spot several lobster traps. Under one abandoned trap, we saw two pretty big lobsters. Basically the diving is pretty much the same as before at the Stonington site.

Weiwei posted @ 23:00:15 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Imaging WO3 (100) Surfaces [Research]

I started MBE (molecular beam epitaxy) growth and surface studies of WO3 (100) several weeks ago. Today, with Eric's help, I obtained my first atomic resolution STM (scanning tunneling microscope) image.

Tungsten oxide (WO3) has wide application in industry, especially in catalysis industry. The (100) surface will adopt several structures, dependent on the preparation procedure. From the large scale image, you can see the atom rows are in a 'framed' strucutre and form a zig-zag shape. The zoomed in image is showing the tungsten atoms.

Weiwei posted @ 22:16:11 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Activity [General]

I am trying to minimize my travels recently. Not only because that I want to save some money for the photo/diving gears, but also I think I am behind of my schedule. So I sort of forced myself in front of the computer.

I did finish several things. First I uploaded all the trip photos in the 'travel journal' section. It is pretty tedious, especially to look at the pictures with that much noise. Second, I made some progress working on ISIE website. But the whole thing seems like low efficient. Sometime I just can not focus myself on what I am doing. I hope this only happens in the weekend - because I am still behind of the schdule of the paper.

I had a nice meal last night with several friends (sorry no photos taken). After that we went to see a movie. Since it's late, the only choice was Spider Man 2. I watched episode 1 and it's not good. But the episode 2 is far more better than 1 - not bad at all. This made the weekend a little bit fun.

I also went to the Edgeton Park to take some pictures early this afternoon. The sky was overcast. I have not gone out to take pictures for quite sometime - I guess I pretty much focuse on the diving recently. You may go to the photography to take a look at the new pictures.

Weiwei posted @ 19:51:01 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (5) [    ]

Stonington Point again...hehe..this the 5th time I have been here. It was very rainy on Monday and Tuesday. I had thought probably I could not go today. But eventually it's dry and good enough for diving.

Stonington Point is a very good dive site in Connecticut. One of the reason is that there are lots of lobsters here. Although I have heard it for a long time, today it's my first time to really see a lobster sitting there under the rock.

Don and Bruce are very nice. They let me go first so that I could take my time to take pictures. You can see those two lobster pictures are not bad at all. Bruce used a dive light so that the color of the lobster was brought out. It is supposed that more lobster will come out at night.

We did have a very nice dive. The bottom time is 71 min. So far it is my longest bottom time.

Weiwei posted @ 22:23:42 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Dell Sucks (2) [General]

The tragedy happened again. It started with an error message of "Fatal error reading boot.ini". Eric and I spent the whole afternoon trying to fix the problem but ended up with no progress. It seems that the hard disk failed again. So far this is the 4th case a hard drive failed in a Dell computer.

I once had a notebook in college. It's very slow compared with today's computer. However, after serveral years no use, I still could read the word files about my college life. So I always think the hard drive is supposed to be strong. So not quite understand what happened to Dell. If you have any other choice, do not choose Dell.

Weiwei posted @ 21:56:48 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Dinner with Xia's Parents and Zhiyu [General]

I was so tired today when I came back from the New York City. But it is still very excited to cook some food and invite Xia's parents to my home. Plus Zhiyu is here and we haven't seen each other for quite a long time. Xia's Dad praised me for cooking the food better than last time. Well cooking is pretty much like photography. Taking a ramdom snapshots is easy but making good pictures are not that simple.

Weiwei posted @ 21:39:09 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Reunion in NYC [General]

I got the call from Zhijian this morning and knew that Xiong Sr. just arrived from China and was in the City. They both are my high school classmates and good friends. Another friend, Zhiyu, is in Massachussetts. He would drive down to the City and we could go together to meet Zhijian and Xiong Sir.

I found most of my old schoolmates have gained lots of weight since we were seperated. Today's Xiong Sir actually has lost some weight. Zhiyu was really 'fat' when I saw him last time in the City more than one year ago. Today he was really fit, by loosing lots of weight recently. So you can see how calories play an important role in today's life - it can shape a person so easily.

We had pretty much fun in the City. Click in to see some pictures.

Weiwei posted @ 21:34:04 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

The Old Goodies [Thoughtful]

I was working on an old vaccum pump today. The tag on it showed that the last time it was serviced (something like to be cleaned, oil changed) was April 1985. I have to say this is not really the oldest stuff I saw in the lab. Some of the meters on the shelf with batteries changed in 1968.

Seeing those old stuff, people are used to think about what they were doing at that time. I remember at home when I was still young, Mom sometime pointed a certain piece of kitch utensil and said it was even older than me. And then I always had sort of admiration to it.

But I do sometime feel that I am getting old. Because there are more and more chances you will see people are doing what you have done before: getting into college, driving test, applying for graduate school......So pretty often I feel kind of lost because I do not know what will be left by time.

Weiwei posted @ 19:46:33 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (4) [    ]

Today's diving is the fourth time at Stonington Point. The weather was brilliant: dry, not hot and a lot of sunshine. However, when we got to New London, there came very thick sea fog. This is the first I saw a sea fog. I had thought it was a storm. Dave is the today's team leader. I have not seen him for a while since the classes early this year.

Everything was basically the same. I am now pretty much comfortable with my gear and the water. The issue is about taking the pictures. Since the visibility is no more than 10 feet, I have to keep an eye on my buddy. This makes it difficult to focus on the subject of which I want to take pictures. Another issue is that the camera focus is terribly slow.

There is not too much fish there. But I did see lobsters: a huge one and a very small one. They fled away very quickly.

Weiwei posted @ 21:31:28 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Weekend Update [General]

How is your July 4th holiday? Well I hope life is always in holiday - you can pretty much do anything as you want.

Besides the hard computer work, I did have a nice dinner with Hui, Min's family and Jun. Hui paid the bill because she wanted to thank me for helping her moving to the new apartment. But actually I did not help too much:(...Jun and I cooked last night and invited Xia's parents for dinner. I haven't cooked for a long long time. But it's not too bad. Seems that we all enjoyed the food.

Did you watch the Wimbledon? The final game between Federer and Roddick was really wonderful. The Swiss star delivered with an awesome display on Centre Court. When I watch tennis game, I sort of thinking about the warrior, with sword on hand. Wimbledon is especially good, perhaps because of its long history.

In my memory, every July 4th before was terribly hot. But this year, it is good!

Weiwei posted @ 19:54:47 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Travel Journal [General]

I finally worked out the 'Travel Journal' section. You can find the link in the 'Categories' on your left-hand side. It is also under the page of 'Photography'. If you would like to take a look, please excuse some of the broken links. At this moment, I much focuse on the code itself. I will make it better soon. I have been working on this part since last Friday. It's tough for me at the beginning because I have to learn everything first.

Weiwei posted @ 19:34:24 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

A New Workplace [General]

I actually seldom brought the laptop with me. So I worked in the office and watched TV at home. I finally decided to buy a desktop so that I can work at home. And here it is! I spent the whole day of yesterday to set up the internet and install the software in this computer. And now it works perfect.

I mentioned that I will add a new section of 'travel journal'. This will need a web application of photo reviewing, just like the photo hacks in this b2blog. I worked the whole day and almost finished this. The next thing is to edit the real journal.

Weiwei posted @ 21:00:27 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)